"Beset" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... passengers on board the "Oceana," on the night of the 20th of December, were totally ignorant of the real nature of the perils that beset them, although, as I said, an undefined misgiving and a sense of ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... tempered by the certainty of being with her again before she left for France; and they did in fact see each other in London. There, however, the atmosphere had changed with the conditions. He could not say that she avoided him, or even that she was a shade less glad to see him; but she was beset by family duties and, as he thought, a little too readily ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... Labici in the year 336—an instance, which will certainly not be reckoned (by such scholars as are worth the arguing with) to belong to the class of traditions that are trustworthy in their historical details, and which is beset by other very serious difficulties (see book ii. ch. 5, note). It is no doubt true that in the non-colonial assignation of land to the burgesses collectively (-adsignatio viritana-) sometimes only a few -jugera- were ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... from a previous example, the tendency of the sea-sand to absorb and conceal a sunken vessel is one of those difficulties that beset the explorer. But for that the recovery of treasure would be more frequent, the profession or business more lucrative. The number of vessels sunk annually, we learn from Lloyd's statistics, is one hundred thousand tons to the English commercial marine; and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... mechanical skill of the diligent artist is discernible, labouring incessantly without extraordinary or transcendental light to the appointed end, the goal accomplished. It should be understood that as spiritual Art of its own property and nature is beset, environed on all impinging sides with a multifold range, a series of difficult corners around which the sense cannot immediately travel, but would for the fructification or sustentation's sake of its etherealism, a process of counter argument may deduce ...
— Original Letters and Biographic Epitomes • J. Atwood.Slater
... remained together, and when Eglantine grew hungry she was led by the white doe to a part of the forest where pears and peaches grew in abundance; but, as night came on, the maid of honour was filled with the terrors of wild beasts which had beset the princess during her ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... view of Quebec; happily, on my last the elements did full justice to its beauty. Other objects developed themselves as we steamed down to the wharf. There were huge rafts, some three or four acres in extent, which, having survived the perils which had beset them on their journey from the forests of the Ottawa, were now moored along the base of the lofty cliffs which, under the name of the Heights of Abraham, have a world-wide celebrity. There were huge, square-sided, bluff-bowed, low-masted ships, lying at anchor in interminable ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... changed suddenly and passed on to another subject to see if she would not contradict herself. They burdened her with long interrogatories of two or three hours, from which the judges themselves went forth fatigued. From the snares with which she was beset the expertest man in the world could not have extricated himself but with difficulty. She gave her responses with great prudence; indeed to such a degree that during three weeks ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... seemed to be a further one, insistent and gathering—what was to be his own attitude here? That could not be answered, either, because only a future moment, over which he had no control, and which must decide events, held that secret. Worry beset Wade, but he still found himself proof against the insidious gloom ever hovering near, ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... who died in his native town of Edinburgh in May 1807, aged eighty-two, is alluded to by Sir Walter Scott in a prophecy put into the mouth of Meg Merrilees in "Guy Mannering"—"They shall beset his goat; they shall profane his ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... this book is to have any serious value, I cannot ignore. That is why it is a melange of the frivolous and the serious, the picturesque and the prosaic, the superficial and the significant. If, when you lay it down, you have gained a better understanding of the dangers and difficulties which beset the colonizing white man in the lands of the Malay, if you realize that life in the eastern tropics consists of something more than sapphire seas and bamboo huts beneath the slanting palm trees and native maidens with hibiscus ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... directed to move on the left of Hazel Run, and turn the enemy's right; but he found the works in his front beset, and the character of the stream between him and Newton precluded any movement of his division to ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... time. She had a sublime faith in herself. She felt in her soul the divine afflatus, and pressed forward gloriously to her goal. Mr. Geer had as much firmness, not to say obstinacy, as falls to the lot of most men; but Mrs. Geer had more; and as Launce Outram, hard beset, so pathetically moaned, "A woman in the very house has such deused opportunities!" so Farmer Geer grumbled, and squirmed, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... following the trail that led to Upper Sandusky and that Procter was moving coastwise with his troops in a flotilla under oars and sail. Harrison was, or believed himself to be, in grave danger of confronting a plight similar to that of William Hull, beset in front, in flank, in rear. His first thought was to evacuate the stockade of Fort Stephenson and to concentrate his force, although this would leave the Sandusky River open for a British advance from the shore ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... were fifty or more head of stock, seven wagons, and seventeen people. We made the trip across the divide in twenty-two days without serious mishap or loss. This was good time, considering the difficulties that beset our way at every step. Every man literally "put his shoulder to the wheel." We were compelled often to take hold of the wheels to boost the wagons over the logs or to ease them down steep places. Our force was divided ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... of the river, and so to passe upon those: but let us folowe our reasonyng. If it happen that a capitain be led with his armie, betwen two hilles, and that he have not but twoo waies to save hymself, either that before, or that behinde, and those beyng beset of thenemies, he hath for remidie to doe the same, which some have doen heretofore: that which have made on their hinder parte a greate trenche, difficult to passe over, and semed to the enemie, to mynde to kepe him of, for ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... a school of my own in which the boys are up to all kinds of mischief, for boys will be mischievous—and schoolmasters unforgiving. When any of us are beset with undue uneasiness at their conduct and are stirred into a resolution to deal out condign punishment, the misdeeds of my own schooldays confront me in a ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... since, a party of sappers and miners was stationed at Peterborough, engaged in the trigonometrical survey, when the officer entered the cathedral with his spurs on, and was immediately beset by the choristers, who demanded money of him for treading the sacred floor with armed heels. Does any one know the origin of this singular custom? I inquired of some of the dignitaries of the Cathedral, but they were not aware ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.04.06 • Various
... Lydia had disguised her sister's strange condition as well as she could, he knew that something was being kept from him, and his mind, ever ready to doubt the reality of the happiness that had been granted him, was at length so beset with fears that he could no longer pay attention to the day's business. He rose at the usual time, but with a word at his mother's door made known his intention not to go out till after breakfast. Having lit a fire in the parlour, he sat ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... only do not question the integrity of Mr. Hayes, but I believe him and most of those immediately about him to have been high-minded men who thought they were doing for the best in a situation unparalleled and beset with perplexity. What they did tends to show that men will do for party and in concert what the same men never would be willing to do each on his own responsibility. In his "Life of Samuel ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... and felt for a rifle. He had to rise to shake off this oppression. On his feet he laughed softly, being again in Newbern on a fool's mission. He lay down hands under his chin, but again the silent watching beset him with the old oppression. He must be still and strain his eyes ahead. Presently the word would come, or he would feel the touch of a groping foe. He half dozed at last from the memory of that other endless fatigue. He came to himself with a start and raised his head to scan the ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... poverty and beset by many difficulties in boyhood. His mother was a constant inspiration to him, and when he was disposed to give up the struggle, her words, "My son, stick to your school," led him to continue until he overcame the obstacles. When ready for the university he went to Leipsic, where ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... three, perhaps too the repose and simplicity which characterize antique art, make the path less arduous. I never, even in the infinite vistas of the Vatican, felt the fatigue and perplexity which have beset me ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... art worn and hard beset With sorrows, that thou wouldst forget, If thou wouldst read a lesson, that will keep Thy heart from fainting and thy soul from sleep, Go to the woods and hills! No tears Dim the sweet look ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... at his words, beset with fears, For there were sleeping dragons all around, At glaring watch, perhaps with ready spears— Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found, In all the house was heard no human sound. A chain-drooped lamp was flickering by each door; The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound, ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... hope may seem but futile, When with troubles you're beset, But remember you are facing Just what other men have met. You may fail, but fall still fighting; Don't give up, whate'er you do; Eyes front, head high to the finish. See ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... was over, and give all my money to. O Tom, what a poor, pitiful, sneaking wretch I felt that I was. The two letters that I had received from her during my absence—so kind, so affectionate, and so full of fervent prayers to God that her poor boy might be preserved from the temptations that beset the sailor, and be brought safely back to her widowed arms—rushed to my remembrance, and overwhelmed me with grief; and I—I, who ought to have denied myself even innocent gratification until I had ministered to her wants, had forgotten the best of mothers, and ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... feelings—the underrating of simple pleasures apart from the intellectual—the chase of the imagination, often unduly stimulated, for things unattainable below—all these are surely amongst the first temptations that beset the entrance ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... the call of the President of the United States to enlist in the federal service. The narrative contradicts in no way the more extensive chronicle by Tyler. There is description of troubles that early beset the inexperienced soldiers, who appear to have been illy prepared to withstand the inclemency of the weather. There was sage dissertation concerning the efforts of an army surgeon to use calomel, though the men preferred the exercise of faith. Buffalo was declared the best ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... seated in her new country before the virulence of Court intrigue against her became active. She was beset on all sides by enemies open and concealed, who never slackened their persecutions. All the family of Louis XV., consisting of those maiden aunts of the Dauphin just adverted to (among whom Madame Adelaide was specially implacable), were incensed at the marriage, ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... happy blending of church history, and personal reminiscence, full of fact, humor and pathos, and, most of all, devotion to freedom, morality, temperance, and godliness. Few people of today are able to appreciate the privations, and sacrifices, and dangers, with which the pioneer was beset, and these dangers came with special nearness to the man whose mission, courage and conscience made him the open and avowed foe of all sorts of wickedness. The house was packed with intense listeners, and from beginning to end he held the great ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... through much peril, Miriam," replied the man. "Snares and violence have beset my path. I went to carry the gold and the silver I had promised to Jacob, the goldsmith, when, lo! I was ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... genius—Godolphin yet foresaw that he was not henceforth destined to play a shining part in the crowded drama of life. His career was already closed; he might be contented, prosperous, happy, but never great. He had seen enough of authors, and of the thorns that beset the paths of literature, to experience none of those delusions which cheat the blinded aspirer into the wilderness of publication—that mode of obtaining fame and hatred to which those who feel unfitted for more bustling concerns are impelled. Write he might: and he was fond (as disappointment ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... are beset with many difficulties and possible fallacies which have in the past misled investigators into apparently determining that tobacco smoke contained no nicotin, but ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... of Justice comprising a number of Benches. I would ask the reader kindly to take these very lightly outlined schemes for what they are worth. Whatever may be their defects they indicate a way out of some of the great difficulties which beset the realisation of the universal demand for International Councils of Conciliation and an International ...
— The League of Nations and its Problems - Three Lectures • Lassa Oppenheim
... high rank to which they elevated certain families, no doubt, greatly favoured this romantic system. Not only the lustre of a noble descent, but the stately castle beset with battlements and towers, served to inflame the imagination, and to create a veneration for the daughter and the sister of gallant chiefs, whose point of honour it was to be inaccessible and chaste, and who could perceive no merit but that of the high minded and the brave, nor ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... of light and warmth. And I can read almost all my waking hours; for all through my illness my head has been clear. My principal embarrassment is to choose among the many temptations with which your goodly bookcases beset me. However, after reading Traill's 'William III.' (a rather thin composition, I think) I have settled into Gardiner's 'Civil War,' which is much more solid ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... they all returned ashore. Mr Forster and his party being out in the country botanizing, his servant, a feeble man, was beset by five or six fellows, who would have stripped him, if that moment one of the party had not come to his assistance; after which they made off with a hatchet ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... which doth most easily beset middle-class, and so- called educated Englishmen; we call it purity and culture, but it does not much matter what we call it. It is the almost inevitable outcome of a university education, and will last as long as Oxford and Cambridge ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... him studying himself in the circles of fashion and learning. He could look on Robert Burns, as he were another person, brought from the plough and set down in a world of wealth and refinement, of learning and wit and beauty. He saw the dangers that beset him, and the temptations to which he was exposed; he recognised that something more than his poetic abilities was needed to explain his sudden popularity. He was the vogue, the favourite of a season; but public favour was capricious, and next year ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... occupied with their clients, the babel of voices, and yet an Oriental indolence pervading all, crowds but no hurry; the sonorous and musical sound of the Muezzin call to prayers from the minarets—all was new and strange; delightful too, if you except the dogs that beset the streets and over which, as they lay about, we stumbled at every step. They are now a thing of the past. Poor brutes, they deserved a better fate than the cruel method of extinction which Turkish ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... gardens at home. To take a boat in a pleasant evening, and with music [3252]to row upon the waters, which Plutarch so much applauds, Elian admires, upon the river Pineus: in those Thessalian fields, beset with green bays, where birds so sweetly sing that passengers, enchanted as it were with their heavenly music, omnium laborum et curarum obliviscantur, forget forthwith all labours, care, and grief: or in a gondola through the Grand Canal in Venice, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... The difficulties, however, that beset even the courageous and the competent were enormous. The general paralysis of industry, the breaking up of society, and poverty on all sides bore especially hard on those who had not previously been manual laborers. Physicians could get practice enough but no fees; lawyers who had supported ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... of Lathom, after the place had been closely beset four months; during which time the garrison lost but six men,—four in the service, and two ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... sweet, good people, as he phrased their quality to himself. He had come to terms of impersonal confidence the night before with Boyne, who had consulted him upon many more problems and predicaments of life than could have yet beset any boy's experience, probably with the wish to make provision for any possible contingency of the future. The admirable principles which Boyne evolved for his guidance from their conversation were formulated with a gravity which Breckon could outwardly respect ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... been beset by at least six of Morgan's men. A desperate conflict followed, and he had killed, or at least desperately wounded, three of his assailants, and it was only after he had not a single shot left in his revolver and was surrounded that ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... The Duke was touched to kindness for these fellow-lovers. He would fain preserve them from the anguish that beset himself. So humanising ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... of us are obstinate. We see one pathway we long to tread even though it is beset with stones and briers. We are determined to take that way, even if we never climb high enough to penetrate the low-lying mists which darken it. We would rather pursue even a little way the painful pathway which leads ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... judicial and ministerial officers to enforce their delivery, contrary to the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, which declares all such interference on the part of the States unconstitutional, it is apparent that the legislatures of all the free States would be beset by hordes of persons in the interest of the slave power for the passage of laws protecting slavery within their limits. No means, however impure, would be omitted to obtain them; and it is easy to see that a slave ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... conditions, so he began to unlace his shoe. Then realizing the value of circumstantial evidence, he paused. No! His disability must bear all the earmarks of an accident. He must guess the location of his smallest and least important toe, and trust the rest to his marksmanship. Visions of blood-poisoning beset him, and when he pressed the muzzle against the point of his shoe his hand shook with such a palsy that he feared he might miss. He steeled himself with the thought that other men had snuffed out life itself in this manner, then sat down ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... for I must have no more of you men down with sickness. Let us hope that we may win our way safely to the ship and the island yet. I would send out a little party to try and fetch help, but I fear they are beset at the residency already, and I do not think a detachment could succeed. I propose then that we all hold ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... am not naturally cruel, but, beset as you have been, I should have shot both the fellows ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... wiser, but better. I do not mean to say that Harry was a remarkably good boy, that his character was perfect, or anything of the kind. He meant well, and tried to do well, and he did not struggle in vain against the trials and temptations that beset him. I dare say those with whom he associated did not consider him much better than themselves. It is true, he did not swear, did not frequent the haunts of vice and dissipation, did not spend his Sundays riding about the country; yet he had his faults, and captious people did not ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... would put her baby on goat's milk and come and nurse his child for a few shillings—ten or fifteen shillings a week; Ellen's beauty was worth a great deal more. The hands of the clock went on, he had to close his letter and post it; and no sooner was it posted than he was beset by qualms of conscience. During the meeting he wondered what Ellen would think of his letter, and he feared it would shock her and trouble her; for, while considering the rights of the child, she would remember his admiration ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... would be dreary and joyless to him. I was overwhelmed with grief at the thought of his leaving me; my nerves were still weak, and I wept in all the abandonment of sorrow. I feared for him the dangers that beset the path of the traveller—sickness, death; but I feared not for his honor or truth. I relied upon his integrity, as I did upon the promises of the Holy Scriptures. I did hot urge him to explain the motives of his departure, satisfied that they were ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... fleeting dreams— The vision charms the hours away, And bids me curse Aurora's ray, For breaking slumbers of delight, Which make me wish for endless night; Since, oh! whate'er my future fate, Shall joy or woe my steps await, Tempted by love, by storms beset, Thine image I ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... inconsequent to be indulged in except as a reckless dram now and then; for she had been too early habituated to anxious reasoning to drop the habit suddenly. She felt none of those ups and downs of spirit which beset so many people without cause; never—to paraphrase a recent poet—never a gloom in Elizabeth-Jane's soul but she well knew how it came there; and her present cheerfulness was fairly proportionate to her solid ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... unhallowed and unhappy temptation about the time when he shall attain the age of twenty-one, which period, the constellations intimate, will he the crisis of his fate. In what shape, or with what peculiar urgency, this temptation may beset him, my ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... of the valley in which the cottages were situated; uncultivated, sweet, and wild. They were a good distance beyond Barton's tower. The stream of the Ryth, not so large as it became further down, sparkled along in a narrow meadow, beset with flowers. Here and there a rude bridge crossed it; and the walkers passed as they listed from side to side, wandering down the valley at great leisure, remarking upon all sorts of things except what Eleanor was dreading. The walk and talk went on without anything ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... he did it, he showed none in his calm, observant face. Buttoning up his coat as he went: the October sunset looked as if it ought to be warm, but he was deathly cold. On the street the young doctor beset him again with bows and news: Cox was his name, I believe; the one, you remember, who had such a Talleyrand nose for ferreting out successful men. He had to bear with him but for a few moments, however. They met a ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... the skies at Wittenberg. The plague Drove him to Rostoch, and he watched them there; But, even there, the plague of little minds Beset him. At a wedding-feast he met His noble countryman, Manderup, who asked, With mocking courtesy, whether Tycho Brahe Was ready yet to practise his black art At country fairs. The guests, and Tycho, laughed; Whereat the swaggering Junker blandly sneered, "If fortune-telling fail, Christine will ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... perplexities that beset her, sweeping her thoughts hither and thither, as sea-weed is swept by the wash of the waves. She strove to collect her faculties. How should she rid the house of her cavaliers? She had regularly to refuse some half-dozen of them each day that she ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... part of the design of this Magazine to sympathise with what is truly great and good; to scout the miserable discouragements that beset, especially in England, the upward path of men of high desert; and gladly to give honour where it is due, in right of Something achieved, tending to elevate the tastes and thoughts of all who contemplate it, and prove a lasting credit to the country ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... narrowness and that horrible Covenant, had been a passage from bondage to liberty, there were times, as she paced the terrace alone and looked out on the gray sea of the east coast, when the contradictory circumstances of her life beset her and she was troubled. When she was forced to listen to the interminable harangues of hill preachers, sheltering for a night in the castle, and day by day was resisting the domination of her mother, her mind rose in revolt against the Presbyterians and all their ways. When she was among men ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... would have been reasonable to conjecture that twenty years later she would look but little older than she did today. For such emotions as she was victim of were the sterile and ageless emotions of art; such desires as beset her were not connected with her affections, but her ambitions. Dynasty she had none, for she was childless, and thus her ambitions were limited to the permanence and security of her own throne as queen of Riseholme. She really asked nothing more of life than the continuance of such harvests ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... Thou who didst with Pitfall and with Gin Beset the Road I was to wander in, Thou wilt not with Predestination round Enmesh me, and impute my Fall ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... kindred at Ulm, he had made no progress in consequence of the determined opposition of her two sons, and he had therefore resolved to wait a while, and let her and the young Baron feel their inability to extricate themselves from the difficulties that were sure to beset them, without his authority, influence, and experience—fully believing that some predicament might arise that would bring the mother to terms, ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and in point of time, this always happens just when the first brood have left the nest. The cock-bird, too, who had been silent whilst his young were unfledged, begins to sing again, and throwing off the anxious and care-beset manners of a parent, again assumes that of a bridegroom. But to return to Wrens' nests. I found one within ten yards of the one I had known of since the 10th of April, lined, and ready for an egg. As I was anxious to prove what ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... the effects of playing with dangerous tools, but without knowing that such an experience, is the greatest danger that can beset an untried life. ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... come hither, for the last five days," he said. "A herd of bullocks arrived here, three days since, and were to have been forwarded on to the army; but the Welsh are out in force, and every road beset. Parties have come down from the hills overlooking us, and have fired several houses, that escaped when they last attacked us. My force is sufficient to hold the town against any attacks, but I cannot spare so many men ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... work of making periodical visits to all parishes within such a far-flung charge was, considering the then available means of transportation, not only strenuous but hazardous. Roads were bad and vessels weak and slow. Hardships and danger beset his almost continuous voyages and journeys. A number of poems relating the adventures of the traveler are reminiscenses of ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... feel that you have done me an irreparable injury. I can never more look her in the face. I can never more frequent her society. These new thoughts will beset and torment me. My disquiet will chain up my tongue. That overflowing gratitude; that innocent joy, unconscious of offence, and knowing no restraint, which have hitherto been my titles to her favour, will fly from my features and manners. I shall be anxious, vacant, and ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... back. Urged by the maiden, Artegall kills the second persecutor, and only then discovers that the knight who first came to her rescue is Arthur. They two, by questioning the maid, learn she is a servant of Mercilla (another personification of Elizabeth), and that her mistress is sorely beset by the Soldan, to whom she has recently gone to carry a message. On her return, the poor maid was pursued by two Saracen knights, who were determined to secure her as a prize. Hearing this, Artegall proposes to assume the armor of ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... in unshared exaltation looks down equally upon plain and mountain. Or you behold a hawk sallying from some crag, like a Rhenish baron of old from his pinnacled castle, and darting down towards the river for his prey. Or perhaps, lazily gliding about in the zenith, this ruffian fowl is suddenly beset by a crow, who with stubborn audacity pecks at him, and, spite of all his bravery, finally persecutes him back to his stronghold. The otherwise dauntless bandit, soaring at his topmost height, must needs succumb to this sable image of death. ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... Vermont. There were five younger children, and after Ann's graduation at the State University, she set forth to make fame and fortune, with the ultimate object of rescuing her father and mother from the financial anxieties which had always beset them. ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... rougher and rougher. The whole surface of the ocean seemed a vast plain furrowed with huge blackish waves fringed with white foam. The thunder growled around us, and the lightning discovered to our eyes all that our imagination could conceive most horrible. Our boat, beset on all sides by the winds, and at every instant tossed on the summit of mountains of water, was very nearly sunk in spite of our every effort in baling it, when we discovered a large hole in its poop. It was instantly stuffed with every thing we could find;—old clothes, sleeves of shirts, shreds ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... gave still further proof of faith unshaken by discovering an afflicted damsel in Boston, whom they visited and prayed with, and of whose case Cotton Mather wrote an account circulated in manuscript. This damsel, however, had the discretion to accuse nobody, the spectres that beset her being all veiled. Reason and common-sense at last found an advocate in Robert Calef, a citizen of Boston, sneered at by Cotton Mather as "a weaver who pretended to be a merchant." And afterward, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... hollowing out a nest in the tree-trunk to the woodpecker or nuthatch, whose old homes it readily appropriates; or, when these birds object, a knot-hole or a hollow fence-rail answers every purpose. Here, in the summer woods, when family cares beset it, a plaintive, minor whistle replaces the chickadee-dee-dee that Thoreau likens to "silver tinkling" as he heard it on a ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... he saw large numbers of the European immigrants tarrying in the Atlantic cities, where want, sickness, and crime, beset their path, and he became deeply interested in giving to this worth population the more healthful and vigorous direction of the West. . . . Articles were prepared and published, setting forth the attractions of the country. . . . An immense correspondence, with persons in this country and in ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... have died before my life begun, Whenas my father for his country's good The Persian's favor and the Sophy won And yet with danger of his dearest blood. Thy father, sweet, whom danger did beset, Escaped all, and for no other end But only this, that you he might beget, Whom heavens decreed into the world to send. Then father, thank thy daughter for thy life, And Neptune praise that yielded so to thee, To calm the tempest when the storms were rife, And that thy ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... farewell to his congregation, and had got as far homewards as Dieppe, where he was much disappointed to receive 'contrary letters.' His reply, indignantly acquiescing, indicates the plan which by this time he had formed in order to solve the combined difficulties in theory and practice which beset Scotland. He reminded his correspondents—Glencairn, Lorne, Erskine, and James Stewart—in very memorable words, that they were themselves magistrates, or at least representatives of the ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... man's awakening consciousness of his power, by means of intelligent co-operation, to make conditions that shall protect him and his loved ones from the many calamities which have hitherto beset and overwhelmed human lives, we note the extraordinary work accomplished by the different classes of insurance companies, during the past fifty years. These companies are in fact large bodies of ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... short-breathed wonder which sometimes beset her over a new blossom. She touched the fabric delicately and lifted ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... are invalids could become strong if they had the native or acquired will to vow they would do so. Those who have no other quality favourable to life, whose bodily organs are nearly all diseased, to whom each day is a day of pain, who are beset by life-shortening influences, yet do live by will alone." —Dr. George M. ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... Great difficulties beset the Duke of Parma at the commencement of the siege. Sluys was built upon the only piece of solid ground in the district, and it was surrounded by such a labyrinth of canals, ditches, and swamps, that it was said that it was almost ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... tell. The Medical Center and the Highways in Hiding are one agency dedicated to the conquest of the last and most puzzling of the diseases and maladies that beset Mankind. We are no closer to a solution than we ever were, and so I am ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... and of his Highness now having the administration of the Government of the realm in his own person, lately, upon the 22nd day of September last bypast, in the very hour of the death of the said late Alexander, Bishop of Ross, or shortly thereafter beset and enclosed the said castle, house, and place of the Chanonry of Ross, took the same by force and as yet detains and holds the same as a house of war and will not render and deliver the same to the said Lord Methven.' Mackenzie was duly charged to give up possession of the ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... assaults of unstaying Fate: whereof, for the most part, the women sat down against the wall and plied dextrously their fans; but the men stood leaning against the pillars which held the timbers of the roof. And they conversed easily together, and some were merry, and others, as I could perceive, beset with affairs of government or business—for they talked more vehemently of these matters than of others, as men will, even beneath the very eyelids of the god. And so I could understand that this sacrifice was not the yearly celebrating of high mysteries, but the common piety of every day ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... despair, we entreated the gentleman to be our guide as far as he went. But so many obstacles beset our path in the form of newly- chopped trees and blocks of stone, scattered along the shore, that it was with the utmost difficulty we could keep him in sight. At last we came up with him at the place ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... freedom of trade with England. They were subject to discriminating duties in English ports, and were excluded from the direct trade with the English West Indies, which had been the chief resource the colonial ship- owners. The State governments were in debt, embarrassed, and beset with the social difficulties which come in the train of war. The disbanded troops were not accustomed to regular employment or to a quiet life; taxes were heavy and odious; the far Western settlements clamored to be set free from the States to which they belonged. Above ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... year to Sir Mosley Menteith, and the whole of their life together had been to her a painful period of gradual disillusion—and all the more painful because she was totally unprepared even for the possibility of any troubles of the kind which had beset her. Parental opinion and prejudice, ignorance, education, and custom had combined to deceive her with regard to the transient nature of her own feeling for her lover; and it was also inevitable that she should lend herself enthusiastically ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... falls upon the Shadow Witch, there is but one who can release her from that enchanted chamber where the Wizard now holds her, but one who can bring her unharmed through the perils which will afterward beset her." ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... the friends to whom he wrote—who understood and loved him. Afflicted early with a deafness that became total,—the irony of fate,—the majority of his master-works were evolved from a mind shut away from the pleasures and disturbances of earthly sounds, and beset by invalidism and suffering. Naturally genial, he grew morbidly sensitive. Infirmities of temper as well as of body marked him for their own. But underneath all superficial shortcomings of his intensely ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... among them is pork. The next food is tortoises, which they are accustomed to salt a little. Sometimes they resolve to rob such or such hog-yards, wherein the Spaniards often have a thousand heads of swine together. They come to these places in the dark of night, and having beset the keeper's lodge, they force him to rise, and give them as many heads as they desire, threatening withal to kill him in case he disobeys their command or makes any noise. Yea, these menaces are oftentimes put in execution, without giving any quarter to the miserable swine-keepers, or any ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... takes occasion to discuss what makes difference of faculties. And the criterion which he proposes is difference in the working of the faculties. The same faculty cannot produce contradictory effects. But the path of early reasoners is beset by thorny entanglements, and he will not proceed a step without first clearing the ground. This leads him into a tiresome digression, which is intended to explain the nature of contradiction. First, ...
— The Republic • Plato
... secrets and the sorrows that were aching in his own breast. Yet he had not allowed himself to run to waste in the long time since he was left alone to his trials and fears. He had resisted the seductions which always beset solitary men with restless brains overwrought by depressing agencies. He disguised no misery to himself with the lying delusion of wine. He sought no sleep from narcotics, though he lay with throbbing, wide-open eyes through all the weary hours of ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... as a leading civilization, outpacing the rest of the world in the arts and sciences. But in the 19th and early 20th centuries, China was beset by civil unrest, major famines, military defeats, and foreign occupation. After World War II, the Communists under MAO Zedong established a dictatorship that, while ensuring China's sovereignty, imposed ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... know not what you say! For you to venture from this place under existing circumstances, beset as we are on every hand with dangers seen and unseen,—would be ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... the fate of him who would rebel Against Thee: though Thy sway is just and mild. My father, Amon—as an earthly son His earthly father—so I call on Thee. Look down from heaven on me, beset by foes, By heathen foes—the folk that know Thee not. The nations have combined against Thy son; I stand alone—alone, and no man with me. My foot and horse are fled, I called aloud And no one heard—in vain I called to them. And yet I say: the sheltering care of Amon Is ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Crowds of gayly-dressed people bearing baskets and garlands of flowers, and hailing his appearance with shouts of joy, met him at every village. On the balcony of old Federal Hall, New York City, he took the oath to support the Constitution of the United States. Difficulties beset the new government on every hand. The treasury was empty, and the United States had no credit. The Indians were hostile. Pirates from the Barbary States attacked our ships, and American citizens were languishing ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... sentinels on both banks. If he were to strike eastward toward the Mystic, he would encounter the guard in that direction and the warship Scarborough anchored in the channel. The route up the Charles was most direct and inviting, though beset with ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... the month the Gladwyn sailed down the Detroit to meet a convoy that was expected with provisions and ammunition from Fort Schlosser. At the entrance to Lake Erie, as the vessel lay becalmed in the river, she was suddenly beset by a swarm of savages in canoes; and Pontiac's prisoner, Captain Campbell, appeared in the foremost canoe, the savages thinking that the British would not fire on them for fear of killing him. Happily, a breeze sprang up and the schooner escaped to the open lake. There was ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... a victim to the foulest treachery of ambitious rivals, rather than to the strength of his open foes. Any one who will in candor trace the movements and the handling of that little army, when beset by an enemy now known to have been double its own strength, must concede that his plans were well conceived, and his generalship in this campaign fully equaled that which had won him so ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... spell by some releasing word. But she presently understood that he recognized the futility of words, and was resolutely bent on holding her to her own purpose of behaving as if nothing had happened. Once more she inwardly accused him of insensibility, and her imagination was beset by tormenting visions of his past...Had such things happened to him before? If the episode had been an isolated accident—"a moment of folly and madness", as he had called it—she could understand, or at least begin to understand (for at a certain point her imagination always turned ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... a Westminster boy, becomes a resident at the chateau of a French marquis, and after various adventures accompanies the family to Paris at the crisis of the Revolution. Imprisonment and death reduce their number, and the hero finds himself beset by perils with the three young daughters of the house in his charge. The stress of trial brings out in him all the best English qualities of pluck and endurance, and after hair-breadth escapes they ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... would have proved his last. Alarmed by frequent hints from his friends, he petitioned to retire beyond the sea, and was told that he might expect an answer the following morning. This unnecessary delay increased his apprehensions. To deceive the vigilance of the spies that beset him, he ordered a bed to be prepared in the church, and in the dusk of the evening, accompanied by two clerks and a servant on foot, escaped by the north gate. After fifteen days of perils and adventures, Brother Christian (that was the name he assumed) ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... being a sign of a man's disposition or condition, because according to Ecclus. 19:27, "the attire . . . of the man" shows "what he is." In this way coarseness of attire is sometimes a sign of sorrow: wherefore those who are beset with sorrow are wont to wear coarser clothes, just as on the other hand in times of festivity and joy they wear finer clothes. Hence penitents make use of coarse apparel, for example, the king (Jonah 3:6) who "was clothed with sack-cloth," and Achab (3 Kings 21:27) who "put hair-cloth ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... conflicting duties, no occasion to decide between her father and her husband, between the country of her birth and that of her adoption, none of those struggles and heartrending perplexities which so cruelly beset her afterwards. At that time the Emperor Francis was well contented with his son-in-law, and corresponded with him in a most friendly way. At that happy moment the Frenchwoman could be an Austrian without injury to her mission and her duty. The path she was to follow was clearly traced. ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... these nocturnal visits to the wreck I recall with peculiar gusto, because it brought back that contest with catarrh and coughing among my own warriors which had so ludicrously beset me in Florida. It was always fascinating to be on those forbidden waters by night, stealing out with muffled oars through the creeks and reeds, our eyes always strained for other voyagers, our ears listening breathlessly to all the marsh sounds,—blackflsh ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... for her like a flash of lightning framed in the darkness which had beset her on all sides, showing a deadly precipice right under her feet. With a convulsive movement she sat up straight, but had no power to rise. Ricardo, on the contrary, was on his feet on the instant, as noiseless ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... preying upon Miss Mayhew's mind?" she queried with increasing frequency. Her experience as a teacher of young girls made her quick to detect the presence of those dangerous thoughts which beset the entrance on mature womanhood. With a frown that formed a marked contrast with her customary gentle and genial expression, she surmised: "Can Sibley, or any one else, be seeking to tempt and lead ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... and the man that's done this thing to me. I'll get him," he said, getting up dramatically. "I'll get him, and when I do—" He turned a livid face to the wall, and Aileen saw clearly that Cowperwood, in addition to any other troubles which might beset him, had her father to deal with. Was this why Frank had looked so sternly at ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... Roland to the Dark Tower Came," is an allegory of the pilgrimage of man through the dark places of the earth, on a dismal path beset with demons, and strewn with the wreckage of generations of failures. In his ear tolled the knell of all the lost adventurers, his peers, all lost, lost within sight of ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... highway the child followed a path she knew through the forest; but alas, she found the way long and beset with perils. A number of uncivil Indians were encamped on the side of the Cumberland mountains and a number of the young braves were out hunting that night. Their stealthy approach was heard by the little fugitive girl but too late ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... are both direct employers of labour, the third reaping only indirect profits from the production controlled by others. It was in this respect, as employers of labour, that the societies of the time were free from the anxieties and restrictions that beset the modern employment of capital. Except in the rare case where the contractors had leased arable land and sublet it to its original occupants,—the treatment which seems to have been adopted for ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... quarry that lies below. Whatever it is, they do not appear to have yet touched it. All keep aloft, none of them alighting on the ground, though at times stooping down, and skimming close to the tops of the sage-bushes with which the plain is thickly beset. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid |
