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More "Beat about" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you an hour about the reasons why I wanted it. You understood that I had a good reason for asking. I'm going to ask just one more thing from you in this life. I'm going to ask it straight from the shoulder. You and I don't need to beat about the bush with each other. I want you to say 'yes,' for if you don't you're abandoning our old State as though she were a widow ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... stowed into his mental hold not fact-shadows, but the glowing facts all alive, O. For thirteen years, man and boy, he had beat about the globe, with real eyes, real ears, and real brains ever at work. He had drunk living knowledge like a ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... I know when to speak an' when not to," she remarked. "Now don't beat about the bush; the men-folks'll be back to-rights. I never in my life give Len a mite o' news he couldn't ha' ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... must gain time, and to gain time without displeasing Austria, we must use the same language we have used for the last six months—that we can do everything if Austria is our ally.... Work on this, beat about the bush, and gain time.... You can embroider on this canvas for the next two months, and find ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief, Taffy came to my house and stole a piece of beef; I went to Taffy's house, Taffy wasn't home, Taffy came to my house and stole a marrow bone; I went to Taffy's house, Taffy was in bed, I took the marrow-bone, and beat about his head." ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... Aby, I von't beat about the bush with you. I'm quite sure, my child, ve should make it answer much better, if you'd let your father advance the money. Doesn't it go agin the grain to vurk into the hands of Christians against ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... mean? Puaka is pig, piki is to mount or climb, and enata is man. A great white light beat about my brow. "The pig men climb?" Could he mean Rozinante, the steed to whom T'yonny had entrusted me, and who had so basely deserted his trust over ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... was simple, applicable, natural, and pressing: it offered itself, of itself. Wherefore, the confessor was amazed by it; he blushed, he beat about the bush, he could not collect himself. By degrees he did so, and replied to me in a manner that he doubtless thought would convince me at once. "If the case you suggest were to happen," he said, "and the Pope declaring for one disputant were to excommunicate ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Hraun on the south bank of the Hitara. Next morning before he rode out he said to his servants: "Now we will ride in red clothes and let the forest-man see that we are not like the other travellers who beat about here every day." ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... skill in navigation, made them change the route, for no purpose, but that of showing his skill in manoeuvring the ship.—Every instant he changed the tack, went, came and returned, and approached the very reefs, as if to brave them; in short, he beat about so much, that the sailors at length refused to obey him, saying boldly that he was a vile imposter. But it was done. The man had gained the confidence of Captain Lachaumareys, who ignorant of navigation himself, was doubtless glad to get someone to undertake ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... hotly, "Will you give me an answer and not beat about the bush any longer? Or do you mean that ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... ghost-like form. He described it as the figure of a female, with one arm across her body, and the other hanging down, hovering upright and motionless over the spot, her feet being a few hand-breadths above the soil. The young man would not approach the vision, but the poet beat about it with his stick, walked through it, and seemed to the eyes of Billing like a man who beats about a light flame, which always returns to its old shape. For months, experiments were continued, company was brought to the spot, the spectre remained visible always in the dark, but to the young man ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... for us, while, houseless things, We beat about with bruised wings On the dark floods and water-springs, The ruined world, the desolate sea; With open windows from the prime All night, all day, He waits sublime, Until the fulness of the time Decreed ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... was to draw him out of himself. He would have been glad to gain Harry's confidence, and to hear from him how matters stood, though he very well knew he should fail if he asked the question point-blank. He therefore beat about the bush for some time, talking of his own love affairs when he was a young man, and of those of several of ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... large hemlocks or oaks that absorb our attention, but in an old stub or stump not six feet high, and which we have seen and passed several times without giving it a thought. We go farther down the mountain and beat about to the right and left, and get entangled in brush and arrested by precipices, and finally, as the day is nearly spent, give up the search and leave the woods quite baffled, but resolved to return on the morrow. The next day we come back and ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... seems to have been full of pleasantry) making sport among his soldiers of the soutar's great-coat. Presently they hear disputation and the sound of blows inside. Out flies the cobbler, his coat flying, the flaps of his hat beat about his face, and the lieutenant and his soldiers mock at him as he runs off. They laugh not so hearty the next time they had occasion to visit the cell, and found nobody but a tall, pretty, grey-eyed lass in the female habit! As for the cobbler, he was "over the hills ayont ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of consuming terror now possessed me. I crouched in the dank corner clutching my sword, listening, vainly listening, for some sound out of which to conjure up an assassin. A rat ran across my foot. Screaming out I bounded erect and beat about me with blind desperation. One hand touched the other and shrank from its mate. ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... the place; for as I came to it and went to it before on the south and east side of the island, coming from the Brazils, so now, coming in between the main and the island, and having no chart for the coast, nor any landmark, I did not know it when I saw it, or, know whether I saw it or not. We beat about a great while, and went on shore on several islands in the mouth of the great river Orinoco, but none for my purpose; only this I learned by my coasting the shore, that I was under one great mistake before, viz. that the continent which I thought I saw from the island I lived ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... one arm, and he bore her safely over the huge swells and through the onslaught of the breaking waves. I could thank God for his strength, and trust her to it. For the other three of us, we were all strong swimmers, and though bruised and beat about, we held our own. Each wave, overcome, left us nearer the islet,—a little while and our feet touched bottom. A short struggle with the tremendous surf and we were out of the maw of the sea, but out upon a desolate islet, a mere hand's-breadth ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... simply had to let them go, and make the best of it. Oh, dear Miss Grant—Mary—this is a bad time to ask a favour, I know, when my husband's just come a cropper with your money, as well as his own; but I was never one to beat about the bush. And you're a regular brick. You're in luck, and we're out—down and out! I wonder—would you be inclined to lend us—say, a thousand pounds, just to tide over the few weeks till our dividends come? We'd ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Ogilvie, rather inclined to beat about the bush, "I thought you were paying her a good deal of attention. But then—she is very popular, you know, and receives a good deal of attention; and—and the fact is, she is an uncommonly pretty girl, and I thought you were flirting ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... practice than either you or your friend have apparently been able to devote to it, I have much pleasure in coming to the rescue. In dealing with members of the medical profession it is never wise to beat about the bush; superfluous subtlety merely irritates them. I have therefore endeavoured to make the poem just the artless outpouring of the innocent passion of such a girl as I imagine your friend Mary Smith to be. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various
... had forgotten me, in the dazzling light that beat about the thought of luncheon, I almost bustled into the hotel, and asked for the servants' dining-room. I knew that there was little hope of eating alone, for several important-looking motor-cars were drawn up before the hotel; but I was ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... Pine, The years I cannot recollect that make this life of mine: The snows have fallen o'er my crest, the winds have whistled high, For tens of years the winter's frost I managed to defy; But now the fiat has gone forth, the flame of life is dead, And nevermore I'll feel the storms that beat about my head. ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... 1907 ii. 78. The accounts in Evelyn and Goldsmith are probably familiar to the reader.] about this year, "six or seven hundred dirty half-naked Turks in a small vessel chained to the oars, from which they are not allowed to stir, fed upon nothing but bad biscuit and water, and beat about on the most trifling occasion by their most inhuman masters, who are certainly more ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... old gentlewoman, who never beat about bushes, but mostly walked through them, Sanchia's bluntness made immediate appeal. Her reply, for instance, to the enquiry, What had induced her to go on with the affair, was a counter-question. "What else could I do?" she had asked, with ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... so, my lad. Now, let's make sail, and beat about here, to and fro. We must keep a good watch for our two friends, and if they come down we can follow till we see the Teaser in the offing. We may, I say, ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... somehow, in the sequel, had a more palpable loss to show. But the plain fact was that he hadn't spent a penny on it; which was no doubt the reason of the prodigious score it had since been rolling up. At any rate, beat about the case as he would, it was clear that he owed it to Anna—and incidentally to his own peace of mind—to find some way of securing Sophy Viner's future without leaving her installed at Givre when he and his wife should ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... and forgetting in his fury what he had said before of Mohammed himself, he laughed wildly, and beat about the patio from side to side like a ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... about the seas, and we met her again at the Canaries, where we arrived on the 13th of the same month of April, and had good opportunity to wonder at the high peaked mountain in the island of Teneriffe, as we beat about between that island and Grand Canary for four days with contrary winds, and indeed had such evil weather till the 14th of May, that we despaired of being able to double the Cape of Good Hope that year. Yet, taking our course between Guinea and the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... the cliff, unheeding the storm which beat about her head and scattered the embers of her fire. The anguish of her position forced itself upon her. To be left on the island meant a slow and torturing death; and yet, had she been rescued, she must have left behind her ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... beat about the bush. Nobody knows he's there, yet, except myself and—you. You met him on the ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... money; fourthly, it often finds such engagements for them by acting as their honest, disinterested agent; fifthly, it is its principle to act humanely upon the instant, and never, as is too often the case within my experience, to beat about the bush till the bush is withered and dead; lastly, the society is not in the least degree exclusive, but takes under its comprehensive care the whole range of the theatre and the concert-room, from the manager in his room of state, or in his caravan, or at the ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... hours they beat about; and then, to their great joy, they descried the pinnace in the distance, making for land. The wind had now risen, and it was blowing hard, and their position on the raft was dangerous enough. They found that it would be impossible for them to keep at sea, and ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... of them, run over my face and hands before I could regain my feet. Several times I put my hand on them, and once I flung one from my shoulder. Groping around, I found a stout stick or stave, put my back to the wall, and beat about me blindly but ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... felt that he had made his footing; but he was not the man to abide for a week where a day would suit his purpose. His rule was never to beat about the bush when he could break through it, and he thought that he saw his way to do so now. Having finished his meal, he set down his knife with a bang, sat upright in the oaken chair, and gazed in a bold yet pleasant manner at the ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... may now delay, negotiate, beat about and argue as much as they please; their hesitation has no other effect that to consign them into the background, as being lukewarm and timid. Thanks to them, the (Jacobin) faction now has its deliberative ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... you intend to do? A man like you wasn't made for idleness. Look here, Paul; I'm not going to beat about the bush. We've got a whopping big contract from the Chinese government, and we need a man to take charge, a man who knows and understands something of the yellow people. How about a salary of ten thousand a year for two years, to ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... lest this 232should be taken as a puff-card of his capabilities, and thereby add to the list of his Cytherean exploits. In a late affair, when the colonel was called out (but did not come), Sir Patrick beat about the Bushe for him very judiciously, and by great skill in diplomacy enabled his friend to come off second best. But here comes one who stands at odds with description, and attracts more notice in Cheltenham than even the colonel, his companions, and all the metropolitan visitory ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... came, at Alexndra Ivnovna's invitation, to divert me from my errors and direct me in the path of truth. If that is so, don't let us beat about the bush, but let us get to business at once. I do not deny that I disagree with the teaching of the Church. I used to agree with it, and then left off doing so. But with my whole heart I wish to be in the truth and will at once accept it if you ...
— The Light Shines in Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... Great shoals of cetaceous fish, of a perfectly black colour, with a white spot before the back-fin, passed by us. They were fired at from our vessel, and one of them being shot through the head, could no longer plunge under water, but began to beat about furiously on the surface, and tinged the sea with its blood. It seemed to be about three yards long, and was slender and blunt-headed, from whence our sailors called it the Bottle-nose, a name which Dale applies to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... a scamp in the superlative degree, the burly ruffian who seated himself by his side looked the character much better. He was not a man to beat about the bush. As he expressed it, he wanted to come to business ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... wife, and child; a hired man slept in the loft. One night eight Indians assailed the house. As they burst in the door Bingaman thrust the women and the child under the bed, his wife being wounded by a shot in the breast. Then having discharged his piece he began to beat about at random with the long heavy rifle. The door swung partially to, and in the darkness nothing could be seen. The numbers of the Indians helped them but little, for Bingaman's tremendous strength enabled him to shake himself free whenever grappled. One after another his foes sank under his crushing ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... answered Mammy, with a mournful shake of the head. "Dyin' would be somethin' to look forwa'ds to if we could all hope for such a buryin' as that. But I'm beat about John Jay. He do seem so onfeelin'. He loved that man bettah than anything on this yearth, an' I s'posed he'd take his death mighty hard; but what you reckon he said to me this mawnin'. I was i'onin' my black aidged handkerchief to take, when he says to me, sezee, 'What you want to put on mo'nin' ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... official peculation confined in certain limits is considered entirely consistent with honesty. Their cheating, if it can be called by that name, is conducted on certain established principles. A Chinese will 'beat about the bush,' and try every plan to circumvent the man with whom he deals, but when he once makes a bargain he adheres to it unflinchingly. Among the merchants I was told that a word is as good as a bond. Their slipperiness ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... up a pilot balloon; see how the land lies, get the lay of the land, test the waters, feel out, sound out, take the pulse, see, check, check out[coll.], see how the wind blows; consult the barometer; feel the pulse; fish for, bob for; cast for, beat about for; angle, trawl, cast one's net, beat the bushes. try one's fortune &c. (adventure) 675; explore &c. (inquire) 461. Adj. experimental, empirical. probative, probatory[obs3], probationary, provisional; analytic, docimastic[obs3]; tentative;unverified, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... glance Gifford saw what was the whole matter with the sick man. And painful as the truth was to the sick man's mother, and humiliating with a life-long humiliation to the sick man himself, Gifford was not the man or the minister to beat about the bush at such a solemn moment. "This boy has been tampering with that which will kill him unless he gets it taken off his conscience and out of his heart immediately." Now, this same divination into our pastoral cases is by far and away the most difficult ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... are many who in these days gnash their teeth against you and pursue with malice and reproach the words you utter and the deeds you perform, so that verily the tempests of the world beat about your head. It may please you, therefore, to know that there is one man at least whose affectionate admiration for you has suffered no decrease, nay, has rather been augmented a hundredfold by the events of the past half-year. Need I say that I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... bad to the core, I will soon show you that I am. It's no use, I see, to beat about the bush any longer. If I can't get you one way I will another, an' I'll have you ahead of that d—— guy who has won your heart. You're here alone with me, remember, an' ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... The devil," he goes on to say, "knows well how to construct his arguments, and to urge them with the skill of a master. He delivers himself with a grave, and yet a shrill voice. Nor does he use circumlocutions, and beat about the bush, but excels in forcible statements and quick rejoinders. I no longer wonder," he adds, "that the persons whom he assails in this way, are occasionally found dead in their beds. He is able to compress and throttle, and more than once he has ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... pertinacious interrogatory now beat about within herself for succour. "I must not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... make it so; We leave the sunny spaces, And beat about, or high or low, In dark and narrow places; Till, worn with failure, vexed with doubt, Our strength at last we rally, And the bruised spirit flutters out To find the ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... those of previous generations and rivetting another link to the chain of testimony. It is as natural and as right for a young man to be imprudent and exaggerated, to live in swoops and circles, and beat about his cage like any other wild thing newly captured, as it is for old men to turn gray, or mothers to love their offspring, or heroes to die for ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pastry flour once, then measure and sift three times. Add a pinch of salt to the whites of eight or nine eggs or just one cup of whites, beat about one-half, add one-half teaspoon of cream of tartar, then beat the whites until they will stand of their own weight; add one and one-fourth cups of sugar, then flour, not by stirring but folding over and over until thoroughly mixed in; ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... sit aloft one's self in the pure air and under the unclouded dome of heaven, and thus look down on the submergence of the valley, was strangely different and even delightful to the eyes. Far away were hilltops like little islands. Nearer, a smoky surf beat about the foot of precipices and poured into all the coves of these rough mountains. The colour of that fog ocean was a thing never to be forgotten. For an instant, among the Hebrides and just about sundown, I have seen ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... who was still laid up, had pilfered our provisions all the way, and lived on us by force, although the agreement was that he should keep himself, he confessed I was right, or thought it better to make the confession. However, he beat about the merchants, and got two or three of them to come down to speak to me, who said, "If he has done bad, treat him bad, that is, give him a little backsheesh." I then gave him half a dollar. His ingenuity was never exhausted. He pretended I ought to feed the camels two or three days after ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... it is an essential element in every attempt to deal with the prevention of disease. Unless we know precisely the exact incidence, local variations, and temporary fluctuations of a disease we are entirely in the dark and can only beat about at random. All progress in public hygiene has been accompanied by the increased notification of disease, and most authorities are agreed that such notification must be still further extended, any slight inconvenience thus caused to individuals being of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... in a large bowl and beat about half as stiff as you wish them to be when finished beating. Add cream of tartar, sprinkle it over the beaten whites of eggs lightly, and then beat until very stiff. Sift in sugar, then flour very lightly. Fold ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... he said, "I know very well that you're not afraid of death, so I won't beat about the bush," ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... Esthetics. Some women think that because they are married to their husbands they owe the latter no esthetic consideration. Things that they would be horrified to let a stranger see they do before their husband's eyes without hesitation. For instance, not to beat about the bush, though the subject is not a pleasant one, they will urinate in their husbands' presence, or they will let him see their soiled menstrual napkins, etc. Some husbands may not mind it; but some men are very sensitive—men on the whole are more esthetic ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... voyage homeward-bound," said the captain, "and that's the voyage off of which I now come straight, I encountered such weather off the Horn as is not very often met with, even there. I have rounded that stormy Cape pretty often, and I believe I first beat about there in the identical storms that blew the Devil's horns and tail off, and led to the horns being worked up into tooth-picks for the plantation overseers in my country, who may be seen (if you travel down South, or ...
— A Message from the Sea • Charles Dickens
... fortune to show over Westminster Abbey an American woman whose name, by reason of her works—sound practical common-sense works,—has come to be known throughout the United States, and I heard "the wings of the dead centuries beat about her ears." I took her to Poet's Corner. She turned herself slowly about and looked at the names carved on either side of her, and then looked down and saw the names that lay graven beneath her feet; and she dropped sobbing on her ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... said Jacques Collin. "Come, do not puzzle your heads. That person is my aunt, a very plausible aunt, a woman, and an old woman. I can save you a great deal of trouble. You will never find my aunt unless I choose. If we beat about the bush, we shall never ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... between the reef and the shore, is found the greatest variety of the more brittle kinds of coral, and among their sometimes thick bushes, mollusca and echinodermes lie concealed. The rapid movements of a small Strombus, which, when taken, beat about it with its shell, formed like a thin plate of horn, and armed with sharp teeth, were very curious. On breaking the stone which is formed by fragments of coral, a Sternaspis was found burrowing in the interior. Seven classes of Holothuria were ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... hand to beat about the bush, young feller," he declared. "Now look at the position you're in. You might say, you're more than half queered already with your company. Your engine and all that collateral has been dumped into the lake—sayin' nothin' about how it happened. The ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... as he beat about the hay-stacks. Then I got tired of holding the heavy weapon and leaned it against the shack-wall. I watched the red coat go in through the stable door, and felt vaguely dismayed at the thought that its wearer was now quite out ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... statement of the policeman. He had been walking on his beat about seven o'clock, and had seen the body of a dead man lying in a lane not far from Howden Clough. He quickly identified it as that of Mr. Edward Wilson. He described the position in which it lay. He told of the knife which was driven through the body. He immediately ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... sultan simply to take exercise. He therefore said to him, "Here is a ball, which I have stuffed with certain rare and costly medicinal herbs, and here is a bat, the handle of which I have also stuffed with similar herbs. Your highness must take this bat and with it beat about this ball until you perspire freely. You must do this every day." His highness acquiesced, and in a short time the exercise of playing bat and ball with the dervish greatly improved his health, and by degrees cured him of his ailment. ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers
... spectacles than a vessel stranded on a lee-shore, and especially such a shore, which is fringed with reefs extending far out and offering no spot for shelter. The hapless ship lies dismasted, bilged, and beat about by the waves, with the despairing crew clinging to the wreck, or to the shrouds, and uttering cries totally inaudible in the roar of the sea; while at each successive dash of the breakers the number of the survivors is thinned, till ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... Noddy, they began to survey the situation. All were soaked through, and the rain beat about them unmercifully. But they were thankful to have escaped with their lives. Through the white curtain of rain they could make out the outlines of the Curlew, riding at ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... and pompoms, a wrecked railroad train at thirteen hundred yards was as easy a bull's-eye as the hands of the first baseman to the pitcher, and while the engine butted and snorted and the men with their bare bands tore at the massive beams of the freight-car, the bullets and shells beat about them. ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... broken promise. He learned very early to do as he was told, and not to do, under any consideration, what he had said he would not do. Upon this last point he was almost morbidly conscientious, although once, literally, he "beat about the bush." His aunt Margaret, always devoted to plants and to flowers, had, on the back stoop of his grandfather's house, a little grove of orange and lemon trees, in pots. Some of these were usually in fruit or in flower, and the fruit to The Boy was a ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... about 5 A.M., Cap't Freebody went up to York in the pinnace to get provisions and leave to beat about for more hands. At 1 P.M. the Pinnace returned and brought word to Cap't Norton from Mr. Freebody that he had waited on his Honour the Gov'r, and that he would not give him leave to beat up for Volunteers. The chief reason he gave was that the City was thinned ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... right," he confessed, warmly. "He's a good friend of mine, too; in fact, he lived with me for a while." Misconstruing the eager expression that came to his caller's face, he rose heavily and thrust out a thick, wet hand. "Don't let's beat about the bush, Mr. Anthony; your son is safe and well and making a name for himself. I'm happy to say I helped him—not much, to be sure, but all I could—yes, sir, I acknowledge the corn—and I'm glad to meet you at last. ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... weather had fallen sharp; a flighty piping wind, laden with showers, beat about the township; and the dead leaves ran riot along the streets. Here and there a window was already lighted up; and the noise of men-at-arms making merry over supper within came forth in fits and was swallowed up and carried away by the wind. The night fell swiftly; the ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... there; any one not utterly calloused would, I think, have felt the same squeamishness with that sort of a tale crowding close. If she had been expecting bad news of any kind it wouldn't have been so hard to go on; but I couldn't beat about the bush any longer, so I made the plunge with what ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... some news I have to tell you? I am engaged to Mr. Blake. I will tell you all about it presently, just as though you were my father-confessor; I will not hide one little thing from you. But I was never one to beat about the bush, and I hope my abruptness has not made you jump; but oh, Michael dear, I am ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... treaty-makers Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Wilson focussed the "fierce light" that beat about the proceedings. But it was Smuts, in the shadow, who contributed largely to the mental power-plant that drove the work. Lloyd George had to consider the chapter he wrote in the great instrument as something in the nature ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... itself was dark. Frosty windows, pelted for miles by the furious gale, white outside but black within, protected the snug travellers who slept the sleep of the hurried and thought not of the storm that beat about their ears nor wondered at the stopping of the fast express at a place where it had never stopped before. Far ahead the panting engine shed from its open fire-box an aureole of glaring red as the stoker fed coal into its rapacious maw. The unblinking head-light ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... quiet came a sound, a sighing, a half-mournful whispering that beat about us and ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... poetical way of speaking. I'm a downright man and never take ten minutes where five's enough, so there it is. It came over me last night as a thing that must be—like the conversion of Paul. And I'll go further; I won't have you beat about the bush, Nelly. You're the sort of woman that can make up your mind in a big thing as quick as you can in a small thing. I consider there's been a good deal of a delicate and tender nature going on between us, though we were too busy ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... Mollett," said Mr. Prendergast, now getting up and standing with his back to the fire, "I do not know that you and I need beat about the bush much longer. I suppose I may speak openly before these ladies as to what has been taking ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... see that it's any good to beat about the bush," said the ship-keeper frankly. "That's just what I came here for. We could get a reward for turning the schooner over, and you could run her up as far ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... before her the refuse scraps, which she had indignantly emptied upon the table. He could scarcely believe his eyes; he got up and looked in the kettle, but found no haricot. "Well," said he, with surprise, "if that don't beat me! I saw mother fill it with haricot myself; I'm clean beat about it." ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... ribbons, since there was a ball that night in honor of his nearing marriage, and a confluence of gentry to attend it. Miss Vining and he walked through a minuet to some applause; the two were heartily acclaimed a striking couple, and congratulations beat about their ears as thick as sugar-plums in a carnival. And at nine you might have found the handsome dramatist alone upon the East Terrace of Ouseley, pacing to and fro in the moonlight, and complacently reflecting upon his quite indisputable and, past ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... their rooms more bare than they do in colder ones. I missed also the sight of a grand piano or some similar instrument, there being no means of producing music in any of the rooms save the larger drawing-room, where there were half a dozen large bronze gongs, which the ladies used occasionally to beat about at random. It was not pleasant to hear them, but I have heard quite as unpleasant music ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... looked at him, shrugged his shoulders, and said: "You don't beat about the bush when ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... with great emphasis, that he was parting with his kinsfolk, to see them perhaps, no more on earth; that however, happily he might be situated in freedom, he would have the painful reflection ever present with him, that those he most loved in this world, were slaves—"knocked and beat about—and made to work out in all weathers." It was this that made many falter and give up their purpose to gain their freedom by flight, but Randolph was not one of this class. His young heart loved freedom too well to waver. ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
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