"Irregular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... then allowed to ferment. Better results are generally obtained if the manure is piled under cover. If the weather is cold and fermentation does not start readily, wetting the pile with hot water may start it. The first fermentation is nearly always irregular; that is, it begins unequally in several places in the pile. In order to make the fermentation uniform, the pile must be turned occasionally, taking care to break up all hard lumps and to distribute the ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... IIb, 8l2b there is a plan almost identical with that of San Lorenzo. The diagonal sides of the irregular octagon ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... General Scott. His pride was touched. He felt the slight, but he was too good an officer, too subordinate, and too well disciplined, to complain. The secret military expedition undertaken by the Secretary of State without the knowledge of the proper departments and of himself, was so irregular, such evidence of improper administration, that he became alarmed. He felt keenly the course of Mr. Seward in not consulting him, and in substituting one of his staff as military adviser for the Secretary of ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... came into the narrow streets of Deal, and very gloomy they were upon a raw misty morning. The long flat beach, with its little irregular houses, wooden and brick, and its litter of capstans, and great boats, and sheds, and bare upright poles with tackle and blocks, and loose gravelly waste places overgrown with grass and weeds, wore as dull an appearance ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... slightingly of the sex, and be ever ready to honour its virtues and defend its weakness; she may continue to incline towards him a willing ear. His habits and his conduct must awaken her vigilant attention before it be too late. Should he come to visit her at irregular hours; should he exhibit a vague or wandering attention—give proofs of a want of punctuality—show disrespect for age—sneer at things sacred, or absent himself from regular attendance at divine ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... decreasing sounds of a fire as it dies,—for it seems cruel to leave it, as we do, to die alone. I watched beside this hearth last night. As the fire sank down, the little voices grew stiller and more still, and at last there came only irregular beats, at varying intervals, as if from a heart that acted spasmodically, or as if it were measuring off by ticks the little remnant of time. Then it said, "Hush!" two or three times, and there came something so like a sob that it seemed human; ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... conversation became less reserved; and I found that I was conversing with one of the most renowned officers of irregular cavalry in the late Confederate service—a service which, in the efficiency, brilliancy, and daring of that especial arm, has never been surpassed since Maharbal's African Light Horse were recognised by friends and foes as the finest corps in ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... army was heavy, dull and irregular, and the few torches they carried added little light to the glare of the lightning and the glow of the burning forest. The two marched on in the dark, saying little, making little noise for numbers so great, but steadily converging ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... incident to the general election was the informal vote taken, at the suggestion of The Wheeling Intelligencer, on Mr. Battelle's emancipation proposition which had been rejected by the Convention. Despite the irregular and unauthorized manner in which this was done, by the several counties holding such extra election, the count showed that six thousand votes were cast for emancipation and six hundred against.[73] It is not improbable, therefore, that the constitution would have been adopted without ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... is most apparent in the towns, it is frequently spoken of as the Urban Poor, but its characteristic traits are to be found also in the rural districts. For the most part its individuals are either criminal, immoral, parasitic in more or less irregular ways upon the more successful classes, or labouring, at something less than a regular bare subsistence wage, in a finally hopeless competition against machinery that is as yet not so cheap as their toil. It is, to borrow a popular phrase, the "submerged" portion of ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... house is an approach to the river: most of the buildings near are old and irregular, and at low tide a great deal of the shore must be exposed. Going upon the slippery stones, beside which lay a few idle and rickety boats, I found the expected range of windows with "red curtains matching the noses of the regular customers." I looked in at the door. A long passage opened a vista ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... an irregular body of land raised above the level of the ocean. This, no doubt, is the smallest portion of the globe; but it is the part to us by far most interesting. It is upon the surface of this part that plants are made to grow; consequently, ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... legislator, "it's tricky—deuced tricky. The nastiest lot of irregular verbs I've come across yet. Still, I get along all right. Worst of it is, you know, that when I've got a sentence out all right with its verbs and things, I'm not in a fit state ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... waiting with candles. He gave one each to the newcomers, leading the way to a low door in the rock. This was opened by an individual in a long red coat of ceremony, carrying a heavy silver mace, who gave Matthews the customary salutation of peace and bowed him into an irregular court. An infinity of doors opened out of it—chiefly of the stables, the old man said, pointing out a big white mule or two of the famous breed of Bala Bala. Thence the visitor was led up a steep stone stair to a terrace giving ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... nor in accordance with the facts, for generally speaking, as has been pointed out, all these attractions are the same in both sexes.... But, Daphnaeus, let us combat those views which Zeuxippus lately advanced, making Love to be only irregular desire carrying the soul away to licentiousness, not that this was so much his own view as what he had often heard from morose men who knew nothing of love: some of whom marry unfortunate women for their ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... personal history, almost as full of risk and adventure as that of its own heroes. The writer himself calls the piece a cantefable, a tale told in prose, but with its incidents and sentiment helped forward by songs, inserted at irregular intervals. In the junctions of the story itself there are signs of roughness and want of skill, which make one suspect that the prose was only put together to connect a series of songs—a series of songs so moving and attractive that people ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... were dragging, and his square shoulders bowed under the burden of the knapsack, whose height and big irregular outline seemed almost fantastic. Twice he ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... three swing jaws, shown at C, Figs. 109 and 110. The watch plate is indicated by the parallel dotted lines A, Fig. 109. The seat a of the swing jaws C must hold the watch plate A exactly parallel with the bed plate B. In the cheap movement holders these seats (a) are apt to be of irregular heights, and must be corrected for our purpose. We will take it for granted that all the seats a are of precisely the same height, measured from B, and that a watch plate placed in the jaws C will be held exactly parallel with the said bed B. We must next provide two pillars, shown at ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... get the horses shod. I was looking at the holes the calks of Old Blacky's shoes made in the wagon-box last night, and they are shallow and irregular. He needs new shoes to do himself justice. If this blacksmith seems like a man of force of character, we'll ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth
... in the straw cot furnished me. A stirring time, they had, I assure you. The following night, I was roused up from a ten horse-power slumber, by a little million of enterprising insects,—well,—their style of locomotion, though irregular, accomplishes remarkable results. By the way, I doubt that story of a pair of fleas, harnessed into a tiny chariot and broken into ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... remembrance. Nevertheless, he had pretty well forgotten it, when he pulled off the cover of his box of shaving soap the next morning. He was belated, and in something of a hurry. If ever a man suddenly forgot his hurry, Mr. Randolph did, that morning. He knew the unformed, rather irregular and stiff handwriting in a moment; and concluded that Daisy had some request to make on her own account which she was too timid to speak out in words. That was what he expected when he opened the paper; but Eve could not have been much more surprised when ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... help. One day we saw the 'ad' in our paper telling what Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound is doing for women so I began to take it. It has helped me wonderfully. I am feeling fine, do all my housework and washing for seven in the family. I had been irregular too, and now I am all right. I am telling my friends what it has done for me and am sure it will do good for others. I will stand up for Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound any time." MRS. WM. ...
— Food and Health • Anonymous
... but which really they had never seen before. Sense of direction left them, for they continually changed the angle, compelled by the undergrowth to do so. Twigs leaped at them and stung their faces, Tim's cheeks were splashed with mud, Uncle Felix's clean white flannels showed irregular lines of dirty water to his knees. It was altogether a tremendous affair in which rescue and escape were madly mingled with furious attack and terrified retreat. Everything was moving, and in all directions at once. They rushed headlong through the angry ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... the far-stretching, soft shadow of the sea, with its gentle, irregular line of white where it met the shore, she asked him if he wouldn't like to be rowing just then with a girl on a lovely lake. She wanted him to say—yes, if the girl were she. But he did not say it, and he had no idea that ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... 200 children below 14 years of age and with I Q between 95 and 105, not one was making much more nor much less than average school progress. Four were two years retarded, but in each case this was due to late start, illness, or irregular attendance. Children who test close to 90, however, often fail to get along satisfactorily, while those testing near 110 are occasionally able to win an ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... entered the open door-way of the tavern, as the people termed it, under the pretext of buying a draught of milk. The interior of this rude dwelling presented no very inviting aspect. The walls were of rough unhewn logs, filled between the chinks with moss and irregular wedges of wood to keep out the wind and rain. The unplastered roof displayed the rafters, covered with moss and lichens, green, yellow, and grey; above which might be seen the shingles, dyed to a fine mahogany-red ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... had elapsed, when an answering whoop was heard from the cluster of huts forming the village of Namasket, now the town of Middleboro', and an irregular stream of warriors, headed by Tisquantum in person, came running toward the ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... for their mistresses, whether wives or irregular concubines, men of the Occident have generally been driven to ever fiercer struggle with their fellows. Thus a Pericles, at the zenith of his powers, facing difficulties which strained and developed all his forces, had for his legitimate wife a woman, bound hand and ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... although he assumed that Shakespeare was the author of the Plays, rejected the facts of his life and character, and says: "Ask your own hearts, ask your own common sense, to conceive the possibility of the author of the Plays being the anomalous, the wild, the irregular genius of our daily criticism. What! are we to have miracles in sport? Does God choose idiots by whom to ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... question as a family matter? I reply with alacrity, to the best of my ability: and with my hand on my heart, Mr. Beltham, let me assure you, I very heartily desire the information to be furnished to me. Or rather—why should I conceal it? The sources are irregular, but a child could toddle its way to them—you take my indication. Say that I obtained it from my friends. My friends, Mr. Beltham, are of the kind requiring squeezing. Government, as my chum and good comrade, Jorian DeWitt, is fond of saying, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... inquiries and tumultuous congratulations; and, as they afterwards remembered, there was something absorbed, thoughtful, and self-concentrated in her deportment. She looked pale, as well she might, and held her torch with a nervous grasp, the tremor of which was seen in the irregular twinkling of the flame. This last was the chief perceptible sign of any recent ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... at the great piece of glowing mineral which lay in her hand. Its surface was irregular; it had many faces; the subdued light from the window gave it the appearance of animated water. He felt it necessary ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... much for your two notes. The case of Julia Pastrana (A bearded woman having an irregular double set of teeth. 'Animals and Plants,' volume ii. page 328.) is a splendid addition to my other cases of correlated teeth and hair, and I will add it in correcting the press of my present volume. Pray let me hear in the course of the summer if you get any evidence about ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... is succeeded by a debility, from the depression of which I cannot always rouse my patient. When the fits proceed from dentition, I lance the jaws, and give an emetic, and follow it up with cooling purgative medicine. When they are caused by irregular and excessive exercise, I open the bowels and make my exercise more regular and equable. When they arise from excitation, I expose my patient more cautiously to the influence of those things which make so much impression on his little but ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... sure that the tail was not shown when he had previously used the glass, but he could not account for it at the time. He afterwards traced it to the warm air collecting in the upper part of the tube and producing an irregular refraction of the light. When this cause was corrected the defect disappeared. But he got no further encouragement at home to pursue his work. The first recognition of his genius came from England, the ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... silent for some time, listening to the low irregular breathing of the creature on the bed and watching the rustle of the bed-clothes as it impotently struggled to free itself ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... continued on up the valley for twenty miles or until the brakes of the Plain made the land no longer desirable. Returning to our commencement point with still one hundred certificates left, we extended the survey five miles down both rivers, using up the last acre of scrip. The new ranch was irregular in form, but it controlled the waters of fully one million acres of fine grazing land and was clothed with a carpet of nutritive grasses. This was the range of the buffalo, and the instinct of that animal could be ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... cup of the sky, an irregular pink wisp formed before their wondering eyes, and vanished again. But more slowly, ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... betrayed the firmness of her wit and the almost masculine quality of her reasoning judgment. Even her arms and hands and her shoulders were "mal tailles" as her contemporaries would have told you. But what a charm in those irregular features! What a seductiveness in the ensemble of that not too-well- proportioned figure! What an indescribable radiance seemed to emanate from the entire personality of this most ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... Thanks to its irregular serpentine outline, and to the desolate majesty of the hills which environ it, Lough Veagh, though not a large sheet of water, may well be what it is reputed to be, a rival of the finest lochs in Scotland. No traces are now discernible on its shores ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... the incisions filled with colouring. Several brasses in England conform to this style of workmanship, and are evidently the production of foreign artists. The English brasses, on the contrary, consist of separate pieces, with an irregular outline, corresponding with that of the figure. They have no brass background; and for delicacy of engraving and general appearance the English brasses are by far ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... are not irregular; that is as Sunday-school teachers rate regularity. To be sure, it would never do to be teaching a graded school, for instance, and be as careless as some of them are about regularity. But that is a different matter, of course; this is only a Sunday-school! ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... looked new and neat and well cared for. The mound, however, still stood its ground, and had relapsed into something of its old savage condition; it would have warranted a theory of Mr. Oldbuck's as to its possible former purposes and origin. I looked at its crumbled and irregular wall, from which the turf had peeled or been washed away; at the tangled growth of grasses and weeds round the top, crenellated with many a breach and gap; and the hollow, now choked up with luxuriant evergreens that overtopped the inclosure and forbade entrance to it, and ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... the yellow knitted scarf round the neck of the new-comer that he is an itinerans scholasticus, or travelling scholar, who brings with him not only the possibility of news from the outer world, so important in an age when journals were non-existent and communications irregular and deficient, but also a chance of beholding wonder-workings, as well as of being cured of the ailments which local skill had treated in vain. Already surrounded by a crowd of admirers waiting for the words of wisdom to fall from his lips, he would start ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... the tunnel had fallen in and buried a number of the workmen. The last arch had been keyed in, and the work was all but finished, when the accident occurred which was thus exaggerated by the lying tongue of rumour. An invert had given way through the irregular pressure of the surrounding earth and rock at a part of the tunnel where a "fault" had occurred in the strata. A party of the directors accompanied the engineer to inspect the scene of the accident. They entered ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... Alps, continued on the west by the Pyrenees and the Cantabrian mountains, and carried eastward to the Black Sea by the Balkan range, form an irregular line, that separates the three peninsulas of Spain, Italy, and Greece from the great plain of central Europe. On the north of this plain, there is a corresponding system of peninsulas and islands, where the Baltic answers in a measure to the Mediterranean. This ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... moving to this irregular and doleful music, passed through another little town which Zene said was named Boston, late on a rainy afternoon. Here they crossed the Miami River in a bridge through the cracks of which Robert Day and Corinne looked at the full but not very wide stream. It flowed ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... horsehair is tied round the neck of the scrotum and tightened by slow degrees till the circulation of the part stops and the bag drops off without pain. This has been adopted in sundry Indian regiments of Irregular Cavalry, and it succeeded admirably: the animals rarely required a day's rest. The practice was known to the ancients. See notes on Kadisah in Mirabeau. The Eunuchata virgo was invented by the Lydians, according to their historian ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... this illness had driven me to a strange introspection. There had been time to think. I smiled at Captain Blaise's amateurish rhymings on the veranda of the manor-house. I had condemned him in my own mind for this death or that death of his irregular career; on that last night on the veranda I had even allowed him to read my thoughts of such matters. And now I could not recollect of his having ever killed or maimed except in defence of his life or property; and yet that night in Momba I had shot, ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... brown alpaca dress, with the white spots on it—touched the floor, within the housekeeper's reach. Mrs. Lecount lifted the outer of the two flounces which ran round the bottom of the dress one over the other, softly cut away a little irregular fragment of stuff from the inner flounce, and neatly smoothed the outer one over it again, so as to hide the gap. By the time she had put the scissors back in her pocket, and had risen to her feet (sheltering ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... surface washing are very deficient in phosphorus and much poorer than ours in potassium and magnesium; and your undulating and steeply sloping lands are more or less broken, with many rock outcrops on the points and some impassable gullies, which as a rule compel the cultivation of the land in small irregular fields. A three-cornered field of from two to fifteen acres can never have quite the same value per acre as the land where forty or eighty acres of corn can be grown in a body with no necessity of omitting a single hill. Then there is some unavoidable loss from surface ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... irregular in shape, and the surface did not naturally lend itself to the purpose for which it was destined. His engineers, however, put this right by constructing enormous piers for the foundations, which they built up from the slopes of the mountain ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... I was in my own room, stretched upon my pallet. I looked around in a dazed way and saw the Brother Director and a young gendarme by the closed door. Something black and irregular in the outline of the bed at my side attracted my eyes. I saw that it was Edouard's head buried in the drapery. As in a dream I laid my numb hand upon those crisp curls. I was an old man, she was a weak, wretched girl. She raised her face at my ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... large city in the country with a three cent street car fare. The wages of both motormen and conductors are 29 cents an hour for the first year and 32 in succeeding years. The hours of labor are very irregular. The usual working day is ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz
... time upon the hamlets and villages of the Moor, now carried on their lofty crowns the flames of rejoicing. Bonfires of varying size, according to the energy and importance of the communities responsible for them, dotted the circumference of the lonely region in a vast, irregular figure, but thinned and ceased towards the unpeopled heart of the waste. On Wattern, at Cranmere, upon Fur Tor, and under the hoary, haunted woods of Wistman, no glad beacons blazed or voices rang. There Nature, ignorant of epochs and heeding ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... L. (GREAT LAUREL.) Leaves thick, 4 to 10 in. long, elliptical-oblong or lance-oblong, acute, narrowed toward the base, very smooth, with somewhat revolute margins. Flowers large (1 in.), with an irregular bell-shaped corolla and sticky stems, in large clusters, white or slightly pinkish with yellowish dots. July. Evergreen shrub or tree, 6 to 20 ft. high, throughout the region, especially in damp swamps in the Alleghany ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar
... year before I saw Barber again. I heard that he had lost his place at his office. The cashier there, who told me this, said that although the young man was generally docile and a fair worker, he had in the last year become very irregular, and was often quarrelsome and impudent. He added that Barber could now and then influence the management—"when he was not himself," as the cashier put it—or they would not ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... period of slavery in the Purchase Region, buying and selling slaves was carried on at irregular intervals. The trading usually took place at the home of the slave owner. The prices paid for slaves was dependent upon certain conditions. In case of a full grown, robust negro boy the price was sometimes as ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... came to a quiet suburb, where road after road, lined on either side with houses exactly like each other, stretched in depressing monotony. To Kitty it looked the very acme of correct, neat, yet hateful propriety, and her thoughts flew back longingly to the dear old irregular wind-swept street of Gorlay, which was to her then the most lovable and lovely spot on the face of the earth. At last, when she was almost tired of speculating on the people who lived in the houses they were passing, ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... land around Santo Domingo, but in every direction a succession of hills and valleys. The hills are not isolated; they run in irregular ranges, having mostly an east and west direction, but with many modifications in their trend. From the main valleys numerous auxiliary ones cut deeply into the ranges, and bifurcate again and again, like the branches of a tree, forming channels for ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... how soon it was I spoke to Geoffrey Dawling; his sittings were irregular, but it was certainly the very next time ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... it, I wonder, on an irregular day! Anyhow, if she had, I shouldn't have to go to The Maples this afternoon. Must I take a ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs
... once replied. So heavy was the fire that the head of the column wavered, many of the leading files being at once shot down, but, encouraged by their officers, they rallied, and pushed forward at a run. The fire of the townspeople at once became hurried and irregular, but the Scots picked off their men with steady aim. The leader of the Imperialists, who carried a petard, advanced boldly to the edge of the ditch. The fosse was shallow and contained but little water, and he at once ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... termed the MISTRAL. The recorder never failed to indicate the mistral when it blew, and sometimes even to predict it by many hours. Before the storm was itself felt, the delicate glass pen became agitated and disturbed, the frail blue line broken and irregular. The electrician knew that the mistral would blow before long, and, as it rarely blows for less than three days at a time, that rather rude wind, so dreaded by the Marseillaise, was ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... over to Plainfields with her brother's folks," replied Mrs. Janes, rocking herself with irregular motion, as she sat close to the stove. "Got back some time in ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... does not perfectly comprehend what is noblest and most just for all and therefore cannot enforce what is best. The differences of men and actions, and the endless irregular movements of human things, do not admit of any universal and simple rule. And no art whatsoever can lay down a rule which ...
— Statesman • Plato
... foot or two larger, and of irregular shape, its deck-wall forming a swell, in which were three broad windows which gave a view of the sea for a full half-circle of the horizon. It also overlooked the forward deck, the watchful lookout on the ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... in the middle of a polysyllable, in the end of a long syllable, and in certain tenses of a few irregular verbs when preceded by d'; as, snitheach[17] watery, s['i]th peace, an d' thug e? did he give? also in the ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... frise of pine was faintly etched, as a consistent setting to the turrets and peacefully stacked chimneys of Stukeley Castle. Yet, even in this disastrous eclipse of color and distance, the harmonious outlines of the long, gray, irregular pile seemed to him as wonderful as ever. It still dominated the whole landscape, and, as he had often fancied, carried this subjection even to the human beings who had created it, lived in it, but which it seemed to have in some dull, senile way dozed over and forgotten. ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... our journey I noticed a curious change in the ground. It seemed now, in many places, to be like a soft, chalky limestone, which ran in pockets and seams between strata of very hard rock. I called Miela's attention to it once, and she pointed out a number of irregular shaped, small masses of a substance which in daylight I assumed might be yellow. These were embedded in the ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... only a few weeks after the irregular multitude which followed Peter the Hermit, and was really the first Crusading army, for Peter's undisciplined throng could ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... wagons. A court was in session; and these were the wagons of lawyers and clients, alike humble in their style of equipage. On the left-hand side of the hotel, down the eastern slope of the hill ran an irregular block of brick buildings, no two of a height or size, The block had burned down in spots several times, and each owner had rebuilt as much or as little as he chose, which had resulted in as incoherent a bit of architecture ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... of his many changes of home, namely, that to Norfolk Island, isolating him finally from those who had become almost as near kindred to him, and devoting him even more exclusively to his one great work. No doubt the separation from ordinary society was a relief, and the freedom from calls to irregular clerical duty at Auckland was an immense gain; but the lack of the close intercourse with the inner circle of his friends was often felt, and was enhanced by the lack of postal communication with Norfolk Island, so that, instead of security of home ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rubbed out the saliencies of human nature. At a distance the mass of the Russian people seem as monotonous as their steppes and their commune villages, but the Russian novelists find characters in this mass perfectly individualized, and, indeed, give us the impression that all Russians are irregular polygons. Perhaps if our novelists looked at individuals as intently, they might give the world the impression that social life here is as unpleasant as it appears in the novels to be ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... unlike the other little wooden houses. It was of stone, in the style of those formerly much affected by Genoese merchants, with irregular windows of various sizes, secured with iron shutters and bars. This usurer differed from other usurers also in that he could furnish any required sum, from that desired by the poor old beggar-woman to that demanded by the extravagant grandee of the court. The most ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... not easily moved, but now his concentrated passion was terrible to witness. His hands worked convulsively; his respiration was quick and irregular. His business and his commercial standing were his idols, and to think that a selfish, scheming girl had caused the jeopardy of both to further her own petty ambition, and that his brother should be one of her ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... with her majestic step across the room, and closed the door. Then she stood there, her back pressed against the mahogany panels, indicating only by the distance she had placed between herself and her hostess the consciousness of an irregular position. "I am not Georgina Gressie! I am Georgina Benyon,—and it has become plain, within a short time, that the ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... view, but so that you can see it in the mirror. Now reach your hand under the screen and trace with a pencil around the star from left to right, not taking your pencil off the paper until you get clear around. Keep track of how long it takes to go around and also note the irregular wanderings of your pencil. Try this experiment five times over, noting the decrease in time and effort required, and the increase in efficiency as the movements ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... to glance at his sister and her companions, when his eyes fell on a face near him in the pit which had fixed an absorbed regard in the same direction. It was that of a man a few years older than himself, with irregular features, but a fine mouth, large chin; and great forehead. Under the peculiarly prominent eyebrows shone dark eyes of wondrous brilliancy and seeming penetration. Malcolm could not but suspect that his gaze was ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... wondered whether the irregular diary might not have wider interest than at first appeared. To me, its personal appeal was very strong; might it not be possible to cull from it the substance of a small volume which, at least for its sincerity's sake, would not be ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... for the small room he got from his Portuguese landlady, Maria Silva, a virago and a widow, hard working and harsher tempered, rearing her large brood of children somehow, and drowning her sorrow and fatigue at irregular intervals in a gallon of the thin, sour wine that she bought from the corner grocery and saloon for fifteen cents. From detesting her and her foul tongue at first, Martin grew to admire her as he observed the brave fight she made. There were but four rooms in the little ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... transport ice from the high interior down to sea-level. There, the summer temperature is so warm that the lower parts of the glaciers become much decayed, and, reaching the sea, break up readily into numerous irregular, pinnacled bergs of clear ice. In the south, the tabular forms result from the fact that the average annual temperature is colder than that prevailing at the northern axis of the earth. They are so ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... they heard he needed recruits, and the robbers whom he had fined and whose forts he had destroyed forsook the pursuits of peace and declared themselves ready to follow him to the gates of hell if necessary. Of them he chose out those who already had relatives or fellow-clansmen in his irregular corps to accompany him at once, leaving the rest under the command of his subordinate Carpenter at Dera Galib, nominally for drill, but also to serve as a ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... made an approximate estimation but had not counted the steps. This fact is well known to people who do not care about accuracy, or who want to give their statements the greatest possible appearance of correctness; hence, in citing figures, they make use of especially irregular numbers, e. g. 1739, , 3.25%, etc. I know a case of a vote of jurymen in which even the proportion of votes had to be rendered probable. The same jury had to pass that day on three small cases. In the first case the ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... would have been more prudent not to have parted with even eleven shillings, for he was not a rich man. Indeed, with the single exception of the Earl of Wetherby, whose finances were so irregular that he could not be said to possess an income at all, he was the poorest man of his ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... way through irregular streets and dingy canals till we reach the church of St. Jacobi. It stands in an open space, is neither railed in, nor has it a graveyard attached to it. It is of stone, and has an immense gable roof, slated, ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... which he kept in a golden, jewel-studded tube at the feet of the goddess. For, when the black butterfly of his melancholy now danced before his eyes, Ivan reverted remorselessly to that opium which he had for years abstained from. These days were irregular, however, and the act voluntary, being not as yet compelled by physical craving. And, in the intervals, he pursued his ordinary occupations of reading and composing, to which he had now added the transcribing of his own memoirs and a self-instituted office ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... The low, irregular landscape was as familiar to him as his own face. He knew it so well that he could see it with closed eyes—could note each change of expression where the daylight shifted, could tell where the thin cornfields ended and ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... now the religion of the state. Schools have been established, and churches built. Honoruru, in the Island of Cahu, is the capital of the group. Some of the houses are built of stone; but the natives still prefer living in their huts, so that the town is grotesquely irregular. The principal public building is the English school, where children of both sexes are taught to read and write. The place is altogether in a flourishing condition, and so advanced in the refinements of life, that the news-paper, lately established ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... crowded thoroughfare which is the oddest street in Europe. The Calle de las Sierpes is merely a pavement, hardly broader than that of Piccadilly, without a carriage-way. The houses on either side are very irregular; some are tall, four-storeyed, others quite tiny; some are well kept and freshly painted, others dilapidated. It is one of the curiosities of Seville that there is no particularly fashionable quarter; and, as though some moralising ruler had wished to place before his people a continual ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... we strained our eyes through the greasy old telescope, for neither moving figures nor stationary black dots were visible. Even Jakob with his eagle eye confessed to seeing no trace of man either amongst the irregular ash-colored rocks or upon the snowy curves of the Wild Gall, which, like a huge white-crested breaker at sea, upheaved itself in the air as in the very act of turning. Quite as solitary and untrodden did it look as its still more stately sister, the Hoch Gall, a mountain deservedly the especial ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... leader of the party, Loren Pierce, a rich quarryman, was an old man of medium size and mean attire, with a square, beardless face as hard and impassive in expression as one of his blocks of limestone. The irregular, thin-lipped mouth, slightly sunken, and shut with vice-like firmness, the short snub nose, and the little eyes squinting from half-closed lids beneath slightly marked brows, seemed scarcely to attain to the dignity of features, but evaded attention instead, as if feeling that they were only ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... popularity, thoroughly deserved it. He was about twenty-six years of age, above medium height, with a lithe and graceful figure which the riding costume that he was wearing well set off. Fair-haired and blue-eyed, with good though irregular features, he was pleasant-faced and attractive rather than handsome. The cheerful, good-tempered manner that he displayed even at that trying early hour was a true indication of a happy and light-hearted disposition that made him as liked by his brother ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... wild and unsettled regions of the border States on horseback. He worked with energy and intelligence, and in 1815 the business was found to be so extensive that a removal to Baltimore became necessary. About this time a sort of irregular banking business was added to the operations of the house. This was chiefly the suggestion of Mr. Peabody, and proved a source ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... wandered from place to place, proclaiming their new doctrine in every pulpit to which they were admitted, and they speedily awoke a passionate enthusiasm and a bitter hostility in the Church. Nothing, indeed, could appear more irregular to the ordinary parochial clergyman than those itinerant ministers who broke away violently from the settled habits of their profession, who belonged to and worshipped in small religious societies that bore a suspicious resemblance to conventicles, and whose whole tone and manner of preaching were ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... had replied to Braxton, but even now he would say no more, and Wyatt, following his custom, shrugged his shoulders and walked away. Then all, mingled in one great throng, went forward to the village. Paul saw an irregular collection of buffalo-skin and deer-skin tepees, and a few pole wigwams, with some rudely cultivated fields of maize about them. A fine brook flowed through the village, and the site, on the whole, was well chosen, well watered, and sheltered by the little hills ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and concluded that it was N. poeticus pure and simple. Pulmonarias were abundant along the road, as also in the whole region of the Pyrenees, the character of the leaves varying greatly, some being spotless, some full of irregular white patches, others with well defined round spots. They varied, too, from broad heart-shaped to narrow lanceolate, and I soon concluded that it was hopeless to attempt any division of the class founded ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... the irregular ticking of a Geiger counter seemed to spring out from the audio speaker, four times as loud as before. I could even hear the pen of the seismograph scribbling away, until I looked at the instrument and saw that Clark had stopped ...
— One-Shot • James Benjamin Blish
... amidst the confusion of objects and the prodigious variety of scenes. This continent is divided, almost equally, into two vast regions, one of which is bounded on the north by the Arctic Pole, and by the two great oceans on the east and west. It stretches towards the south, forming a triangle whose irregular sides meet at length below the great lakes of Canada. The second region begins where the other terminates, and includes all the remainder of the continent. The one slopes gently towards the Pole, the ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... to facilitate reading and conversation; it contains also a new and very easy method of classifying and remembering the irregular verbs. ...
— German Science Reader - An Introduction to Scientific German, for Students of - Physics, Chemistry and Engineering • Charles F. Kroeh
... to render effective service in this field of Anti-slavery labor, had become disorganized and scattered, and that for the last two or three years, the duties of this department had been performed by individuals on their own responsibility, and sometimes in a very irregular manner; that this had been the cause of much dissatisfaction and complaint, and that the necessity for a remedy of this state of things was generally felt. Hence, the call for this meeting. It was intended now to organize a committee, which should be composed of ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... hill, and across the brow of the ridge stretched the massive, irregular wall of the town. The great brazen gates were closed, and in the oval turrets that rose sentinel-like above the wall appeared no ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... the foot of a hill to whose top went the heather, but along whose base, between the heather and the bogland below, lay an irregular belt of moss and grass, pretty clear of stones. The boy did not seem eager ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... read any of the English, Latin, French, or Gothic letters, pronouncing the three first languages perfectly. He had before the fifth year, or in that year, not only skill to read most written hands, but to decline all the nouns, conjugate the verbs regular, and most of the irregular; got by heart almost the entire vocabulary of Latin and French primitives and words, could make congruous syntax, turn English into Latin and vice versa, construe and prove what he read, began himself to write legibly, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... notice was taken of the forced, irregular whistle which was the best he could give at ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... range in one hand, but she had left the matches upon the beach as causing too much anxiety. Thus they set off. Yulee with the range and the bow and arrows, and Bo with his pop-gun. It did not take long to explore the island; it was only about an acre in all, and irregular in shape. They came to the clump of trees but did not dare go in, though Yulee was pretty sure that the cave must be in there. They left that, however, for a future tour, and came back without further adventure to their landing place, where they found their stores safe upon the beach, but the boat ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... The irregular, cream-coloured facade was broken up into many separate parts by pillars and frenzied ornaments of plaster, and there had been addition after addition, stretching away long and low to the left. A row of large windows, discreetly veiled so that no shadows could be cast from within, glowed ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... them,—work for other workers to employ or to undo. But with some persons, life somehow gets the better of work, becomes, whether in the form of circumstance or of new problems, infinitely the stronger; and scatters work, tossing about such fragments as itself, in its irregular, irresistible fashion, has torn into insignificance, or (once in a blue moon!) shaped ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... However irregular and arbitrary these subdivisions of the Evangelical text are observed to be in their construction, their usefulness is paramount. They are observed to fulfil exactly the same office as our own actual division of the Text into 89 Chapters and 3780 Verses. Of course, 1165 subdivisions are (for ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... may infer, was eminently a free-thinker, or rather, a free-actor, in respect of irregular verbs. In fact, he tyrannized over all parts of speech: wrested nouns and verbs from their original shape, till you could hardly recognize their distorted faces; and committed that next worst sin to murdering one's mother, namely,—murdering one's mother-tongue, with an abandon that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... flower-beds, sunk six inches below the surface of the court. This pavement, which consists of what we should call pantiles, is clean and perfect, and freshly sprinkled; and the sprinkling and consequent evaporation make a grateful coolness. In the flower-beds are irregular clumps of marvel of Peru, some three feet high, of varied coloured blossom, coming up irregularly in wild luxuriance. The moss-rose, too, is conspicuous, with its heavy odour; while the edging, a foot ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... Sidonie had ever been, as she spoke thus, enveloped by a pure light which seemed to fall upon her from a great height, like the radiance of a fathomless, cloudless sky; whereas the other's irregular features had always seemed to owe their brilliancy, their saucy, insolent charm to the false glamour of the footlights in some cheap theatre. The touch of statuesque immobility formerly noticeable in Claire's face ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... thinker? Too ill for any real study, his musical instincts drove him to the organ, and we find him playing for occasional services at Eastham Parish Church at the age of nine. After his father's death, when he was about fourteen, he spent a couple of years in irregular attendance at school, and at the time of his confirmation was persuaded that by superhuman effort of will his physical disabilities might be disregarded and a life of some value be worked out. Then began the desperate struggle that gradually overcame every obstruction and resulted ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... effort in the direction of good behaviour. Her conduct was certainly immeasurably superior to what it had been with her governesses at home, and yet, judged by Chessington standards, it was frequently irregular and unorthodox. With her best endeavours, she could not grasp the fact that education is a very solemn affair, and a school-room about the last place in the world where one should try to be funny. She never ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... the brow of the cliffs. Soon he could distinguish the irregular heap of chalk against which Adam had stood, whilst he had held the lantern in one hand and gripped the ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... and fell upon the necks of her father and lover, with whom she retired into the private apartments. The sultan and his vizier were made happy in the company of the daughter of the latter and the other ladies. The master of the ship, as his troubles had atoned for his irregular behaviour, was received into favour, and had his vessel restored; but the savage chief of the banditti was put to death, by being cast into a burning pile, that no further injury might be offered to mankind. In a few ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... great beauty and breadth of thought and expression. Its only structural blemish, that of an opening stanza whose form is not distinctly followed, can be so easily put right that it need only be mentioned here in order to emphasize the canon that it is only in irregular odes that variation of stanza is permissible. Keats, no doubt, in one at least of his unequalled odes, does depart from the scheme of structure indicated by the opening stanza, and without any apparent metrical need for so doing. But the poem does not gain by the departure. Besides, Keats is now ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... chance to be the very sort of man I need. The devil could not have sent me a better," he said, with some enthusiasm. "You are an American soldier, the best-drilled men in the world for irregular service. You can understand that the longer I can keep those fellows down there fighting, the more I will sell. Good! that is part of my business. And the better they are drilled, the longer they will keep it up. That is what I want you for—to help make that mob of rags ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... including Washington and West streets and the docks, is built on new ground, made within the century. Behind Trinity Church, and as far down as the Battery, the shore rose to a very considerable bluff. Necessarily, much the greater part of the city then lay east of Broadway. The irregular streets to be found on this side are relics of both the Dutch and English foundation; of their buildings, however, as they stood in 1776, scarcely one remains at the present time. New streets have been built on the East River as well as on the North, materially changing the water ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... unfit for the residence of a gentleman and his family. It stands not in a park, for the land about it is divided into paddocks by low stone walls, but in the midst of lovely scenery, the ground rising all round it in low irregular hills or fells, and close to it, a quarter of a mile from the back of the house, there is a small dark lake, not serenely lovely as are some of the lakes in Westmorland, but attractive by the darkness of its waters and the gloom of the ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... of the Limbang rebellion against Sultan of Brunai. Oppression of the nobles. Irregular taxation—Chukei basoh batis, bongkar sauh, tulongan, chop bibas, &c. The orang kayas. Repulse of the Tummonggong. Brunai threatened. Intervention of the writer as acting Consul General. Datu Klassi. Meeting broken up on news of attack by Muruts. Sultan's firman eventually accepted. ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... of the rural school is haphazard and faulty. This is partly because of the small enrollment and irregular attendance, and partly because of the inexperience and lack of supervision of the teacher. Children are often found pursuing studies in three or four different grades at the same time. And even more often they omit altogether certain fundamental studies because they ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts
... countries. These machines were not then shut up in cases, as they now are, but were placed about the room and easy of access. Presently I heard Mr. Dickerson in a loud voice call out: "Good God! Sam, come here! Only look at this!'' On our going to him, he pointed out to us a lathe for turning irregular forms and another for copying reliefs, with specimens of work still in them. "Look at that,'' he said. "Here is Blanchard's turning-lathe, which only recently has been reinvented, which our government uses in ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... no less than the poet, would have to speak in verse, if, instead of making statements, he portrayed: if, besides asserting that "all things are to be seen in God," he sought to excite in the reader the emotion appropriate to the sight. Prose is the "oratio soluta." It is complex, irregular, inharmonious. It thus corresponds to the natural or phenomenal view of life; the view of it, that is, in its diversity, as qualified in innumerable modes by animal wants and apparent accident, ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... promulgated. Some writers have suggested that this transmigration was only taught by Pythagoras in a metaphorical sense; as, for instance, when he said that the souls of men were transferred to beasts, it was only to teach us that irregular passions render us brutes; on examination, however, we shall find that there is no ground to doubt that he intended his doctrines to be understood according to the literal meaning of his words; indeed, the more strongly to enforce his doctrine by a personal illustration, he was in the habit ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... language of one of his aides:[1] "The entire army, if it deserved the name, was but an assemblage of brave, enthusiastic, undisciplined, country lads; the officers in general quite as ignorant of military life as the troops, excepting a few elderly men, who had seen some irregular service among the provincials under Lord Amherst." With this force, ill-posted and very insecurely fortified, Washington was to drive the British from Boston. His first step was to count his men, and it took eight days to get the necessary returns, which in an ordinary ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... between the dull, sightless opaque orb on one side of his face, and the brilliant, piercing little ball on the other, was almost terrifying. His nose had been eaten away by the disease till it formed a sharp but irregular point: part of the muscles of the chin were contracted, and it was drawn in with unnatural seams and puckers. He was tall, gaunt, and thin, seldom smiled, and when he did, the smile ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... died suddenly and mysteriously. There was no apparent reason for her demise, but the autopsy, which revealed a large and irregular fragment of window glass lodged in her gizzard, proved that she was a victim of Beauty's vanity. A friend who was present said, as he tenderly held the glass between thumb and finger: "It is now easy to see through the cause of her death; under the circumstances, it would ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... curl; her eyes were of the same color, very large and brilliant, and rendered peculiarly expressive by the long raven lashes which shaded them. Her complexion was a pale olive, clear and smooth as satin; her features were somewhat irregular, but singularly pleasing when she was animated; her cheeks slightly tinted, her lips a vivid scarlet, her teeth ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... operation, all the tubes were taken out, the ends of many of them being vitrified with the heat; but the metal was not removed until some days afterwards, when the whole was perfectly cool. Part of the furnace was then taken down, and the iron appeared in the form of a large irregular mass, with pieces of charcoal adhering to it. It was sonorous; and when any portion was broken off, the fracture exhibited a granulated appearance, like broken steel. The owner informed me that many ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... flowed into it, but none flowing out of it. It is possible that before the earthquake which destroyed Srinagar, the lake had an outlet, but Moorcroft found no trace of it. The lake is situated between the Himalayas and the Cailas chain, and is of irregular oblong shape, five leagues ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... account of his not having a fair show. All religions issue Bibles against him, and say the most injurious things about him, but we never hear his side. We have none but the evidence for the prosecution, and yet we have rendered the verdict. To my mind, this is irregular. It is un-English; it is un-American; it is French. Without this precedent Dreyfus could not have been condemned. Of course Satan has some kind of a case, it goes without saying. It may be a poor one, but that is nothing; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... troops, and guarded at the ends of its few streets by loaded cannon, with lighted matches smoking by their sides. A considerable encampment was formed on a slightly rising eminence near the village; and on the neighbouring ground, still farther off, might be seen large irregular groups of people, who, I learned, upon inquiry, were chiefly Orangemen, preparing for a grand ceremonial procession on this the 12th of July, the well-known anniversary of the battle of the Boyne. In order to resist this ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... is he, Whom wrong or insult seems to gall and shame That he doth thirst for vengeance, and such needs Must doat on other's evil. Here beneath This threefold love is mourn'd. Of th' other sort Be now instructed, that which follows good But with disorder'd and irregular course. "All indistinctly apprehend a bliss On which the soul may rest, the hearts of all Yearn after it, and to that wished bourn All therefore strive to tend. If ye behold Or seek it with a love remiss and lax, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... sometimes in both. This vegetative stage later sends up in various ways a mass of tissue which results in the formation of pustules. These appear on the surface, sometimes more or less regularly rounded, sometimes rather irregular. In the case of the summer spore stage, we have inside the pustules a mass of tissue which is formed into spores. The interior of the spore mass, or at least portions of it, is somewhat mucilaginous, so that when moisture is applied ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... were able, in obedience to all the laws of justice, to shake off the yoke of Genoa, and can do likewise with that of the French. Amen." But in the spring it was the then famous but since forgotten Abbe Raynal of whom he became a devotee. At the first blush it seems as if Buonaparte's studies were irregular and haphazard. It is customary to attribute slender powers of observation and undefined purposes to childhood and youth. The opinion may be correct in the main, and would, for the matter of that, be true as regards the great mass of adults. But ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... declension and conjugation, every genitive and every so-called infinitive and gerund, is the result of a long succession of efforts, and of intelligent efforts. There is nothing accidental, nothing irregular, nothing without a purpose and meaning in any part of Greek or Latin grammar. No one who has once discovered this hidden life of language, no one who has once found out that what seemed to be merely anomalous and whimsical in language ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... heard at a distance of a mile or more from the fall of pinnacles into crevasses or from the opening of new crevasses. The berg discharges are very irregular, from three to twenty-two an hour. On one rising tide, six hours, there were sixty bergs discharged, large enough to thunder and be heard at distances of from three quarters to one and a half miles; and on one succeeding falling tide, ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... desires to reform and not to wound; that rebuke which looks merely at the effect to be produced acts on another principle. For when it is necessary to stop people on the verge of wrong-doing, or to check some violent and irregular impulse, or if we wish to rouse and infuse vigour in those who prosecute virtue only feebly and languidly, we may then assign strange and unbecoming motives for their behaviour. As Odysseus in Sophocles' play,[493] striving to rouse Achilles, says he is not angry about his supper,[494] but "that ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... heads. In the rear came a lady with a veil so long that it reached the ground: her turban was twice as large as the largest of the others; her eyebrows were joined, her nose was rather flat, her mouth wide, but her lips of a vermilion color. Her teeth were thin-set and irregular, though very white; and she carried in her hand a fine linen cloth, containing a heart. Montesinos informed me that this lady was Belerma.—Cervantes, Don ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... among the loiterers on the terrace for a few moments, and then descended a broad flight of steps, which brought them into a more shaded and retired walk; on either side of which rows of orange-trees gave forth their fragrance, while, to the right, sudden and numerous vistas were cut among the more irregular and dense foliage, affording glimpses—now of some rustic statue—now of some lone temple—now of some quaint fountain, on the play of whose waters the first stars ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his memories. He did not wish to lose one moment of that night in the little place, filled with the soul of Gottfried, to which he had been led as though impelled by some unknown force. But while he lay listening to the irregular trickling of the fountain and the shrill cries of the bats, the healthy fatigue of youth mastered his will, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... now verging toward man's estate, and though my education had been extremely irregular—following the caprices of my humor, which I mistook for the impulses of my genius—yet I was regarded with wonder and delight by my mother and sisters, who considered me almost as wise and infallible as I considered myself. This high opinion of me was strengthened by a declamatory ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... If Barnabas had been like some of us, he would have had a very different style of exhortation. He would have said, 'This irregular work has been well done, but there are no authorised teachers here, and no provision has been made for the due administration of the sacraments of the Church. The very first thing of all is to give these people ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... loved, had circumstances permitted; none in which they have not been loved, or (for hope springs eternal in the human breast) have been about to be loved. Even woman has an Active Voice in the matter; indeed, "to love" is so perfect that, compared with it, "to marry" is quite irregular. For, while "to love" is sufficient for both sexes, directly you get to marriage you find in some languages that division has crept in, and that there is one word for the use of ladies and another for gentlemen only. Turning from the evidence enshrined in language to the records ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... on which the waning moon threw its light with a pale and whitish tinge, I looked back with a deep and boding sigh towards the walls which contained Diana Vernon, under the despondent impression that we had probably parted to meet no more. It was impossible, among the long and irregular lines of Gothic casements, which now looked ghastly white in the moonlight, to distinguish that of the apartment which she inhabited. "She is lost to me already," thought I, as my eye wandered over the dim and indistinguishable intricacies ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Unitarian congregations, within walking distance, as cared to hear him. But as he would take no pay for his services his preaching contributed nothing toward the support of his family. Lloyd, who was epileptic and subject to moody variation in his attachments, was but an irregular housemate after the first few months, and his contribution to the household expenses was correspondingly uncertain. The future looked so dark in October, 1797, that in spite of misgivings and former scruples he had concluded that ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... what was wanted of her, Lita went back the way she had come, as Ben could see by the fresh, irregular tracks that cut up the road where she had galloped for help. For a mile or more they went, then she paused at a pair of bars which were let down to allow the carts to pass into the wide hay-fields beyond. On she went again cantering across the new-mown turf toward a brook, across which she had ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... him now, and they could see each other's faces, white and strange in the dark, but the boy's looked whiter, and his breath came oddly, in irregular gasps. He held both her hands in his, but he did not bend down to ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton |
