"Difficulty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... innocent, humorous, unfathomable eyes of hers! And they didn't remind me of violets, either," he pursued, belligerently, "nor did her mouth look to me in the least like a rosebud, nor did I have the slightest difficulty in distinguishing between her hands and lilies. I consider these hyperbolical figures of speech to be idiotic. Ah, no!" cried Colonel Musgrave, warming to his subject—and regarding it, too, very intently; "ah, ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... provided, but sets boldly on good natures, as the most vanquishable. One that seriously admires those worst princes, as Sforza, Borgia, and Richard the Third; and calls matters of deep villany things of difficulty. To whom murders are but resolute acts, and treason a business of great consequence. One whom two or three countries make up to this completeness, and he has travelled for the purpose. His deepest endearment is a communication of mischief, and then only you have ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... on that business nearly seven years, and, though he had been at first grandly victorious, had failed at last. His own soldiers, tired of their protracted absence, mutinied against him, and Glabrio, a later Consul, who had been sent to take the command out of his hands, had feared to encounter the difficulty. It was essential that something should be done, and one Manilius, a Tribune, a man of no repute himself, but whose name has descended to all posterity in the oration Pro Lege Manilia, proposed to the ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... perhaps, to give many illustrations of the effect of such organic sensations on our dreams. Among the most common provocatives of dreams are sensations connected with a difficulty in breathing, due to the closeness of the air or to the pressure of the bed-clothes on the mouth. J. Boerner investigated the influence of these circumstances by covering with the bed-clothes the mouth and a part of the nostrils of persons who were sound asleep. This was followed by a protraction ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... made by melting up all the old type-metal, babbitt, battery zincs, white metal and other scrap available, and adding a little antimony if the metal shrinks too much in cooling. If a good furnace is available, aluminum can be melted without any difficulty, although this metal melts at a higher temperature than any of ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... he could remain on the deck only with the greatest of difficulty. Several life lines had been stretched around and he clung to one ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield
... out of order. The Moors of Tangier have so degenerated that it has been long since there was an artificer among them capable of curing so delicate a patient as a debilitated clock. The great men of the city met in solemn conclave to consider how the difficulty was to be met. They discussed the matter thoroughly but arrived at no solution. Finally, a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... up the staircase, Francois Tessier's heart beat so violently that he had to stop several times. There was a dull and violent thumping noise in his breast, as of some animal galloping; and he could breathe only with difficulty, and had to hold on to the banisters, in ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... once more Sultan, and the basin of water into which he had dipped his head was before him. He began furiously to reproach the learned doctor for banishing him from his capital and sending him into the midst of vicissitudes and adventures for so many years. Nor was it without difficulty that he was brought to believe that he had only just dipped his head into the water and lifted it ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... as would enable it to redeem the public faith, or to adopt, themselves, some general and common principle of commercial regulation. But the States had not agreed, and were not likely to agree. In this posture of affairs, so full of public difficulty and public distress, commissioners from five or six of the States met, on the request of Virginia, at Annapolis, in September, 1786. The precise object of their appointment was to take into consideration the trade of the United States; to examine the relative situations and trade of the several ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... jailer and sheriff, did not want to admit us. I thought what a kind man! However, the policeman insisted that we be locked up, and the jailer finally turned the big key in a double-locked door and pushed us into the prison. Then I saw why he had made some difficulty about receiving us. He had put his provision of onions to dry in this prison and they were strewn out on every bench. He heaped them all together in a corner. We were searched, our money, matches and knives taken from us. Then we were locked up ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... maniac crouched low, and glided along with a rapidity which did not distance Cesarini. They reached the paling that separated the vegetable garden from the pleasure-ground; the soldier vaulted over it with ease, Cesarini with more difficulty followed. They crept along; the herbs and vegetable beds, with their long bare stalks, concealed their movements; the man was still on the ladder. "La bonne Esperance," said the soldier through his ground teeth, muttering ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... The difficulty of obtaining definite information added tremendously to the excitement and apprehension of the people in Pittsburgh who had relatives and friends at the scene of ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... on the Greek force as a whole. That it was blameworthy is clear. "Your lordship," wrote Sir Richard Church in answer to the letter just quoted, "is not aware of all the difficulties I had to encounter in passing our troops who had all struck for pay. Not one would move. However, that difficulty is now nearly over and the greater part are passing to the camp at ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... forbidding plunder, and by a resolute fidelity to his plighted word. In political craft he was matchless; in great perils none was gentler than he, but when the danger was past none was harsher; and common talk hinted that he was a willing breaker of his word, deeming that in the pressure of difficulty it was easier to repent of word than deed, and to render vain a saying than a fact. "His mother's teaching, as we have heard, was this: That he should delay all the business of all men; that whatever fell into his hands he should retain along while and enjoy the fruit of it, and keep suspended ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... The difficulty of confuting this assertion, arises merely from its generality and comprehension; to overthrow it by a detail of distinct facts, requires a wider survey of the world than human eyes can take; the progress of reformation is gradual and silent, as the extension ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... him back, broke that compulsion—and the dream. Shann opened his eyes with difficulty, his lashes ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... that Deerfoot held some theory of his own to explain this phase of the difficulty which confronted them, and no one could travel so close to truth as he; but when asked his opinion, he would not give it. He shook his head to signify that he preferred to hold his peace on the matter, and Jack knew him too well to ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... the November of 1816, there comes an intimation that Harvard College wishes to recall Mr. Ticknor to his old home, and give him the professorship of French and Spanish literature. It was a matter of difficulty for him to make a final decision, and a year passes before he determined to accept the charge, and a year and a half more before he enters upon ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... to herself, "they are all so fond of Lucy, to be sure they will make no difficulty about it." And so away she went and told Mrs. Dashwood all about Lucy's engagement to Edward Ferrars; the result of which was that the married lady fell into hysterics, while the Misses Steele were hastily bundled out ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... dream and that understanding of the hysterical and hypnotic somnambulism is deplorably lacking. Still less has science to say about the influence of the moon upon night wandering. The authors extricate themselves from the difficulty by simply denying its influence. They bring forward as their chief argument for this that many sleep walkers are subject to their attacks as frequently in dark as in moonlight nights and when sleeping in rooms ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... altered—quiet and gentle, and anxiously affectionate with her husband and her child. But in her case this happy change is, it seems, a sign of approaching dissolution, from the medical point of view. There is a difficulty in making the poor old, major understand this. He only sees that she has gone back to the likeness of her better self when he first married her; and he sits for hours by her bedside now, and tells her ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... born to die, be mindful to preserve a temper of mind even in times of difficulty, as well an restrained from insolent exultation in prosperity: whether thou shalt lead a life of continual sadness, or through happy days regale thyself with Falernian wine of the oldest date, at case reclined in some grassy retreat, where the lofty pine and hoary poplar delight to interweave ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... the danger seek help where they think it may be expected. As soon as Earl Hakon heard the news of disturbance in More, he fitted out ships, sent the war-token through the land, made ready in all haste, and proceeded out of the fjord. He had no difficulty in assembling men. Ragnfred and Earl Hakon met at the north corner of More; and Hakon, who had most men, but fewer ships, began the battle. The combat was severe, but heaviest on Hakon's side; and as the custom then was, they fought bow to bow, and there was a current in the sound which drove ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... powers no new subjects of difficulty have arisen, and those which were under discussion, although not terminated, do not present a more unfavorable aspect for the future preservation of that good understanding which it has ever been our desire ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... Rachel's turn to laugh a musical little roulade; but somehow her talk was neither so gay, nor so voluble, as it used to be. She liked to listen; she would not for the world their little conversation ended before its time; but there was an unwonted difficulty in finding ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... a man of discrimination. When we were forced to inaugurate a School Board on account of the growing difficulty, owing to the bad times, of collecting voluntary subscriptions, all the old school managers, including my second Vicar—I served under three Vicars as church-warden—refused to join the Board. Jarge, who was much exercised in ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... One important difficulty presents itself at this point of the narrative, in an apparent contradiction between the native records of the Assyrians and the casual notices of their history contained in the Second Book of Kings. The Biblical Pul—"the king of Assyria" ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... people of hers have left her to do all the work," he said to himself indignantly, and as she appeared to be having some difficulty with the official, he went to ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Sanskrit works called Agamas (corresponding to the Pali Nikayas) cannot be later than that period. It is highly probable that the same word was in use among both Hindus and Buddhists at the same time. And since the Mahabharata mentions the Pasupatam, there is no difficulty in supposing that expositions of Sivaite doctrine were current in the first century A.D. or even B.C. But unless more texts of the Agamas come to light the question of their age has little practical importance, for it is said by native scholars that of the twenty-eight primary ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... it was difficult to estimate how far it might be shaken by such a blow occurring at this crisis. [18] Fortunately, Alfonso was in no condition to profit by his success. His Castilian allies had experienced the greatest difficulty in enlisting their vassals in the Portuguese cause; and, far from furnishing him with the contingents which he had expected, found sufficient occupation in the defence of their own territories against the loyal partisans of Isabella. At the same time, numerous ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... which well-nigh defied his teeth. But bit by bit, whenever the chance offered, he was getting more of the loose skin and fur in his mouth. The result was that he was slowly throttling White Fang. The latter's breath was drawn with greater and greater difficulty ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... to have no difficulty in proving he is not Jack Andrews," he remarked, reflectively; "and yet—those pearls are difficult to explain. Their similarity to the ones stolen in Europe fooled the expert, Le Drieux, and they are likely to fool ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... an extraordinarily long time and without dreaming. Nastasya, coming into his room at ten o'clock the next morning, had difficulty in rousing him. She brought him in tea and bread. The tea was again the second brew and again in her ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... be able to give me some counsel,' thought the king; and, with some difficulty, he scrambled into the pit and laid his hand on the shoulder ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... the two men who held to the rope connecting with Dave had seated themselves across the second raft. If the ice broke at that point they would have little difficulty ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... (& having sown in peace by the Law of the Land they are secured in reaping in peace) & continue at Work without ever enquiring whose the Land is, until the Proprietor himself disturbs & drives them off with Difficulty.[18] ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf
... I rather like this indifferentism? Did you never have the misfortune to live in a community, where a difficulty in the parish seemed to announce the end of the world? or to know one of the benefactors of the human race, in the very 'storm and pressure period' of his indiscreet enthusiasm? If you have, I think you will see something beautiful ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... put me in some difficulty, but after a good deal of consideration I have made up my mind to allow the 'right' you claim. It is your right, and I have no right to deprive you of it. Yet the difficulty reaches further still; for without ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... Century to this closing year of the Nineteenth, and to choose the best. Nor have I sought in these Islands only, but wheresoever the Muse has followed the tongue which among living tongues she most delights to honour. To bring home and render so great a spoil compendiously has been my capital difficulty. It is for the reader to judge if I have so managed it as to serve those who already love poetry and to implant that love in some young minds ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... favorite funeral hymn. The only difficulty would be in keeping aunt Becky Burnham from pitching it in a key where nobody but a soprano skylark, accustomed to warble at a great height, could possibly sing it. It was generally given at the grave, when Elder Weeks ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... have made many changes throughout the original text. Misspelling of terms, ignorance of cookery have done much to obscure the meaning. The scribes of the middle ages had much difficulty in this respect since medieval Latin is different ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... son betiding while my soul was under this anxiety, I thought of nothing but resigning my dominions, and retiring for ever from the sight of mankind. My only difficulty was to fix on a successor, who would be tender of my people, and to dispose of the Lady Isabella, who is dear to me as my own blood. I was willing to restore the line of Alfonso, even in his most distant kindred. And though, pardon me, I am satisfied it was his will that Ricardo's lineage should ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... that "to a passion, which has, no doubt, especially in France, had considerable effect in state affairs, there is assigned ... a paramount influence." But romancers with a nose for gallantry had no difficulty in finding material for their pens in England during the times of Henry VIII, Elizabeth, and Henrietta Maria. But most frequently of all was chosen the life of the Queen ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... Kadesh, according to the Priestly Code from the wilderness of Paran. In the former authority they penetrate to Hebron, whence they bring back with them fine grapes, but they find that the land where these grow is not to be conquered. In the latter they proceed without any difficulty throughout the whole of Palestine to Lebanon, but have nothing to bring back with them, and advise against attacking the land because they have not found it particularly desirable, as if its advantages had been accessible to faith alone and ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
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— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... probably left his new address there. However, I shall have no difficulty in finding him. Mrs. ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... obtained probably in consequence of his failure. Some English officers, cleverer than silly Pieter, by means of a line thrown over the summit, by which a ladder was drawn up, managed to reach it, and moreover, to the great disgust of the French inhabitants, to place the Union Jack there. The difficulty of the feat exists in consequence of the upper portion overhanging that immediately below it, as a man's head does his neck. I had been reading the account of the ascent in a book I had with me, and ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Wildegrave that he had taken for that purpose. Anthony told him that Mr. Wildegrave had written to him for the money, and that he was greatly perplexed what to do. In this emergency, he (Godfrey) advised him to go to his father and state to him the difficulty in which he was placed, and, in all probability, the old man would rescue him from his unpleasant situation. He then related the result of the prisoner's interview with his father, the manner in which he had been repulsed, and the threatening language which the prisoner ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... of artists have sprung from humble life. If they had been born rich, they would probably never have been artists. They have had to work their way from one position to another; and to strengthen their nature by conquering difficulty. Hogarth began his career by engraving shop-bills. William Sharp began by engraving door-plates. Tassie the sculptor and medallist, began life as a stone-cutter. Having accidentally seen a collection ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... known to Herbert Murray, and he then saw that he had still a task of no ordinary difficulty before him—that it was not sufficient alone to have his ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... to fight, but my new-born principles taught me to pray rather than to fight, where not called on positively by duty to do so. In either case, my example might be of service. I prayed (as all men in a difficulty should pray) to be guided aright. I decided to remain with the missionary, and use every means to stay the fight, or to mitigate its horrors should it ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... will be of passing interest to recall one or two. In Cas. 530 Lysidamus goes to the "forum" and returns 32 verses later complaining that he has wasted the whole day standing "advocate" for a kinsman. But this difficulty is resolved, if we accept the theory of Prof. Kent (TAPA. XXXVII), that the change of acts which occurs in between, is a conventional excuse for any lapse of time, in Roman comedy as well as in Greek tragedy. But it is extremely doubtful that Prof. Kent succeeds in establishing the truth of this ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... attending the public meeting that the first party of exploration should be accompanied by cattle. Now, from my previous examination of the country to the westward of the located parts of South Australia, I had in 1839 fully satisfied myself, not only of the difficulty, but of the utter impracticability of opening an overland route for stock in that direction, and I at once stated my opinion to that effect, and endeavoured to turn the general attention from the Westward to the North, as being the more promising opening, either for the discovery ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... planes, he says, are with much difficulty distinguished "from ordinary stratification planes, like which they have been plicated, faulted, and denuded. Here and there, as a result of denudation, a portion of one of them appears capping a hilltop. One almost refuses to believe that the little outlier on the summit does not ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... complying with her measures; and therefore she resolved, as she had always declared, whenever those allies came to themselves, not to make the peace without their reasonable satisfaction." The difficulty that most pressed, was about the disposal of Tournay and Conde. The Dutch insisted strongly to have both, and the French were extremely unwilling to ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... like a fugue, everything must grow out of the subject and there must be nothing new. Nor, again, did he see how hard it is to say where one idea ends and another begins, nor yet how closely this is paralleled in the difficulty of saying where a life begins or ends, or an action or indeed anything, there being an unity in spite of infinite multitude, and an infinite multitude in spite of unity. He thought that ideas came into clever people's heads by a kind of spontaneous germination, ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... about this time," The General has told us, "another difficulty started across my path in connexion with my business. I have told you how intense had been the action of my conscience before my conversion. But after my conversion it was naturally ever increasingly sensitive to every question of right and wrong, with a great preponderance ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... became his will that his people should acknowledge no other pope than himself; and the servile spirit of the age, joined to the ignorance and indifference on religious subjects then general, had caused it to be submitted to without difficulty. In consequence, the title of Head of the Church had quietly devolved upon Edward VI. as part of his regal style; and while the duties of the office were exercised by Cranmer and the Protector, the nation, now generally favorable to the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... criterion of equality between two portions of power there can be no common measure of portions of power. Therefore it is utterly impossible to compare them together. But where two portions of power are of the same kind, there is no difficulty in ascertaining, sufficiently for all practical purposes, whether they are equal or unequal. It is easy to judge whether two men run equally fast, or can lift equal weights. Two arbitrators, whose joint ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... had all the charming difficulty of fixing on the play. The dullest and dreariest of our country Rosciuses were uniformly for comedy; but the fair sex have a leaning to the tragic muse. We had one or two, who would have had no objection to be piquant in Lady ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... deceive a very vain person in matters where vanity has a part to play as it is to cheat a blind man, and Pignaver was hoodwinked without difficulty by his niece and her nurse, and the love that had sprung up between the two young people almost at first sight grew at an amazing rate while they sang and looked at ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... his three concubines and himself back to back, placed them in a cart, and conducted them to the Archbishop's residence, in Bonnonia: who then refused to judge him; but sent him and his females to the Monastery of Saint Michael; into which, with some difficulty, he was admitted after midnight, in consequence of the Provost assuring the Friars, that if they would not receive the Abbot, they would procure his prelatical dress, and escort him and the young women in procession through the city, and back to his own Monastery the ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... mother? Do you think I might curve it a little more in front?" asked the girl, holding her feet still with difficulty because she felt that ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... and lost in mazes concerning the cabalistic figures in the book, and the chapter of directions to beginners; for he could with difficulty read at all; yet, in the end, if not interrupted, he somehow managed to arrive at a conclusion satisfactory to him. So that, as he generally wore a good-humored expression, no doubt he must have thought, that all his future affairs were ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... his portrait, which was a good likeness of him at that age, as may be seen even yet; and thus, by watching him paint that work and others, he saw his method of colouring, although afterwards, either by reason of the difficulty or from lack of inclination, he did not pursue the use of colours, finding more satisfaction ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... Eustace. Then, as for a century previous and until quite modern days, Frenchmen were regarded as the natural foes of England, and however large a force an English king wished to collect for service in France, he had never any difficulty whatever in obtaining the number he asked for, and they were ready cheerfully to give battle whatever the odds against them. The English archer's confidence in himself and his skill was indeed supreme. Before the shafts of his forefathers the flower of the French chivalry had gone ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... this iron crown, a simple board, with an oblong rim on one side so padded with hair that the crown of the head entirely escapes pressure, may prove a very good substitute. The upholsterer should so fill the pad that the wearer will have difficulty in balancing it. It may be loaded with bags ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... clinging to Him. No objection can be raised to the representation of this passage as to God's proving Abraham, which does not equally apply to the whole structure of life as a place of probation that it may be a place of blessing. But the manner of the trial here presents a difficulty. How could God command a father to kill his son? Is that in accordance with His character? Well, two considerations deserve attention. First, the final issue; namely, Isaac's deliverance, was an integral part of the divine purpose from the beginning ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... wife Rebecca had a difficulty with Bishop in reference to payment for a hog they had bought of her. The following is from their testimony at her trial. After stating that she came to their house and quarrelled with them about it, they go on to say ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... the first time he had ever sung, except among themselves, as Mrs. Edmonstone had never known whether he would like to be asked; but Eveleen refused to sing some of the Irish melodies unless he would join her, and without making any difficulty he did so. Mrs. Brownlow professed to be electrified, and Eveleen declaring that she knew she sung like a peacock, told Mrs. Brownlow that the thing to hear was Sir Guy singing glees with Laura and Amy. Of course, they were obliged to sing. Mrs. Brownlow ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Both were born before their parents came to New York; Carlotta in Florence, in 1840, and Adelina in Madrid, in 1843. The childhood and youth of both were spent in New York, and here both received their musical training. Their artistic history belongs to the world, and since I am, with difficulty, trying just now to talk more about opera houses and those who built them to their own ruin, than about those who sang in them, I will not pursue it. The summer of 1847 saw Palmo's little opera house deserted. In 1848 it became Burton's Theater, ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... back over this growth of modern monarchy, we cannot but be struck with the immense practical difficulty of creating a strong nationality without sacrificing self-government. Powerful, indeed, is the tendency toward over-centralization, toward stagnation, toward political death. Powerful is the tendency to revert to the Roman, ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... We had some difficulty to escape from the earnest exhortations of numerous devout sellers of rosaries, who insisted on our buying their medals, chapelets, &c., assuring us that they were of extraordinary virtue; and we could scarcely believe that we had not been transported several centuries ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... me, sire; my understanding is particularly thick; things do not penetrate it without difficulty; but it is true, when once they get in, they ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... prolonged investigations. In February and March, 1882, he frequently experienced attacks of pain in the region of the heart, attended with irregularity of the pulse. On April 18 he fainted, and was brought back to consciousness with great difficulty. He seemed to recognize the approach of death, and said, "I am not the least afraid to die." On the afternoon of Wednesday, April 19, he passed away. On April 26 he was interred in Westminster Abbey. The funeral was attended by representatives ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... boy got a rope, which he made fast around the little girl's body, and watching his time, at the intervals of the breaking waves, he bore her to the main shrouds. She went up to the mast head without much difficulty, though the force of the wind was so great that Noddy had to hold on to her, to keep her from ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... reflect. He didn't even know he was actually doing it. But he did it, all the same, with the simple, straightforward, instinctive sense of duty which makes civilized man act aright, all unconsciously, in any moment of supreme danger and difficulty. Leaping on to the taffrail without one instant's delay, and steadying himself for an indivisible fraction of time with his hand on the rope ladder, he peered out into the darkness with keen eyes for a glimpse of Muriel Ellis's head above the fierce black water; and ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... did not exclude in each a consciousness of his own value, nor a profound esteem for his neighbor; and finally, as every member of the circle felt that he could afford to receive or to give, no one made a difficulty of accepting. Talk was unflagging, full of charm, and ranging over the most varied topics; words light as arrows sped to the mark. There was a strange contrast between the dire material poverty in which the young men lived and the splendor of their intellectual ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... not pause to think that she would in all probability be still in bed, that he might have some difficulty in rousing Madame Belhomme, that the latter might not even care to admit him; nor did he reflect on the glaring imprudence of his actions. He wanted to see Jeanne, and she was the other side ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... fine weather, Almeyda marched again on the 5th January 1632, though with much difficulty, as the waters were still out, so that the men had often to wade up to their breasts. Being opposed by the enemy near the fort of Tranqueyra Grande, many of them were slain, as the general gave three or four ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... message from Dan," he cried, half aloud. He had read the strange marking without difficulty. It ran as follows: ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... to the land of the Geats, Beowulf served Higelac faithfully till the day of the king's death, which befell in an expedition that he made to Friesland. Beowulf was with him on that disastrous journey, and only with difficulty did he escape with his life. But when he returned as a poor solitary fugitive to his people, Hygd, Higelac's wife, offered him the kingdom and the king's treasures, for she feared that her young son Heardred was not strong enough to hold ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... of this difficulty, which distressed the Knight much more than his stubbornness allowed him to admit, was close at hand that morning, while Angela bent over her embroidery frame, and her father spelt through the last London Gazette that the ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... Alabama's Legislature was about one-third white and two-thirds negro, a fine old gentleman who had been a slaveholder and was an experienced parliamentarian, was attempting to preside over the Legislature. In this he experienced much difficulty, his greatest bete noir being a negro member, full of oratory, who continually interrupted ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... frowning; but not frowning because of the girl's mutiny. He was a little puzzled by a vague impression, and was striving to pin it down for recognition; but was so thoroughly bemused with fatigue and despair that only with great difficulty could he force his faculties to logical reasoning, his memory to respond to his call ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... that the traveller has generally nothing to do but to step across the platform from the car that he came in to the cab that is waiting there to receive him. Nor is there, as is usual in America, any difficulty or delay in regard to the baggage; for each man's trunks are placed on the car that he rides in, directly over his head; so that, while he walks across the platform to the cab, the railway porter takes his trunk across and places it ...
— Rollo in London • Jacob Abbott
... Her father's peculiar stiffness of soul presented itself now as something altogether left out of the calculations upon which her plans were based, and, in particular, she had not anticipated the difficulty she would find in borrowing the forty pounds she needed for Ramage. That had taken her by surprise, and her tired wits had failed her. She was to have fifteen pounds, and no more. She knew that to expect more now was like anticipating a gold-mine in ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... said the commander-in-chief, as the good-nights were being said, "that discipline would be maintained with difficulty were we long to remain encamped here. Personally, I cannot but regret that we move northward to-morrow; but for the good of the service I think 't ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... wrote Brown in a private letter on {78} October 17, 'on the question of the distribution of members in the upper chamber of the federal legislature, but fortunately we have this morning got the matter amicably compromised, after a loss of three days in discussing it.' The difficulty seems to have been to select the members of the first Senate with due regard to party complexion, so as not to operate in Upper Canada, as Brown felt, unfairly against the Liberals. Finally, an agreement was arranged on the basis that the senators should be drawn from both parties; and this ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... prince's attentions to one of her fair friends, exclaimed, "I sincerely hope that it may not be my turn next, for to repel him is impossible." Towards the middle period of his life, he became so enormously fat, that four life-guardsmen could not, without difficulty, lift him on horseback; but, as he advanced in years, although still corpulent, his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 535, Saturday, February 25, 1832. • Various
... working their toilsome way up a narrow ravine—which, although the season was autumn, was still filled with snow, that lay in the bottom of the gorge to a great depth. It was snow that had lain all the year; and although not frozen, the surface was firm and stiff; and it was with difficulty they could get support for their feet on it. Here and there they were compelled to stop and cut steps in the snow—as the surface sloped upward at an angle of full 50 degrees, and, in fact, they were rather climbing than walking. Their object, in undertaking this ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... strange," said Mabel, rising with that firm moral courage, which always prompted her to face a difficulty at once. "Say to the General, that I wish to ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... overrefined—one might even say, affected. How could these be the thoughts, or those the expressions, of the imperfectly civilized shepherds of the Panjab? But if it be only a hymn-book, with its materials arranged for liturgical purposes, the difficulty vanishes.[2] We shall accordingly take it for granted that the Veda presents only the religious thought of the ancient Hindus—and not the whole of the religious thought, but only that of a very influential portion of the race. With all the ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... and petty needs, was distasteful to the lad, and he was anxious to obtain a collegiate education, and thus become fitted to fight the battle of life with brain instead of muscle. His ambition was not discouraged by his father, but there was a great difficulty in the way of its gratification—the want of money. Mr. Otis was utterly unable to give his son any pecuniary assistance, though ready to resign his claim on his son's time; an important sacrifice when the demands of a large family and the ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... hemisphere. Leaving these out of view, the noticeable point is that the vegetation of California is most strikingly unlike that of the Atlantic United States. They possess some plants, and some peculiarly American plants, in common—enough to show, as I imagine, that the difficulty was not in the getting from the one district to the other, or into both from a common source, but in abiding there. The primordially unbroken forest of Atlantic North America, nourished by rainfall distributed throughout the year, is widely separated ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... upon Giordano to kill him, and Frederick saves the ambassadors with difficulty, and ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... challenge American businesses to give people on welfare the chance to move into the work force. I applaud the work of religious groups and others who care for the poor. More than anyone else in our society, they know the true difficulty of the task before us, and they are in a position to help. Every one of us should join them. That is the only way we can make real welfare reform a reality in the lives of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William J. Clinton • William J. Clinton
... guidance; after which she said to her husband, 'Amiddleward the Sea of Treasures stands a mountain called the Mount of the Bereaved Mother,' (the cause of which being so named shall follow in its place, if it be the will of God,) 'and thither can none come, save with difficulty; do thou make her ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... difficulty attends the exposition of this parable: the main features of its meaning are so distinctly marked, that it is hardly possible to miss them. The lesson is easily read; and when read, it ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... since that they were sea-lions, and entirely harmless. But the look of them, added to the difficulty of the shore and the high running of the surf, was more than enough to disgust me of that landing place. I felt willing rather to starve at sea ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... earth, and that God is the Lord. When this was said I was permitted to perceive the interior nature of his adoration, which was communicated to me; and it was much more holy than is the case of Christians, This makes clear that at the present day the heathen come into heaven with less difficulty than Christians, according to the ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... the scuttle is broken, just as Osborne said," he reported. "And anyone who could gain the roof would have little difficulty in effecting an entrance." He led the way down the hall, saying as he went: "Now we'll browse around in the rooms for a while; then we'll ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... hot and cold, red and white by turns. With difficulty I controlled myself under that taunt—the cruellest he could have flung at me in ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... patience with which he clumsily, yet surely, brought out the real point of the matter, overlooked by others, the debate ended in the recognition that he had been right. It was often a strange and almost distressing sight to see the difficulty under which he sometimes laboured of communicating his thoughts, as a speaker at a meeting, or as a teacher to his hearers, or even in the easiness of familiar talk. The comfort was that he was not really discouraged. He was wrestling with his own refractory ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... in some difficulty; Mr. Olmney was not the only one, clearly, whose powers of comprehension were not ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... subscription dance in our particular corner of England. One has to ignore distances and forget fatigue if one wants to be gregarious even on a limited scale. There are one or two officials who are our chief social mainstays, but the difficulty is to muster the few available souls under the same roof at the same moment. A road will be impassable in one quarter, a pony will be lame in another, a stress of work will prevent some one else from coming, and another may be down with a touch of fever. When my little girl gave a birthday ...
— When William Came • Saki
... will be slow, but if you want quick work, I propose this system," the system I speak of, of asking people to contribute such and such a sum from year to year and drop out whenever they please, and he would find there wouldn't be any difficulty, people wouldn't feel the burden of it. And he wrote back saying he had raised the $2400 a year indefinitely by that system in, a single afternoon. We would like to do something just like that to-night. We will take as many checks as you care to give. You can leave your donations in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... nothing amid the swirling waves of the Cimmerian sea that lay beneath him. Then the buildings of the factory below were the first objects which, one by one, disentangled themselves from the shadows and stood out before his vision in indistinct masses, which he had no difficulty in recognizing: the engine-house, the shops, the drying rooms, the storehouses, and when he reflected that within twenty-four hours there would remain of that imposing block of buildings, his fortune and his pride, naught save charred timbers and crumbling walls, he overflowed ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... to—but they kept steadily at their work from morning until night. Then too, I didn't hesitate to do a little work myself now and then. If at any point another man seemed to be needed to help over a difficulty I jumped in. I not only often saved the useless efforts of three or four men in this way but I convinced them that I too had my employers' interests at heart. My object wasn't simply to earn my day's pay, it was to finish the ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... The general conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church even appointed an hour of prayer that the Senate might be moved to convict. The lawyers for the defense so far outgeneraled the prosecutors that one who reads the records at the present day finds difficulty in thinking of them as more than the account of a pitiful farce. At length on May 16 the Senate was prepared to make its decision. The last charge was voted upon first. It was a very general accusation, drawn up by Stevens, and seemed most likely to secure the necessary two-thirds for conviction. ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... I had had some difficulty in forcing a way through the crowd which thronged the entrance, but finally I found myself standing beside Inspector Bristol and looking down upon that which had brought us ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... did not the bargain close, then? Alas, one finds, the answer YEA had unfortunately set his Prussian Majesty on viewing, through magnifiers, what advantages there might have been in NO: this is a difficulty there is no clearing away! Probably, too, the Tobacco-Parliament was industrious. Friedrich Wilhelm, at last, tries if Half will not do; anxious, as we all too much are, "to say Yes AND No;" being in great straits, poor man:—"Your Prince of Wales to wed Wilhelmina at once; the other ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Pond,—I have been thinking over the military situation, and am of opinion that if the enemy once effected a lodgment in Looe, we in Troy might have difficulty in dislodging him. Have you considered the danger of Talland Cove and the accessibility of your town from that quarter? And would you and your corps entertain the idea of a descent of my corps upon Talland one of these nights as a friendly test?—Believe ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... myself until last night. That my going to Cornwall is necessary, on business grounds, I have already made clear to Marmaduke. He will tell his wife, and Harriet will tell all the world. I have so arranged that you will have no difficulty of any kind. This house will go on as usual, or you can visit at Thornhurst and at my father's. There will be no loss to you of anything or anybody—except one, whose absence must be welcome." "Welcome!" she repeated in an accent ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... The aim was to turn out planes as rapidly as Ford Cars and to swamp the Hun with numbers. America is unusually rich in the human as well as the mechanical material for crushing the enemy in the air. In this service, as in all the others, the only difficulty that prevents her from making her fighting strength immediately felt is the difficulty of transportation. The road of ships across the Atlantic has to be widened; the road of steel from the French ports to the ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... programme cheerfully, for the child made singularly few requests. Thomas, the gardener, was to row them over, and Miss Greene, a stout person who moved with difficulty, seated herself in the stem of the boat with a sigh of relief, and drew Raymond Mortimer down beside her. He wriggled out of her grasp and struggled to his feet, his stout legs apart, his brown ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... there will be no difficulty on this score," said Mr. Hardley. "In the first place, two attempts were made to get this wealth, and were unsuccessful. Then it was practically abandoned, and I believe under the law the persons who now find it will be entitled to keep it. Besides the persons ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... which I have referred, it was expressly admitted that the restrictions recommended "would not alone remedy the evil, or do much toward it; there would still be much, and with the ambitious too much, studying out of school." They ascribed the real difficulty "to the general arrangements of our schools, and to the strong pressure from various causes urging the pupils to intense application and the masters to encourage it," and said that this "could only be met by some general changes introduced by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... each typewritten sheet, enclose it in the stamped envelope which I will send you, and send it by post. When the cheques come, sign them on the back and forward them to me. For every ten pounds you forward me, I'll give you one for yourself. In any difficulty, simply write to me—here's my own address—and I'll ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... recent work on African folk-tales, says of the natives of Angola: "No Angola child finds difficulty at any time in producing ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... countermarching in and out of the office on the part of the Secretary and the Yeomen, but no public application on the part of the Association was made to the Alderman, and it was understood that there was much difficulty in determining the manner of renewing, with any prospect of success, the attacks upon the inmates of "The ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... looking towards the court, they saw Schemselnihar's confident coming towards them, followed by ten black women, who, with much difficulty, carried a throne of massy silver most curiously wrought, which they set down, before them at a certain distance; upon which the black slaves retired behind the trees to the entrance of a walk. After this there came ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... accursed pool of her destruction. Charity Coe was near it, seated on a marble bench alone. She was pensive with curious thoughts. She heard Kedzie's childish snivel as she passed. Charity looked up, recognized the girl with difficulty, and after a moment's hesitation called ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... that there was some difficulty of speech, and she would not press matters. She put Eleanor into a seat, and looked at her, and took off her bonnet with her own hands; stooped down and kissed her brow. Eleanor steadied herself and ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... lenses—one of crown glass, the other of flint glass—to destroy the colour, in a way originally suggested by Euler. He soon acquired a great reputation for his telescopes of moderate size; but there was a difficulty in making flint-glass lenses of large size. The first actual inventor and constructor of an achromatic telescope was Chester Moor Hall, who was not in trade, and did not patent it. Towards the close of the eighteenth century a Swiss named Guinand at last succeeded ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... ample amends for the defects of that of her lover; and this superiority of the heroine, it may be observed, is almost invariable in the early Greek romances. The masculine firmness and presence of mind which she evinces in situations of peril and difficulty, combined at all times with feminine delicacy, and the warmth and confiding simplicity of her love for Theagenes, attach to her a degree of interest which belongs to none of the other personages; and her spontaneous burst of grateful affection, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... ought to resign, and therefore mentioned the subject to my members, and left it. But calling on a friend, as I returned home, she said, 'she was requested to tell me, that Mr. H. would be glad if I would meet the class at his house' So this difficulty is removed, and there the matter rests. O Lord, direct me by Thy counsel.—Providence seems to thwart my purposes: yet everything appears either to point, urge, allure, or draw me to the skies. I find the beneficial ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... to him? He is to mind his own business and you yours." Kate was about to say still more, to cry out: "Leave off telling him your private concerns, I won't have it," but she controlled herself, although with difficulty. She could have boxed this round-cheeked girl's ears, as she looked at her so boldly with her bright eyes. Even Frida Laemke was preferable ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... the river with great difficulty, but, as it chanced, without loss of life, Ishmael being borne over it upon the shoulders of the strongest men. Upon its further bank he summoned the captains and delivered to them the orders of the King. Then they set out for Ramah, ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... cutting, but it is not here "the first step which costs," but the later steps. After the first foot is removed, if the ground be hard, a pick or subsoil plow must be used. A subsoil plow, properly constructed, may be made very useful in breaking up the subsoil, though there is a difficulty in working cattle astride of a deep ditch, encumbered with banks of earth. A friend of ours used, in opening drains, a large bull in single harness, trained to walk in the ditch; but the width of a big ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French |
