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Refractory   Listen
adjective
Refractory  adj.  
1.
Obstinate in disobedience; contumacious; stubborn; unmanageable; as, a refractory child; a refractory beast. "Raging appetites that are Most disobedient and refractory."
2.
Resisting ordinary treatment; difficult of fusion, reduction, or the like; said especially of metals and the like, which do not readily yield to heat, or to the hammer; as, a refractory ore.
Synonyms: Perverse; contumacious; unruly; stubborn; obstinate; unyielding; ungovernable; unmanageable.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Refractory" Quotes from Famous Books



... hard in the presence of the farmers, but obsequiously soft under the banker's eye, invited him into the office, a dismal place, the walls hung with halters, bridles, chains and twisting sticks, used to grip the jaw of a refractory horse and wrench rebellion out of him. The rough appearance of the stable men within and the pungent smell of the place, turned McElwin at ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read

... was not destitute of a sense of humour, never thought of Mr. Gall without a smile, so much out of keeping did the man's occupation seem with his jovial humour. Mr. Gall, he said, was the kind of policeman who would bribe a refractory tramp to move on by the present of a pint of beer. But Gall had a good point. He was very proud of his profession, and in the exercise of it he showed a discretion which, if it was the better part of his valour, argued unlimited ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford

... invested some of the money he made in army contracts, had been put out of business many years ago by the development of iron-making in North Jersey and Pennsylvania. An attempt was made to turn it into a wood-pulp factory; but that had failed because the refractory yellow pine was full of hard knots that refused to let themselves be ground into pulp. Now a feeble little saw-mill was running from time to time in one corner of the huge edifice; and the greater part of the river out of work was ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke

... we were mustered into the service as a part of this gigantic force of seventy-five thousand, at the bare suggestion of whose numbers the refractory South was confidently expected to abandon its rash enterprise, and kindly resume its sway over us. Before the awful ceremony known as 'mustering in,' we were sixty odd excited young gentlemen, hailing from and residing in all parts of the country. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... Tyton himself gallops along the ranks and orders all to push on. That is the signal for a general shout, cracking of whips, barking of dogs, and yells from the niggers: soon there is one vast crowd of living animals in front of them. Now and then a refractory beast breaks away and rushes the ranks, but the horses are on the alert, and they soon round him in, for there is no tugging required—you merely stick to your pigskin. Hil and Susy are doing their share along the line and are about four hundred yards apart. Presently a small mob, led ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang

... that he needed had been laid out in readiness for him, and he dressed mechanically with a feverish haste that struggled ineffectually with a refractory collar stud, and caused him to execrate heartily the absent valet and his enigmatical errand. Another ten minutes was lost while he hunted for his watch and cigarette case which he suddenly remembered were in the coat that he had left at the little house. Or had he searched ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull

... Journey through Oudh [433] he states that in Oudh there were then supposed to be one hundred thousand families of Pasis, who were skilful thieves and robbers by profession, and were formerly Thugs and poisoners as well. They generally formed the worst part of the gangs maintained by refractory landowners, "who keep Pasis to fight for them, as they pay themselves out of the plunder and cost little to their employers. They are all armed with bows and are very formidable at night. They and their refractory employes ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... asked him to come, when I was in Tuxedo, and he evidently wanted to do so, for he proposed to Amy that she bring him. Of course, I'd no idea he and Miss Lang had ever met before, and when I innocently ordered her in, I did it simply because Radcliffe was refractory and refused to come without her, and I couldn't have a scene ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann

... was afraid of his wife, afraid of a policeman, afraid of physical violence, and lived in constant dread of burglars. But the one thing he was not afraid of was wild animals of the most ferocious sorts, such as lions, tigers, leopards, and jaguars. He knew the game, and could conquer the most refractory lion with a broom-handle—not outside the cage, ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... offenders to wander through the desert until they reached a valley in the Sierras, opposite Tehachapi, where he caused them to be exterminated by a horde of savages from the Mojave desert. Then, in a fit of disgust at refractory humanity, he evoked a whirlwind and stripped away every living thing from the country of the savages, declaring that it should be empty of human beings from that time forward. And it ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... in the future. If I held the doctrine of transmigration, I should be firmly persuaded that the souls of parish beadles, drunken captains, and other petty tyrants, shifted quarters into the bodies of Jamaica negroes' donkeys. One patriotic black woman, whose donkey was rather refractory, relieved her mind by exclaiming, in a tone of infinite disgust, 'O-h-h you Roo-shan!' accompanying her objurgation by several emphatic demonstrations on his hide of how she was disposed to treat a 'Rooshan' at that ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... he knew it, found himself under the rear of the car, fussing with a refractory lifting jack and trying to keep his eyes from the view of trimly clad, brown-shod little feet, as they pattered about at the side of the car, hurried to the running board, then stopped as wrenches and a hammer clattered to the ground. Then one shoe was raised, to press tight ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... which Blair and his companion found themselves was a small strongly built closet, used as a "lock-up" for refractory sailors. A single bull's-eye admitted a mere glimmer of light for a while, but that soon died away in utter darkness as the night came rapidly on. It was well for the boys that they knew something of ocean's rough rocking. A land-lubber ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... forty men, and the business with such crowds of them was getting hot; when, all at once a loud squeaking of pigs was heard in the village,"—apprehensive swineherd hastily penning his pigs belike, and some pig refractory;—"at sound of which, the Pandour multitude suddenly pauses, quits fighting, and, struck by a new enthusiasm, rushes wholly into the village; leaving Truchsess, in a tragi-comic humor, victorious, but half ashamed of himself. [ OEuvres de Frederic, iii. 73.] In the beginning of December, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... snipped and ripped and rebasted the refractory seam, Elizabeth brought out her little stores of finery to discuss ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... cleverness in upsetting the plot against Dorn and turning all to his advantage demonstrated that. Therefore, Hull should be elected and passed up higher. It did not enter his calculations that Hull might prove refractory, might really be all that he professed; he had talked with Davy, and while he had underestimated his intelligence, he knew he had not misjudged his character. He knew that it was as easy to "deal" with the Hull stripe of honest, high minded ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips

... tried to make the men promise, "that if he should be discharged they would all follow him." Smeaton at once assembled the men and gave orders that such of them as had any dependence on, or attachment to, the refractory foreman, should take up his tools and follow him. Only one did ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne

... eat out of his hand, and they allowed him to approach without making any difficulty, but once harnessed they reared and could with difficulty be held in. However, it was not long before they submitted to this new service, for the onager, being less refractory than the zebra, is frequently put in harness in the mountainous regions of Southern Africa, and it has even been acclimatized in Europe, under ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... night-visiting one) is the name of a night spectre, said to have been Adam's first wife, but who, for her refractory conduct, was transformed into a demon endowed with power to injure and even destroy infants unprotected by ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... as a reasonable one, so I left him with his feet upon the mantelpiece, and his chair in front of the fire, fortifying himself with stimulants against his refractory visitors. From the room beneath, in which I sat with Mrs. D'Odd, I could hear that after sitting for some time he rose up, and paced about the hall with quick impatient steps. We then heard him try the lock of the door, and afterwards drag some heavy article of furniture in the direction ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... shortened by their good behaviour. For the inspectors, if they have reason to believe that a solid reformation has taken place in any individual, have a power of interceding for his enlargement, and the executive government of granting it, if they think it proper. In the case, where the prisoners are refractory, they are usually put into solitary confinement, and deprived of the opportunity of working. During this time the expences of their board and washing are going on, so that they are glad to get into employment again, that they may liquidate the debt, which, since ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... join the Patarenes. Hearing of this, the Pope requested the King of Hungary to compel Kulin to eject them from the country, at the same time ordering Bernard, Archbishop of Spalatro, publicly to excommunicate Daniel, the refractory Bishop. ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... inflicts irreparable injuries upon poor people, and is full of the most gigantic abuses. It is often complained of by the Levant correspondents of newspapers, under the character of the various spiritual tribunals of Eastern Christians inflicting fines, torture, and imprisonment on refractory or heretic members of those churches. The Jewish synods of Africa and the East exercise the same arbitrary powers, under the sanction of the supreme Mahometan authorities. Lately, however, the European ambassadors ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... cases) (Besenval, Memoires, ii. 21.) faltered out a dismissal: dismissal of his last substantial man, but pacification of his scarlet-woman. Thus D'Aiguillon rose again, and culminated. And with him there rose Maupeou, the banisher of Parlements; who plants you a refractory President 'at Croe in Combrailles on the top of steep rocks, inaccessible except by litters,' there to consider himself. Likewise there rose Abbe Terray, dissolute Financier, paying eightpence in the shilling,—so that wits exclaim in some press at the playhouse, "Where is Abbe Terray, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... them. The ease with which they found their wishes obeyed stimulated them to desire more, and to be stubborn about impossibilities. Everywhere they found only contradictions, impediments, suffering, and sorrow. Always complaining, always refractory, always angry, they spent the time in crying and fretting; were these creatures happy? Authority and weakness conjoined produce only madness and wretchedness. One of two spoiled children beats the table, and the other has the sea lashed.[3] They ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... guilty of cowardice. Daniel Scott was the black sheep of the family. He got into difficulties in business, formed a bad connexion with an artful woman, and was sent to try his fortunes in the West Indies. There he was employed in some service against a body of refractory negroes—we do not know its exact nature—and apparently showed the white feather. Mr. Lockhart says that "he returned to Scotland a dishonoured man; and though he found shelter and compassion from his mother, his brother would never see him again. ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton

... upon their neighbours, to detect violations of the 'rules of the estate.' It is mainly through the spy-system that Mr. Steuart Trench, according to his own avowal, won most of his victories over refractory tenants. For example, on this estate he had a woman acting as a spy at the meetings of the Ribbonmen; and he boasted that a dog could not bark at Farney without his knowledge. I refer to this matter ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... stupendous Section, headed Natural Supernaturalism, that the Professor first becomes a Seer; and, after long effort, such as we have witnessed, finally subdues under his feet this refractory Clothes-Philosophy, and takes victorious possession thereof. Phantasms enough he has had to struggle with; "Cloth-webs and Cob-webs," of Imperial Mantles, Superannuated Symbols, and what not: yet still did ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... which sciences are rapidly becoming effaced, one can hardly go wrong in ascribing a primary value to the investigations into the relation between the solid, liquid, and gaseous states of matter on the one hand, and degrees of pressure and of heat on the other. Almost all, even the most refractory, solids have been vaporised by the intense heat of the electric arc; and the most refractory gases have been forced to assume the liquid, and even the solid, forms by the combination of high pressure with intense cold. It has further been shown that there is no discontinuity between these ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley

... civil liberty. He may not be altogether well advised in respect of what liberties he will defend and what he will submit to; but the fact is to be counted with in any projected peace, that there is always this refractory residue of terms not open to negotiation or compromise. Now it also happens, also by historical accident, that these residual principles of civil liberty have come to blend and coalesce with a stubborn preconception ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... a Pacha is sufficiently strong to resist, the single messenger, who is always the first bearer of the order for his death, is strangled instead, and sometimes five or six, one after the other, on the same errand, by command of the refractory patient; if, on the contrary, he is weak or loyal, he bows, kisses the Sultan's respectable signature, and is bowstrung with great complacency. In 1810, several of these presents were exhibited in the niche of the Seraglio gate; among others, the head of the Pacha of Bagdat, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... intelligences of that impulse had decked her out with every attractiveness as though they had taken thought to confound all masculine resistance; to sweep into their service those refractory units that withheld themselves from the common purpose. She was lovely, as the aged Major Carrington had uttered it—great violet eyes in a delicate skin sown with gold flecks, a skin so delicate that one felt that a kiss ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post

... agreeable to both of us than such an arrangement: but the old gentleman, since I first knew him, has changed, like the rest of the world, very lamentably for the worse: now, we wish to bring him to reason, if possible, though we mean to dispense with his consent, if he should prove much longer refractory." ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock

... Count Holke, his age three-and-twenty; and his post answers to one that we had formerly in England, many ages ago, and which in our tongue was called the lord high favourite. Before the Danish monarchs became absolute, the most refractory of that country used to write libels, called North Danes, against this great officer; but that practice has long since ceased. Count Holke seems rather proud of his favour, than shy ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole

... Saint Julian, be praised every one of them!" said the King, "and all laud and honour to the learned Galeotti; who read in the stars that this youth's destiny was connected with mine! If the maiden be so attached to him as to make her refractory to the will of Burgundy, this Quentin hath indeed been rarely ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... like Lovedy Kelland was no small treasure to them; there were designs of making her a pupil teacher in a few years, and offers and remonstrances rained in upon her aunt. But they had no effect; Mrs. Kelland was persuaded that the child had been spoilt by learning, and in truth poor Lovedy was a refractory scholar; she was too lively to bear the confinement patiently; her mind was too much awake not to rebel against the dulness, and her fingers had not been brought into training early enough. Her incessant tears spoilt her thread, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... phials with ground-glass stoppers, not filled with water.) It is of snowy whiteness, and is no doubt the remains of a decomposed feldspar. I forwarded a considerable portion of it to the intendant of the province. In a country where fuel is not scarce, a mixture of refractory earths may be useful, to improve the earthenware, and even the bricks. Every time that the clouds surrounded us, the thermometer sunk as low as 12 degrees (to 9.6 degrees R.); with a serene sky it rose to 21 degrees. These observations were ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... contention of the leaders, asserting that the company was only a corporation and that any colonist had a right of appeal to England. Winthrop refused definitely to recognize this right, and measures were taken to purge the colony of these refractory spirits, among whom were Dr. Robert Child, one of the best educated men of the colony, William Vassall, and Samuel Maverick. All were fined, some clapped in irons, and many banished. Child returned to England, Vassall went to Barbados, and the rest were silenced. So menacing was the revolt that Edward ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews

... in 1791, headed his gallant men wherever a riot, a fire, or a public calamity required their presence, is difficult to understand. No man was more popular in the city from the services he rendered when called on. One class, however, found in him an unrelenting disciplinarian—the refractory soldier attempting mutiny ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... city were full of thrills—of hopes and fears. Groups of excited people met to discuss again all phases of the contest; the freshness of the dogs, the stamina of the men, the possibility of accidents; for a broken harness, a refractory leader, an error in judgment, may mean overwhelming ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling

... going to Cambridge in person in February 1643-4, with his two chaplains, Messrs. Ashe and Good, had been engaged in the work through the months of March and April, summoning refractory Heads of Colleges and Fellows before him, examining complaints against them, and putting them in most cases to the test of the Covenant. The result, when complete (which it was not till 1645), was the ejection, on one ground or another, of about one half of the Fellows ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... blast would come creeping in—almost always in the skirts of the hope that God would never require such a sacrifice of him. But he never again found he could not pray. Recalling the strife and the great peace, he made haste to his master, compelling the refractory slave in his heart to be free, and cry, "Do thy will, not mine." Then would the enemy withdraw, and again he breathed the air of ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... sir, understand their needs and just the proper amount of control necessary to be enforced for mutual protection. They have grown up under that training until it is a part of themselves. There are refractory blacks, of course, just as there are worthless demoralized whites, but I assure you, sir, I voice the sentiments of our people when I state that the families of Southern planters feel much more secure ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan

... every member of the City Imperial Volunteers before the departure of the regiment for active service in the South African War. The Chamberlain also deals with disputes between masters and their apprentices, and has power to commit refractory apprentices to Bridewell for imprisonment. There was formerly attached to his office a little prison-cell, known as "Little Ease," which exercised a wholesome dread upon the turbulent 'prentices of days gone by. In ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various

... dreaded? Would these serfs, habituated to the irregularities of war, bring back their former habits of submission? Undoubtedly not; they would return full of new sentiments and new ideas, with which they would infect the villages; they would there propagate a refractory spirit, which would give infinite trouble to the master ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote

... ignorant classes believe that certain persons are possessed of a mystic power called anting-anting, which preserves them from all harm, and that the body of a man so affected is even refractory to bullet or steel. Brigands are often captured wearing medallions of the Virgin Mary or the Saints as a device of the anting-anting. In Maragondon (Cavite), the son of a friend of mine was enabled to go into any remote place ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... panic. Dr. Melchior Hubner, who had been a miller's man, wished for a hundred musketeers to mow them down; but the Town Clerk proposed that all the Council should creep quietly down the back stairs, lock the doors on the refractory womankind, and make their escape. This was effected as silently and quickly as possible, for the whole Council 'could confess to a state of frightful terror.' Presently the women peeped out, and saw the stairs bestrewn with hats, gloves, and handkerchiefs; and perceiving ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of incorruptible zeal and stately gravity, who held under his stern dominion a little flock of two hundred souls, and who, eking out a narrow parochial stipend by the week-day office of teaching, had gained large repute for his subjugation of refractory boys. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various

... drawn, and in order to get room for working at it, it was necessary to take off the end of the other cylinder. And such a job! Three pulley hooks were broken in my sight, and I believe some out of my sight. However this auxiliary end was at last got off: and the people began to act on the refractory bolt. But by this time it was getting dark and the men were leaving the dockyard, so I left, arranging that what they could do in preparation for me might be done ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... is enough of a politician to be very sure that the authorities will not be severe with him in case of trouble, but he has a horror of having his place entered by the police in their official capacity. He enforces his orders with his fists if necessary, and hustles refractory guests from his premises without hesitating. The "fancy" generally submit to his commands, as they know he is a formidable man when aroused. He keeps his eye on everything, and though he has a business manager, conducts the whole establishment himself. He has been in his wretched business fifteen ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... treatment of silver ores, the invention of Herr Francke, a German gentleman long resident in Bolivia, whose acquaintance the writer had also the pleasure of making. After many years of tedious working devoted to experiments bearing on the metallurgical treatment of rich but refractory silver ores, the inventor has successfully introduced the process of which it is proposed in this paper to give a description, and which has, by its satisfactory working, entirely eclipsed all other plans hitherto ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various

... impossible where there is too much talk. Some sort of order must be imperceptibly if not unconsciously maintained, or the sentences clash in general conversation. Leading conversation is the adroit speech which checks the refractory conversationalist and changes imperceptibly the subject when it is sufficiently threshed or grows over-heated; it is guiding the talk without palpable break into fresh fields of thought; it is the tact with which, unperceived, the too slow narration ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin

... consciousness; but what fear was there that poor Clifford was going to run a tilt at any great standard? It had, however, never occurred to Acton to dedicate the Baroness Munster to the redemption of a refractory collegian. The instrument, here, would have seemed to him quite too complex for the operation. Felix, on the other hand, had spoken in obedience to the belief that the more charming a woman is the more numerous, literally, are ...
— The Europeans • Henry James

... club kitchen. During the day it would be the function of the matron to think up a number of odd jobs to be performed in the course of the evening. Pictures would be hung, clocks wound, a number of tin cans would be waiting to be opened with refractory can openers, and there would always be several window blinds that had gone wrong. A really resourceful matron could devise any number of ways of making the club seem just like home. One night she would discern a smell of gas, the next there might be a hole in the fly-screens, or a little carpentering ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... for instant use there lies a sharp axe at the bottom of the well, by which any rope may be cut, and a blow may be given to the forelock of an anchor or other refractory point needing instant correction, and near this again is the sounding lead, with its line wound on a stick like that of a boy's kite. I soon found that much the best way to tell the fathoms, especially at night, was to measure the line as it was hauled in by opening my arms to the full ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor

... conclude without feeling grateful to Heaven for having given me such a son as I am blessed with. He is, indeed, quite invaluable to me in managing these refractory people, and were it not for his aid and vigor, I could not have been able to send your lordship the last remittance. He is truly zealous in your cause, but I regret to say, that I am not likely to be able to avail myself long of his services. He is about taking a large ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... render unnecessary the stipulation of safe conveyance to Europe, as I was determined that a solemn engagement should not be violated with impunity. This, as a great portion of the troops were actually on board, and within reach of the flagship's guns, produced the desired effect on the refractory troops ashore, though not till I was compelled to send Captain Crosbie with a large party to enforce compliance and to disarm the militia, both of which objects he effected ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... me, Sir?" said Clyffurde quietly, and with steady hand and firm fingers he undid the refractory knots and spread the ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

... had sat on the throne before her,—would adopt as her own representative in Scotland the favourite of William; yet she continued Queensbury in that high station which it was believed none could fill so adequately in the disturbed and refractory ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson

... character may preclude all occasion for a resort to penalties of a harsh or degrading nature. The safety of a ship and her crew is often dependent upon immediate obedience to a command, and the authority to enforce it must be equally ready. The arrest of a refractory seaman in such moments not only deprives the ship of indispensable aid, but imposes a necessity for double service on others, whose fidelity to their duties may be relied upon in such an emergency. The exposure ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... was ever at any time any dispute or disagreement between him and Olympias in respect to his measures, she soon learned that he was not to be controlled in these things, and gave up the struggle. Nor was this a very extraordinary result; for we often see that a refractory woman, who can not by any process be made to submit to her husband, is easily and ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... was long after noon-time before Barton actually rallied his aching bones, his dizzy head, his refractory inclinations, to meet the fluctuant sympathy and chaff that awaited him down-stairs in every nook and corner of the great, ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... Chamber of Deputies, but were in a meagre minority in the Chamber of Magnates. But Metternich and the cabinet grew alarmed at the struggle, and were eager to obtain the grant of men, and to close the refractory Diet. In 1840 a royal rescript suddenly made its appearance, granting the amnesty, accompanied also with conciliatory remarks, and the demands of the Government for men and money ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... Next morning, on their return, John addressed them in the kindest manner, but to no purpose. They persisted in their refusal. He gave them till the next day, threatening them severely in case they still proved refractory. ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various

... printers referred to in the list was somewhat of a refractory character, a printer of popular books at the risk of imprisonment, a class of men who were to figure largely in the events of the next few years. Nicholas Okes is known best, perhaps, as the printer of some of the writings of Dekker, ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer

... only afford to bestow a fragmentary glance at any time on the refractory, for, almost at one and the same moment he had to check the impetuous, hold up a warning hand to the unruly, rescue a runaway child from innumerable horse-legs, pilot a stout but timid lady from what we may call refuge-island, in the middle of the roadway, to the pavement, ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne

... usual, and was conscious that when she smiled, as she had just done, the smile did not glide off again in a natural way, but settled down into the lines of her face with a kind of spasmodic tenacity. She could do a great deal in the way of self-control, but she could not quite command these refractory muscles. Mr Wodehouse, who was not particularly penetrating, could not quite make her out; he saw there was something a little different from her ordinary look about his favourite child, but he had not insight enough to enable him to ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... last scuffles I remember of Olaf's having with his refractory heathens, was at a Thing in Hordaland or Rogaland, far in the North, where the chief opposition hero was one Jaernskaegg ("ironbeard") Scottice ("Airn-shag," as it were!). Here again was a grand heathen temple, Hakon Jarl's building, with a splendid Thor in it and much idol furniture. ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle

... in their berths. Our difficulty was to secure those we had captured, to guard against their being liberated. We had a dozen pair of irons on board, which we clapped on those most likely to prove refractory, and so there was little chance of their escaping. The third mate came out of his cabin soon after eight bells, as he was to have had the morning watch, but by that time all the mutineers were secured. The remainder ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... substance has been literally transferred, by a kind of transpiration, to the body of the nurseling, and the victim, slowly exhausted, drained to the last drop, while retaining to the end just enough life to prove refractory to decomposition, is reduced to the mere skin, which, being insufflated, puffs itself out and resumes the precise form of the larva, there being nowhere a point of escape for the ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... And such refractory conduct toward a Russian master, had it not in all times been a terrible and execrable crime—a crime for which banishment to Siberia had always ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... particularly fresh. Hard by we find a decent matron super-intending her tea-table at the lamp-post, and tendering to a remarkably select company little, blue, delft cups of bohea, filled from time to time from a prodigious kettle, that simmers unceasingly on its charcoal tripod, though the refractory cad often protests that the fuel fails before the boiling stage is consummated by an ebullition. Hither approaches perhaps an interesting youth from Magherastaphena, who, ere night-fall, is destined to figure in some police-office as a "juvenile delinquent." The shivering sweep, who has just ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various

... most extraordinary looking little gentleman he had ever seen in his life. He had a very large nose, slightly brass-coloured; his cheeks were very round, and very red, and might have warranted a supposition that he had been blowing a refractory fire for the last eight and forty hours; his eyes twinkled merrily through long silky eyelashes, his moustaches curled twice round like a corkscrew on each side of his mouth, and his hair, of a curious mixed pepper-and-salt colour, descended far over his shoulders. He ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... is, with this small exception, defrayed by the town, and amounts to about 20l. annually for each boy. These poor children are generally sent there by the magistrates on conviction of some crime or misdemeanour, but are often sent by parents when they have troublesome or refractory children, and the result is, in most cases, very satisfactory. They all seemed very happy, and the whole had much more the appearance of a large school, than of anything partaking of the character of a prison. Having called in the afternoon ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter

... classical lands. The kindly, hospitable Seliniotes, known for centuries as the bravest of all the Cretan clans, persecuted with all the cruelty of Venetian craft in the days when the island city ruled the island sea, always refractory under foreign rule and often unruly under their own rgime, seem to have enjoyed in the later centuries of Roman rule and the earlier of the Byzantine a great prosperity, if one may judge from the evidence ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman

... that she did not know and colored when the other told her. The man was a famous scientist who had recently simplified the smelting of some refractory British Columbian ores, and was now understood to be occupied with the problem of utilizing certain barren alkali belts ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss

... reader appreciates my ingenious indirectness of expression, when I touch on the unmentionable subject of trousers!). Grappling me thus, and supporting himself by his free hand, he lifted me up as easily as if I had been a small parcel; then carried me horizontally along the loose boards, like a refractory little boy borne off by the usher to the master's birch; or—considering the candle burning on my hat, and the necessity of elevating my position by as lofty a comparison as I can make—like a flying ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... little to do, for by this time they had hatched a second brood, and, just now, these last required their constant attention, although they hoped that by the end of the month their young ones would be able to fly a little. This brood had proved more refractory than the first one, and they were continually getting into trouble and mischief. One of them tumbled into a pool of water, and was as nearly as possible drowned; another was pursued by a cat and had his leg very much hurt; while a third, alas! a poor little fellow, tumbled ...
— What the Blackbird said - A story in four chirps • Mrs. Frederick Locker

... I went to the "Refractory building," under special charge of Dr. Beemer, and through the wards pretty thoroughly, both the men's and women's. I have since made many other visits of the kind through the asylum, and around among the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... secured but one part of that faction. Some of the most popular leaders, such as the duke of Leeds, the marquis of Normanby, the earls of Nottingham, Seymour, Musgrave, Howe, Finch, and Showers, had been either neglected or found refractory, and resolved to oppose the court measures with all their influence. Besides, the French king, knowing that the peace of Europe would in a great measure depend on the resolutions of the English parliament, is said to have distributed ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... These six refractory gases now became a target for the experiments of a host of workers in all parts of the world. The resources of mechanical ingenuity of the time were exhausted in the effort to produce low temperatures on the one hand and high pressures on the other. Thus Andrews, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... a penitentiary prisoner; while the exquisite has his head shaved with the sharpest razor, giving a bluish cast or frame for his yellow face. Occasionally the size or thickness of the tail appears to be unsatisfactory, and a larger surface is spared from the knife. The refractory hairs growing out in this supplementary patch surround the genuine cue with a halo an inch or two in height. Lots of these apostolical-looking Chinese are to be met with in every street, and, as they rarely wear hats, they have a very comical appearance. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... future progress of events; like some great serpent, coming out again to glare on the sight, with his appalling glance and length of volume, after a volley of missiles had sent him to his retreat. The old approved expedients against unreasonable discontents, and refractory tempers, and local movements of hostility excited by some worthless competitor for power, had been combined and applied on the grand scale; and henceforward all was to be still. It was not given to these spell-bound understandings to apprehend that the spirit to be repressed might be of a nature ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... the several oil horizons. Large blocks of coal, representing the different veins of Kentucky, several full lines of broken coals, and a very complete display of coke were also displayed. A very elaborate display of kaolin—plastic, vitrifying, and refractory ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... Sonoy, governor of North Holland, a soldier of much experience, sagacity, and courage, who had rendered great services to the cause of liberty and Protestantism, and had defaced it by acts of barbarity which had made his name infamous. Against this refractory chieftain it was necessary for Hohenlo and Maurice to lead an armed force, and to besiege him in his stronghold—the important city of Medenblik—which he resolutely held for Leicester, although Leicester had definitely departed, and which he closed against Maurice, although ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... young men felt that the tie which had hitherto united them in such close intimacy was, for the present at least, entirely severed. Indeed, Griffith was only restrained by the presence of Cecilia and Katherine from arresting his refractory inferior on the spot; and Barnstable, who felt all the consciousness of error, without its proper humility, with difficulty so far repressed his feelings as to forbear exhibiting in the presence of his mistress such a manifestation ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... conquering Europe in obedience to a word from the Emperor in the order of the day; the heroes of a modern time who outdid the mythical feats of paladins of old. The cities of France, however avaricious or refractory, must perforce do honor to the Imperial Guard, and mayors and prefects went out to meet them with set speeches as if the conquerors had been crowned kings. Mme. de Bargeton went to a ridotto given to the town by a regiment, and fell in love with an officer of a good family, a ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... one morning on the stage drilling my "corps" as usual. One most refractory spirit, to whom but a few words were entrusted, and who bungled even those, I was endeavouring to train ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever

... by which high temperature may be measured," says the Electrical Engineer, London. "The first uses an air thermometer of refractory material; the second depends on the change in the resistance of a platinum wire with change in temperature; and the third is based on the employment of a thermo couple of relatively infusible metals. According ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various

... number of elements is not in the least surprising: they are not condensed bodies, and we think that their average temperature is low, too low generally to develop the luminous vapors of the more refractory elements. If their temperatures, approximated those which exist in the stars, their spectra would probably reveal the presence of many of the elements which exist in the meteorites. Of course the proof of ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... appear, popping out of the hole beside the stump like a Jack in the Box, that Sock was startled, and pranced back, exactly as he would have done in order to drag a refractory steer off its feet. And this was just what took place with ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker

... footwear), food and beverages, metals and metal manufactures, chemicals, shipbuilding, automobiles, machine tools, tourism, clay and refractory products, footwear, ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... Faith," said Mr. Stoutenburgh, "I have my doubts as to the correctness of that first statement; but I'll tell you what I shall do, my refractory young lady. If you set about anything outside the limits, I'll do my best to ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... not disobey, for the army of the Prince was now so near him that punishment might have followed; besides, he was a politician as well as a robber, and was unwilling to cancel the interest created through former secret services, by being refractory on this occasion. He therefore made a virtue of necessity, and transmitted orders to his lieutenant to convey Edward to Doune, which was safely accomplished in the mode mentioned in a former chapter. The governor of Doune was directed to send him to Edinburgh as a prisoner, because the ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... distinct variety, which is capable of producing the anomaly in any desired number of instances; only dependent on a favorable treatment and a judicious selection. In other cases no treatment and no selection are adequate to give a similar result, and the anomaly remains refractory despite all our endeavors to breed it. The cockscomb and the peloric fox-glove are widely known instances of permanent anomalies, and others will be dealt with in future lectures. On the other ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... in your house to-morrow, or on any recurrence of to-morrow. I will be exhibited to no one, as the refractory slave you purchased, such a time. If I kept my marriage day, I would keep it as a day of shame. Self-respect! appearances before the world! what are these to me? You have done all you can to make them nothing to me, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... so generally acute a logician was blinded by it to such palpable inconsistencies! On what ground of right could a magistrate inflict a penalty, whereby to compel a man to hear what he might believe dangerous to his soul, on which the right of burning the refractory individual might not be ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... (Nanny) to-day," he writes in a letter to his good friend Madame Streicher, who was very helpful to him in his domestic matters. On one occasion, when her conduct became unbearable, he threw books at her head. Strangely, this method of disciplining the refractory Nanny produced better results than could have been expected. He reports soon after to Madame Streicher, "Miss Nanny is a changed creature since I threw the half dozen books at her head. Possibly, by chance some of their contents may have ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer

... commemorated his subsequent acquisition of a fresh allotment, with the stock on it, by a little pamphlet, published at Sydney, on the "Sanctity of the Rights of Property;" and that when I left the colony, having been much pestered by two refractory "helps" that he had added to his establishment, he had just distinguished himself by a very anti-levelling lecture upon the duties of servants to their employers. What would the Old World have done for ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... lost in repairing to the spot with three highly-trained elephants, two of which were females; the third was a well-known fighting male, a tusker named Moota Gutche, who was usually employed to dominate the obstreperous wild elephants when refractory in the keddah enclosures. The necessary ropes and chains were prepared, and the small but experienced party started, Mr. Sanderson being armed only with a long spear, and riding on the pad, well girthed upon the ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... enormous difference to the Mistertons. Jim fetched a hired girl from town, and Angela was relieved, during a scorching summer, of a housewife's most intolerable duties. Also, when Jim was hard at work clearing his brush-hills, wrestling with refractory roots of chaparral and manzanita, his greatest pal was kind enough to undertake the entertainment of Angela. The pair rode about together, and Jim told us that it did his heart good to see how the little woman had brightened up. Thorpe, for his part, ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell

... not even into the secret of the Writingcase and the Royal Women's operations there, began at last, as Wilhelmina says, to hint, That in his Majesty's service there were means of bringing out the truth in spite of refractory humors; that there was a thing called the rack, not yet abolished in his Prussian Majesty's dominions! Friedrich owned afterwards, his blood ran cold. However, he put on a high look: "A Hangman, ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle

... to drive them away, and very plainly ordered us off to the ship. It was very evident that our forbearance was mistaken for weakness, and that mischief was preparing. I accordingly took hold of one of the most refractory, and compelled him to march off at double-quick time, when they all retired to some rocky hills overlooking our camp, from which it was necessary to dislodge them. Taking Mr. Brown with me, we climbed the first hill, ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory

... had been vacant for three years and a half. An epitaph written on him by pope Damasus, who also mentions himself in it, says, that by enforcing the canons of holy penance, he drew upon himself the contradictions and persecutions of many tepid and refractory Christians, and that for his severity against a certain apostate, he was banished by the tyrant Maxentius.[1] He died in 310, having sat one year, seven months, and twenty days. Anastatius writes, that Lucina, a devout widow of one Pinianus, who lodged St. Marcellus when he lived ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... pleasure, and refuse to think of coming vengeance. Having heard of the treatment which his agents had received, the proprietor despatched another party more numerous, with the view probably of overawing the refractory peasants by a display of strength; but the second mission was as cruelly and contemptuously rejected as the first. The proprietor, still unwilling to bring matters to an extremity, adopted next an expedient which he hoped would subdue the rebellion, without imposing on him the necessity of punishing ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... of being the most sincere in his profession of regard for the advancement of human freedom. He imposes no restrictions upon his own subjects which he does not consider necessary for the maintenance of his despotic power, and, while struggling against the influence of a wealthy, intelligent, and refractory aristocracy to extend the boon of personal liberty to twenty-three millions of serfs, is the only sovereign who boldly and openly manifests a generous sympathy for the cause of freedom in the United States. While I can see nothing to admire in any form ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... stepmother, was not to be made to forgo her plans for the boy's reform by any such vulgar ribaldries; and Mr. Newcome being absent in the City on his business, and Tommy refractory as usual, she summoned the serious butler and the black footman (for the lashings of whose brethren she felt an unaffected pity) to operate together in the chastisement of this young criminal. But he dashed ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... which are mild and paternal, are fully aware of this and allow the utmost liberty of speech; well knowing that, thanks to that friend and ally of Legitimacy, tobacco, the romantic visionary and somewhat refractory youth will subside into a tranquil ganz alltaeglicher Mann and become totally averse to any innovation which demands ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... his eyes away and scribbled briefly upon a sheet of paper. Then, getting up stiffly, he took the portrait and moved woodenly across the room to a furnace. As though enshrining it he placed the plastic block upon a refractory between the electrodes and threw a switch. After the flaming arc had done its work he turned and handed the paper to a tall man, dressed in plain gray leather, who had been watching him with quiet, understanding eyes. Significant enough to the initiated of ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith

... was stated, had restrained his wild bands of armed burghers, with which the land was simply bristling, and he was then in close confabulation with Her Majesty's High Commissioner, Sir Hercules Robinson, whom he had summoned to Pretoria to deal with such refractory Englishmen. The journals also took advantage of the occasion to bid Kruger remember this was the opportunity to show himself forgiving, and to strengthen his corrupt Government, thereby earning the gratitude of those Afrikanders, for whom, indeed, ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... living cricket for that which the Sphex had left, expecting to find it on the spot where it had been placed. On emerging it perceives the cricket scampering away; not a moment was to be lost, and without reflection it leapt on the refractory victim. A lively struggle followed, a duel to the death among the blades of grass; it was a truly dramatic spectacle, the agile assailant whirling around the Cricket, who kicked violently with his hind legs. If a blow were to reach the Sphex it would be disembowelled; but it ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... mine the naval portion of the guests were silent, but the civilians more insolent than before. I did not wish to come to open war, so I said nothing more, and left the table. After I was gone, the refractory parties made more noise than ever. Just before the dinner hour on the following day, Mammy Crissobella sent a circular round to the young men, stating that she could not receive them at dinner. They all laughed, ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat

... question is interesting to her alone; for to the middle, the southern, and western States, they are of no direct concern; of no more than the culture of tobacco, rice, and cotton to Massachusetts. I am really at a loss to conjecture what our refractory sister will say on this occasion. I know what, as a citizen of the Union, I would say to her. 'Take this question ad referendum. It concerns you alone. If you would rather, give up the fisheries than war with England, we give them up. If you had rather fight for them, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... precaution in the case of a swift-flying or excitable insect. Holding the net now in the left hand, take the bottle, previously uncorked, in your right hand and slip it into the net and over the insect. In case of refractory insects, blowing from the outside will sometimes make them go to the bottom of the bottle. When this happens, you can slip your hand from the outside over the mouth of the bottle, and hold it there until the insect is corked up. In less than a minute it is stupefied and motionless. ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... were we to leave the waggon and the cattle, but that was very far from Uncle Mark's thoughts. By voice and whip we urged on the oxen, and shouting, shrieking, and using our thick sticks, we endeavoured to drive forward our refractory charges. ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston

... Austria, had virtually broken off negotiations. Bonaparte informed the French agent in Rome that he must do anything to gain time, anything to deceive the "old fox"; in a favorable moment he expected to pounce upon Rome, and avenge the national honor. During the interval Naples also had become refractory; refusing a tribute demanded by the Directory, she was not only collecting soldiers, like the Pope, but actually had some regiments in marching order. Venice, asserting her neutrality, was growing more and ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... which work he assured us that some most learned and enormous man, whose name was a foot and a half long, had promised him an appendix, which appendix treated of the Red Sea and Solomon's signet ring, with forms of mittimus for ghosts that might be refractory, and probably a riot act, for any meute amongst ghosts inclined to raise barricades; since he often thrilled our young hearts by supposing the case, (not at all unlikely, he affirmed,) that a federation, a solemn league and conspiracy, might take place amongst the infinite generations of ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... the most absurd, ridiculous fool I ever met," he cried. "An opportunity occurs for us to make an immense fortune. All we have to do is to stretch out our hands and take it; when you must needs prove refractory, like a whimpering baby. Nobody but an ass would refuse to drink when he is thirsty, because he sees a little mud at the bottom of the bucket. I suppose you prefer theft on a small scale, stealing by driblets. And where will your system lead you? To the poor-house or ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau

... that, what with the constant troubles on his frontiers, the incessant schemings and projects going on in his own pericranium, the memorials, petitions, remonstrances and sage pieces of advice of respectable meetings of the sovereign people, and the refractory disposition of his councilors, who were sure to differ from him on every point and uniformly to be in the wrong, his mind was kept in a furnace-heat until he became as completely burnt out as a Dutch family pipe which has passed through three generations of hard smokers. ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various

... copper wire tied in even weights to each end of sticks which they laid on the shoulder; then helter-skelter came the Wanguana, carrying carbines in their hands, and boxes, bundles, tents, cooking-pots—all the miscellaneous property—on their heads; next the Hottentots, dragging the refractory mules laden with ammunition-boxes, but very lightly, to save the animals for the future; and, finally, Sheikh Said and the Beluch escort; while the goats, sick women, and stragglers, brought up the rear. From first to last, some of the sick Hottentots rode the hospital ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... pull the singers out of their beds to get them to go to rehearsals; Daniel had to help out with the singing when the chorus was too weak; Daniel had to distribute the roles, tame down refractory women, and make brainless dilettants subordinate their noisy opinions to the demands of a work which he himself generally detested. He had to drill beginners, abbreviate scores, transpose voices, and produce effects with lamentably inadequate material. And from morning to night he ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... bawled the old maid, half squeaking through her nose, which was well charged with rappee, "did'nt I tell you so? I knew the fellow would not come to terms no more than will your refractory daughter. This love fairly bewitches such foolish, crack-brained youngsters. But say Mr. ——, what's your name, addressing herself to Alonzo, will love heat the oven? will love boil the pot? will love clothe the ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.

... arrangements of the paper—a business of no small difficulty—he had often occasion to exercise promptness and boldness of decision in cases of emergency. Printers in those days were a rather refractory class of work men, and not unfrequently took advantage of their position to impose hard terms on their employers, especially in the daily press, where everything must be promptly done within a very limited ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... that officer barely escaped with his life. Other officials were not so fortunate, but on the whole Shanghai was acquired by the rebels with very little bloodshed. In a few hours this important Chinese city passed into the hands of a lawless and refractory mob, who lived on the plunder of the townspeople, and who were ripe for any mischief. The European settlement was placed meantime in a position of efficient defense, and although the Triads wished to have the spoil of its rich factories, they very soon decided that the enterprise ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... book, struck out these concessions as unnecessary and dangerous, and placed Episcopacy in full and exclusive possession of the ground, as the divinely instituted and only admissible form of Church government and discipline. He caused this book to be circulated; but the attempt to reason with the refractory, after having failed in the attempt to coerce them, is not generally very successful. The archbishop, in his report to the king this year of the state of things throughout his province, represents the spirit of non-conformity to ...
— Charles I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... customs-inspector, or gendarme, as prefect, sub-prefect, or commissioner of police, that is to say, as subaltern henchman and bully restraining subjects and raising contributions, confiscating and burning merchandise, seizing grumblers, and making the refractory toe the mark.[12137] In 1810, one hundred and sixty thousand of the refractory were already condemned by name, and, moreover, penalties were imposed on their families to the amount of one hundred and seventy millions of francs In 1811 and 1812 the roving columns which tracked ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... stated here that Cousin Benedict had endeavored to initiate the young novice into the mysteries of entomology. But Dick Sand had shown himself rather refractory to these advances. For want of better company the savant had fallen back on the negroes, who comprehended nothing about it. Tom, Acteon, Bat, and Austin had even finished by deserting the class, and the professor found himself reduced to Hercules alone, who seemed to him to have some ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne

... man's establishment. At the moment when the young lady was about to be forcibly married to the fop she despised, or, on the point of eloping with the youth of her choice, the good fairy made her appearance, and, changing the refractory pair into Harlequin and Columbine, the old curmudgeon into Pantaloon, and the body servant into Clown: the two latter in company with the rejected "lover," as he was called, commenced the pursuit of the happy pair, and ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent

... has often befallen me, when I was at the University, or later when studying law, to exert my mind to grasp, and all in vain, some problem in mathematics or a puzzling legal question, or even to remember some refractory word in a foreign language which would not remain in the memory. After a certain amount of effort in many of these cases, further exertion is injurious, the mind or receptive power seems to be seized—as if nauseated—with spasmodic ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland

... some regard to their own preservation. All his efforts, however, were for some time in vain; but next day, the weather proving stormy, and there being great danger of the ship going to pieces, the refractory part of the crew began to be afraid of perishing, and were desirous of getting to land; and, in their madness, as the boat did not come to fetch them off so soon as they wished, they pointed a four-pounder from the quarter-deck, against ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... of coercion was necessarily implied, though not expressed in the articles, and much might have been said in behalf of this opinion. The Confederation explicitly declared itself to be perpetual, yet how could it perpetuate itself for a dozen years without the right to coerce its refractory members? Practically, however, the remedy was one which could never have been applied without breaking the Confederation into fragments. To use the army or navy in coercing a state meant nothing less than civil war. The local yeomanry would have turned out against ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... by God to legislate in spirituals, and assumed by a class of irreligious despots. Though the State pays the clergy, still it owns the church property, and entirely cripples the power of the bishop, who cannot remove a bad and refractory priest, if it suits not the pleasure of the civil authorities. Such a state of things naturally caused some demoralization among the clergy, and, as a consequence, much religious indifference among the people. Societies like the Jesuits, who have been ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various

... would meet one of the herders sitting at ease on his horse, or galloping madly after some refractory steer that was making a break for freedom. They had, in their ride, passed four of these men, and to every one Scip gave a signal, merely the wave of his hand in a peculiar manner, to which the men had responded likewise. They were nearing another stand, the ranchman, ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton

... and anxiety. But in the sixteenth year of his reign his liver, which up to that time had acted with the most commendable regularity, began to develop alarming eccentricities of behavior. Mr. Pelgram became gradually less certain in his attendance, and finally his struggle with the refractory liver ended in the victory of that inconspicuous but important organ, and he passed peacefully away at a German spa in the course of taking a cure which would very likely have killed him even had he been in ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... Esclairmonde for perverseness and obstinacy in not accepting the only male thing she had ever favoured. The Bishop of Therouenne threatened and argued; and the Duke of Burgundy himself came to enforce his commands to his refractory vassal, and on finding her still unsubmissive, flew into a rage, and rated her as few could have done, save ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... thence it descends into the retort, G, where it is roasted by the heat of the fireplace, L. The sulphur converted into a state of vapor passes through the conduit, R, into the coke or charcoal retort, G', which is divided into two parts by the partition, g g', of refractory clay, and heated ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various

... end to the remarks of his refractory seaman by starting up suddenly in fierce anger and seizing the tiller, apparently with the intent to fell him. He checked himself, however, as suddenly, and, breaking into a loud laugh, cried—"Come, Jo, you must admit that there is at least one ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne

... not succeed, be assured of that, my Adam, he will not succeed in it. I only know too well that in you I have a faithful, devoted servant, in the Electoral Prince a rebellious and refractory son; that with you all is bound up in my life; with him all in ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... to work at a refractory elastic or button, and many interruptions from catches in her breath, she murmured aloud during the process of her undressing: "Dear Father in Heaven, I seem to feel sorry all over, and full of error. Help me to know that I'm not a mortal mind little girl, hating and ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham

... Berber, and Zirra. Having commenced his royal tour of inspection, he found the King of Berberistan in a state of rebellion, with his army prepared to dispute his authority. A severe battle was the consequence; but the refractory sovereign was soon compelled to retire, and the elders of the city came forward to sue for mercy and protection. After this triumph, Kaus turned towards the mountain Kaf, and visited various other countries, and in his progress became the guest of ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... Farfa-Magne-quint-quatorze! [For whom this name was intended is not clear.] It consisted in making the latter see the difference between the two German verbs "verwundern" (to amaze) and "bewundern" (to admire), and to translate clearly, according to her wits, which are sometimes so ingeniously refractory, what progress there is from Verwundern (amazement) to Erstaunen (astonishment). Imagine, now, with what a wonderful solution of the difficulty your packet and letter furnished us, and how pleased I was ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated

... Mr. H. Festing Jones and I have had the good fortune to meet; he is an engineer now, and does not know one note from another; he has quite lost his deafness, is married, and is, of course, a little squat man with the same refractory hair that he always had. It was very interesting to watch him, and Jones remarked that before the end of dinner he had become positively posthumous. One morning I was told the Beethovens were going away, and before long I met their ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler

... assassinate Mr. Fraser, the British Commissioner, the country population round about were seized with the news as with the coming of a dragon or a destroying army; and the British Lion was the Bogy, the Black Douglas, in whose name poor ryots' wives scared refractory brats into trembling obedience. Not far from Delhi was a village school, where were many small boys,—so many Asiatic frogs-in-a-well,—to whom "the news of the day" was full of terrible portent. Once, when they were tired of foot-ball, and the shuttlecock ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... endeavour to abolish evil desires and practices in the individual and all social, industrial and political wrongs. They give full play to all man's powers in private and in public matters. They have never been proved inadequate to their task, but they have found much refractory material with which ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell

... forgotten that John Calvin burned Michael Servetus at the stake for heresy; that the arch-reformer not only avowed but also justified the deed in his writings; and that he established in Geneva an Inquisition for the punishment of refractory Christians. ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... Neil Kennedy was a huge man, standing six feet three in his socks, as I afterwards learned, and being bulky in proportion, was the sort of man that a "hazing" skipper would at once have singled out as eminently suited to keep a refractory crew in order and get the last ounce of work out of the laziest skulker. But it happened that Kennedy was not that sort of man at all. Although admirably fitted by Nature for the part, he was not the typical quarterdeck tyrant and bully, but a genial, merry, great-hearted ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood

... this disagreeable duty. When the cook had prepared the meat for roasting, he found that the dog which should have wrought the spit had disappeared. He attempted to employ another, but it bit his leg and fled. Soon after, however, the refractory dog entered the kitchen, driving before him the truant turnspit, which immediately, of its own accord, went into the wheel. A company of turnspits were assembled in the Abbey Church of Bath, where they remained very quietly. At one part of the service, however, the word "spit" was pronounced, ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... my dear pupil. For, notwithstanding your refractory and rebellious state, you are still ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... the overseer called at the cabin of one of the slaves, and was not a little surprised to find there the refractory slave, Williams, in company with three other men. He immediately walked up to him and asked him some question, to which Williams made no reply. Attended, as he always was, by his ferocious bull-dog, ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward

... repelled the hand he raised to hers, and, though she was forced to put down her candle first, persisted in confining the refractory tress; then seated herself at the table, and taking from her pocket the manuscript which Hugh had been criticising in the morning, unfolded it, and showed him all the passages he had objected to, neatly corrected or altered. It was wonderfully done for the time she had had. ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... to sanction this interference with the freedom of deputies. Bismarck then introduced a bill into the Reichstag asking for power to punish any member who abused his parliamentary position. There was to be a court established consisting of thirteen deputies, and this was to have power to punish refractory delegates by censuring them, by obliging them to apologize to the House, and by excluding them from the House. It was also proposed that the Reichstag should in certain instances prevent the publicity of its ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... the refractory cow had been brought to a state of partial subjection, and stood blinking at her captors as if uncertain what course to pursue. Leaving the sleigh, Mr. Westmore strode over to where the three were standing and laid his hand ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody

... say. The lean bilious Turk on the edge of the crowd began talking viciously. The saturnine French corporal turned and smacked him terribly across the nose with the edge of the scabbard of his bayonet. "Et-ta soeur!" He had the air of a schoolmaster reproving a refractory pupil. But his language was obscene and his blow broke the man's nose.... He vouchsafed no further interest in the Turk, but turned to watch the ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

... wonders of Energon, and went away, with the fear of death in their hearts, to abdicate thrones and crowns and hereditary licenses. When Goliah spoke to politicians (so-called "statesmen"), they obeyed . . . or died. He dictated universal reforms, dissolved refractory parliaments, and to the great conspiracy that was formed of mutinous money lords and captains of industry he sent his destroying angels. "The time is past for fooling," he told them. "You are anachronisms. You stand in the way of humanity. ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... of Westphalia? Leave Salzburg?" shrieked the Right Reverend Father: "Are we getting into open mutiny, then? Open extensive mutiny!" shrieked he. Borrowed a couple of Austrian regiments,—Kaiser and we always on the pleasantest terms,—and marched the most refractory of his Salzburgers over the frontiers (retaining their properties and families); whereupon noise ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... had retreated towards the bowsprit; but, being reinforced by the boatswain and carpenter, we took command of the hatches so effectually, that a dozen additional discharges among the ebony legs, drove the refractory to their quarters below. ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... of a fleet in the Pacific as well as of one in the Atlantic was a fatal luxury. It was superfluous to keep on tap a whole division of ships in our Atlantic harbors merely posing as maritime ornaments before the eyes of Europe or at the most coming in handy for an imposing demonstration against a refractory South-American Republic. All this could have been done just as well with a few cruisers. English money and Japanese intrigues, it is true, succeeded in always keeping the Venezuelan wound open, so that we were constantly obliged to steal furtive glances ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff

... but he was much more. He was not only a wealthy planter, but he was an engineer, a traveller, to an extent a manufacturer, a politician, and a soldier, and he saw that, as a conservative, he must be "Progressive" and raise the law to a power high enough to constrain all these thirteen refractory units. For Washington understood that peace does not consist in talking platitudes at conferences, but in organizing a sovereignty strong enough to coerce ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams

... Romans on this occasion in Apulia. It was becoming daily more evident that in a military point of view the resources of the king were inferior to those of the Romans, just as, politically, the loose and refractory coalition could not stand a comparison with the firmly-established Roman symmachy. The sudden and vehement style of the Greek warfare and the genius of the general might perhaps achieve another such victory as those of Heraclea and Ausculum, but every ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... unanimously "That all exportations to Quebec, Nova-Scotia, the Island of St. John's, Newfoundland, Georgia, except the Parish of St. John's, and to East and West Florida, immediately cease."[23] These measures brought the refractory colony to terms, and the Provincial Congress, July 4, 1775, finally adopted the "Association," and resolved, among other things, "That we will neither import or purchase any Slave imported from Africa, or elsewhere, ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois

... of assurance. We arrive at our conclusions by reasoning from analogy. Here we have a disease always exhibiting the same symptoms, more or less peculiar to one class of animal, always with a similar characteristic appearance and smell, always obstinately refractory to treatment, showing always a tendency to spread to the other feet of the same animal, and often to the feet of other animals near enough to become infected, and always cured—when cured it is—by a treatment ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks



Words linked to "Refractory" :   liner, refractory anaemia, intractable, fireclay, furnace lining, stubborn, aluminum oxide, aluminium oxide, fractious, refractory pot, medicine



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