"Irregularity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... these generals at Donelson was somewhat irregular in a strictly military view. But the people argued that they had done all that in them lay; that they had fought nobly until convinced that it was futile; that they had brought off five thousand effective men, who, but for that very irregularity, would have been lost to the army of the West; and, finally, that General Johnston had approved, if not that one act, at least their tried ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... fashion, though (with occasional coarse exceptions) very civil-spoken to their tradesmen, are accustomed to show in their conduct an utter disregard of what amount of trouble, inconvenience, and vexation of spirit they may occasion, either by irregularity in paying their bills, by requiring incessant attendance, or by a thousand fanciful humours, changes of purpose, and fastidious objections. Possibly, indeed, they are very little aware of the amount of it; so inconsiderate are they of everything which is not made to dance ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... 30,000 Chinese. The dwellings were old business blocks of the early days; but the Chinese had added to them, rebuilt them, had run out their own balconies and entrances, and had given it that feeling of huddled irregularity which makes all Chinese built dwellings fall naturally into pictures. Not only this, they had burrowed to a depth equal to three stories under the ground, and through this ran passages in which the Chinese transacted ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... our conclusion that the watch sometimes went wrong, or that it seldom went exactly right. The purpose of the machinery, the design and the designer, might be evident in whatever way we accounted for the irregularity of the movement, or whether we could account for it at all." "Nor would it bring any uncertainty into the argument if there were a few parts of the watch concerning which we could not discover, or ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... Voltaire wrote to her rhymed epistles. Says Madame du Deffand, 'Her mouth is fallen in, her nose crooked, her glance wild and bold, and in spite of all this she is beautiful. The brilliance of her complexion atones for the irregularity of her features. Her waist is thick, her bust and arms are enormous. yet she has not a heavy air: her energy gives her ease of movement. Her wit is like her face, brilliant and out of drawing. ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... agree With FECHNER'S pedant formulae, I don't complain of such disparity; Too flawless that perfection shows; For me a larger comfort flows From human failings (take your nose— I like its quaint irregularity). ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... down as though by magic, for such was the power of the wind that the slightest irregularity of surface, the slightest lift of a wave, was at once torn off and swept away to leeward in the form of spray so dense that it was impossible to see farther than a few yards in any direction. And perhaps ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... coincides with the onset of epilepsy, and in some cases irregularity of the menses seems to be a secondary or ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... true and extends to a good many other things; but in a ship in the middle of the ocean, when the least confusion or irregularity in certain cases might be destruction to all on board, it does inspire confidence to see that there is even in the minutest things a strong and steady system, that goes on without saying "by your leave." ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... all, it was as magnificent a piece of work as ever human skill contrived. At the foot of the palatial facade was strewn, with careful art and ordered irregularity, a broad and broken heap of massive rock, looking is if it might have lain there since the deluge. Over a central precipice fell the water, in a semicircular cascade; and from a hundred crevices, on ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to nodde. An anacoluthon. The construction should be "begin to nodde" after "I have seene an oke" in l. 94, but the intervening participial clauses produce irregularity. Similarily in l. 101 "he fell" should be "fall" and ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... indications by which its inmost secrets may be searched out. In fine, criticism should examine with a stricter, instead of a more indulgent eye, the merits of females at its bar, because they are to justify themselves for an irregularity which men do not commit in appearing there; and woman, when she feels the impulse of genius like a command of Heaven within her, should be aware that she is relinquishing a part of the loveliness of her sex, and obey the ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... A distaste for exertion and society, a fitful appetite, low spirits,—these are all the symptoms noticed at first. Then, one by one, come palpitation of the heart, an unhealthy complexion, irregularity, dyspepsia, depraved tastes,—such as a desire to eat slate-pencil dust, chalk, or clay,—vague pains in body and limbs, a bad temper; until the girl, after several months, is ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... trifling irregularity in the protection itself, or the slightest discrepancy between the personal appearance of the bearer and the written description of him, was enough to convert the protection into so much waste paper and the bearer into a naval seaman. ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... bells, by Mears, and cost L500, the largest being also the hour-bell of the clock. In the chime-work, by Dent, there are two hammers to several of the bells, so as to play rapid passages; and three and five hammers strike different bells simultaneously. All irregularity of force is avoided by driving the chime-barrel through wheels and pinions. There are no wheels between the weight that pulls and the hammer to be raised. The lifts on the chime-barrel are all epicycloidal ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... it was impossible to see from its irregularity, the sides projecting in great buttresses here and there, all of grey rock, while what had seemed to be the softer portions had probably crumbled away. Here and there, though, glimpses could be obtained of what looked like profound depths where all ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... without escape. Even the children who are born there are not excepted, as those who live there and have experienced it told us when we were there. And although their manner of life is the cause of much irregularity in their health, there is nevertheless something in the atmosphere which produces disease: but this will become gradually better, as the country is measurably populated, and thereby becomes more cleared, as experience shows is true of all the lands in America which have been unhealthy. ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... boats on the beach, and mighty strokes of luck with the fish; employed more men than anyone before or since; paid them well when he had the money, and with an irregularity which would have been tolerated from no other boat-owner. Dina went to lodge at his house. He made of her, so gossip says, a second wife. He succeeded in running a household of three; then bought ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... warmth, instead of extremes and fluctuations. But in England, the apartments, with their open chimnies, may be compared to great aerial funnels, constantly pouring out their warm air through a large opening, and constantly requiring to be replenished; and where, from the irregularity of the supply or of the discharge, the temperature ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 272, Saturday, September 8, 1827 • Various
... quartz fibers that the spectrum from end to end consists of parallel bands. Occasionally a fiber is found which presents a slight irregularity here and there. A spider line is so irregular that these bands are hardly observable; but, as the photograph on the screen shows, it is possible to trace them running up and down the spectrum when you know what ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... a hold on my affection, the force of which I have never realized during my seasons of actual residence here. Indeed, so far as its physical aspect is concerned, with its flat, unvaried surface, covered chiefly with wooden houses, few or none of which pretend to architectural beauty—its irregularity, which is neither picturesque nor quaint, but only tame—its long and lazy street, lounging wearisomely through the whole extent of the peninsula, with Gallows Hill and New Guinea at one end, and a view of the alms-house at the other—such being the features of my native town, it would be ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... months of freedom from its reappearance. In these cases no alarm need be felt as long as the general health is not affected. Again, there may be suspension of the function from change of surroundings. Girls who go away to school often suffer from irregularity. I have known of a case where the girl never menstruated during the school year, but was ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... will sometimes relieve it; a long walk has often the same effect. The use of stimulants brings alleviation for a time, but there seems to be no permanent remedy except in the perfect restoration of the system by time from this effect of the wear and tear of opium upon the nerves. Irregularity in the action of the liver, while singularly marked in the earlier stages of the experiment, and continuing for years to make its agency manifestly felt, is in a considerable degree checked and controlled by a ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... full significance of my semi-adventure may be comprehended, with all its irregularity, let me explain that my manner of arrival was as unsuitable—as suspicious, if you like—as it well could be. I had no business to drive up to a palace, in a common sledge hired on the street, on such an occasion. I ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... in England to literary or poetic drama, alike of the past and present, is chiefly notable for its irregularity. The circumstance may be accounted for in various ways. It is best explained by the fact that England is the only country in Europe in which theatrical enterprise is wholly and exclusively organised on a capitalist basis. No theatre in England is worked to-day on any but the capitalist principle. ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... he said, "they will catch Pomeroy before we join him. But there's time yet. We can warn Pomeroy to meet us twenty miles north-east of the spot previously arranged. I think, Captain Bolitho, we may perhaps overlook Mr. Smith's little irregularity in joining if he gives us a full account ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... corolla, etc. Olacineae are allied to Aurantiaceae, but they are nearer akin to Santalaceae. The processes are indubitably modified stamina, with a great tendency to irregularity; in one species from Tagoung only three fertile, and five sterile stamina were observed: the three fertile generally, but not invariably, alternate with ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... a noble Thought and Passion. But Mr. Cowley's Davideis is the Medium between both; it has Gondibert's Majesty without his stiffness, and something of Spencer's Sweetness and Variety, without his Irregularity: Indeed all his Works are so admirable, that another Cowley might well be employ'd in giving them their just Elogy. His Hero is according to the ancient Model, truly Poetical, a mixture of some Faults and greater Virtues. ...
— Epistle to a Friend Concerning Poetry (1700) and the Essay on Heroic Poetry (second edition, 1697) • Samuel Wesley
... and made a circuit of the campong. There was no sign of the missing one and no indication of any other irregularity than the demolished portion of the roof. With an expression of mild concern upon his ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the peace and good order of his majesty's subjects in the province; and praying that he would call together the legislative assembly. The governor refused to receive any communication from the meeting, warned it of the irregularity of its proceedings, and assured it that his majesty was determined to maintain his entire sovereignty over the province. A deputation was then sent to the governor by the convention, but it was refused admission into his presence, and a committee of nine persons were appointed to consult ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... poles. The prevailing westerly winds of the United States are due to this circumpolar whirl, though modified and altered by the changes of the seasons, the differences of heat between day and night, the radiation from the land, the irregularity of the coastline, the currents of the ocean and a thousand other factors. Each of these the Weather Man has to study when he makes a forecast, but, in the United States, his work is aided by the fact that weather always travels eastward ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... Herbert Morse, a queer chap with whom Carl and Hugh had succeeded in scraping up only the slightest acquaintance. He was a big fellow, fully six feet, husky and quick. The football coach said that he had the makings of a great half-back, but he had already been fired off the squad because of his irregularity in reporting for practice. Except for what the boys called his stand-offishness—some of them said that he was too damned high-hat—he was extremely attractive. He had red, almost copper-colored, hair, and an exquisite skin, as delicate as a child's. His features ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... accounted for by one of the above reasons usually means fever, a rise of 6 beats in pulse usually being equivalent to a rise of 1 degree. Often more important than the rate, however, is the quality of the pulse. Roughly, the feebler the pulse, the more serious the condition of the individual. Irregularity in the rate may be a serious sign, and when it is noticed a doctor should be immediately called. Failure to find the artery should not necessarily cause uneasiness, as by trying on himself, the director may see that the taking of the pulse is often ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... granted bricks, and stones were fetched from Veii. Within a year the city rose from its ashes; but the streets were narrow and crooked; the houses were frequently built over the sewers; and the city continued to show, down to the great fire of Nero, evident traces of the haste and irregularity with which it had been rebuilt. Rome was now deprived of almost all her subjects, and her territory was reduced to nearly its original limits. The Latins and Hernicans dissolved the League with the Romans, and wars broke out on every side. In these difficulties and dangers Camillus ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... story or two with great gusto, and talked on of my experiences and sensations, till suddenly I noticed, in the appearance of my charming neighbour, something—a slightly glazed look in her eyes, a just perceptible irregularity in her breathing—which turned that occasion for me into a kind ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... as well, whatever irregularity it may introduce in the arrangement of the general subject, that yonder sad letter warped me away from the broad inquiry, to this speciality, respecting the present distress of the middle classes. For the immediate cause of that distress, in their own imprudence, of ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... is for her, Lawson—land, house, trade, and money. You're pretty sure there's no irregularity in that will of mine, ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... all the principal ruins on the left bank except the Babil tower. They may therefore be the old defences of the Eastern palace; though, if so, it is strange that they run in lines which are neither straight nor parallel to those of the buildings enclosed by them. The irregularity of these ramparts is certainly a very strong argument in favor of their having been the work of a people considerably more barbarous and ignorant than the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... have been quite sure that it was her doing: that it should not take place after she had preconceived it, caused her an irritation which every thinker will sympathize with. She was the diplomatist of Tipton and Freshitt, and for anything to happen in spite of her was an offensive irregularity. As to freaks like this of Miss Brooke's, Mrs. Cadwallader had no patience with them, and now saw that her opinion of this girl had been infected with some of her husband's weak charitableness: those Methodistical whims, that air of being more religious than the rector and curate ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... ought not to criticise; but we cannot think that the design is a very appropriate one for a postage stamp. The blobs of red are not always quite correctly placed; we have even heard of cases in which a little irregularity of "register" has resulted in the annexation of the greater part of the United States, while England invaded France, and the Cape of Good Hope went ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... President, it is to be remembered that we are acting for all time. It is not this one case that is before us. We are settling a precedent which is to last for generations. Relax your constitutions and laws for this irregularity and you open a gap through which a coach and four may be driven. Every other mission, under the least pretext, will come and claim the same or a similar modification in their case, and you cannot consistently deny them. The ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... we first entered Sir James Lancaster's Sound, the sluggishness of the compasses, as well as the amount of their irregularity produced by the attraction of the ship's iron, had been found very rapidly, though uniformly, to increase as we proceeded to the westward; so much, indeed, that, for the last two days, we had been under the necessity of giving up altogether the usual observations for determining the variation ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... within the limits of prose by reason of the vigorously prescribed stateliness and stiffness of their verse at that time. A man in this country with the quality of Vauvenargues, with his delicacy, tenderness, elevation, would have composed lyrics. We have undoubtedly lost much by the laxity and irregularity of our verse, but as undoubtedly we owe to its freedom some of the most perfect and delightful of the minor figures that adorn the noble ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... roared up to Graham now, no longer upborne by music, but coarse and noisy, and the beating of the marching feet, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, interwove with a thunderous irregularity of footsteps from the undisciplined rabble that ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... a work, constructed with all the dramatic irregularity of the early French and Spanish stage, the author has made an experiment which had been called for by the suffrages of more than one "organ of public opinion," as well as of all the "first-nighters" of Paris. He wished to meet the genuine public and to have his ...
— The Resources of Quinola • Honore de Balzac
... not been allowed to meet their deputation? It would only have taken the deputation fourteen days to perform the journey; by now it would have been among them. But permission had been refused them. And why? It was said that to grant a permission would have been a military irregularity. But the present meeting was also a military irregularity. There must be something more behind that refusal. But what were the arguments against going on with the war? He would enumerate them—the situation in which they found themselves was critical; ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... the ground-floor, furnished in new and handsome style. She received a sum for weekly expenses, of which she must keep a careful account, and all the marketing fell to her. She had to struggle with hot-tempered servants, and with the greatest irregularity and disorder in the household; while her imperfect knowledge of English (this was soon after her arrival at Bath) added a new pang to her homesickness and low spirits. Later on, in her capacity as musical assistant, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... Fleda, trying to recover herself, "there is a slight irregularity; with you the stars are ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... imperfectly cooked, and even these in varying and often in sufficient quantities. To this diet may be attributed the prevalence of skin diseases, and ulcers on the legs and joints. The scurfy skin disease so common among savages has a close connexion with the poorness and irregularity of their living. The Malays, who are never without their daily rice, are generally free from it; the hill-Dyaks of Borneo, who grow rice and live well, are clean skinned while the less industrious and less cleanly tribes, who live for a portion of the year on fruits and vegetables ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... money. An envelope showing the amount due the girl is sent from the school to the settlement worker, and on this is indicated any absence or tardiness. It is one of the duties of the member of the committee to inquire the reasons for any irregularity in attendance, and, if necessary, to report to the parent. In addition, each settlement worker renders valuable service by giving friendly oversight to the girls and families in her group, by doing as much for their welfare ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman
... the tea with hot goat's milk in it, by the genuine ham sandwiches and the pancakes, my note-book takes up the tale once more. It dwells upon the rich look of the land and the comfort of the farms contrasting with the wild irregularity of the mountain ranges which now began to serrate the horizon; and I have no doubt that if I had then read that most charming of all Washington Irving's Spanish studies, the story, namely, of his journey over quite the same way we had come seventy-five years later, my note-book ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... of Mr. Truefitt's imagination, his sister suddenly ceased from all comment upon the irregularity of his hours. Unprepared, by the suddenness of the change, he recited mechanically, for the first day or two, the reasons he had invented for his lateness, but their reception was of so chilling a nature that his voice was ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... he was not yet appointed. He perfectly knew that the public could never have got him in, but he grimly gratified himself with the idea that the public kept him out. Under the influence of this injury (and perhaps of some little straitness and irregularity in the matter of wages), he had grown neglectful of his person and morose in mind; and now beholding in Clennam one of the degraded body of his oppressors, received him with ignominy. Mrs Gowan, however, received him with ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... moisture. Both these plans, however, are expensive to adopt; first, because of the actual cost of granulating or "treating" the carbide; secondly, because the carbide deteriorates in gas-making capacity by its inevitable exposure to air during the granulating or "treating" process. The defects of irregularity of pressure and possible waste of gas by evolution in the hopper may be overcome by disposing the parts somewhat differently; making the holder an annulus round the hopper, or making it cylindrical with the hopper inside. In this case the hopper is supported by the main portion ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... exhibitions. What attracts them at first is the evidence which these beliefs furnish, that the world in which they live is not entirely under the dominion of an unconscious or inflexible power, but that behind the iron mechanism of cause and effect is a will more like their own in its irregularity and arbitrariness. Afterwards, as the majesty of law dawns upon them, miracles are no longer regarded as capricious exercises of power, but as the operation of higher physical laws, which are only active on rare occasions. A truer view sees in ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... either of the vellums, and must have been composed at least a century before Hauk's Book was written; they may well be much older than the beginning of the thirteenth century (Reeves). The antiquity of the verses of the saga is also attested by a certain metrical irregularity, as in poetry of the tenth and beginning ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... great appearance of reason, that the irregularity of his conduct proceeded wholly from his zeal for Bolingbroke, who might perhaps have destroyed the pamphlet, which Pope thought it his duty to preserve, even without its author's approbation. To this apology ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... over the irregularity, but as the defence of Acre had made a great sensation in England, and a vote of thanks had been passed by both Houses of Parliament, and by many of the corporate bodies in England, to Sir Sidney and those serving under him, they agreed to ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... (extending { through 14th Century), as { the delightful irregularity in { line and decoration shows, {Tables, chests, presses (wardrobes), there was NO SET TYPE; each { chairs and benches or piece was an individual creation { settles. and showed the personality { ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... always quite so manifest in other things as in trees, a little attention will soon enable you to see that there are such lines in everything. In an old house roof, a bad observer and bad draughtsman will only see and draw the spotty irregularity of tiles or slates all over; but a good draughtsman will see all the bends of the under timbers, where they are weakest and the weight is telling on them most, and the tracks of the run of the water in time of rain, where it runs off fastest, and where it lies long and feeds ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... like a glove, and if, as is sometimes the case, the same or a similar poetical measure is heard set to another air than Moore's, this other always seems intrusive and wrong. He draws attention in one case to the extraordinary irregularity of his own metre (an irregularity to which the average pindaric is a mere jog-trot), yet the air fits it exactly. Of course the two feet which most naturally go to music, the anapaest and the trochee, are commonest with him; but the point is that he seems to ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... he continued, now facing us. "The normal heart traces its throbs in regular rhythm. The diseased or overwrought heart throbs in degrees of irregularity that vary according to the trouble that affects it, both organic and emotional. The expert like Barron can tell what each wave means, just as he can tell what the lines in a spectrum mean. He can see the invisible, hear the inaudible, feel the intangible, ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... gables; not only of the fronts towards the streets, but of the sides also, set with small garret or dormer windows, each of the most fantastic and beautiful form, and crowned with a little spire or pinnacle. Wherever there is a little winding stair, or projecting bow window, or any other irregularity of form, the steep ridges shoot into turrets and small spires, as in fig. 8,[6] each in its turn crowned by a fantastic ornament, covered with curiously shaped slates or shingles, or crested with long fringes of rich ironwork, so ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... about to take leave of him, when opening the door of a little boudoir he showed me a room with an air which seemed to say, "Is there any way by which the least irregularity should occur ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... May songs date from the Middle Ages, but they have suffered much corruption in the course of time. Words and music have been altered, but the version given here is from an old source, and, owing to the irregularity of the metre of the lines, as in all traditional songs, a considerable amount of ingenuity is called for on the part of the singer to fit the words of the second and subsequent verses—particularly of the Day Song—to the tune. But it ...
— Legend Land, Volume 2 • Various
... insight into the principles regulating the construction of flowers in general. It gives us no archetype except in those comparatively rare cases where primordial symmetry and regularity exist. When an explanation of the irregularity of development in these early stages of the plant's history is required, recourse must be had to the inferences and deductions drawn from teratological investigations and from the comparative study of allied forms precisely as in the case of ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... Gentry ought to be Industrious in the Advancement of Letters. They might do it with great ease and little Expence; for the Number is not so great who deserve their Countenance. In vain we complain of the Irregularity of the Stage, if they who cou'd support its Honour, want support themselves: So that one great Step to advance the Theatre, is to take care, that they who write for the Stage, do ...
— A Letter to A.H. Esq.; Concerning the Stage (1698) and The - Occasional Paper No. IX (1698) • Anonymous
... classic in form. It is a rough, irregular metre, in which the trochees preponderate over the dactyls: many of the lines, in fact, would not bear a critical scansion. We have not scrupled to imitate this irregularity, as not inconsistent with the plain, ungrammatical speech of the characters introduced, and the homely air of even the most imaginative passages. The opening poem is a charmingly wayward idyl, called ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... the session was the impeachment of his old friend, Lord Melville. As Treasurer of the Navy in Pitt's former Administration, he had been guilty of a serious irregularity in not preventing Deputy Treasurer Trotter from using the sum of L10,000 for private speculation. Suspicions having been aroused on this and other grounds, a Commission was appointed to sift the matter to the bottom. The tenth Report dealing with these charges came out on ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... an insuperable difficulty in English, on account of its irregularity and elusiveness, is in Esperanto invariably on the last ...
— Esperanto: Hearings before the Committee on Education • Richard Bartholdt and A. Christen
... counterbalancing a certain awe at the mysterious action of the loom, by a pleasant sense of scornful superiority, drawn from the mockery of its alternating noises, along with the bent, tread-mill attitude of the weaver. But sometimes it happened that Marner, pausing to adjust an irregularity in his thread, became aware of the small scoundrels, and, though chary of his time, he liked their intrusion so ill that he would descend from his loom, and, opening the door, would fix on them a gaze that was always enough to make them ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... Rebi. Made but little progress to-day, on account of the irregularity in the river already mentioned, which makes its course hereabouts almost the direct contrary to its natural direction, and brings, in consequence, the prevalent winds ahead. Passed some small, but fine islands, and saw, for the first time for several ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English
... matter nearly uniform throughout, they would probably continue each in its original form; but there are many chances against their being uniform in constitution. The unavoidable effects of irregularity in their constitution would be to cause them to gather towards centres of superior solidity, by which the annular form would, of course, be destroyed. The ring would, in short, break into several masses, the largest of which would be likely to attract ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... their cleverness as hunters by stalking people—crawling up to them through the long grass, taking advantage of every irregularity of the ground or shrub to get nearer, and grinning with delight on seeing the surprise and fear of ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... octave to sestet the following sonnets observe the prescribed law, namely, the second, third, sixth, seventh, and ninth. The seven remaining sonnets all show some irregularity in this respect. The first sonnet (Fair Star) with its abrupt enjambement at the close of the octave, and the thought pause in the body of the first line of the sestet, is a form much employed by Mrs. Browning, but rigorously avoided by Dante Gabriel Rossetti ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... interesting. The elements, of course, are the observed fall of rain by the gauge in the district, and the area of the catchment (or drainage) basins of each river and its tributaries. The chief objection to water-power is its irregularity. To remedy this he proposes to do what has increased the water-power on the Bann five-fold, and has made the wealth of Greenock—namely, to make mill-lakes by damming up valleys, and thus controlling and equalising the supply of water, and letting none go waste. ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... sex-problem novels, we see it frequently on the stage and in motion pictures, and we hear it in general conversation. The advertised suggestion of sexual immorality in a forthcoming serial novel often raises surprisingly the circulation of certain magazines. A few hints of sexual irregularity in certain plays have brought crowded audiences. A scandalous divorce case, reported as freely as the law allows, is a choice morsel for average readers of newspapers. Everywhere it is the sexual abnormality, perversity, and even bestial vulgarity, that seems to attract the most attention. Books ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... reason to rejoice in these victories, since he did but consume his own kingdom; till at length he left off fighting, and endeavored to come to a composition with them, by talking with his subjects. But this mutability and irregularity of his conduct made them hate him still more. And when he asked them why they so hated him, and what he should do in order to appease them, they said, by killing himself; for that it would be then all they could do to be reconciled to him, who had done such ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... that first week at Brook Farm were sad days indeed. I made a bad beginning! Shut up indoors by the most violent tempest of the year, I sulked in corners, alone in a crowd, the loneliest kind of solitude. The teachers did their best to keep classes going in the bedrooms, but, in the irregularity of the sessions, I was allowed to be absent without remark. Althea and some others tried to draw me into the continuous picnic performance going on all over the house only to learn there was nothing doing in brother's retreat. At meal time the exasperating brown bread was invariably ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... only expedient; but he had been through too many fights to be caught off his guard. Instructions were wired from the despatcher's office to the operators all along the line, ordering them to report promptly any irregularity or suspicious circumstance. Meanwhile the regular trains for Truesdale pulled out through the yards and went on ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... great irregularity of the ground, most of these plantations were easy of access. We had, indeed, all given him our advice and assistance, in order to accomplish this end. He had formed a path which wound round the valley, and of which ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... Since Nature made herself, why was she so uneven a worker? Nay, why could she not have given him white teeth like Zussmann's wife? Not that these were ostentatious—you thought more of the sweetness of the smile of which they were part. Still, as Nature's irregularity was particularly manifest in his own teeth, he ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... possible that in the earlier Nephite baptisms some irregularity in mode or impropriety in the spirit of administering the ordinance may have arisen; for, as we have seen the Lord enjoined upon the people in connection with the instructions concerning baptism that disputations must cease. (3 ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... From its irregularity, and from other circumstances, Boston is much more like an English town than New York. The names are English, and the inhabitants are by no means so uniformly sallow, as they are in many other parts of America. This town ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... western portion of the Louisiade Archipelago the reefs seen by us exhibit great irregularity of outline, continuity, and width. Some are linear reefs, others atolls* more or less distinct in character, and the remainder are usually round or oval. Viewed as a whole they form an interrupted chain, with numerous deepwater channels, which terminates in the West Barrier Reef of the chart ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... from one reign to another* all maxims upon all subjects may be changed. The Russians, both men and women, generally carry into love their characteristic impetuosity, but their disposition to change makes them also easily renounce the objects of their choice. A certain irregularity in the imagination does not allow them to find happiness in what is durable. The cultivation of the understanding, which multiplies sentiment by poetry and the fine arts, is very rare among the Russians, and with these fantastic and vehement dispositions, love is rather a fete or a delirium ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... which only the two central ranges of columns are now standing. Still further back were smaller halls and numerous apartments, evidently meant for the king's residence, rather than for a temple or place exclusively devoted to worship. The building is remarkable for its marked affectation of irregularity. "Not only is there a considerable angle in the direction of the axis of the building, but the angles of the courtyards are hardly ever right angles; the pillars are variously spaced, and pains seem ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... apartment. It is hard to say by what psychology he found their respectability so satisfactory. It was as though his own status gained by it. He had much the same feeling about the order and decency with which Marie managed the apartment, as if irregularity were ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... other contemporary artist. Lawrence aimed at it, but with effect only commensurate to his success in painting. Of old, as before the Seventeenth Century in Germany and Italy, the art of landscape-painting per se was inefficiently cultivated, at least expressed with irregularity, although occasionally with force enough to show that the pathos as well as the beauty of nature were by no means unappreciated or neglected to anything like the extent which has been commonly represented by writers on Art. Reynolds probably ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... striking vividness that people are startled at the sight of them. These pictures, however, are neither real nor true. On the other hand, ordinary scenery, of familiar mountains, of calm streams of water, and of dwellings just before our eyes, may be sketched with an irregularity so charming, and with such excellent skill, as almost to rival Nature. In pictures such as these, the perspective of gentle mountain slopes, and sequestered nooks surrounded by leafy trees, are drawn with such admirable fidelity ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... and it is this perfect mastery of the technique of his art which has enabled him to outrank Schubert and Schumann, neither of whom would one venture to pronounce inferior to him in native wealth of musical ideas. May we not partly attribute to rudimentary deficiency in counterpoint the irregularity of structure which so often disfigures the works of the great Wagner and the lesser Liszt, and which the more ardent admirers of these composers are inclined to regard as ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... Department was humorous. This bureaucrat was continually refusing Roosevelt's applications because they were irregular. In each case Roosevelt would appeal to the Secretary of War, with whom he was on the best of terms, and would get from him an order countenancing the irregularity. After a number of experiences of this kind, the harassed slave of red tape threw himself back in his chair and exclaimed, "Oh, dear! I had this office running in such good shape—and then along came ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... customs, and come into a situation which subjects them to be disowned. And this is so generally true, that of those persons, whom the society has been obliged to disown, the commencement of a long progress in irregularity may often be traced to a deviation from the simplicity of their dress. And here it may be observed, that an effect has been produced by this care concerning dress, so beneficial to the moral interests of the ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... gather. In fact," she added coolly, "where the women of my race loved they usually found the way—rather unconventionally. There was, if I understood you, enough of divorce, of general indiscretion and irregularity to seriously complicate any family tree and coat of arms I might ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... just the trouble," interposed Mrs. Kent. "Kathleen, my dear, do run downstairs and see what's wrong in the kitchen. I'm afraid Eliza is in difficulties again. Mr. Blair, you and Mr. Carter must excuse this irregularity. Our substitute cook is a very ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... unconscious. Which check you cashed after his death, in violation of the State banking laws from which perhaps even you are not exempt if this man's relatives choose to bring you to account for the irregularity." ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... of those perfect factotums who do as they are told. He has a sharp eye and no scruples, and so, owing to the fact that three other officers live in my billet, he was able to find two valuable fountain pens and one stylographic in no time. The exigencies of war necessitate some little irregularity now and then; but how, I asked him, did he justify this excess of zeal? J. B. is distinguished by a lisp among other things. "It'th betht to be on the thafe ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... three inches shorter than Mr. Brumley, his hair was grey-shot brown, his face clean-shaven, his features had a thin irregularity, and he was dressed in a neat brown suit with a necktie very exactly matching it. "Sir Isaac Harman?" said Mr. Brumley ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... pushed its golden ball above the hilltops, and all the rifle barrels gleamed in the light. Marchmont and the new-met captain approached the courier from Kelly, sitting his horse in the middle of the road. "Lieutenant McNeill," said the aide with quietness, "there seemed, at Frederick, some irregularity in your papers. Doubtless everything can be explained, and your delay in reaching Romney will be slight. It is my duty to conduct you to Williamsport headquarters, and to report the matter to the colonel commanding. I regret the interruption—not ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... to talk to you about, so that I went home vexed and disappointed, and only relieved myself a little by writing a few verses. I wonder if you will mind very much when I tell you they were suggested by you. You must forgive the poet's license I take. Here is one verse. The metrical irregularity is intentional, because I want, as it were, to put you apart: to change the lilt and the mood altogether when ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... all publishers of immorality and sedition—of putting embryo rioters to death, and granting them a judicial examination as soon as possible afterwards. Dissenting meeting-houses he would shut up instanter, and guard with soldiers to prevent irregularity or disobedience. "Things," he says, "are twisted since his father was a boy, and must be twisted back—by force—to their right place again. Ordinary measures are less than useless for extraordinary ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... I do, or most other men brought up on an island that is crowded with its cathedrals. Something of the same spirit may be seen in the beautiful new plans and buildings of Yale, deliberately modelled not on classical harmony but on Gothic irregularity and surprise. The grace and energy of the mediaeval architecture resurrected by a man like Mr. R. A. Cram of Boston has behind it not merely artistic but historical and ethical enthusiasm; an enthusiasm ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... were made to pay from day to day the actual cost of sickness, accident, invalidity, premature death, or premature old age consequent upon excessive hours of labor, of unhygienic conditions of work, of unnecessary risk, and of irregularity in employment, those ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... with another piece of evidence in the papers, given, like that of the confessing witches just referred to, long after Burroughs's execution, I expressed surprise that the irregularity of putting such testimony among the documents belonging to the trial, escaped the notice of Hutchinson, eminent jurist as he was, and also of Calef. The Reviewer represents this remark as one of my "very grave and unsupported charges against the honesty of ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... in couples? They will not do it when they leave the Limes, and will be utterly at fault. There is no day in the week on which more general notice is taken than on Sunday; there is no day on which differences are more apparent. The pupils therefore walked irregularly, the irregularity being prescribed. The entering the church; the leaving the pews; the loitering and salutations in the churchyard; the show, superior saunter homewards were all the result of lecture, study, and even of practice on week-days. "Deliberation, ease," said Miss Ponsonby, "are the key to ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... claims for the soul of man—that is to say, it must have a free will, 'constantly departing from its normal state,' acting irregularly and according to the freaks of its own spontaneity. And because there is no such caprice and irregularity in the operation of the laws of nature, the inference is drawn that they cannot be the evidences of spiritual power, in the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... their substantial improvement by removing obstructions and building bridges. On good roads there is greater inducement to individuals to erect inns; and in well arranged streets to build good houses—than where uncertainty as to the permanent direction of the one, or irregularity in the plan or line of the ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... question of the naturalisation of the Uitlanders, the books which should have recorded their registration were either withheld or missing. Settlers in the Transvaal between the years 1882 and 1890, owing to this irregularity, were debarred from proving their registration as the law required. Speaking of this period, Mr. Fitzpatrick, in "The ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... possession of the northern warrior. The broad axe which the Varangian bore was also stained with blood, and the paleness of death itself was upon his countenance. These marks of recent battle were held sufficient to excuse the irregularity of his salutation, while he exclaimed,—'Noble Prince, the Arabs are defeated, and you may pursue your ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... although not providing direct remedies for such special cases, admits of adaptation to the most unforeseen exigencies; and so urgent was the pressure of affairs at this agitating juncture, that the irregularity was passed over by the tacit consent of ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... the work of a Nguvu or hippopotamus, which they say sometimes attacks canoes; they believe with Tuckey that the river-horses cause irregularity of soundings by assembling and trampling deep holes in the bed; but the Ngadi is a proof that they do not, as M. du Chaillu supposes, exclusively affect streams with shoals and shallows. The jacare (crocodile) is known especially to avoid the points where the current sweeps swiftly past, yet ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... of Commons was the real source of power of Parliament. Whatever the imperfections in the method of election, whatever the irregularity of constituencies, whatever the crudity of the idea of representation, the five hundred or more knights, country gentlemen, lawyers, and merchants who made up the Commons at this time [Footnote: Names of Members Returned to Serve in Parliament, pt. i., 442-448.] were convinced that ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... played it EXACTLY as it is written. Neither at Dresden, nor in London [Footnote: Concert of the Philharmonic Society, 26th March, 1855.] when, in after years, I had occasion to prepare a performance of the symphony, did I succeed in getting rid of the annoying irregularity which arises from the change of bow and change of strings. Still less could I suppress an involuntary accentuation as the passage ascends; musicians, as a rule, are tempted to play an ascending passage with an increase ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... question the legality of the Court, Hutchinson expresses a deep sense of the irregularity of its proceedings; although, as he says, "the most important Court to the life of the subject which ever was held in the Province," it meets his unqualified censure, in many points. In reference to the instance of the Jury's bringing in a verdict of "Not guilty," ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... prison," continued Mat; "but I will say they'll be great fools to do it. The Government have so good an excuse for not doing so: they have such an easy path out of the hobble. There was just enough difference of opinion among the judges—just enough irregularity in the trial, such as the omissions of the names from the long panel—to enable them to pardon the whole set with a ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... palaces of Roderic, had deceived him. When he looked towards the scene that was to form the termination of his journey, the glade below escaped from his sight. But when he descended to the plain, it was otherwise. One swell of the surface he had to traverse succeeded another; and the irregularity of the ground caused him sometimes to be lost, in a manner, in the length of the way, and took from him the consolation of being able so much as to perceive the object of his destination. As he passed the hills, and ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... as a farmer, that it was past nine o'clock before she looked round for her children. Healthy as Lucilla was, her frame was so slight and unsubstantial, and her spirits so excitable, that over-fatigue or irregularity always told upon her strength and temper; for which reason Honor had issued a decree that she should go to bed at nine, and spend two hours of every morning in quiet employment, as a counterbalance to the excitement ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... end of some people's fingers, and quite unlearnable by others. When she had made the old miser's rooms to her mind, we might have understood, if we had speculated about it, how it was that she had not profited by my mother's sound advice to send all his "rubbishy odds and ends" (the irregularity and ricketiness and dustiness of which made my mother shudder) to be "sold at the nearest auction-rooms, and buy some good solid furniture of the cabinet-maker who furnished for everybody in the neighbourhood, which would be the cheapest in the long-run, besides making the rooms look ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... its little piazza, and it has a gorgeously arrayed municipal band. But from a little distance one neither hears the band nor sees the trees, the grim mediaeval fortifications frown upon the valley, and the time-stained dwellings, great and small, rise in rugged irregularity against the lighter brown of the rocky background and the green of scattered olive groves and chestnuts. Those features, at least, have not changed, and show no disposition to ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... myself, as I wrote, to the impulses of the feelings which moulded the conception of the story; and this impulse determined the pauses of a measure, which only pretends to be regular inasmuch as it corresponds with, and expresses, the irregularity of the imaginations ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... symmetrical arrangement. M. Maxime Du Camp reports that she said to him: "When I begin a novel I have no plan; it arranges itself whilst I write, and becomes what it may." This fault shocks less in England, where genius is apt to rebel against the restrictions of form, and such irregularity has been consecrated, so to speak, by the masterpieces of the greatest among our imaginative writers. And even the more precise criticism of her countrymen has owned that this carelessness works by no means entirely to her disadvantage. In fictions more ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... becomes really magnificent; I have seen no subterraneous cavity with so many traits of beauty and of grandeur. The irregularity of its surface, the magnitude of the masses broken in pieces which compose its sides, and which seem torn from the bosom of the mountain by some great convulsion of nature, their dark colours and deep shades form a singular ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... "they're not very original. I don't say they're not good, in away, but they lack a certain imagination. It's difficult for me to express what I mean, 'machine made' isn't precisely the idea, but there should be a certain irregularity in art—shouldn't there? I saw a reproduction in one of the architectural journals of a house in Boston by a man named Frey, that seemed to me to have ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... correctitude was deeply shocked by this outbreak. The Graf von Winterfeld immediately communicated with the mayor, and pointed out the irregularity, and the fire look-out stations were instructed in the matter. The New York police was speedily hard at work, and a foolish contest in full swing between impassioned citizens resolved to keep the flag flying, ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... gone a step further. She had summoned the eldest assistant to her corner and had informed her, with all the solemnity of a confession made to assuage a conscience which has been tortured too long, that she had on many occasions been guilty of sexual irregularity with her late employer, Samuel Povey. There was no truth whatever in this accusation (which everybody, however, took care not to mention to Constance); it merely indicated, perhaps, the secret aspirations of Maria Insull, the virgin. The assistant was properly scandalized, ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... irregularity in Manuel's eyes is taken by Vanderhoffen, in his Tudor Tales, to be a myth connecting Manuel with the Vedic Rudra and the Russian Magarko and the Servian Vii,—"and every beneficent storm-god represented with his eye perpetually winking (like sheet lightning), lest his concentrated ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... who justly admire your work, constantly complain of this fragmentary style of publication, which is the despair of those who have not the leisure to place your scattered sheets where they belong and disentangle the skein.* (* Owing to the irregularity with which he received and was forced to work up his material, Agassiz was often either in advance or in arrears with certain parts of his subject, so that his plates and his text did not keep pace with each other, thus ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... justice and injustice, praise and blame, punishment and reward cannot attach to necessary actions, and nobody will be under obligation to do the impossible or to abstain from doing what is absolutely necessary. Without any intention of abusing this consideration in order to favour irregularity, one will nevertheless not escape embarrassment sometimes, when it comes to a question of judging the actions of others, or rather of answering objections, amongst which there are some even concerned with the actions of God, whereof I will ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... the modes in which it may be manifested in subsequent generations present no uniformity whatever. Insanity in a parent may be followed by any possible form of mental irregularity in the descendant,—insanity, idiocy, epilepsy, drunkenness, criminal impulses, eccentricity. And so, too, eccentricity, even of the least prominent kind, may be followed by grosser eccentricity, or even overt insanity, in the descendant. The ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... characteristics of her countrywomen. The roundness of form and clearness of complexion, the result of good nurture and pure blood which are often found in those who have been nursed in an Irish cabin, the abundant wavy hair and the deep-set grey eye. The face, in spite of some irregularity of feature, would have been pretty, decidedly pretty, if the owner had been happy; but the expression was too abstracted, too thoughtful, too melancholy for childhood or even for youth. She was like ...
— Honor O'callaghan • Mary Russell Mitford
... mistaken for it, with the i undotted and t uncrossed. Despite its geometrical and caligraphic inaccuracy in detail, this hand is generally written with great regularity, that is, the characters, though incomplete, are always uniform in their irregularity. The e is never open, but is an undotted i, and n is u, but when the peculiarities of the writer become familiar this hand is ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... trees told of the coldness of the climate; they were more brown than green—far browner than the ripe grass of the little hay-garths. Here, as at Wanlockhead, were haycocks, hay-stacks, potato-beds, and kail-garths in every possible variety of shape, but, I suppose from the irregularity of the ground, it looked far less artificial—indeed, I should think that a painter might make several beautiful pictures in this village. It straggles down both sides of a mountain glen. As I have said, ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... been caught napping, and have not mailed my weekly letter. But you will be expecting some irregularity about the time of your flight to Berlin. I called at Mrs. M.'s to-day, and ran on at such a rate that Mrs. Woolsey, who was there, gave me ten dollars for poor folks, and said she wished I'd stay all day. Afterwards I went down town to get Stepping Heavenward ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... Missouri, was justly regarded as one of the clearest thinkers and speakers in the Upper House. Irregularity of life had somewhat blunted what must once have been a very superior mind. His statesmanship was of a high order; his oratory ingenuous, generally courteous and conciliatory, and always entertaining, from its lucidness and keenness. He was decidedly popular ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... another, with a quivering candle and shaky hands. Here's the wine papers, here's the sawdust, here's the coals; here's my letters to Calcutta and Madras, and replies from Major Dobbin, C.B., and Mr. Joseph Sedley to the same. "He shall find no irregularity about ME, Emmy," the ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Prose, and that he repeatedly expressed his wish and expectation that it would be thus brought together and published, e.g. in the 'Memoirs,' speaking of his own prose writings, he said that but for COLERIDGE'S irregularity of purpose he should probably have left much more in that kind behind him. When COLERIDGE was proposing to publish his 'Friend,' he (WORDSWORTH) had offered contributions. COLERIDGE had expressed himself pleased with the offer, but said, "I must arrange my ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... respects at least, scarcely be greener from the brows of the original wearer. That idea, however, was at that hour, as I have hinted, not the source of solicitude it ought perhaps to have been, for I felt less the irregularity of Saltram's getting the money than that of this exalted young woman's giving it up. I wanted her to have it for herself, and I told her so before I went away. She looked graver at this than she had looked at all, saying she hoped such a preference wouldn't ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... closely at the young girl. Her eyes shone with abnormal brightness. He sounded her, but found nothing wrong except the irregularity of her heart. He sent Esperance back to the salon so that he could talk with her father alone. The Duke hastened to apologize for having come thus without notice. He was staying at the Chateau of Castel-Montjoie with Doctor Potain, and when he heard that the Doctor was ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... ritual over action and character. In the training of animals and the education of children it is the perfection, inevitableness, invariableness, and relentlessness of routine which tells. They should never experience any exception or irregularity. Ritual is connected with words, gestures, symbols, and signs. Associations result, and, upon a repetition of the signal, the act is repeated, whether the will assents or not. Association and habit account for the phenomena. Ritual gains further strength when it is rhythmical, and ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... gentleman's son about to do so. He alluded himself to the reports to his prejudice, avowed with sorrow that neglect of parochial duties was indeed a just accusation, but from every other, he solemnly assured the Marquis, his conscience was free. Not one proof of vice or even irregularity of conduct had been or could be brought against him. He farther informed Emmeline, that not only the Marquis but the Marchioness and the whole family appeared much disposed in his favour, particularly Lord Louis, who declared that if he might not have him ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... Latin adaptations were dropped; the greater part remained. They have excluded from French—as some think to the impoverishment of that language—most elements of the Gothic—the inversion of the adjective, the frequent suppression of the relative, the irregularity of form, which had survived from the Middle Ages, and which make the older French poetry so much more sympathetic to the Englishman than is the new—all these were destroyed by the group of men of whom I speak. They were called by their contemporaries the Pleiade, ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... 'Black Bart' will have a private grudge to revenge. I wonder if he suspects who attacked him! But don't worry, Miss Hope; we have miles the start, and the wind has been strong enough to cover our trail. Do you see that dark irregularity ahead?" ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... would be that the organ ought to stop at once, in function, by the excess of strain put upon it. At the same time the excess of motion is injurious to the heart and to the body at large; it subjects the heart to irregularity of supply of blood, it subjects the body in all its parts to the same injurious influence; it weakens, and, as a necessary sequence, degrades both the heart and ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... unanimously passed by the French Senate a few years after the State had taken over certain lines, beginning: "The deplorable situation of the State system, the insecurity and irregularity of its workings." He gives figures demonstrating the invariably greater efficiency, economy and superiority of service of private management as compared to State management in countries where these two systems are in operation side by side. He treats ...
— Government Ownership of Railroads, and War Taxation • Otto H. Kahn
... and leisure to notice all this as he directed her course, sometimes behind her, sometimes in front, now holding back the low, overhanging branches, and a second later warning her of some sudden irregularity in the ground. The narrow forest footpath was anything but a pleasant road for a ramble, and was an especially trying passage for the woman. Her dress caught frequently on thorn and branch, and her long gauze veil had to be loosened from more than one bramble, while ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... Schoenbrunn is much too small to belong to an imperial residence; but, on the other hand, it would be hard to find one more beautiful or better arranged. The park of Versailles is grander and more imposing; but it has not the picturesque irregularity, the fantastic and unexpected beauties, of the park of Schoenbrunn, and more closely resembles the park at Malmaison. In front of the interior facade of the palace was a magnificent lawn, sloping down to a broad lake, decorated with a group of statuary representing the triumph ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... own loss of station to a loss of honesty. In the eyes of many persons whose esteem I value, I am still worthy; but if I permitted another man to love me, I should fall indeed. The world is indulgent to those whose constancy covers, as with a mantle, the irregularity of their happiness; but it ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... and strengthened with constantly renewed buttresses of earth. They wind across the plain with many unexpected and apparently aimless turns; on closer examination, however, it may be seen that this irregularity is not to be attributed to ignorance or caprice. Experience had taught the Egyptians the art of picking out, upon the almost imperceptible relief of the soil, the easiest lines to use against the inundation: of these ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... names on the streets; where there are numbers they have no sequence, and I met no Europeans on foot to help me in my difficulty. Yokohama does not improve on further acquaintance. It has a dead-alive look. It has irregularity without picturesqueness, and the grey sky, grey sea, grey houses, and grey roofs, look harmoniously dull. No foreign money except the Mexican dollar passes in Japan, and Mr. Fraser's compradore soon metamorphosed my English gold into Japanese satsu ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird |
