"Unenviable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... distributed as coming from the anti-suffragists—undoubtedly by some vicious element among the men which had its own good reason for opposing us. The "antis" also suffered in this campaign from the "pernicious activity" of their spokesman—a lawyer with an unenviable reputation. After the campaign was over this man declared that it had cost the opponents of ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... desperate as to make his name dreaded even in Paris. On one occasion, at a cafe, he had cut a bullying hussar's head clean off with his own sabre for knocking a woman down; and in another duel, where he had detected a French count cheating him at cards, he shot his nose off for a bet. With this unenviable reputation, and at the urgent solicitations of his agent, after years of absence he returned to his ancestral home. We met as of old—it was Paul and Henry—and though still the same restive, hot-headed spirit as he had ever been, he yet ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... bad as in England. In Holland the prisons were so neat and clean as to make it difficult to believe that they were prisons: and they were used as models for the legislation of 1779. One cause of this unenviable distinction of English prisons had been indicated by an earlier investigation. General Oglethorpe (1696-1785) had been started in his philanthropic career by obtaining a committee of the House of Commons in 1729 to inquire into the state of the gaols. The foundation of the colony of Georgia as ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... evil of watered stock lies not in the presence of water, but in the concealment or coloring of that liquid. Notwithstanding the unenviable reputation which the popular view attaches to watered stock, there are distinctly two sides to that question, always provided that the strictest and fullest publicity is given to all pertinent facts concerning the creation and nature of ...
— The New York Stock Exchange and Public Opinion • Otto Hermann Kahn
... in its death-rate. It is only within the last two or three years that they have taken to publish the comparative returns of the capital cities of Europe, and now it appears that Buda-Pest is in the unenviable position of having on an average the highest death-rate of any European town! By some this is attributed to the great excess of infant mortality—consolatory for the grown-up people, as reducing their risk; but the ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... in the voice he generally used for his collie dog, which bore a thoroughly unenviable reputation, "come on in, ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... Ordinarily they begin, as do our own, with the formula, "once upon a time there was." The ending is also a variable formula, often a couplet referring to the happy termination of the tale and the relatively unenviable condition of the listeners. The Sicilian ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... above all in the history of Faustus, in which the names Wittenberg and Wuertemberg are confounded. Our hero's abode at the former place was very probably merely that of a traveller; he left there, as we shall soon see, a very unenviable reputation. It is true that Saxony was the principal scene of the Doctor's achievements; but this very circumstance makes it improbable that he was born and brought up there, as it is well known that "a prophet hath no honor in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... figures in history, is only known in connection with some stupendous fault—some mistake, some folly, or some sin—that has given him an unenviable immortality. Mention his name, and the huge blot by which his memory is besmirched starts up before the mind in all its hideousness. Take Cain, for example. He occupies the foremost rank as regards ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... ago I discovered that I was worthless. My great failings are insincerity of character and sly ugliness. Any one who watched me a little while would discover my unenviable nature." ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... that the council had nothing to do with the matter, and that he could not waste time in talking about it, was not always present at the meetings, and it sometimes became necessary to depute one or more of the members to visit him. Auteuil, the attorney-general, having been employed on this unenviable errand, begged the council to dispense him from such duty in future, "by reason," as he says, "of the abuse, ill treatment, and threats which he received from Monsieur the governor, when he last had the honor of being deputed to confer with him, the particulars whereof ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... in excellent language. He has certainly hit upon the way (but I could not make out by what means) of speaking a much purer English language than that which is in general spoken on the parent soil. This astonished me much; but it is really the case. Amongst his many good qualities he has one unenviable and, I may add, a bad propensity: he is immoderately fond of smoking. He may say that he learned it from his nurse, with whom it was once much in vogue. In Dutch William's time (he was a man of bad taste) the English gentleman could not do without his pipe. During the short ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... age of twenty he succeeded to the throne of Macedonia, a perilous and unenviable inheritance: for the neighbouring barbarian tribes chafed at being held in bondage, and longed for the rule of their own native kings; while Philip, although he had conquered Greece by force of arms, yet had not had time to settle its government ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... suitable for the older labourers engaged upon their honourable employment on the land. We had a maid named Vashti, and she was quite shy about mentioning it at her first interview with my wife. In all country neighbourhoods there is a special place with the unenviable reputation of stupidity; such was "Yabberton" (Ebrington, on the Cotswolds), and Vashti was somewhat reluctant to admit that it was her "natif," as a birthplace is called in the district. Among the traditions of Yabberton it is related that the farmers, being anxious to prolong the summer, erected ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... were standing in groups. Sterling Hopkins, the volunteer hangman of Casey, of the Vigilance police, came up and attempted the arrest of Reub. Maloney, a notorious politician, whose impudence of speech and reckless ways in partisan devices had made him an unenviable reputation. His bravery was in his mouth; his mouth beyond his own control. Judge David S. Terry, then of the State Supreme Court, interposed to prevent the lawless arrest, and in the struggle he drew a knife and dangerously wounded Hopkins. In a few minutes word had reached ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... the copse another head rises; that of Chaucer's great friend, John Gower. Unlike Chaucer in this, Gower hated and despised common people; when he allows them room in his works, the place assigned to them is an unenviable one. He is aristocratic and conservative by nature, so that he belongs to old England as much as to the new nation, and is the last in date of the recognisable representatives of Angevin Britain. Like the latter, Gower ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... Louis, succeeded, by linking the Catholic cause to his personal ambition, in realizing his dream of universal monarchy, Europe would most likely have been plunged into a political and social condition as unenviable as that into which old Asia has been plunged for these four hundred years; and it may well be believed that it was Providence that raised and directed the tempest that scattered the Grand Armada, and that gave victory to the arms of Eugene ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... she was dead in order that her past life might be obliterated. The doctor, however, died before the marriage, and Rosanna did not trouble herself about undeceiving me. She was then acting on the burlesque stage under the name of 'Musette,' and seemed to have gained an unenviable notoriety by her extravagance and infamy. Whyte met her in London, and she became his mistress. He seemed to have had a wonderful influence over her, for she told him all her past life, and about her marriage with me. Her popularity being on the ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... the clapping of hands and kicking of heels was most satisfactory. There was at any rate no prejudice at the onset. "English Ladies and Gentlemen," he said, "I am in the unenviable position of having to say hard things to you for about an hour and a half together, if I do not drive you from your seats before my lecture is done. And this is the more the pity because I could talk to you for three hours about ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... his position:—"If I had said time instead of the public, I should have expressed myself exactly. It is impossible for me to work up any enthusiasm for the service done to literature by criticism as a whole. I have, no doubt, the unenviable advantage over you of having wasted three mortal months in reading all the literary criticism extant of the first quarter of this century. It would be difficult to express my sense of its imbecility, its blundering, and its bad passions. But the good books ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the colonization of the land to the west of the Andes. As has been related, Almagro's unfortunate expedition returned, dejected and diminished in numbers, from the apparently inhospitable soil in the south. This disaster lent to Chile an unenviable but entirely undeserved notoriety. Pedro de Valdivia was the next to venture into these regions. Valdivia naturally enjoyed several advantages over his predecessor, for he knew now, by the other's experiences, the dangers and perils against which he had to guard. In consequence of this his expedition ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... Kings, Founders of sects and systems, to whom add Sophists, Bards, Statesmen, all unquiet things Which stir too strongly the soul's secret springs, And are themselves the fools to those they fool; Envied, yet how unenviable! what stings Are theirs! One breast laid open were a school Which would unteach mankind the ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... to despair. There are few conditions in life so utterly unenviable as penury and love—to be next door to starving, and at the same time in love. Day after day Shiel, who was thus afflicted, had revelled in Gladys's company, and had intoxicated himself with her beauty, ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... de Commarin was not one of those who possess the rather questionable and at times unenviable accomplishment of pleasing every one. He was wise enough to distrust those astonishing personages who are always praising everybody. In looking about us, we often see men of success and reputation, who are simply dolts, without any merit except their perfect insignificance. ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... Bay of Bengal, about six hundred miles from the Hoogly mouth of the Ganges, lie the Andaman Islands. The savages inhabiting these islands have the unenviable reputation of being, in common with several other tribes, the nearest approach to primeval man in existence. These islands and their inhabitants have been known and feared since time immemorial; our old friend Sinbad the Sailor, of ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... bald-pated surfaces, extremely slippery, and incapable of being permanently grooved. A specimen of this will be often referred to in the course of this account, being that which has attained such an unenviable degree of notoriety in the Poultry. Other inventors have shown ingenuity and perseverance; but the great representative of wooden paving we take to be the Metropolitan Company, and we proceed to a narrative of the attacks it has sustained, and the struggles ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... remembered that once upon a time he had seen Black Madge, who was the daughter of a Frenchwoman by an Italian father; Black Madge, who had already made an unenviable record for herself on both sides ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... we lunched with the Governor General, Mr. Gohr, the Director of Justice—who at present is in the unenviable position of having many critics in Europe, usually imperfectly informed of the details and evidence laid before the judges—Mr. Vandamme, who knows everyone and everything connected with the State, Commandant and Madame Sillye, Judge and Madame Webber, and some others. Afterwards, ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... keenly, and cursed the falsehood which had placed him in such an unenviable position. It was vain to assume the old superiority that was forfeited; but too much a man of the world to be long discomforted by any contretemps like this, he rapidly regained his habitual ease of manner, and avoiding the perilous past clung to ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... shuffling and tergiversation of the ministers of Spain and Holland. Evil reports, also, had their effect on the sultan. It was told him that a large English fleet was on its way to the Dardanelles and Constantinople, and that his capital would soon be bombarded. In such an unenviable position did the British envoy stand, that he thought it prudent to take his departure from Turkey. Secret preparations were made for this purpose, and a scheme was also devised for carrying off with him the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... had forgotten my sweet companion for a moment. 'I am sorry,' said I, taking her hand, 'very sorry, that you think the United States so unenviable a place of residence. I hope, dear lady, to persuade you to make ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... danger in every period of history is lest we take our own age as the term in institutional evolution. Private enterprise has the sanction of prescription; but since the Industrial Revolution the chief lesson we have had to learn is the unsatisfactory character of that title. History is an unenviable record of bad metaphysics used to defend obsolete systems. It took almost a century after the publication of the Wealth of Nations for men to realize that its axioms represented the experience of a definite time. Smith thought of freedom in the terms most suitable to ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... often does when he has a strong hand to play: it is generally when his cards are poor that he gives way to the paroxysms of rage and indulges in the personal abuse and violent behaviour which have earned for him so unenviable a reputation. He listened to all that had been advanced by the deputation, and then said that 'it was no time to talk when danger was at hand. That was the time for action.' The deputation represented to him that there ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... was appointed historiographer-royal in 1702. He wrote the bulk of the second part of Absalom and Achitophel with a wonderfully close imitation of Dryden's manner, besides several dramatic pieces and poems. Between Tate, Shadwell, Eusden, and Pye lies the unenviable distinction of being the worst of the laureates of England. Brady was a clergyman who, after the pleasant fashion of that day, was a pluralist on a small scale, for he had the living of Richmond for thirty years from 1696, and while holding that held also in succession the livings of ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... obliged when the next one came, to fall back on her original talent, and ate her ice abashed and silent speaking only when she was spoken to, and then in short words and long hesitations. Thereupon the Sisters were of opinion that after all poor Miss Howe could not help her unenviable lot, she was perhaps more to be pitied on account of it than—anything else. It came to this, that Sister Ann Frances even had an exhibitor's pride in her, and Hilda knew the sensations of a barbarian female captive in the bonds of the Christians. But she could not ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... that no habit is so progressive, and that he who begins with the little, will rapidly pass on to the much! I am also additionally urged to these mournful disclosures, from their forming one portion only, of Mr. Coleridge's life. It has been my unenviable lot, to exhibit my friend in his lowest points of depression; conflicting with unhallowed practices, and, as the certain ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... the man to put back into port as long as he could possibly keep the sea. He had a good deal of the Flying Dutchman spirit about him, without the profanity of that far-famed navigator, which has so justly doomed him to so unenviable ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... or two all will be changed; the people owning summer homes will themselves own and use automobiles; the horses will see so many that little notice will be taken, but the pioneers of the sport will have an unenviable time. ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... intimidation had collapsed. Miss Paul had been given the maximum sentence of seven months, and at the end of five weeks the Administration was forced to acknowledge defeat. They were in a most unenviable position. If she and her comrades had offended in such degree as to warrant so cruel a sentence, (with such base stupidity on their part in administering it) she most certainly deserved to be detained for the full sentence. The truth is, every idea of theirs had been subordinated to ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... at first sight, wildly improbable, but it is at any rate an almost incredible coincidence. With your knowledge of the law I need scarcely remind you that the facts as you have just recounted them place you in a rather unenviable position." ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... there were many stories associated with it, some true, others doubtful, the more doubtful the more interesting. Murder had been committed within its walls in the time of the first Edward; and even down to the Georges; it possessed an unenviable reputation for ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... Lancken may possibly escape general obloquy, for his part in the crime was no greater than that of Pilate, who sought to wash his hands of innocent blood; but von Bissing will enjoy "until the last syllable of recorded time" the unenviable fame of Judge Jeffreys. He, too, was an able Judge and probably believed that he was executing justice, but because he did not execute it in mercy, but with a ferocity that has made his name a synonym for judicial tyranny, ...
— The Case of Edith Cavell - A Study of the Rights of Non-Combatants • James M. Beck
... imagine, second in size only to the Cacuhuainilpa, in Mexico, which, if the accounts given are accurate, would take half a dozen such as the Mammoth inside. I fear it is almost superfluous to inform the reader, that the Anglo-Saxon keeps up his unenviable character for disfiguring every place he visits; and you consequently see the names of Smith, Brown, Snooks, &c., smoked on the rocks in all directions—an appropriate sooty record of a ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... talk Jim felt not even the slightest interest. He wanted to talk about Louise. But not in Mrs. Cranceford's manner nor in her eyes when she looked straight at him was there a hint that Tom had told her that the girl had been seen. Perhaps the boy had decided to elect him to this unenviable office. The Major asked him about his trip, but he answered as if he cared not what he said; but when shortly afterward the Major went out, Taylor's unconcern fell from him and he stood up and in tremulous anxiousness looked at ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... Semyonitch,' she protested with heat, 'you were the death of your wife, Anfisa Karpovna, but you shan't worry me into my grave!' 'Indeed?' 'No! you shan't.' 'Indeed?' 'No! you shan't.' They kept it up in this fashion for some time. My position was, as you perceive, not merely an unenviable one: it was positively idiotic. I couldn't conceive what had induced Kolosov to bring me.... I have never been a good card-player; but on that occasion I was aware myself that I was playing excruciatingly badly. 'No!' the retired lieutenant ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... officers of the army and navy. To those who are acquainted with the arbitrary habits of military and naval officers, and with the iron despotism which they exercise among the soldiers and sailors,[B] the bare mention of this fact is sufficient to convince them of the unenviable situation of the apprentice. It is at best but a gloomy transfer from the mercies of a slave driver, to the justice ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... forenoon, Hunter-Weston quite fixed that his men are strained to breaking point and d'Amade emphatic that his men will not carry on through another night unless they get relief. To me fell the unenviable duty of reconciling two contrary persuasions. Much argument as to where the enemy was making his main push; as to the numbers of our own rifles (French and English) and the yards of trenches each (French and English) have to hold. I decided after anxious searching ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... its citizens figure that name about says it all. The Solar League ambassador to the Lone Star Planet has the unenviable task of convincing New Texans that a s'Srauff attack is imminent, and dangerous. Unfortunately it's common knowledge that the s'Srauff are evolved from canine ancestors—and not a Texan alive is about to be scared of a talking dog! But unless ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... shortly released from his unenviable situation, and Zeb put in his place. The negro made no threats or declaration, but submitted to the trying ordeal without a word. The scenes through which he had passed had evidently had some effect upon him. He seemed to possess a faint realization of the danger in which he ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... of the Teuton with the Slav; and in German military circles there was undoubtedly a conviction that the epic conflict had best come sooner and not later. How long this idea has influenced German policy we do not pretend to say. But it has certainly contributed to her unenviable prominence in the 'race of armaments' which all thinking men have condemned as an insupportable, tax upon Western civilization, and which has aggravated all the evils that it was ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... of Clay was one of unenviable distinction and power. He could not be elected President, but he could, it was believed, determine which of his rivals should have the coveted office. His own State favored Jackson as a second choice; but Clay wrote to a friend that he could ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... sort, they stayed on after their recovery and helped Leander with the ranch work. But for the most part they "hit the trail" again as soon as their ills were healed, not forgetting to advertise the Springs to other patients of their own class. The only limit to this unenviable popularity was the size of the house. Leander saw no ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... contrived to keep our legs. The ship was running before the wind, and rolling considerably, and the motion, aided by the wine and the act of plucking aside the flag, might have precipitated the captain into his unenviable situation; he thought otherwise. No sooner was he placed upon his feet, and his mouth sufficiently clear from the salt water decoction of hog-wash, than he collared the poor victim of persecution, and spluttered out, "Mutiny—mu—mu—mutiny—sentry. Gentlemen, I call ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... instrument than a private letter, can be studied by the curious in the appendix where it is given in full: here it is sufficient to say that no such hocuspocus had ever been previously indulged in China. Drafted by an American legal adviser, Dr. Goodnow, who was later to earn unenviable international notoriety as the endorser of the monarchy scheme, it erected what it was pleased to call the Presidential System; that is, it placed all power directly in the hands of the President, giving him a single ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... justice had been served by Butler's acquittal. But in the light of after events, it is perhaps unfortunate that the jury did not stretch a point and so save the life of Mr. Munday of Toowong. Butler underwent his term of imprisonment in Littleton Jail. There his reputation was most unenviable. He is described by a fellow prisoner as ill-tempered, malicious, destructive, but cowardly and treacherous. He seems to have done little or no work; he looked after the choir and the library, but ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... Monroe had omitted to explain properly our reasons for treating with England, that he had held out hopes to the French government which were totally unauthorized, that he had brought on a renewal of the hostilities of that government, and that he had placed us in all ways in the most unenviable light, Washington recalled him, and appointed Charles Cotesworth Pinckney in his place. By this time too he was thoroughly disgusted with Monroe's performances, and in his letter to Pinckney, on July 8, 1796, offering him the appointment to Paris, he said: "It is a fact too ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... our comrades from the vacation, and to keep away from the bad company into which I had ventured. Fortunately I had not long to wait; university life soon began again, and the fencing ground was filled. The unenviable position, in which, in student phrase, I was suspended with a half-dozen of the most terrible swordsmen, earned me a glorious reputation among the 'freshmen' and 'juniors,' and even among the older ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... or shorter intervals, to thrust itself upon public attention. Meanwhile it was not the only instance of abuse of power on the part of the Executive to which the people of Upper Canada were constrained to submit. Several other notable contemporaneous examples shared with it in the unenviable work of widening the breach between the Government and the people, and in destroying popular confidence in the impartial administration of justice. It is a rather singular fact that of all the many high-handed ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... of the High and Broad Streets was previously a notorious rookery. Dyott Street, which still exists, though cut in half, had a most unenviable reputation. The Maidenhead Inn, which stood at the south-east corner of this, was a favourite resort for mealmen and country waggoners. There was in this street also a tavern called the Turk's Head, where Haggart Hoggarty planned the murder of Mr. Steele on Hounslow Heath in 1802. Walford mentions ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... heard it surmised that the defence means to claim that it was Cory's. Cory doubtless went on his errand of forgiveness unarmed, and beyond doubt the second weapon belonged to the woman herself, who has an unenviable record. ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... to have taken a desperate step. Miss Jane Marston, Della's sister-in-law, had always been the superfluous member of her family. Such unenviable tasks as amusing or teaching the younger children, sewing, or making up whist sets, had, as is usual with the odd members in a family, fallen to her share. All this Miss Marston hated in a slow, rebellious manner. From always having just too little money to live ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... Recollets at this time was unenviable. The agents of the merchants were not better disposed towards them than the interpreters. Some of these agents were demoralized, and the reproach that they received from the fathers caused them to avoid their presence. The conduct ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... no rhyme for it. I thought about it all the time I was dressing—it's dreadfully bad for one to think whilst one's dressing—and all lunch-time, and I'm still hung up over it. I feel like those unfortunate automobilists who achieve an unenviable motoriety by coming to a hopeless stop with their cars in the most crowded thoroughfares. I'm afraid I shall have to drop the aasvogel, and it did give such lovely local ...
— Reginald • Saki
... blushing and looking down, wondering how on earth he was to endure this stark publicity. He was there poised bleakly for all to see, an unenviable position. And there was no escape. He must stand there, because it was his job, and recover from the nervousness that had come from finding himself so abruptly thrust on to this veritable pillar of Stylites in the midst of an interested ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... life among the company of officers was satisfactory enough. (The Assistant-Surgeon messed in the gun-room with the middies. A man in the midst of a lot of boys, with hardly any grown-up companions, often has a rather unenviable position; but, says Captain Heath, who was one of these middies, Huxley's constant good spirits and fun, when he was not absorbed in his work, his freedom from any assumption of superiority over them, made the boys his good comrades and allies.) Huxley's ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... have them arrested and taken care of. Some of the pirates happened to hear this remark, and as soon as it was generally known, created the greatest consternation among them, and upon arriving at Kelley's Island and not receiving the messenger promised by Cole, they were in a very unenviable position. To go to Sandusky they would be arrested; the only course they could take to save their own lives and liberty, was that which they eventually adopted. Capt. Beall, after hearing this report, quickly determined to seize the vessel, which was accordingly done, to the great terror of ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... man was careful to surround himself with such an appearance of respectability that society should easily feign ignorance of his offence. An Elizabethan distich—familiar to all barristers, but too rudely worded for insertion in this page—informs us that in the sixteenth century Gray's Inn had an unenviable notoriety amongst legal hospices for the shamelessness of its female inmates. But the pungent lines must be regarded as a satire aimed at certain exceptional members, rather than as a vivacious picture ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... after what had occurred, was an unenviable one, for he was placed in the cruel dilemma of either remaining in a home where his presence was not agreeable to the host and hostess, or abruptly leaving without having an understanding with the one he so dearly loved. He chose the latter alternative, ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... her married life a sway over her lord and master all the greater that neither of them was conscious of the fact. A most devoted and submissive wife, a most indulgent and affectionate mother, Mrs. Wedmore occupied the not unenviable position of being half slave, half idol ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... the German officers in their embarrassment. Here was the son of the old King whom they had raised, and whom they had deserted. What an unenviable office was theirs when they must make war upon, suppress, and make a feint of punishing, this man to whom they stood bound by a hereditary alliance, and to whose father they had already failed so egregiously! They were loyal all round. They were loyal ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the reformers, was born at Vezelai, in the Nivernois, in 1519, and was originally a Catholic, and intended for the law. At the age of twenty, he gained an unenviable reputation by the composition of Latin poetry which was at once elegant and licentious, and which, some years afterwards, he published under the title of "Juvenile Poems." Though not in orders, he possessed benefices of considerable value. These, however, he abandoned in 1548, and ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... insolent city in the world. To make or to refute such a statement implies so wide a knowledge of contrasted civilizations that to most of us the words have no significance. It is true that certain communities have earned for themselves in the course of centuries an unenviable reputation for discourtesy. The Italians say "as rude as a Florentine"; and even the casual tourist (presuming his standard of manners to have been set by Italy) is disposed to echo the reproach. The Roman, with the ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... be well; if they were neglected, matters could not be much worse than they were at present. As the new commissioners had merely to take a message and were credited with no discretionary power, it was thought unnecessary to burden the higher magnates of the State with the unenviable task, or to expose them to the undignified predicament of finding their representations flouted by a rebel who might have eventually to be recognised as a king. A chance was given to younger members of ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... true poetic genius makes him the most tedious of Latin authors, and his unenviable reputation is well deserved. For the poetry of the ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... was the last of the statesmen of the middle period of our history whom it was my fortune to meet. As a whole, and as individuals their fortunes were unenviable. They struggled against the order of things. They accomplished nothing, unless it may be said of them, that they kept the ship afloat. Their memories deserve commiseration, possibly gratitude. No effort of theirs ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... and late, the lake had been her favourite haunt. Caribou Lake enjoys an unenviable reputation for weather; Bela thought nothing of crossing the ten miles in ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... the troubles and afflictions incident to the unenviable office of Governor of a colony. Those innocent country gentlemen who have expended the better part of their property on contested elections, and now weary heaven and Her Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State for colonial appointments, little ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... certain well-to-do farmer and dairyman who had an unenviable reputation as a cruel taskmaster with his hired help. He was also known to be exceedingly harsh in his treatment of any with whom he had dealings, who chanced to be unable to meet their obligations to the minute. Because ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... An unenviable notoriety in this respect attached to William Maule (created Baron Panmure 1831). He was the second son of the eighth Earl of Dalhousie, but on succeeding, through his grandmother, to the estates of the Earls of Panmure, he had assumed the name of Maule ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... of, and rival bookseller to, Gaine in seventeen hundred and sixty was James Rivington. Mr. Hildeburn has given Rivington a rather unenviable reputation; still, as he occasionally printed (?) a child's book, Mr. Hildeburn's remarks ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... hostilities, and, in the event of their success, everything hitherto achieved would be lost. Or again, the destruction on his part of many fellow-creatures and allies was a terrible alternative, which would place the Spartans in an unenviable light with regard to the rest of Hellas, and render the soldiers ill-disposed to the cause in hand. Accordingly he took with him fifteen men, armed with daggers, and marched through the city. Falling in with one of the reed-bearers, a man suffering from ophthalmia, who ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... struggle,—they allowed the bold propositions of Molyneux, one of their own number, to be condemned and reprobated without a protest. The knotted lash of Jonathan Swift was never more worthily applied, than to "the Legion Club," which he has consigned to such an unenviable immortality. Swift's inspiration may have been mingled with bitter disappointment and personal revenge; but, whatever motives animated him, his fearless use of his great abilities must always make him the first political, as he was certainly the first literary character of Ireland at that day. In ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... service may call on him to perform. On the other hand, without relinquishing this principle, it is often possible, by a little tactful and unostentatious redistribution of troops, to avoid placing a soldier in so unenviable a position as taking part in an attack on his own home. Sometimes, however, this is impossible, as ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... you for the tip. It may, or may not interest you to know that, if the business can be satisfactorily arranged, I myself, am about to assume that unenviable position." ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... the street or at some place of amusement. Very often the proprietor of the house is simply victimized by such people, and several respectable houses have been so far overrun by them that decent persons have avoided them altogether. One or two of the smaller hotels of the city bear a most unenviable reputation of this kind. Even the first-class hotels cannot keep themselves entirely free from the presence of courtezans of the better class. Rich men keep their mistresses at them in elegant style, and the guests, and sometimes the proprietors, are in utter ignorance ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... a blazing fire, in the lazy comforts of convalescence, with pipe and tobacco at his elbow, presented a not unenviable picture when contrasted with ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... Register, February 5, 1841. Judge Smith is put in an unenviable light by contemporary historians. There seems to be no reason to doubt that he misinformed Douglas and others. See Davidson and Stuve, ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... nearer to the mark. I have sometimes thought I might consider it worth while to set up a school for instruction in the art. "Poetry taught in twelve lessons." Congenital idiocy is no disqualification. Anybody can write "poetry." It is a most unenviable distinction to leave published a thin volume of verse, which nobody wanted, nobody buys, nobody reads, nobody cares for except the author, who cries over its pathos, poor fellow, and revels in ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... back on her original talent, and ate her ice abashed and silent, speaking only when she was spoken to, and then in short words and long hesitations. Thereupon the Sisters were of opinion that, after all, poor Miss Howe could not help her unenviable note—she was perhaps more to be pitied on account of it than anything else. It came to this, that Sister Ann Frances even had an exhibitor's pride in her, and Hilda knew the sensations of a barbarian female captive in the bonds of the Christians. But she could not ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Paesti—have supplied the theme of every Roman poet from Vergil to Ausonius. Yet in spite of its apparent prosperity, the seeds of coming decline had already been sown. Strabo tells us that even in early Imperial days the city was obtaining an unenviable reputation for malaria: a circumstance that was due to the over-flowing of the unwholesome streamlet, the Salso, whose reeking and fever-bearing waters began to impregnate the earth. Engineering works on a large scale were planned to remedy this ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... as in Committee of the Whole, having been concurred in, etc., the Joint Resolution, as originally reported by the Judiciary Committee, was at last passed, (April 8th)—by a vote of 38 yeas to 6 nays—Messrs. Hendricks and McDougall having the unenviable distinction of being the only two Senators, (mis-)representing Free States, who voted against this ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... of coffee originated in Brazil. When the original plan was threatened with disaster, Hermann Sielcken stepped in and saved the Brazil planters from ruin; the Brazil government from possible revolution; and, incidentally, won for himself and those who were his partners in the enterprise much unenviable notoriety. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... from the physical type of common manhood and womanhood, as for instance, the possession of a sixth toe or finger, would in the eyes of the multitude go far toward making a man morally objectionable. It was, perhaps, because I wished to save my friend Storm from this unenviable lot that I always contended that he was yet a ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... of the rare biographical details which, as has been explained, may "force the consigne" here, is that Beyle in his youth, and almost up to middle age, was acquainted with an old lady who had the very unenviable reputation of having actually "sat ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... savage, it is true, but he was possessed of a dauntless courage, a persistency of purpose, and an unscrupulous craftiness and ambitiousness of character which would have won him distinction of a certain unenviable kind in any community. Already his brain was teeming with vague unformed plots of the wildest and most audaciously extravagant description, the possibility of which he was determined to ascertain ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... of the Su-chow-Ning-po line, and notably in the matter of the Tientsin-Pukau (Nanking) railway. In that case the provincial authorities overrode the central government, with the result that "for wholesale jobbery, waste and mismanagement the enterprise acquired unenviable notoriety in a land where these things are generally condoned." The good record of one or two lines notwithstanding, the management of the railways under Chinese control had proved, up to 1910, inefficient and corrupt.[23] Nevertheless, so great was the economic development following ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... companion and intimate of the old widow, who never took any step of importance without first consulting her dear Agnes. The "dear Agnes" improved her intimacy and played her cards so well, that although she never paid her board, she was never requested to do so, and thus enjoyed the unenviable advantage of being enabled to live rent free. Having accomplished her first object, she now undertook to achieve her second. One day she sought the widow, and in a fit of gushingly-tender confidence revealed to her sympathizing friend her heart history; she told the ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... was only by paying the keenest attention that he could detect those who from sheer incapacity were relaxing their strain on the traces. And his position was not pleasant even when he knew, for to tell any of these brave people that they must turn back was a most unenviable [Page 165] task. Thus it came about that all six of them marched on, though Scott was sure that better progress would have been made had the ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... moment before filled with rage toward Tarzan of the Apes, stood close to the battling pair, his red-rimmed, wicked little eyes glaring at them. What was passing in his savage brain? Did he gloat over the unenviable position of his recent tormentor? Did he long to see Sheeta's great fangs sink into the soft throat of the ape-man? Or did he realize the courageous unselfishness that had prompted Tarzan to rush to the rescue and imperil his life for ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... there must be something good in the caddie's recommendation, he has been tempted in spite of himself to use it. How frequently are the consequences disastrous in such circumstances as these, and how unenviable are the golfer's after reflections upon his own weakness! Yes, decidedly the girl caddie excels. I have seen her on many links up and down the country, and she is always good. In one of my last matches last season—at Luton—I ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... from figures of the city directory in 1904 gave it then a population of 485,000, probably a considerable exaggeration. In it are mingled inhabitants from most of the nations of the earth, and it may claim the unenviable honor of possessing the largest population of Chinese outside of China itself, the colony ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... quoted by J. W. THOMAS, is quite common amongst the Easterns even at the present day. I remember, when at Malta, in March, 1848, whilst walking in company of the most accomplished Arabian of the day, the conversation turned upon a certain individual who had since acquired a most unenviable notoriety in the annals of British jurisprudence, my companion abruptly turned upon me, whilst at the shore of the Mediterranean, and said, in his fascinating Arabic, "Behold this great sea! were all its water turned into ink, it would be insufficient to describe the villany ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... if the life of a Boys' Dog is so unhappy, why do they enter upon such an unenviable situation, and why do they not dissolve the partnership when it becomes unpleasant? I will confess that I have been often puzzled by this question. For some time I could not make up my mind whether ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... summary of a bear, the raccoon, comes out of his den in the ledges, and leaves his sharp digitigrade track upon the snow,—traveling not unfrequently in pairs,—a lean, hungry couple, bent on pillage and plunder. They have an unenviable time of it,—feasting in the summer and fall, hibernating in winter, and starving in spring. In April I have found the young of the previous year creeping about the fields, so reduced by starvation as to be quite helpless, and offering no resistance to my taking them ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... he felt himself in a trap. He certainly acted like a bird out of its senses, while the gull, flapping hugely, and forgetting, in the excitement, his own bondage, gradually forced the raven's head back and back over his back, till that raven was in the unenviable position of staring over his own back at his own tail, upon which he was ignominiously sitting. Also, his neck was half-dislocated, and he was nearly choking. And about this time it began to dawn upon him that it ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... crown at this time were men whose names have justly acquired an unenviable notoriety. We must take heed, however, that we do not load their memory with infamy which of right belongs to their master. For the treaty of Dover the King himself is chiefly answerable. He held conferences on it with the French agents: ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and, most significant of all, he has lived! That is the point! He has not starved to death. Not only has he been care-free and happy, but he has lived! And from the knowledge that he has idled and is still alive, he achieves a new outlook on life; and the more he experiences the unenviable lot of the poor worker, the more the blandishments of the "road" take hold of him. And finally he flings his challenge in the face of society, imposes a valorous boycott on all work, and joins the far-wanderers of Hoboland, the gypsy folk of ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... Foljambe, who had joined from the Territorial Force Reserve, was in charge at the Depot, and later commanded for some time the 3rd Line, with the unenviable task of getting together and training in an extraordinarily short space of time, personnel to replenish the 1st and 2nd Lines. Many young Officers and others who passed through his hands in those days look back with pleasure and affection ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... of my power to say "no." They come with appeals for small amounts, as loans, donations to particular charities, or as the price of articles that I do not want, but which I cannot well refuse to take. I am sure that, since I have obtained my present unenviable reputation, it hasn't cost me a cent less than two thousand, in money given away, loaned never to be returned, and in the purchase of things that I never would have thought ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... Iberville and his brothers, Bienville and Chateauguay, were "thieves and knaves."[300] La Vente, cure of Mobile, joined in the cry against Bienville, and stirred soldiers and settlers to disaffection; but the bitterest accuser of that truly valuable officer was the worthy matron who held the unenviable post of directress of the "King's girls,"—that is, the young women sent out as wives for the colonists. It seems that she had matrimonial views for herself as well as for her charge; and she wrote to Ponchartrain that Major Boisbriant, commander of the garrison, would certainly ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... importance, the alleged assault by Christ Church men on the Junior Censor, is untrue. The fact is that nearly all the disturbers were out-College men, and, though it is true that the Censor was struck by a stone thrown from a window, the unenviable distinction of having thrown it belongs to no member of the House. I doubt if we have one single man here who would be capable of so base and ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... quicker men. When his wife and her relations declared him to be a mere animal, he never contradicted them—and so gained the reputation of a person on whom reprimand was thrown away. Under the protection of this unenviable character, he sometimes said severe things with an air of perfect simplicity. When the furious doctor discovered him in the laboratory, and said, "I'll be the death of you, if you tell any living creature what I am doing!"—Lemuel answered, with a stare of ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... rolls from side to side she is liable to dip the end of her heavy boom in the water and "trip herself up." When a boat trips up she does not necessarily go down, but she is likely to upset, placing the young sailors in an unenviable, if not dangerous, position. Fourth, when the craft begins to swagger before the wind she is liable to "goose neck," that is throw her boom up against the mast, which is another accident fraught with the ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... greatly annoyed. The scandal, which spread throughout the kingdom, placed him in a very unenviable position. The marquis would probably have passed the rest of his life in one of the oubliettes of the Bastile had he not escaped from France. Madame de Montespan, in her wonderfully frank Memoirs, records ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... town in England seems to have enjoyed so unenviable a reputation for some centuries for the folly and stupidity of its inhabitants, that I am induced to send you the following Query (with the reasons on which it is founded) in the hope that some of your readers may be able to help ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various
... first makes its appearance, is to plunge into the nearest river, by which they think to purify themselves. This course, however, in reality, tends to shorten their existence. When the small pox rages among the Aborigines, a most unenviable position is held by their "Medicine Man." He is obliged to give a strict account of himself; and, if so unfortunate as to lose a chief, or other great personage, is sure to pay the penalty by parting with his own life. The duties of the "Medicine Man" among the Indians are so mixed up with witchcraft ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... bitterly accusing himself of timidity and he needed sustenance for his waning faith in his own temerity. It was characteristic of him that he should pick an easy beginning, as a timid swimmer seeks proficiency in shallow water. Sol Breck had the unenviable reputation of one who never declined battle—and never emerged from one crowned with victory. Joe hurled at him the challenge of the fighting epithet and after a brief but animated combat had him down and defeated. Then he returned home with a swelling breast, and ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... Devotional services are becoming more common among the students. The Scriptures are studied with a feeling of devout reverence, and are no longer subjected to that profane ridicule which has given an unenviable fame to many ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... ally of the pope and the Jesuits in their efforts to check Protestantism in the latter half of the sixteenth century was the son of Charles V, Philip II. Like the Jesuits he enjoys a most unenviable reputation among Protestants. Certain it is that they had no more terrible enemy among the rulers of the day than he. He closely watched the course of affairs in France and Germany with the hope of promoting the cause of the Catholics. He eagerly forwarded every conspiracy ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... "The unenviable reputation, throughout the length and breadth of the land, in regard to the divorce law, has heaped ignominy on the State of Nevada. A few unscrupulous members of the legal fraternity, little better than outcasts at home, have come to Reno and besmirched the good name of a great State by their ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... rural improvement and rural patriotism, the students that go out from this college cannot misinterpret their duties nor fail to understand the responsibilities they assume as graduates of the North Dakota Agricultural College. Nor is their field of labor an unenviable one. It may at times seem irksome, even discouraging, but nevertheless it is the most exalted and dignified calling to which men and women of special ...
— The Stewardship of the Soil - Baccalaureate Address • John Henry Worst
... shown more forcibly than in this book in the treatment of the subject of riots and mob violence. It may not be generally known, especially among the younger portion of the community, that no American and but few European cities have such an unenviable and disgraceful record on this head as Baltimore. The accounts of its riots remind one too forcibly of the worst days of the French Revolution, and all of them read more like the incidents so plentiful in the sensational stories of the day, than like the cold, dispassionate record ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... expecting a sudden retractation. What was the good? Supposing he took it upon himself to extenuate the old man's statements, Morestal was the sort of uncompromising man who would give him the lie in public. And then the government would find itself in an unenviable plight indeed! ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... trouble you by attempting to express my sorrow on hearing of Sir Gervase Damian's death. You would probably form your own opinion on that subject also; and I have no wish to be judged by your unenviable experience of humanity for ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... lad was the terror of the school, never out of mischief, and costing his father a pretty sum to keep him from serious consequences. Before he was fifteen he spent his Saturdays carousing with the wildest set in the town, and incidentally built up a very unenviable reputation. Then he was sent to a city college. Did you hear the rumors that came back ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... left Paris. For a time he followed his wife's movements, as chronicled in Paris society papers. He learnt that a daughter had been born to him. Finally a tragi-comic story was reported with acclamation in all the papers; his wife played an unenviable part in it. Barbara Paulovna had become a notoriety. He ceased to follow her movements. Scepticism, half formed already by the experiences of his life and by his education, took complete possession of his heart, and he ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... months later he was informed by his steward that Varvara Pavlovna had drawn her first quarter's allowance. After that, scandalous reports about her began to arrive; then they became more and more frequent; at last a tragicomic story, in which she played a very unenviable part, ran the round of all the journals, and created a great sensation. Affairs had come to a climax. Varvara ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... enumeration of the difficulties which beset the new Prime Minister brings home a sense of his unenviable position. Ireland was on the verge of starvation and revolt; everywhere in Europe the rebellions which culminated in 1848 were beginning to stir, seeming then more formidable than they really were in their immediate consequences; in England the Chartist ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... with reference to their food-habits at least, and let the reader judge for himself as to what would be the proper treatment for these birds. Taking the family as a whole that which is made up of birds like the Crows, Ravens, Magpies, Jays, Nut-crackers, "Camp-robbers," etc., though some of them have unenviable names and reputations at least, are not at all as bad as we are sometimes requested to believe them ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... A year's pay goes to his family—were as much required of every employer and his the burden of proving the accident the fault of the employee, how the safety appliances in factories would multiply. There is a man attached to Ancon hospital whose unenviable duty it is to write a letter of condolence to the relatives in ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... the daughter of the Greek Emperor, and succeeded in expelling the Tartars, and making himself master of their city Kazan. He was followed by his son Vasilii, who was succeeded by Ivan IV., who has gained a very unenviable reputation on account of his cruelties. Already the yoke of the Tartars had begun to have a very deteriorating effect upon the Russian character, and the more sanguinary code of the Asiatics had effaced the tradition of the laws of Yaroslav. ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... the principal river of Dalmatia and Herzegovina, by one of the numerous mouths which combine to form its delta. Its ancient name was the 'Naro,' and it is also called by Constantine Porphyrogenitus 'Orontium.' Later it acquired an unenviable notoriety, as being the haunt of the 'Narentine Pirates,' who issued thence to make forays upon the coast, and plundered or levied tribute on the trading vessels of the Adriatic. At one time they became so powerful as to ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... bugle loudly sounded the 'assembly,' when all the boys below came rushing up the hatchway near us, trooping onwards by the ladder above to the upper deck. They jostled and shoved past each other, I thought, as if Old Nick were after them, none wishing to occupy the unenviable position of last man, ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... arms about his neck, and kissed him. It was very reprehensible, I suppose. Young people were honestly friendly in those days, and seldom had a chaperone; yet they did not play at love, unless they were real flirts; and a flirt soon gained an unenviable reputation. ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... Spirit in a very unenviable position, that of preaching four or five different teachings at the same time, each within a half-mile of the other. Suppose a preacher were to do that! What would the people think of him? It would ruin the reputation of ...
— The Spirit and the Word - A Treatise on the Holy Spirit in the Light of a Rational - Interpretation of the Word of Truth • Zachary Taylor Sweeney
... submitted to test. It was for the judges to do this. We maintain that nothing that the public will accept as a decision has been reached, and on behalf of the public we protest that the managers have not only placed themselves in a very unenviable position by their action in the premises, but have done a lasting injury to the American Institute, the results of which will be disastrously ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... his first arrival at York, had taken up his quarters at a public house. The York inns of the period had an unenviable reputation, and were widely different from the Queen's and Rossin of the present day. Some of my readers will doubtless remember John Gait's savage fling at them several years later. To parody Dr. Johnson's characterization of the famous leg of mutton, they were ill-looking, ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... to laugh with the majority; but in the judgment of history, those who do so, hold unenviable positions. The time is coming when the human mother will recognize the educative possibilities of early childhood, learn that the ability to rightly teach little children is rare and precious, and be proud and glad to avail themselves ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... other respects, he looked upon him as one of the most original and wisest men of the age. It will be remembered by my professional readers that Z——, although esteemed in England one of her first surgeons, acquired an unenviable notoriety through the publication of certain physiological lectures, in which the doctrines of materialism and infidelity were supported, it must be allowed, with all the eloquence and power of a first-rate mind. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... deserted street, lighted only by the brilliant moon. They began now to feel that their position was critical, and Bert, who more easily yielded to the depressing effects of circumstances, bemoaned his fate and all the series of events that had led up to their present unenviable plight. He was inclined to blame Harry for ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... and the inability of the Government to buy native land while it refused to let private persons do so, joined, with a trade collapse in Australia, to make the condition of the Auckland settlers soon almost as unenviable as that of their fellow-colonists in ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... this disease are guarded. Socrates, Julius Caesar, Mahomet, Joan of Arc, Peter the Great, Napoleon, Byron, Swinburne, and Dostoieffsky are but a few among many great names in the world of art, religion and statecraft. Epileptic princes, kings and kinglets who have achieved unenviable notoriety might be named by scores, Wilhelm II being the ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... unenviable state of mental anxiety, and corporeal lassitude, was our justly renowned hero, at the period of those preparations being completed, which were calculated to display him, in the view of an enraptured people, ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... appeared to be no one on whom he could visit his wrath. Dismissing the under-gardeners curtly, he was forced to return to his work in a very unenviable frame of mind, suspicious ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... The unenviable position of governor and chief royal commissioner was offered in turn to several English statesmen and declined by all of them. It was eventually accepted by Lord Gosford, an Irish peer without experience in public life. With him were associated as commissioners ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... the next morning with the weight of a disagreeable duty hanging over her. She had given Jean Brent until after Thanksgiving to decide upon her course of action. Jean's disregard for her wishes had already placed the freshman in an unenviable prominence in college. Conscientious to a fault, Grace believed herself to be partly to blame for what had occurred during her week-end absence from Harlowe House. She should have insisted, in the beginning, on absolute frankness on the part of Jean. She had respected ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... Germany, where no military Government, jealous of their "honour," could protect them from the thrashing they deserve. It is also true that, at international congresses, excursions and banquets, attended by both men and women representatives of all nations, the Germans have gained an unenviable reputation for bad manners because they have pushed themselves into the best places, crowded into the trains ahead of the women, and generally ignored the courtesies due to ladies and gentlemen associated with them. But, in spite of our full recognition of this undesirable ...
— Plain Words From America • Douglas W. Johnson
... but I am convinced that you are the cause of it... Listen: you think, perhaps, that I am looking for rank or immense wealth—be undeceived, my daughter's happiness is my sole desire. Your present position is unenviable, but it may be bettered: you have means; my daughter loves you; she has been brought up in such a way that she will make her husband a happy man. I am wealthy, she is my only child... Tell me, what is keeping you back?... You see, I ought not ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... away without that end being achieved he became worried and perplexed. His own position was an unenviable one, and his thoughts were far from pleasant. He felt that he had failed badly, and that his standing with his superiors in Scotland Yard was under a cloud in consequence. But he could not see where he had actually been at fault. It ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... and mused on the unenviable situation in which I found myself placed, a sound reached my ears that again sent the blood leaping wildly through my veins. It was the distant baying of a bloodhound! Never again will I read the story of human beings, of any color, pursued by these revolting ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... had been born to him; two months later he received a notification from his steward that Varvara Pavlovna had asked for the first quarter's allowance. Then worse and worse rumors began to reach him; at last, a tragic-comic story was reported with acclamations in all the papers. His wife played an unenviable part in it. It was the finishing stroke; Varvara Pavlovna ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... all naturally imagined that the lady beside the duke was one of his sisters, either Princess Frederick-Leopold or Princess Fedora, and accorded to her the homage which would have belonged by right to either of these two princesses, but which was totally misplaced when conceded to a woman of such unenviable notoriety as the fair stranger who sat beside the duke. Needless to add that the emperor was furious when he heard of the affair, and after giving orders for the immediate expulsion of the woman, directed the prince to leave Berlin, and to remain at his castle of Prinkenau until he had ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... up Davy's wits so much that he ceased before long to occupy that unenviable and lowly position, and astonished his ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... been poisoned with the bile of Swift, it is terrible to think what a repertory of biting sarcasms and envenomed repartees he might have transmitted for the study and imitation of cynics and sneerers. Bitterer enemies no man ever had to contend against; and unenviable indeed must have been their disappointment at finding themselves wholly impotent to discompose his sage and large-hearted serenity. So impressive, withal, is his spirit of toleration and benevolence that a diligent reader of his pages is, as it were, perforce imbued by it. Indeed, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... ought not to keep such a good thing to myself, but that I should preach the doctrine far and wide. I soon found, however, that it was an impossible task to try to save men from themselves, and I acquired the unenviable sobriquet of "crank"; but I was not dismayed. From my native friends I turned to the foreign community in Peking, thinking that the latter would possess better judgment, appreciate and be converted to the sanitarian doctrine. Among the foreigners I appealed to, one was a distinguished ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... animal has won the unenviable but deserving reputation of being the most foul-smelling creature on the face of the globe. He belongs to the weasel tribe, and all these animals are noted for certain odors which they possess, but the skunk is pre-eminent ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... who had joined in the first emigration, intending to pass in it to America; and in the same author we find that the vessel arrived in the harbour of Charlestown [N. E.] on July 1, 1630. There was a MAY-FLOWER which, in 1648, gained an unenviable notoriety as a slaver. But this was not the MAY-FLOWER which had carried over the first settlers, it being a vessel Of 350 tons, while the genuine MAY-FLOWER was of only 180 tons." Of the first of her two ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... poetry offers no more interesting case between poet and critic than that of John Keats. The imputed influence of a savage critique in hastening the death of the poet has given the Quarterly Review an unenviable notoriety which clings in spite of the efforts of scholars to establish the truth. To many students, Keats, Endymion, and Quarterly are practically connotative terms; and this is a direct result of the righteous but misguided indignation ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... Every one regards the request as a sign of an unsettled mind. After much argument he prevails on his betrothed bride's parents to permit the marriage (he cannot be ordained until he is married), and hopes to find a helpmeet in her. The rest of the story deals with his experiences in the unenviable position of a village priest, where he has to contend not only with the displeasure of his young wife, but with the avarice of his church staff, the defects of the peasants, the excess of attention of the local gentlewoman, and financial problems of the most trying description. It ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... friends in the chess-room at Very's, about eleven o'clock on the night of the twentieth of December, talking over some of the marvelous successes which had been won by Paul Morphy when in Paris, and the unenviable position in which Howard Staunton had placed himself by keeping out of the lists through evident fear of the New-Orleanian, when Adolph Von Berg came behind me and laid his hand on ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... promoting the agricultural interests of his commonwealth, and otherwise fulfilling useful civil functions. He was a fine exemplar of the American gentleman, preserving the better individualities of his countrymen, but discarding those grosser traits, which have given us an unenviable name abroad. Geary could not do a mean thing, and his courage came so naturally to him that he did not consider it any cause of pride. The bias of party, which in America diseases the best natures, had in some degree affected the General. He was prone to go with ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend |
