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More "Grumble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... down to spin, points at Martha and says to Tars] It's not in her to be quiet. As I always say, we women must find something to grumble about. ...
— The Cause of it All • Leo Tolstoy
... "No sacrifice should be too great for the Fatherland, no privation, too arduous to be endured if one but has the spirit to conquer." He paid particular attention to the rapidly increasing number of people who grumble incessantly over the shortage of food. The good man was clearly losing ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... Legislature for ratification. Many of the charters and amendments came decidedly under Wolfe's ideas of "freak." But there are some extremes to which the machine dare not go, and it did not dare to go on record as against popular municipal government. Wolfe and his associates could and did grumble, but they did not dare refuse the several ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... 100 strings of beads. I wished to begin the exchange by being generous, and told his messenger so; then a small quantity of maize was brought, and I grumbled at the meanness of the present: there is no use in being bashful, as they are not ashamed to grumble too. The man said that Kabinga would send more when he had ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... be poisoned." Of course we had to be careful of spies, but I stuck the bottles in my pack when the officer wasn't looking. Well, we marched to the depot and were soon packed into the small uncomfortable coaches. We started to kick and grumble, but Rust said: "You are lucky to have coaches at all. Last time I went up I rode in a cattle-car," and he pointed out a lot of cars on which was painted "Capacity, so many horses, so many men." After that we hadn't anything more ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... man in the form of a turkey-cock. The sky is his palace, and he remains in it when the air is clear. When the clouds begin to grumble, he descends to the earth to gather up snakes, and other objects which the Indians call okies. The lightning flashes whenever he opens or closes his wings. If the storm is more violent than usual, it is because his young are with him, and aiding in the noise ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... out; some men did so from their hearts, admiring the Duke of Marlborough's prodigious talents, and deploring the disgrace of the greatest general the world ever knew: 'twas the stomach that caused other patriots to grumble, and such men cried out because they were poor, and paid to do so. Against these my Lord Bolingbroke never showed the slightest mercy, whipping a dozen into prison or into the pillory without the ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "When it ain't market day and ye haven't saved enough to buy a few papers or boxes of matches it does come hard. In winter the times is bad, but in summer we gets on fairish, and there ain't nothing to grumble about. Are you ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... arouse a perception of tone-quality in her pupils. Let the beauty of soft, light tone as contrasted with loud, harsh tone be once clearly demonstrated to a class, and the interest and best efforts of every girl or boy who has the germ of music within them will be enlisted. Those who grumble because they may not sing out good and loud may be disregarded, and with a clear conscience. The future will most likely reveal such incipient lovers of noisy music as pounders of drums ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... tinkle, mingle, sprinkle, twinkle, there is implied a frequency, or iteration of small acts. And the same frequency of acts, but less subtile by reason of the clearer vowel a, is indicated in jangle, tangle, spangle, mangle, wrangle, brangle, dangle; as also in mumble, grumble, jumble. But at the same time the close u implies something obscure or obtunded; and a congeries of consonants mbl, denotes a confused kind of rolling or tumbling, as in ramble, scamble, scramble, wamble, amble; but in ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... many midsummer weeks, saving, sometimes, early in the morning; when, looking out to sea, the water and the firmament were one world of deep and brilliant blue. At other times, there were clouds and haze enough to make an Englishman grumble in his ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... itself each panoply With joints that grumble in revolt Maketh an angle with its knee, That creaketh ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... was to have little peace that night! Hardly had Dick finished his grumble and sauntered away, before her husband's step was ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... this. A stout vigilance for a short time will secure your certain happiness for ever. But every thing depends on your present exertions. Don't complain and take advantage of my absence, and call me a hard master, and grumble that you are placed in the midst of a howling wilderness, without peace or security. Say not, that you are exposed to temptations without any power to resist them. You have some difficulties, it is true; but you have many helps and many comforts ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... open, and the flies should find your meat, They’ll scarcely leave a single piece that’s fit for man to eat. But you mustn’t curse, nor grumble—what won’t fatten will fill up— For what’s out of sight is out of mind in an old ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... regularly every year. Before it is delivered, my speech (like the Queen's) is looked for as eagerly as if nothing of the kind had ever been heard before. When it is delivered, and turns out not to be the novelty anticipated, though they grumble a little, they look forward hopefully to something newer next year. An easy people to govern, in the Parliament and in the Kitchen—that's the moral of it. After breakfast, Mr. Franklin and I had a private conference on the subject of the Moonstone—the ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... quieted him down and got him home at last; and when he'd got home he was that dismal and depressed from the reaction that he sat in his armchair all day and did nothing but grumble and burst into tears, for, you see, he'd overdone it, and it was bound to tell upon him. But after that all his natural pluck and determination got hold of him again, and if he wasn't mad to have that dance that ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... couple of days before he began to pry around, and find fault, and grumble at the expense; and I saw there was danger of things relapsing into something like their former condition. So I took him one side, and ...
— The Man Who Stole A Meeting-House - 1878, From "Coupon Bonds" • J. T. Trowbridge
... after, as our little home at Middlemoor had been so very, very simple. Yes, I see now it must have been very hard upon her, for, instead of doing all I could to help her, I was quite taken up with my own part of it, and ready to grumble at and exaggerate ...
— My New Home • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... of experience and common sense, upon what factors their price seems mainly to depend? Two factors spring to mind at once; their cost of production and their usefulness. As regards the former, the case seems clear enough. We may indeed sometimes grumble that the price of this or that commodity is unconscionably high in comparison with its cost; but this only goes to show that we conceive a relation between price and cost as the normal, governing rule. If one commodity cost only a half ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... blankly at each other, and then the spokesman smiled. "Oh, well," he said, "if you have prohibited both of them, I don't see that we have anything to grumble at." ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... our orator, "the Rebels keep their best generals for their Home Guard. Lee and Early, and the rest of the crew, are lambs and sucking doves to Generals Starvation, Wear-'em-out, and Grumble,—especially that last-named fellow, who is the worst of the three, because he comes under our own colors, and we feel shy about firing on our own men. I believe we are all too apt to think that muscles are the vital forces, and that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... But, grumble as she might, there was no getting out of it, and, as Hauskuld would listen to nothing, she sought for her foster-father, Thiostolf, who never had been known to say her nay. When she had told her story, he bade her be of good cheer, prophesying that Thorwald should not be her only husband, and ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... the kind-hearted woman, "what ails thee? Cheer up, man, and finish thy collop. Thou mayest fret about it as thou likes, but thou cannot undo a bad stitch by wishing. If it will make thee better for time to come, though, I'll not grumble. Come, come, goodman, if one collop winna content thee, I wish ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... said good-night again and left the room. Dona Casiana continued to grumble, then ensconced her rotund person in the rocker and dozed off into a dream about an establishment of the same type as that across the way; but a model establishment, with luxuriously appointed salons, whither trooped in a long procession all the scrofulous youths of the ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... or less, they give us paying returns for our investments. But that food will not always last; it is gradually exhausted, and we fail to feed them again, or in that proportion their necessities require. They languish and die; a disease seizes them, and we complain and grumble at ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... that was shocking, there was a tremor in the air and the echo of a rumbling sound beneath the girl's feet. The crack of a distant explosion followed. Then another, and another, until the sound became a continual grumble of angry ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... is thronged every winter afternoon with people promenading or sitting under the snow-powdered trees in an arctic fairyland, while the mercury in the thermometer is at a very low ebb indeed. It is fashionable in Russia to grumble at the cold, but unfashionable to convert the grumbling into action. On the contrary, they really enjoy sitting for five hours at a stretch, in a temperature of 25 degrees below zero, to watch the fascinating horse races on ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... fancy the excitement into which that letter put me. I was half beside myself with glee, and if ever I despised a man, it was old Tom Redruth, who could do nothing but grumble and lament. Any of the under-gamekeepers would gladly have changed places with him; but such was not the squire's pleasure, and the squire's pleasure was like law among them all. Nobody but old Redruth would have dared so much as ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... debated warmly, it was not carried. They had already anchored, as it were, and they resolved to dine "starving," and to grumble all the time of dinner when no one subject was talked about except the friture. It was a miserable spectacle to witness, but confirming the proposition, not at all new, that the French care more about ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... seldom showed any signs of, except of ill—humors, a good share of which he bestowed on me; though I was pleased to hear him play the flute, on which he was a tolerable musician. This second Egistus was sure to grumble whenever he saw me go into his mistress' apartment, treating me with a degree of disdain which she took care to repay him with interest; seeming pleased to caress me in his presence, on purpose to torment him. ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... and moment, and then letting his interest, as the vernacular says, 'tail off.' The trouble taken about Halbert by personages natural and supernatural promises the case of some extraordinary figure, and he is but very ordinary. Still, at the works of how many novelists except Scott should we grumble, if we had the admirable descriptions of Glendearg, the scenes in the Abbey, the night-ride of poor Father Philip, the escape from the Castle of Avenel, the passage of the interview of Halbert with Murray and Morton? Even the ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... very soon they had completed the work necessary for the protection of all. The tools of the enemy "casualties," the spades and picks left behind in deserted villages, were all gladly piled on to the French soldiers' knapsacks, to be carried willingly by the very men who used to grumble at being loaded with even the smallest regulation tool. As soon as night had set in on the occasion of a lull in the fighting, the digging of the trenches was begun. Sometimes, in the darkness, the men of each fighting ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... what's the use to grumble?" demanded my representative. "Do you suppose I will give up my sport for yours? When would I get a sixpence to stake, if it were not that I was kind to young fellows just beginning? There; growl no more; the ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... might get good rain now, and, anyway, it wouldn't cost much to put the potatoes in. If they came on well, it would be a few pounds in my pocket; if the crop was a failure, I'd have a better show with Mary next time she was struck by an idea outside housekeeping, and have something to grumble about when I ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... was inevitable. No one expected the House to win. The defeat was no reflection on Gordon's leadership. The Chief, in fact, said to him: "We were much too small a side, Caruthers, but I think we put up a plucky fight. You haven't anything to grumble at. We did much better ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... it was only the head of the lance that went through my arm. Still, it made a hole big enough to be uncommonly painful; the more so because it gave it a frightful wrench as the man dropped the lance. However, there is nothing to grumble at; and I may consider myself lucky indeed to have got off with a flesh wound when so many good fellows ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... feel de drefful hunger, he tink it am a vice, And he gib me for my dinner a little broken rice,— A little broken rice and a bery little fat, And he grumble like de debbil if I eat ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... unintelligible bellowings, that he was to wait in that narrow damp lobby for the coming of his fellow- Commissioner, the grating on his feelings was even more discordant. He had not pluck enough left to grumble: but he grunted his displeasure. He grunted, however, in vain; for in about a quarter of an hour Alaric was close to him, shoulder to shoulder. He also wore a white jacket, &c., with a nightcap of mud and candle on his head; but somehow he looked as though ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... party collected, and the two Generals came in from some vanity of inspection to grumble a little merrily at the open air banquet, but to take their places in all good humour, and the lively meal began with all the home witticisms, yet not such as to exclude strangers. Indeed, Hubert Delrio was treated with something like distinction, and ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... us, ought to be ashamed of abetting him in it." Those were the thanks which honest Bows got for his friendship and his life's devotion. And I do not suppose that the old philosopher was much worse off than many other men, or had greater reason to grumble. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... risky game, and I lost. And I shall now take the consequences. With luck I should have won. I did not have luck, and I am not going to grumble about it. But I am grateful to you for letting me explain. I should not have liked you to go on thinking that I played practical jokes on my friends. That is all I have to say, I think. It was kind of you to listen. ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... who lived among the mountains with his wife and children; and so very poor was he that he often found it hard to give his family enough to satisfy their hunger. But he did not grumble; he only worked the harder; and his wife, though she had scarcely any furniture, and never a chance of a new dress, kept the house so clean, and the old clothes so well mended, that, all unknown to herself, she rose high in the ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... to the scarcity of business that now came my way, Theodore had little or nothing to do, and he was in very truth eating his head off, and with that, grumble, grumble all the time, threatening to leave me, if you please, to leave my service for more remunerative occupation. As if anyone else would dream of employing such an out-at-elbows mudlark—a jail-bird, Sir, if ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... cry, plaint; lungs; stentor. V. cry, roar, shout, bawl, brawl, halloo, halloa, hoop, whoop, yell, bellow, howl, scream, screech, screak^, shriek, shrill, squeak, squeal, squall, whine, pule, pipe, yaup^. cheer; hoot; grumble, moan, groan. snore, snort; grunt &c (animal sounds) 412. vociferate; raise up the voice, lift up the voice; call out, sing out, cry out; exclaim; rend the air; thunder at the top of one's voice, shout at the top of one's voice, shout at the pitch of one's ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... I hate to grumble, and I have, I believe, shouldered my share of the new taxes like a man, but I am not made of such stern stuff as to be superior to all human aid, and in my own case the mortification of non-combating, which ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various
... thought Cecil; but she was too well bred to grumble, and she had her great work to carry on of copying and illustrating ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... arrived at the station at Plum Creek, the coach was a little ahead of time, and the driver who was there to relieve ours commenced to grumble at the idea of having to start out before the regular hour. He found fault because we had come into the station so soon, and swore he could drive where our man could not "drag a halter-chain," as he claimed in his boasting. We at once took a dislike to him, ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... sister. "Three for Miss Garth. None for mamma. One for me. And the other six all for papa. You lazy old darling, you hate answering letters, don't you?" pursued Magdalen, dropping the postman's character and assuming the daughter's. "How you will grumble and fidget in the study! and how you will wish there were no such things as letters in the world! and how red your nice old bald head will get at the top with the worry of writing the answers; and how many of the answers you will leave until ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... There are harbour dues and regulations, and other taxes. But the people are not taxed—only the traders. When the copra tax was levied, I lowered the purchasing price accordingly. Then the people began to grumble, and Feathers of the Sun passed a new law, setting the old price back and forbidding any man to lower it. Me he fined two pounds and five pigs, it being well known that I possessed five pigs. You will find them entered in the ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... till Eustace came home alone, only just in time for a late dinner, and growled out rather crossly that Harold had chosen to walk home, and not to be waited for. Eustace himself was out of sorts and tired, eating little and hardly vouchsafing a word, except to grumble at us and the food, and though we heard Harold come in about nine o'clock, he did not come in, but went up ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... one time on marches, as night is the only time for cooking. The decrees of an order for a detail are inexorable. A soldier must take it as it comes, for none ever know but what the next duties may be even worse than the present. As a general rule, soldiers rarely ever grumble at any detail on the eve of an engagement, for sometimes it excuses them from a battle, and the old experienced veteran never ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... may grumble a little—but I'll be on the lookout for any move. I'll see to that. I'll teach 'em a lesson as to how far they can push this business of shorter hours and equal pay. It's the unskilled workers who are mostly affected, you understand, and they're not organized. If we can keep ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... from his surprise Croisset had passed swiftly through the door. The engineer called his name, but there came no response other than the rapidly retreating sound of the Northerner's moccasined feet. With a grumble of vexation he sank back on his pillows. The fresh excitement had set his head in a whirl again and a feverish heat mounted into his face. For a long time he lay with his eyes closed, trying to clear for himself the mystery of the preceding night. The one thought which obsessed ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... War-clerk, of Momoros, Dobsents, and such like: all intent to have Churches plundered, to have Reason adored, Suspects cut down, and the Revolution triumph. Perhaps carrying the matter too far? Danton was heard to grumble at the civic strophes; and to recommend prose and decency. Robespierre also grumbles that in overturning Superstition we did not mean to make a religion of Atheism. In fact, your Chaumette and Company constitute a kind of Hyper-Jacobinism, or rabid 'Faction des Enrages;' ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... It was, according to Lark's secret information, only the "smart and would-be smart set" who had combined to spring this mine upon the management. The rest grumbled no more than it was normal for all pleasure-pilgrims to grumble; and as, roughly speaking, the contented travellers were all going on to Palestine after a week's wild sightseeing in Cairo, the colonel might be allowed to continue his voyage without the interruption of ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... game the fellow excused himself on the ground of being a prisoner, and one of his guardians proceeded in the midst of the intense heat to carry my troublesome message. Prisoners have certainly little cause to grumble. [Frequent floggings little regarded.] The only inconvenience to which they are exposed are the floggings which the local authorities very liberally dispense by the dozens for the most trifling offences. Except the momentary bodily pain, however, these appear in most cases to make little ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... she became savage. Below, dreadfully near, she could hear the broom-swish of Aunt Bessie's voice, and the mop-pounding of Uncle Whittier's grumble. She had a reasonless dread that they would intrude on her, then a fear that she would yield to Gopher Prairie's conception of duty toward an Aunt Bessie and go down-stairs to be "nice." She felt the demand for standardized behavior coming in ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... straw. Mutiny had long been smouldering. The hardships of the voyage, the terrific Atlantic storms, the prospect of a long Antarctic winter of inaction on that wild Patagonian coast—these alone caused officers and men to grumble and to demand an immediate return ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... took lodgings in another part of the city, quite as poor a place, but there no one had the right to grumble at him. Still, because she was some relation to Mat, he gave Grandma Rugg full half of his money, but he never remained inside her doors longer ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... gives him the best of characters. He says the boy is thoroughly to be depended upon, and that his work is well done, even to cleaning the pigs; and, best of all, he is never heard to grumble." ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... and the door reply, The hall wake, yawn, and smile; the torpid stair Will grumble at our feet, the table cry: 'Fetch my belongings for me; I am bare.' A clatter! Something in the attic falls. A ghost has lifted up his robes and fled. The loitering shadows move along the walls; Then silence very slowly lifts his head. The starling with impatient screech has ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... the quiet and stable home life of an island people, have done more than anything to make the Englishman a deceptive personality to the outside eye. He has for centuries been permitted to grumble. There is no such confirmed grumbler—until he really has something to grumble at, and then no one who grumbles less. There is no such confirmed carper at the condition of his country, yet no one really ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... now," replied Zeb, "or you'd shovel dirt under fire to the last hour of your enlistment. I'd give grumblers like you something to grumble about. See here, fellows, I'm sick of this seditious talk in our mess. The Connecticut men are getting to be the talk of the army. You heard a squad of New Hampshire boys jeer at us to-day, and ask, 'When are ye going home to mother?' You ask, Zeke Watkins, ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... grumble a little. One poor fellow, with a bullet through his lungs, took high and strong ground against the meat:—"Oh! God love ye! how could a body eat it, swimming in fat? but the eggs, they was beautiful; and the toast ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... one of the foremost men in the city; he has broad and liberal ideas, and none of the jealousy of us Flemings that is so common among the citizens, although my countrymen more directly rival him in his trade than they do many others who grumble at us, though they are in no way injured ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... disaster, but a matter for sincere congratulation that the British prosperous and the British successful, to whom warning after warning has rained in vain from the days of Ruskin, Carlyle, Matthew Arnold, should be called to account at last in their own household. They will grumble, they will be very angry, but in the end, I believe, they will rise to the opportunities of their inconvenience. They will shake off their intellectual lassitude, take over again the public and private affairs they have come to leave ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... but can you say that these proofs are not in my hands? Should you, however, desire to buy them, you are at liberty to do so. I give you the first option, and yet you grumble." ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... Libby, and affording food for speculation to Mrs. Barnes over her knitting. In the winter Captain Ephraim polished him up in his old tricks, and taught him some new ones. But by this time he had grown so big that Mrs. Barnes began to grumble at him for taking up too much room. He was, as ever, a model of confiding amiability, in spite of his ample jaws and formidable teeth. But one day toward spring he showed that this good nature of his would not stand the test of seeing ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... humorous, wild or tame, Lofty or low, 'tis all the same, Too haughty or too humble; And every editorial wight Has nought to do but what is right, And let the grumblers grumble. ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... ashamed to name him, for fear you should be angry with me for doing so. It is—it is the pig! The resemblance is not exactly a flattering one to you, perhaps, but we are all alike, and it would be worse than foolish to grumble at being created as we are. Moreover, there is one difference; the pig, who thinks of nothing but eating, has a very much larger stomach than we have, which is some consolation, at ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... that you had been jingling in your hand. You are to experience some difficulty in finding it again, move about a little to force any one that may be lurking by the garage to retreat around the corner. Grumble a bit and make a little noise; but you are not to overdo it—a couple of minutes at the outside is enough, by that time I shall be under the car seat. You will then run the machine out to the street and ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... now changed, and not for the better. Still, if any one has no right to grumble, it is the archaeologist, because the building of these suburban quarters has placed more knowledge at his disposal than could have been gathered before in the lapse of a century. I quote only one instance. Famous in the annals of Roman excavations are those made ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... Scold, find fault, grumble,—Mr Hasnip was just as if his breakfast had not agreed with him because he got up too early; and at last I was back in my seat, with my face burning, my head aching, and a general feeling of misery ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... now so fully occupied that she could not go out to work in families, as she had been wont to do, but the money paid by her boarders more than compensated for that. Her heart, as well as her hands, was quite full, and having no time to brood over her fallen condition, she did not worry and grumble so much as formerly, and was happier than she had ever been since the doctor died and left her to battle with the world alone. And thus she learned to realize the ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... effect was to stretch him out upon the deck senseless and bleeding. The sound of his fall disturbed one or two of the rest—all of whom were sprawled out inertly upon the foredeck, in the midst of empty and overturned bottles and pannikins—just sufficiently to cause them to raise their heads and grumble out a few unintelligible words; but we had no difficulty whatever with them, and in less than half an hour we had the whole of them securely bound, hand and foot, and lying at our mercy. Having reduced ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... life why they should get a meal ready merely because a timepiece says twelve o'clock. Let them wait until a man's hungry," he would grumble. Then, arrived at the cabin, he would be all courtesy ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... expect to be heard and despatched at all hours and at all seasons, come what will, attending only to their own affairs; and if the poor devil of a judge does not hear and despatch them, either because it is not in his power, or it happens to be an unseasonable time for giving audience, then they grumble and backbite, gnaw him to the very bones, and even bespatter his whole generation. Ignorant man of business! foolish man of business! be not in such a violent hurry; wait for the proper season and conjuncture, and come not at meals and sleeping-time; for judges are made of flesh and blood, and ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... 'March'—and you sha'n't be allowed to put your feet in London a day earlier," said Mary, laying her head on Catharine's knee. "You needn't grumble. Next week you'll have your fells and your becks—as much Westmoreland as ever you want. Only ten days more here," and this time it was Mary who sighed, ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ever the Downs have come to stand as a symbol of an England half lost, which might seem to be passing away, but that is, as indeed these hills assure us, eternal and indestructible, the very England of our hearts, which cannot die. There are some doubtless who grumble at this invasion and are fearful lest even this last nobility should be destroyed by the multitude or this last sanctuary desecrated by the rapacity of the rich, or this last silence broken by the brutal noise of the motor car. But the Downs are too strong, they have seen too many civilisations ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... fairer. We must hope that yesterday's curious little moon may have changed our luck. All day it continued finer, and in the afternoon the wind freshened, and shifted a point or two for the better, sending us along, at higher speed and right on our course; so that we must not grumble, though the motion was ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... the woods to Grandpa Grumble's house; for, sure enough, Bunny and Susan had gone to bed and turned out all ...
— Snubby Nose and Tippy Toes • Laura Rountree Smith
... into the infinite aeons. Everything in this world is but temporary: why should temporary help be undervalued? Would you not pull out a drowning bather because he will bathe again to-morrow? The only question is—DOES IT HELP? Jonah might grumble at the withering of his gourd, but if it had not grown at all, would he ever have preached to Nineveh? It set the laird on a Pisgah-rock, whence he gazed into ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... the men of the column in the roadway seem of a luminous quality. It imparted to the heavy infantry overcoats a new colour, a kind of blue which was so pale that a regiment might have been merely a long, low shadow in the mist. However, a muttering, one part grumble, three parts joke, hovered in the air above the thick ranks, and blended in an undertoned roar, which was the voice ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... fine weather i' Lincoln," was Dan's dry answer. "Up at smithy, it's none so bad neither—yet. Just a touch of thunder we had this morning,—a bit of a grumble i' th' distance like: but I've known worser storms a deal. ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... and utterly crushing the power of Charles in the field. Among the wounded on the parliamentary side was the City's old friend Skippon, "shot under the arme six inches into his flesh." The pain of having his wound dressed caused him to groan. "Though I groane, I grumble not," said he to the by-standers, and asked for a chaplain to come and ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... its ease at home and earning extravagantly high war-time wages while middle-aged bread-winners in England were compulsorily called to the colours; but the marvellously easy-going disposition of Englishmen submitted to the injustice with no more than a legitimate grumble. ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... the very mildest beer, and live on very plain food, and never lose your temper, and go to church every Sunday, and always remain content in the position in which Providence has placed you, and never grumble nor swear; and always keep your clothes decent, and rise early, and use every opportunity of improving yourself, you will get on very well, and never come ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... "50" in a report. We had to stand back, and see about one quarter of our number march out and away home. We could not complain at this—much as we wanted to go ourselves, since there could be no question that these poor fellows deserved the precedence. We did grumble savagely, however, at Captain Bowes's venality, in selling out chances to moneyed men, since these were invariably those who were best prepared to withstand the hardships of imprisonment, as they were mostly new men, and all had good clothes and blankets. ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... "What call has Parmiter to have such a desperate spite against Burke? He got a lickin', in course, but what's a lickin' to a Englishman? Rot it all, the youngster en't a bad matey. He've led a dog's life, that he have, and I've never heard a grumble, nary one; ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... meat, all on credit. The bills increased everywhere at the rate of three and four francs a day. She had not paid a sou to the furniture dealer nor to the three comrades, the mason, the carpenter and the painter. All these people commenced to grumble, and she was no longer greeted with the same ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... of the room above the arch of the caravansary waddled to the far end of the cloister, and sat down, cross-legged, to grumble to himself and scratch his paunch at intervals. His master, low-browed and irritable, continued to strike the stone column with his cane. He was in ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... they think?" Her cheeks were unexplainably scarlet. "If I choose to trust you to take care of me, why should they grumble? And I won't have to spend the night. You don't know how strong I am. I'm very strong. I don't feel tired. We'll go back by moonlight. There's ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... when the Americans began to grumble. "You must go at once, or take the consequences," he exclaimed; and the prisoners saw that it ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... not hesitate to employ all the means in his power to aid them. In return, the soldier professes for his officer an affection, a devotion, a sort of filial respect. Discipline, he knows, must be severe, and he does not grumble at its penalties. In battle, he does not abandon his chief; he watches over him, will die for his safety, will not let him fall into the hands of the enemy if wounded. At the bivouac he makes the officer's fire, though his own should die for want of fuel; cares for his horse, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... As for food, we grumble at times, just as people at home are grumbling at the Savoy, or Lockhart's. It is the Briton's habit so to do. But in moments of repletion we are fain to confess that the organisation of our commissariat is wonderful. Of ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... duties for all. There are opportunities everywhere. Every one of them is a test of love. Brother, sister, how does your love stand the test? Love will not grumble; it will not complain; it will not shrink from service. Do you love as fervently ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... Lincoln sent for Senator Zack Chandler of Michigan, and proposed a compromise. "General Rosecrans," said he, "has a great many friends; he fought the battle of Stone River and won a brilliant victory, and his advocates begin to grumble about his treatment. Now, I will tell you what I have been thinking about. If you will confirm Schofield in the Senate, I will remove him from the command in Missouri and send him down to Sherman. That will satisfy the radicals. Then I will send Rosecrans ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... have some saving crumbs of consolation for those who laugh at fate, and look good-humouredly for them; life's only evil to him who wears it awkwardly, and philosophic resignation works as many miracles as Harlequin; grumble, and you go to the dogs in a wretched style; make mots on your own misery, and you've no idea how pleasant a trajet even drifting "to the ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... you to make fun of me," cried Esau, throwing himself down. "Now then, if you want to quarrel again, go it. I shan't grumble." ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... Brussels where they will feed you, light you, sleep you, wait on you, for two francs a day. Withered old ladies, ancient governesses, who will teach you for forty centimes an hour, gather round these ricketty tables, wolf up the thin soup, grumble at the watery coffee, help themselves with unladylike greediness to the potato pie. It must need careful housewifery to keep these poor creatures on two francs a day and make a profit for yourself. So "Madame," the much- grumbled-at, who ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... victory of Bunker's Hill (as we used to call it in those days), the nation flushed out in its usual hot-headed anger. The talk was all against the philosophers after that, and the people were most indomitably loyal. It was not until the land-tax was increased, that the gentry began to grumble a little; but still my party in the West was very strong against the Tiptoffs, and I determined to take the ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... straight, nowadays; and even God in heaven creates His things no longer straight, and does not shrink from letting the peach-stones grow crooked. But no matter—what God does is well done," added the emperor, crossing himself devoutly; "even an emperor must not censure it, and must not grumble when his cup is not straight because God gave the peach- stone a hump. Well, perhaps, I may change it yet, and ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... comin' round him to get your daughters to keep house for him, and your sons edicated and made priests of; but now that the child takes a ginteel relish for beef and mutton, and wants to be respected, ye are mane an' low spirited enough to grumble about it." ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... thinking that to grumble in the presence of that rich, despotic personality would require ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... satisfactory or hard-working officers. Yet they and their like continued to get advancement. Ordinances might be passed from time to time, requiring age or length of service, but ordinances in old France did not apply to the great. The poorer nobility might grumble, but the court families continued to get the good places. The lieutenant-colonels and the other working officers of the army had but little chance of rising to be general officers. Even before the order of ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... your fetter, for it is the only thing that makes life worth living. None are happy, none are good, none are respectable, that are not gyved like us. And I must tell you, besides, it is very dangerous talk. If you grumble of your iron, you will have no luck; if you ever take it off, you will be instantly smitten by ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... almost absurd: like Father's story of the soldier who greeted his master every morning in India with 'Another hot day, sirr.' We thought if we got one good day out of the three we were to be on the road we wouldn't grumble, and here it goes on and on.... We must come back to Shrewsbury, Davie. It deserves more than just to be ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... life; and there is now a decorum in vice, a respectability among the disreputable, a pure spirit of Philistinism among the waifs and strays of thy Bohemia. For lo! thy very gravediggers talk politics; and thy castaways kneel upon new graves, to discuss the cost of the monument and grumble at the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... make Ned's stay a sort of continuous fete to everybody. She put on no airs over the preference shown her, and was altogether so kind and friendly and sweet that no one could quarrel with her even in thought, and Johnnie herself had to forgive her, and be contented with a little whispered grumble to Dorry now and then over the inconvenience ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... Satisfaction, and fell to work might and main: and continued at it for near two years together, felling Timber, and fetching it out of the Woods, laying Foundations, hewing Stone, till they were almost killed with labour. And being wrought quite tyred, they began to accuse and grumble at one another for having been the occasion of all this toil. After they had laboured thus a long while, and were all discouraged, and the People quiet, the King sent word to them to leave off. And now it lies unfinished, all the Timber brought in, rots upon ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... hold them, and who talked of erecting a statue to the liberty-loving Irishwoman when Italy should be free. Dublin naturally seemed rather dull after all the excitement and delights of a London season, but Lady Morgan, though she loved to grumble at her native city, had not yet thought of turning absentee herself. Her popularity with her countrymen (those of her own way of thinking) had suffered no diminution, and her national celebrity was proved by the following verse from a ballad which ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... behaved as an American People's Club knows so well how to behave; dispersed quietly, without a grumble, or a recollection of the half value of the tickets lost. Miss Kent's carriage drove rapidly from a side door. In two hours, she was on board the night train down ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... primaries, who speak of politics to their neighbors, as members and parts of the machine, and regard only those as good and reliable American citizens who take no part whatever, simply reserving the right to grumble after the work has been done by others. Not much can be accomplished in politics without an organization, and the moment an organization is formed, and, you might say, just a little before, leading spirits will be developed. Certain men will take the lead, and the weaker men will ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... some of the crew began to grumble at the presence of the passengers. Food was running low, and a certain amount of care was required to prevent them from escaping. The upshot of it was that your parents were put ashore on Double Island, with a fairly good amount ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... or painting despises the ladies and gentlemen who treat those arts as fashionable accomplishments. An author was, according to him, a man who turned out books as a bricklayer turns out houses or a tailor coats. So long as he supplied a good article and got a fair price, he was a fool to grumble, and a humbug to ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... you recollect they used to play at cricket In the bye-streets years ago, With a broomstick for a bat, a coat for wicket? Now the Bobbies hunt them so! The old ladies grumble at their skipping; The old gents object to their tip-cat; So they squat midst slums that shine like dirty dripping, Not knowing what the dickens to be at. And the young Town Children, O my brothers, Do you ask them why they stand Making mud-pies, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... linnets, or "redheads," who sing their sweet, merry tunes all summer, and if they do take a cherry or two the farmer should not grumble. They destroy many bugs and caterpillars and eat weed-seeds that might trouble the fruit-grower more than the missing cherries. The yellow warbler, sometimes called the wild canary, flits through bush and tree and trills its gay notes in town and country. Song-sparrows, ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... he had never dreamed—and he began to see that the only reason these men could do these things was that they dared to do them. Well, he too—he and Allan—would dare some things...He paid a dollar for their lunch without a grumble, and again they took ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... back to the job they found the 'coddy' in the kitchen, looking for them and he began to talk and grumble, but the Semi-drunk soon shut him up: he told him he could either have a drink out of one of the bottles or a punch in the bloody nose—whichever he liked! Or if he did not fancy either of these alternatives, he could ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... trawler discharging fish in the Humber on a wet December morning is no more desolating than was the look of Celestine under the mountains of Bougie; and Bougie, if you have a memory for the coloured posters, is in the blue Mediterranean. But do I grumble? I do not. With all the world but slops, cold iron, and squalls of sleet, I ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... it is easy to grumble, and especially in a cheerful, open, light, and smiling city, crammed with works Of art, ancient and modern, its architecture a study of all styles, and its foaming beer, said by antiquarians to be a good deal ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... in these things; but he did not for a moment think that any one acting with him would have dealings with Glump. On the Saturday morning, when the case was still going on, to the great detriment of Baron Grumble's domestic happiness, Glump had not yet been caught. It seemed that the man had no wife, no relative, no friend. The woman at whose house he lodged declared that he often went and came after this fashion. The respect with which ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... dare say you ain't; but if she's willing, you ain't no occasion to grumble, 's I see. She ain't a-going to hear of your starting out hot-foot, 's if she wouldn't keep you. It'd look bad for the reputation of ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... many of them to-night, John, but I saw some goods behind the cart, just now; and though they give more trouble, perhaps, still they pay as well; so we have no reason to grumble, have we? Besides, you have been delivering, I dare ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... especially "Knees Up!" seems to have been of a pretty severe kind, for it draws from Baden-Powell the exclamation, "I'd like to kill him who invented it—but it does us all a power of good." That is the saying of the old soldier. In the barrack-room it is considered the right thing to grumble, or "grouse" as it is called, while one is working hardest. Thus the man with a jack-boot on his left arm and a polishing brush in his right hand—going like lightning,—the sweat running down his red ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... assorted, ill cooked, cold, and calculated to make one extremely ill, but no doubt costing a great deal of money, time, and anxiety to the givers of the feast. Then we fall to grumbling, and are discontented with having too much, but having acquired a habit of expecting it we grumble still more if there is not as much ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... Now, when a wight Sits up all night Ill-natured jokes devising, And all his wiles Are met with smiles, It's hard, there's no disguising! Oh, don't the days seem lank and long When all goes right and nothing goes wrong, And isn't your life extremely flat With nothing whatever to grumble at! ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... to grumble and complain, It's jest as cheap and easy to rejoice; When God sorts out the weather and sends rain, Why, rain's ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... by way of punishment for his having dared to purchase the coat of one of the servants belonging to the electoral household, for he must know that it is not the lackey's but electoral property. But if the Jew ventures to grumble, then say to him that I shall have him watched and his false dealings inquired into. When you have obtained the coat, carry it to the master of the wardrobe, and tell him to release Jocelyn from the guardhouse and permit him to wear ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... say, the best shot of the party. We had been unsuccessful, however, on several occasions, and though there was no famine in the camp, we had very little meat fit to eat; while our black attendants were beginning to grumble greatly at being placed on short commons. This made us more than ever anxious to get some game. We had scoured the country towards the south for some distance, and falling in with no animals, we were induced to proceed further off than usual. The country over which we were passing ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... "If you have the sense to keep out of his way until he has cooled down a bit, and cook him decent dinners in the meanwhile. I've spoken to him very strongly about you, and I don't think he'll dare to push matters to extremities, although he may grumble a bit. If he catches you, and you find his temper particularly bad, just mention the dog Gelert to him. I told him the story this morning and it produced a great ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... there, missy, an' its only half what he desarves the whole of us together could give him, but shure, if we give him all we're able, an' our good intinshions along wid that, he won't be the man to grumble ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... right to make a will. In our State she can hold bonds and mortgages as her own. In our State she has a right to her own property. She can not sell it, though, if it is real estate, simply because the moment she marries her husband has a life-time right. The woman does not grumble at that; but still when he dies owning real estate, she gets only the rental value of one-third, which is called the widow's dower. Now I think the man ought to have the rental value of one-third of the woman's maiden property or real estate, and it ought to be called the widower's ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... but though a very unbending viceroy, a must from the reigning baronet had a potent effect on Markham, whether it was for good or evil. He might grumble, but he never disobeyed, and the boy he was used to scold and order had found that Morville intonation of the must, which took away all idea of resistance. He still, ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Dickie had been allowed to stroke the kitten on Nurse's lap; but it was not a cheerful carriageful that arrived shortly afterwards at the Vicarage, every one seemed to have something to grumble at ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... always right, and it is wicked to grumble. Still, if you saw what a hole it was,—past ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... alluding to those happy days in which another love was paramount. Camilla could not endure this with an equal mind. "Bella, dear," she said, "we know what all that means. He has made his choice, and if I am satisfied with what he does now, surely you need not grumble." Miss Stanbury's illness had undoubtedly been a great source of contentment to the family at Heavitree, as they had all been able to argue that her impending demise was the natural consequence of her great ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... the good woman. "But, there! how the baggage men do grumble at having to lug up big trunks ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... paragraphs you can easily scatter about; these attract booksellers, and booksellers will give advertisements where they find their works are noticed. Above all things, write cautiously concerning all localities; if you praise much, a hundred will grumble; if you are severe, one only may complain, but twenty will shake the head. You will have friends on one side of the water desiring one thing, friends on the other side desiring the reverse, and in seeking to please one you vex ten. An honest heart, a clear ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... troubled himself. Indeed, he had become so ailing and languid of late, that even the squire made only very faint objections to his desire for frequent change of scene, though formerly he used to grumble so much at the necessary expenditure ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... themselves and altogether unnoticeably, of course, to the casual glance, they cautiously right themselves; or, more correctly, fade until they grow a belly unto themselves, and acquire podagra and diseases of the liver. Then they grumble at the whole world; say that they were not understood, that their time was the time of sacred ideals. While in the family they are despots and not infrequently ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... extras to be audited, as possibly would have been the case had a hard-headed designer like Mr. Pierce been employed. The committee felt itself entitled to the congratulations of the community. Nor was the community on the whole disposed to grumble, for home talent had been employed by the architect; under rigorous supervision, to be sure, so that poor material and slap-dash workmanship were out of the question. Still, payments had been prompt, and Benham was able to ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... quieted down to a low-voiced grumble. He was letting the world know that the arrangement was not pleasing and that he didn't intend to suffer in silence. Cameras began to snap, recording for the folks back home the undignified ride of the lady tourist on the ungainly ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... material and social science to aggressive ends, and at last when she felt the time was ripe she let loose the new monster that she had made of war to cow the spirit of mankind. She set the thing trampling through Belgium. She cannot grumble if at last it comes home, stranger and more dreadful even than she made it, trampling the German towns and fields with German blood upon it and its ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... Jack had carried the day captive in his audience at the mast, yet more than thirty-six hours elapsed ere anything official was heard of the "liberty" his shipmates so earnestly coveted. Some of the people began to growl and grumble. ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... order with a grumble, looked from his unreliable horse to the frosty roadway, and was about to shake his head in definite negation when Max cajoled him with a more ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... his father. "He'd talk the hind leg off an elephant. When things need settling, I just settle them myself and leave him to grumble away ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... of the family, still obstinate, refused to profit by the old man's advice, and declared he was not right, and that he only liked to grumble ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... Do you grumble? Do you demur? (Exit servant hastily.) Do my very slaves conspire against me? Heaven, earth, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... diction into which we have now fallen, after all our abuse of the far more manly and sincere "poetic diction" of the eighteenth century; they will find no loitering by the way to argue and moralise, and grumble at Providence, and show off the author's own genius and sensibility; they will find, in short, two real works of art, earnest, melodious, self-forgetful, knowing clearly what they want to say, saying it in the shortest, the simplest, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... use may be forgiven. "The daughter's tragedy," I muttered, and considering it, philosophising according to my wont, I tried to reconcile myself to this visit. "After all," I said, "I am on my own business, therefore I have no right to grumble." ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... Church preferment he had none; Nay, all his hope of that was gone; He felt that he content must be With drudging-in a curacy. Indeed, on ev'ry Sabbath-day, Through eight long miles he took his way, To preach, to grumble, and to pray; To cheer the good, to warn the sinner, And if he got it,—eat a dinner: To bury these, to christen those, And marry such fond folks as chose To change the tenor of their life, And risk the matrimonial strife. Thus were his weekly journeys made, 'Neath summer suns and wintry ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... was one of the worst in the kingdom, the subscriptions were irregular, the kennel servants were ill-paid, the poor cottagers never received payment for losses when Reynard visited their hen-coops, and even the farmers began to grumble at needless damage to their hedges, and to refuse to "walk" the puppies. But the new Master had changed all this. He bore his share, but no more, of the expense caused by the reforms he at once introduced, and he reminded his proud yet stingy ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... the order with a grumble, looked from his unreliable horse to the frosty roadway, and was about to shake his head in definite negation when Max cajoled him ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... help thinking that to grumble in the presence of that rich, despotic personality ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... rarely out of her sight after their first meeting, and the ridiculous excuse she gave to her husband's family was, she feared he would be kidnapped and made a Cossack of! And young Lord Cressett, her husband, began to grumble concerning her intimacy with a man old enough to be her grandfather. As if the age were the injury! He seemed to think it so, and vowed he would shoot the old depredator dead, if he found him on the grounds of Cressett: 'like vermin,' he ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... I said before, you've got to do one thing or the other. You have to trust Longworth or to go on without him. Now, for Heaven's sake make up your mind which it is to be, and don't grumble.' ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... than we do, to grumble or find fault, but we hate just as bad to have our boats detained beyond a reasonable time, at your place; and when our boats leave here for your place, we look for them back at a certain time; and if they ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... houses, so that they are not blown away. It was made to serve man, and it works without a grumble. ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... weaker than the one who has provided the dinner, who must wait until their master or father is done before they have a chance to take a bite. But, as you may see by this picture, they do not wait very patiently. They roar and growl and grumble until their turn comes. ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... bad thing to be a falconer. But if you would rather grumble than to listen to me, ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... me better," said Will. "I will never grumble on that subject again." There was a gentleness in his tone which came from the unutterable contentment of perceiving—what Dorothea was hardly conscious of—that she was travelling into the remoteness of pure pity and loyalty towards her ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... we do not grumble with our good fortune," said Arthur, laughing; "we shall have plenty to do, ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston
... of dissatisfaction finally began to appear, and, after the nature of such things, they developed with marvellous rapidity. People began to grumble about "contraction of the currency." In every country there arose a party which demanded "free money." Demagogues pointed to the brief reign of paper money after the demonetization of gold as a happy period, when the people had enjoyed ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... find in the sea, or that may drift on the shore. I've a whole island that I may honestly call my own, a box of candles, plenty of matches, four cans of oil, a lamp and a lantern, a good boat, and lots of other things besides; so I am pretty well off, after all, and ought not to grumble at the hard luck ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... That's the wife of the director of the local treasury! Bow, I tell you," he would grumble insistently. ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... first railway train, speed ten miles an hour; now we grumble at fifty. In a few years we shall have an aerial Marathon, with the circumference of the ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... man said, opening the gate. "It is late for a discharge; but I don't suppose the prisoner will grumble at that." ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... the early days of March, 1917, began to bear fruit. In spite of the warnings of the few loyal labor leaders still at liberty, the workers began to grumble and to talk revolt. Their stomachs were empty. On February 27, 1917, when the Duma went into session again, 300,000 workingmen had gone out on strike in Petrograd. The air was charged with electricity. Everybody realized that the critical moment was approaching: the final battle between ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... was kept chained in the lines, and every day Langur Dass, the low-caste hillman in Dugan's employ, grubbed grass for her in the valleys. All night long, except the regular four hours of sleep, he would hear her grumble and rumble and mutter discontent that her little son shared ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... held clear and bright and frosty, bitterly cold, everything crisp and sparkling in the sun; but there was no sign of fresh snow, and the ski-ers began to grumble. On the mountains was an icy crust that made "running" dangerous; they wanted the frozen, dry, and powdery snow that makes for speed, renders steering easier and falling less severe. But the keen east wind showed no signs of changing for a whole ten days. Then, suddenly, there ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... arriving without a train appearing, my men began to grumble. In the excitement of this adventure they had omitted to prepare any food, and they were not now allowed to make fires, because the smoke evolved in culinary operations would have been immediately noticed by the enemy's outpost. We ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... should become a first-rate singer. The pupil was apt, the master was exceedingly skilful; and, accordingly, Mrs. Walker's progress was very remarkable: although, for her part, honest Mrs. Crump, who used to attend her daughter's lessons, would grumble not a little at the new system, and the endless exercises which she, Morgiana, was made to go through. It was very different in HER time, she said. Incledon knew no music, and who could sing so well now? Give her a good English ballad: ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... campaigning had made in him. He had fought in Italy, in Spain, in the long blockade of the Pompeians at Dyrrachium. He had learned the art of war in no gentle school. He had ceased even so much as to grumble inwardly at the hardships endured by the hard-pressed Caesarian army. The campaign was not going well. Pompeius had broken through the blockade; and now the two armies had been executing tedious manoeuvres, fencing for a vantage-ground before ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... or "redheads," who sing their sweet, merry tunes all summer, and if they do take a cherry or two the farmer should not grumble. They destroy many bugs and caterpillars and eat weed-seeds that might trouble the fruit-grower more than the missing cherries. The yellow warbler, sometimes called the wild canary, flits through bush and tree and trills its gay notes in town and ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... unkind of me to suspend my answer to your question—for indeed I have not been very well, nor have had much heart for saying so. This implacable weather! this east wind that seems to blow through the sun and moon! who can be well in such a wind? Yet for me, I should not grumble. There has been nothing very bad the matter with me, as there used to be—I only grow weaker than usual, and learn my lesson of being mortal, in a corner—and then all this must end! April is coming. There ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... taking that for granted, wrote more largely of less tangible things. She remembered that she had said that life, if it was no more than its present appearances, was "utter nonsense." She went back to that. "One says things like that," she wrote "and not for a moment does one believe it. I grumble at my life, I seem to be always weakly and fruitlessly fighting my life, and I love it. I would not be willingly dead—for anything. I'd rather be an old match-woman selling matches on a freezing ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... I detest mobs, especially such ones as they delight in—greasy Jews, hairy Germans, Mulatto-looking Italians, squalling children, that run between your legs and throw you down, or wipe the butter off their bread on your clothes; Englishmen that will grumble, and Irishmen that will fight; priests that won't talk, and preachers that will harangue; women that will be carried about, because they won't lie still and be quiet; silk men, cotten men, bonnet men, iron men, trinket men, and every sort of shopmen, ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... were disposed to grumble at the small part they seemed to be playing in the great tussle in which England was engaged, the authorities were satisfied that for so small a town to have kept occupied during the first critical month of the war 10,000—and ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... miserable now. We were weak and cold and wretched. There wasn't a thing to eat or drink on the raft. The fire had given no time to get anything. Some of the men began to grumble. It would have been better, they said, to have started off as soon as they found out the fire, and have had time to put something to eat and drink on the raft. It was all wasted time to try to save the ship. It did no good, after all. The captain ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... seamen, that as soon as conveyed on board the British men of war, they are examined as to the length of time they have been at sea; and according to the knowledge and experience they appear to have, they are stationed; and if they grumble at the duty assigned them, they are called mutinous rascals, and threatened with the cat; the warrant officers are charged to watch them closely, lest they should attempt to pervert the crew, and to prevent them from sending letters from ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... If we mention it with favour we may be regarded, however unjustly, as the advocate of savages, satyrs, and pure sensuality. If we condemn it, we either go over to the Puritans or we join those who are wont to come to table with no edge to their appetites and who therefore grumble at all good fare. There can be no doubt that the value of healthy innocent voluptuousness, like the value of health itself, must have been greatly discounted by all those who, resenting their inability ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... consumed his small savings. Since the ruin of St. Domingo and the pillaging of grocers' shops colonial products are dear; the carpenter, the mason, the locksmith, the market-porter, no longer has his early cup of coffee,[2521] while they grumble every morning at the thought of their patriotism being rewarded ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... go almost everywhere—at least, there are only just a few houses to which we are not asked. But those few make all the difference. It is so humiliating to feel that one is not in quite the best society. However, Lady Kirkbank is a dear, good old thing, and I am not going to grumble about her.' ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... sharply. "I see how it is as well as anybody can do. I knew how it was when I left the colony. Don't be alarmed about me. Do you think I am to be turned against my own flesh and blood by finding out their follies; or to grumble at the place God put me in?—Nothing of the sort! I know the kind of situation perfectly—but one may make the best of it, you know: and for that reason ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... carts moved slowly by. One or two stopped before the shop, and the carters offered vegetables for sale. The old woman would have nothing to say to them, but waved them on irritably. Three had thus stopped and again proceeded, and an impatient grumble broke from the old lady as a fourth, a covered wagon, drew up before ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... present case her cousins, by their ill-temper and fretfulness, had quarrelled with each other; and when Dinah would not let them play—as, indeed, they justly deserved to be punished—they did nothing but grumble and cry the whole day, and were so conscious of their bad behaviour as to be afraid of seeing their mother; while Miss Placid, serene in her own innocence, entertained herself for some time with looking at the horse above mentioned, and afterwards with pricking it, till ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... butler, and served so well in rehearsals that Pierre could only grumble. One afternoon she superintended the comedy. She found a thousand faults with him, so many, in fact, that Pierre did not understand what it meant, and became possessed with the vague idea that she was hitting him over the groom's shoulder. He did not like it; and later, when they were ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... grow aweary of the burdens I am bearin', An' I grumble when I'm footsore at the rough road I am farin', But I strap my knapsack tighter till I feel the leather bind me, An' I'm glad to bear the burdens for the ones who come behind me. It's for them that ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... told, have been entering the houses of private citizens, taking whatever they saw fit, and committing many outrages. I trust, however, they have not been doing so badly as the people would have us believe. The latter are all disposed to grumble; and if a hungry soldier squints wistfully at a chicken, some one is ready to complain that the fowls are in danger, and that they are the property of a lone woman, a widow, with nothing under the sun to eat but chickens. In nine cases out of ten ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... to enter for your cash, smash, crash, Past drowsy Charley, in a deep sleep, creep, But frightened by Policeman B 3, flee, And while they're going, whisper low, "No go!" Now puss, while folks are in their beds, treads leads. And sleepers waking, grumble—"Drat that cat!" Who in the gutter caterwauls, squalls, mauls Some feline foe, and screams ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... considered prosperous. This money goes for extras at the table, for baseball equipments, or for company mascots. The sergeant-major usually has charge of this disbursement, and the soldiers, though they grumble at his orders, can not help respecting him. The sergeant-major has been seasoned in the service. He is a ripe old fellow, and a warrior to the core. The company cook is also an important personage. It was the old cook at Balingasag—I think that he had served for twenty ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... them find time, even on week-days, to assist at the most holy Sacrifice of the Mass. In such congregations there is indeed Catholic life. These pious Catholics carry the blessing of heaven with them wherever they go. Amid all the cares and troubles of life they are gay and cheerful, whilst others grumble and are sad. The religious doctrines and practices learned in youth, can seldom or never be blotted out. The question of Catholic schools is a question of making the country Catholic. If this means be neglected, all other ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... here this day week, and I shall grumble at his excessive caution...The public may well say, if such a man dare not or will not speak out his mind, how can we who are ignorant form even a guess on the subject? Lyell was pleased when I told him lately that you thought that language might be ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... an old man were mumbling complainingly to himself. She smiled coldly. It was very like Nicky Viner—it was a habit of his to talk to himself, she remembered. And, also, she had never heard Nicky Viner do anything else but grumble and complain. ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... fellow. We're all disagreeable and grumble when we're knocked over. That's only natural. Children are cross when they're unwell, and I suppose we're only big children. ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... consisted of an imaginary dialogue between Cato and Laelius. We found the first portion rather heavy, and retired a few moments for refreshment (pocula quaedam vini).—All want to reach old age, says Cato, and grumble when they get it; therefore they are donkeys.—The lecturer will allow us to say that he is the donkey; we know we shall grumble at old age, but we want to live through youth and manhood, IN SPITE of the troubles we shall ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... close, the thermometer is at 109 degrees in the shade, and everything one touches seems to be at melting point! Unfortunately we have had all our cool things for our journey, and they are too dirty to wear in a "live" town. These three last days are the only days we have had to grumble at the heat; and, I expect, if we bad been out at the farm, quietly doing our various works, we should not have felt it so much; but a tent on a hot day is like a ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... doing well, but not well enough for that. Next year, if I live, you will be able to have a carriage. Don't begin to grumble, Honoria. I have got L150 to spare, and if you care to come round to a jeweller's you can spend it on ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... are worthy of record. On pitch-dark nights in pouring rain the men, wet to the skin, covered with mud and filth, without a smoke, groping about in the dark to find a likely stone, carried on the work in silence; and when the word was passed along to knock off work, they "turned in" without a grumble into a wet bivouac. There was no complaining, and the men were never required by their officers to bring along the stones faster. The only noise that broke the stillness of the night was the incessant ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... leaden skies of a Swedish December day before the first snow has fallen. It made him long for sunlight, and the parties brought it to some extent. Then care and caution were forgotten, although his father might grumble before and after. Then the daily routine was broken, and Granny became cynically but actively interested, bent above all on seeing that "the ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... chiefs and leaders of the Creeks; and the Americans fondly hoped that it would end hostilities. It did nothing of the kind. Though the terms were very favorable to the Indians, so much so as to make the frontiersmen grumble, the Creeks scornfully repudiated the promises made on their behalf by their authorized representatives. Their motive in going to war, and keeping up the war, was not so much anger at the encroachments of the whites, as the eager thirst for glory, scalps, and plunder, to ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... day's work (our guns and the remainder of our tents being just issued), an order came from Beaufort that we should be ready in the evening to unload a steamboat's cargo of boards, being some of those captured by them a few weeks since, and now assigned for their use. I wondered if the men would grumble at the night-work; but the steamboat arrived by seven, and it was bright moonlight when they went at it. Never have I beheld such a jolly scene of labor. Tugging these wet and heavy boards over a bridge of boats ashore, then ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... was a shepherd who lived among the mountains with his wife and children; and so very poor was he that he often found it hard to give his family enough to satisfy their hunger. But he did not grumble; he only worked the harder; and his wife, though she had scarcely any furniture, and never a chance of a new dress, kept the house so clean, and the old clothes so well mended, that, all unknown to herself, she rose high in the favour of the ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... the same urgency, writes from Missolonghi,—"The Greek ship sent for your Lordship has returned; your arrival was anticipated, and the disappointment has been great indeed. The Prince is in a state of anxiety, the Admiral looks gloomy, and the sailors grumble aloud." He adds at the end, "I walked along the streets this evening, and the people asked me after Lord Byron !!!" In a Letter to the London Committee of the same date, Colonel Stanhope says, "All are looking forward to Lord Byron's ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... meat in the world. No marvel though that saucy, stubborn generation, the Jews, were forbidden it; for what would they have done, well pamper'd with fat pork, that durst murmur at their Maker out of garlick and onions? 'Slight! fed with it, the whoreson strummel-patch'd, goggle-eyed grumble-dories, would have gigantomachised — RE-ENTER GEORGE WITH WINE. Well said, my ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... Zack Chandler of Michigan, and proposed a compromise. "General Rosecrans," said he, "has a great many friends; he fought the battle of Stone River and won a brilliant victory, and his advocates begin to grumble about his treatment. Now, I will tell you what I have been thinking about. If you will confirm Schofield in the Senate, I will remove him from the command in Missouri and send him down to Sherman. That will satisfy the radicals. Then I will send Rosecrans to ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... are quite right," he answers, somewhat to Eleanor's surprise. "It is foolish, and unnecessary. Now you won't grumble, my pet, if I go for a long day's sport to-morrow. It will do me all the good in the world, some excitement and exercise. I have been getting dreadfully ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... taint of this new poetic diction into which we have now fallen, after all our abuse of the far more manly and sincere "poetic diction" of the eighteenth century; they will find no loitering by the way to argue and moralise, and grumble at Providence, and show off the author's own genius and sensibility; they will find, in short, two real works of art, earnest, melodious, self-forgetful, knowing clearly what they want to say, saying it in the shortest, the simplest, the calmest, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Easter Day in the morning—and do you sit down at the wheel and spin. See, you put your foot on the treadle so, to turn the wheel, and you twist the flax with your fingers so. Don't you get up, but just turn the wheel and grumble ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... These were the thanks which honest Bows got for his friendship and his life's devotion. And I do not suppose that the old philosopher was much worse off than many other men, or had greater reason to grumble. On the second floor of the next house to Bows's, in Shepherd's Inn, at No. 3, live two other acquaintances of ours. Colonel Altamont, agent to the Nawaab of Lucknow, and Captain the Chevalier Edward Strong. No name at all is over their door. The captain does not ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... unnecessary privations. Where they are exposed to difficulties, he does not hesitate to employ all the means in his power to aid them. In return, the soldier professes for his officer an affection, a devotion, a sort of filial respect. Discipline, he knows, must be severe, and he does not grumble at its penalties. In battle, he does not abandon his chief; he watches over him, will die for his safety, will not let him fall into the hands of the enemy if wounded. At the bivouac he makes the officer's fire, though his own should die for want of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... examine one of them:—The Heirs of Tranby Chase. It weighed four or five pounds. The publishers would never have had to grumble at its brevity, or have been compelled to use large type and wide margins to "bulk up." It was written in the thin, early Victorian handwriting not often met with in this generation of writers. It subscribed faithfully to the great canons of publication—for instance, it was written on "one ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... this is all we poor single men can do under the circumstances. Married men bully their wives, grumble at the dinner, and insist on the children's going to bed. All of which, creating, as it does, a good deal of disturbance in the house, must be a great relief to the feelings of a man in the blues, rows being the only form of amusement in which ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... productive strength of the country. The Forgotten Man works and votes—generally he prays—but his chief business in life is to pay. His name never gets into the newspapers except when he marries or dies. He is an obscure man. He may grumble sometimes to his wife, but he does not frequent the grocery, and he does not talk politics at the tavern. So he is forgotten. Yet who is there whom the statesman, economist, and social philosopher ought to think of before this man? If any student of social science comes to appreciate the case of ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... notions into a child's head?" said a tiresome lawyer, who had come to pay a visit, and sat on the sofa. He did not like the student, and would grumble when he saw him cutting out droll or amusing pictures. Sometimes it would be a man hanging on a gibbet and holding a heart in his hand as if he had been stealing hearts. Sometimes it was an old witch riding through the air on a broom and carrying her ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... soul took the sous in the basket to be the gift of the brothers, and, as her portion is not always the same from day to day, but depends on what they can spare from the store set apart for almsgiving, she would not notice the diminished cakes and milk, save perhaps to grumble a little at the increase of the beggars who trespassed thus on her pension." There was silence among us for a moment, then St Aubyn's boy spoke. "Father," he asked, tremulously, "shall I not see that ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... nuts come from? Anyone would think you were a rabid Protectionist who reads your howls about imported plays. Art is universal, not local—I read that in some real high-toned book—and if a play is good, don't worry whether its author is French or German or American. You don't grumble if he is Norwegian. Why not? Do be consistent even if you cannot be broad-minded. And, lastly, let the Censor alone; you have flung enough mud at him; I am tired of reading energetic attacks which you know quite well are mere beating of the ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... hollow length of tree-trunk, the player worked his flat drumsticks of ironwood with amazing rapidity. The call trilled and rumbled, rising and falling, now a patter of light musical sound, now a low grumble. ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... came home alone, only just in time for a late dinner, and growled out rather crossly that Harold had chosen to walk home, and not to be waited for. Eustace himself was out of sorts and tired, eating little and hardly vouchsafing a word, except to grumble at us and the food, and though we heard Harold come in about nine o'clock, he did not come in, but ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a reality of tragedy about him which for the moment overcame her. She had no joke ready, no sarcasm, no feminine counter-grumble. Little as she agreed with him when he spoke of the necessity of retiring into private life because a man had written to him such a letter as this, incapable as she was of understanding fully the nature of the irritation ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... not read this letter so loud as the Lessons, unless you wish Lizzie to hear every word, for she has all her mother's quick senses. There is not much of it, and the scrawl seems hasty. We might have had more for three and fourpence. But I am not the one to grumble about bad measure—as the boy said about old Busby. Now, Maria, listen, but say nothing; if feminine capacity may compass it. Why, bless my heart, every word of it is French!" The rector threw down his spectacles, ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... be quick about it!" the deep grumble proceeded to tell them; and somehow poor Bumpus was forcibly reminded of the growl of a lion he had once heard in a menagerie, as well as several other things along the same "away ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... resolved to go, and only asked me and my company to go along with them, I positively refused it, and rose up (for I was sitting on the ground) in order to go to the boat. One or two of the men began to importune me to go, and when I still refused positively, began to grumble, and say they were not under my command, and they would go. "Come, Jack," says one of the men, "will you go with me? I will go for one." Jack said he would; and another followed, and then another; ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... except the school work. Four of the children have had chills and fever, and I have had to rise at night to care for them. I have been trying to do the work of three people and not complain. Still I'd like to grumble a little, if I could find the right one to talk to. I am beginning to feel a little like Josiah Allen's wife, when she said, 'Betsy Bobbet, you're ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... the miller. He could grumble to Ruth himself, but he would not stand for any other person's criticism of her. "Lemme tell ye, she worked her passage all right. An' I vum! I b'lieve thet 'twas me, myself, thet run the old ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... for one who was. At length he found one—a meek young man from Trumbull County—who agreed to pay for his board in praying. For a while all went smoothly, but the boarding-master furnished his table so poorly that the boarders began to grumble and to leave, and the other morning the praying boarder actually "struck!" Something like the following dialogue occurred ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... are only certain of coming back again where it is possible to do as we please, I won't grumble about what we are obliged to eat," Neal said, with ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... indignant protest against those who would suppress the dialect, against the regents and the rectors whom "we must pay with our pennies to hear them scoff at the language that binds us to our fathers and our soil!" And the poet cries out, "No, no, we'll keep our rebellious langue d'oc, grumble who will. We'll speak it in the stables, at harvest-time, among the silkworms, among lovers, among neighbors, etc., etc. It shall be the language of joy and of brotherhood. We'll joke and laugh with it;—and as for the army, ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... got no cause to grumble at it," said a fat-faced man in very dirty corduroys. "It's your chice, an' your livin'! You likes the road, an' you makes your grub on it! 'Taint no use you findin' fault with the gettin' o' ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... the appointment of Dr. Michaelis, says "there is no chance of his clubbing together with the big industrialists and misguided agitators." So long however as they are clubbed separately we shall not grumble. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... Countrymen came down from distant villages into towns and cities, to see perverters whom they had never heard of, and to learn the righteousness of hatred. When heretics waxed fewer the religious began to grumble that God, in losing his enemies, had also ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... night is the only time for cooking. The decrees of an order for a detail are inexorable. A soldier must take it as it comes, for none ever know but what the next duties may be even worse than the present. As a general rule, soldiers rarely ever grumble at any detail on the eve of an engagement, for sometimes it excuses them from a battle, and the old ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... and the domestic buildings of the monks. The erection of the castle is dated in the twelfth century, and from this time we may consider the older abbey buildings around the church to have been deserted and left to ruin; but we can hardly grumble at a transfer which has given us so curious a combination of military and monastic architecture in the ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... change, and I'm not sorry for one," quoth Mr. Jack, "I'm stiff all over. No one can stand such work long. Won't the shearers growl! No shearing to-day, and perhaps none tomorrow either." Truth to tell, Mr Bowles' sentiments are not confined to his ingenuous bosom. Some of the shearers grumble at being stopped "just as a man was earning a few shillings." Those who are in top pace and condition don't like it. But to many of the rank and file—working up to and a little beyond their strength—with whom swelled wrists and other protests of nature are ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood
... acting chaplain. His hospital stories are full of point and pathos. He tells of one man with twenty-two shell wounds, and yet living and cheerful; of another with a hole as big as a hand in his leg, and another big hole in his arm, and yet refusing to grumble, and professing himself quite comfortable. Of this man an Australian said, 'He exasperates me; he never has any pain.' He pictures to us a corporal seeing to the comfort of his men and horses, and then, by way of a change, teaching his men ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... outcome of the quiet and stable home life of an island people, have done more than anything to make the Englishman a deceptive personality to the outside eye. He has for centuries been permitted to grumble. There is no such confirmed grumbler—until he really has something to grumble at, and then no one who grumbles less. There is no such confirmed carper at the condition of his country, yet no one really so profoundly convinced of its perfection. A stranger might well think from his utterances ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... amendments came decidedly under Wolfe's ideas of "freak." But there are some extremes to which the machine dare not go, and it did not dare to go on record as against popular municipal government. Wolfe and his associates could and did grumble, but they did not dare refuse the several ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... Colonel Lawton. "Are you going my way, Mr. Batholommey? It's queer, Frederik," he added, bidding his host good-bye, "it's queer—deucedly queer how things turn out. There's one thing certain: the old gentleman should have made a will. But it's too late now for us to grumble about that. By the way, what are you going to do with all his relics and family heirlooms, Frederik? Have you thought of it? I supposed, of course, you'd keep everything just as he left it. But from the way you've talked this ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... isn't fair," the eldest sister said, in a gentler voice. "You know I never blamed you. I only showed you that even a popular actress sometimes remembers that she is a woman. And if she is a woman, you must let her have a grumble occasionally." ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... they offered an excellent excuse for my sudden departure. It didn't come to my mind that the white spots might have been the cause of my sudden longing for my own little pink room. I simply knew I wanted to go home; and wake up in the morning cross and disagreeable; and grumble about the bacon and coffee at the breakfast ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... hundred feet higher, where I halted for a while on a rocky island fairly clear of snow. As coolie after coolie arrived, breathing convulsively, he dropped his load and sat quietly by the side of it. There was not a grumble, not a word of reproach for the hard work they were made to endure. Sleet was falling, and the wet and cold increased the discomfort. There was now a very steep pull before us. To the left, we had a glacier beginning in a precipitous ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... and heathen, live on poor fare and go to bed hungry. This is from necessity, not from choice. The poorest man is particular in his degree as to what he eats, more especially as to the manner in which his food has been prepared. Even the beggar off the road will unblushingly and loudly grumble if the fare at a feast to which he has been invited by some wealthy man is not exactly to his mind. The children of mission schools, many of whom have come out of lives of real privation, are sometimes very critical about their meals, ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... They loved to grumble, those old salts, for as soon as one had shot off his grievance his neighbour would follow with another, each ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... heavy with moisture and very still and warm; a heady fragrance of precocious blooms flavoured the air, vying with the scent of rain. The silence was profound, but shaken now and then by a grumble of distant thunder. The world hung breathless on the issue ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... the directors found they had expended 460,000 pounds on the works, and that they were still far from completion. They looked at the loss of interest on this large investment, and began to grumble at the delay. They desired to see their capital becoming productive; and in the spring of 1829 they urged the engineer to push on the works with increased vigour. Mr. Cropper, one of the directors, who took an active interest in their progress, said to Stephenson ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... a good officer, an able tactician and a resolute leader. He had hardly, however, realised as yet that the movements of a brigade must be subordinated to those of the whole army, and he was wont to grumble if his troops were held back, or were not allowed to pursue some local success. Steuart was also a West Pointer, but with much to learn. Taylor and his Louisianians played so important a part in the ensuing operations that they deserve more detailed mention. The command was a mixed one. One of the ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... indicated that the Shiuana ordered him to wait until daylight. It was sure destruction, he felt it; but the Shiuana spoke through the medium of the old man, and the Shiuana were of course right. He could not complain or even grumble. ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... objects of the highest regard. All classes vie with one another in their attentions. The rich send their luxuries; the paupers, however, not having anything to give, go themselves and wait on them and nurse them. For this there is no help, and the rich grumble, but can do nothing. The sick are thus sought out incessantly, and most carefully tended. When they die there is great rejoicing, since death is a blessing; but the nurses labor hard to preserve them in life, so as to prolong the ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... Never was a little brother or sister more real to them than was "Peggy Mel" as she rushed into the hive laden with stolen honey, while her neighbors gossiped about it, or the stately elm that played sly tricks, or the log which proved to be a good bedfellow because it did not grumble. Burroughs's way of investing beasts, birds, insects, and inanimate things with human motives is very pleasing to children. They like to trace analogies between the human and the irrational, to think of a weed as a tramp stealing rides, ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... and my company to go along with them, I positively refused it, and rose up, for I was sitting on the ground, in order to go to the boat. One or two of the men began to importune me to go; and when I refused, began to grumble, and say they were not under my command, and they would go. "Come, Jack," says one of the men, "will you go with me? I'll go for one." Jack said he would—and then another—and, in a word, they all left me but one, whom I persuaded to stay, and a boy left ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... much mince-pie, goes to his weekly lecture, and, seeing only half a dozen people there, proceeds to grumble at those half-dozen for the sins of such as stay away. "The Church is cold, there is no interest in religion," and so on: a simple outpouring ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... but what I'd better hide you till night," the landlord informed Lida. "As I said, they're naturally genteel, but——" He hesitated when he heard the growing grumble of voices. ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... is implied a frequency, or iteration of small acts. And the same frequency of acts, but less subtile by reason of the clearer vowel a, is indicated in jangle, tangle, spangle, mangle, wrangle, brangle, dangle; as also in mumble, grumble, jumble. But at the same time the close u implies something obscure or obtunded; and a congeries of consonants mbl, denotes a confused kind of rolling or tumbling, as in ramble, scamble, scramble, wamble, amble; but in these there ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... learning. Some people go through life with their eyes shut, and then grumble there is nothing to see in it! Well—you want that Arab buried? What a fancy! Look you, then; stay by him, since you are so fond of him, and I will go and send some men to you with a stretcher to carry ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... cultivation of their fields there. This addition to the arable land has been a great boon to the people. I cannot say, however, judging by those with whom I have conversed, that they are satisfied. They grumble at the new tax imposed for the construction and maintenance of the canals, and also at the tax they have to pay for their holdings in the hills, though I believe it to be very light. They would gladly have all the benefits of a firm and improving government ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... A grumble came from the hall without. Evidently his charge, if we may so designate the fellow he had brought there, had his own ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... the old boy had to sleep upon it!" young Bright reported to the senior members of the firm. The lawyers of B—— were accustomed to make fun of Judge Orcutt or grumble about his ways of doing things. He was certainly different from the ordinary run of probate judges or of all judges for that matter. The smart law firms that had dealings with him professed to consider him a poor lawyer, but everybody ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... they grumble, "When?" Guns of Verdun answer then, "Sisters, when to guard Lorraine Gunners ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... dear Thomas. SHE never showed such disrespect to HER husband: and as for affection, wives never think of that now-a-days, she supposes: but things were different in HER time—as if there was any good to be done by staying in the room, when he does nothing but grumble and scold when he's in a bad humour, talk disgusting nonsense when he's in a good one, and go to sleep on the sofa when he's too stupid for either; which is most frequently the case now, when he has nothing to do but to sot ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... you've had your luck in the wars, you've the less reason to grumble at the bit of a surge you may have felt in your garments, as they run you up to this here yard-arm. I say, brother, I've known stouter fellows take the same ride, who never knew when or ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... thunder and grumble At high and at humble Until he became, in a while, Mordacious, pugnacious, Rapacious. Good gracious! They called him the Yankee Carlyle! But he never took rest On his quarrelsome quest Of the giants, both mighty and ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... of the farmhouse, dignified by the name "Attica." My companions were all single men; good, reliable fellows who were working for a principle and would ordinarily have declined such a lodging- place, but under the circumstances were not apt to grumble, but made the best of it. It was like camping out, and all its mischances were turned into fun. My roommates were called "the Admiral," "the Dutchman," "the General" and "the Parson,"—nicknames given each one of them for ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... stole along the wall to that door, intending to listen if aught were stirring within, or on the stairs, or in the rooms above. And I had just got my fingers on the rounded pillar of the doorway, and the thunder was just dying to a grumble, when a hand seized the back of my neck as in a vice, and something hard, and round, and cold pressed itself insistingly into my right temple. It was all done in the half of a second; but I knew, just as clearly as if I could see it, that a ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... experience and common sense, upon what factors their price seems mainly to depend? Two factors spring to mind at once; their cost of production and their usefulness. As regards the former, the case seems clear enough. We may indeed sometimes grumble that the price of this or that commodity is unconscionably high in comparison with its cost; but this only goes to show that we conceive a relation between price and cost as the normal, governing rule. If one commodity cost only a half as much to produce as another, we ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... acquiesced; "and they are a bit shabby, too. You are going down, Grif. You never used to be shabby. None of us were ever exactly that, though we used to grumble sometimes. We used to grumble, not because other people had things, but because we had ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... realise these facts will not, therefore, grumble overmuch at bad times. They will, at least, have had the sense to see that those times were bound to come, and have refused to believe that they had entered into a perpetual paradise of high prices. In this respect ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... adroitly handled, will exploit the majority almost as effectively after Home Rule as before it. Captain Craig will dictate terms to us not from the last ditch, but from a far more agreeable and powerful position, the Treasury Bench. And we undertake not to grumble, for these are ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... determined me to make extensive additions to the scene of the 'Venusberg.' I thought that this would give the staff of the ballet a choreographic task of so magnificent a character that there would no longer be any occasion to grumble at me for my obstinacy in this matter. The musical composition of the two scenes occupied most of my time during the month of September, and at the same time I began the pianoforte rehearsals of Tannhauser in the foyer of ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... pindlin' under this old locust-tree," Sophy heard him grumble. "Throwin' down leaves an' branches every day in the year. Half on 't's rotten. It ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... so much, prattler," said Gervique, "and look out on your side. When we have got by them, it'll be time to grumble. Look out ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... thyself another: A maiden's heart is as champagne, ever aspiring and struggling upwards, And it needeth that its motions be checked by the silvered cork of Propriety: He that can afford the price, his be the precious treasure, Let him drink deeply of its sweetness, nor grumble if it tasteth ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... he looks at the sky he rejoices. In short, for such a man, the mere process of living is happiness. But it is quite the reverse with the other sort of man; you may plate him with gold, and he will continue to grumble; nothing satisfies him; success in life affords him no pleasure, even if it be perfectly self-evident. The man simply is incapable of experiencing satisfaction; he is incapable, and that is the end of the ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... their rights, however, as well as the rich, and even the Snarling Princess was obliged to submit to the disappointment at which she could only grumble. ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... off, bleeding and insensible, and dumped with a sickening thud into the Russian launch. The incident encouraged them so much that they worked without complaint throughout the day, and they did not even grumble at the rations which their taskmasters served out to them. Shortly before dusk the breeze that had been blowing died away, and the Russians took advantage of the calm to warp the vessels together. After that the business in hand proceeded at such a pace that ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... satisfied, 'tisn't for the likes of me to grumble,' Andy said resignedly. 'Only if everybody knew what was before them, they mightn't ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... "brodigious," and guaranteed that she should become a first-rate singer. The pupil was apt, the master was exceedingly skilful; and, accordingly, Mrs. Walker's progress was very remarkable: although, for her part, honest Mrs. Crump, who used to attend her daughter's lessons, would grumble not a little at the new system, and the endless exercises which she, Morgiana, was made to go through. It was very different in HER time, she said. Incledon knew no music, and who could sing so well now? Give her a good English ballad: it was a ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Kensingtons, before the war, all battalions were equally good. They were trained for months for the big battle till their bodies were brought to such a state of fitness that Spartan fare during the ten days of ceaseless action caused neither grumble nor fatigue. The men may well be rewarded with the title "London's Pride," and London is honoured by having such stalwarts to represent the heart of the British Empire. In eight days the Londoners marched sixty-six miles and fought a number of hot actions. The march may not seem long, ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... what sort of a holiday we are to have in Imbros. Are there to be plagues of flies and dust as in Lemnos? However, it will break the monotony which is getting very oppressive, and some of ours keep up a constant grumble ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... fog. This I believe is the usual welcome accorded to travellers to the island of Newfoundland. There is no chart for icebergs, and "growlers" are formidable opponents to encounter at any time. Therefore it behoves us to possess our souls in patience, and only to indulge at intervals in the right to grumble which is by virtue of tradition ours. We have already been here a day and a half, and we know not how much longer it will be before the curtain rises and the first act of the drama ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... the Gentlemen likewise order'd their Oars to Land 'em at the same Place; and observ'd, after the Lady was Landed, that the Sculler ask'd for his Money, and she bid him follow her; and after he follow'd her into Thames-street, he began to grumble, and told her he cou'd go no further, and therefore he wou'd have his Money; which she wou'd not give him whithout he went wither she was going, telling him she wou'd pay him for his time. This ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... delivered, my speech (like the Queen's) is looked for as eagerly as if nothing of the kind had ever been heard before. When it is delivered, and turns out not to be the novelty anticipated, though they grumble a little, they look forward hopefully to something newer next year. An easy people to govern, in the Parliament and in the Kitchen—that's the moral of it. After breakfast, Mr. Franklin and I had a private conference on the subject of the Moonstone—the time having now come for removing ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... with a grumble, looked from his unreliable horse to the frosty roadway, and was about to shake his head in definite negation when Max cajoled him with a more ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... room to grumble about discomforts within, we could only admire unceasingly without the very lovely road along which we were rapidly passing. The country consisted of undulating hills and slopes, prettily wooded, while bright white wooden houses and churches rapidly succeeded each ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... out of her sight after their first meeting, and the ridiculous excuse she gave to her husband's family was, she feared he would be kidnapped and made a Cossack of! And young Lord Cressett, her husband, began to grumble concerning her intimacy with a man old enough to be her grandfather. As if the age were the injury! He seemed to think it so, and vowed he would shoot the old depredator dead, if he found him on the grounds ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... After this its power gradually diminishes in the same way as it increased—the peals become less loud and less frequent, the lightning feebler and less brilliant, until at length it seems to take another course, and after a few exhausted volleys it dies away with a hoarse grumble ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... again it came in a gust which was accompanied by a twinkle of lightening over the whole sky and grumble of thunder. A whirl of dust and fine gravel enveloped the Jasper B. For a moment it was like a sandstorm. A few large drops of water fell. The gust was violent; the sails filled with it and struggled like kites to be ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... men began in their alarm to grumble to themselves (as indeed manifest truth pointed out), that the soldiers if hindered from advancing by the height of the mountains or the dryness of the country, would have no means of returning to get water, and when ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... meal-times. As far as observation permitted, it was pumping out the blood of its prey, but before the operation was finished it forbade closer scrutiny by humming away with a note of savage resentment—a rumble, a grumble and a growl, ending ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... boy; but his father interrupted him. He knew the unvarying beginning of a long grumble, and dreading the argument, cut ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of romance. After all, marching to the divine drumbeat was simply to follow the precepts ingrained in me as a child, but it is much easier to make a quick charge amid the blare of bugles than to plod along day after day to the monotonous grumble of the drum. I wished that the Professor had been a little more explicit, and yet his last words were always with me. It was as though they were intended for me alone, and I coupled them with his admonition to me ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... provided the dinner, who must wait until their master or father is done before they have a chance to take a bite. But, as you may see by this picture, they do not wait very patiently. They roar and growl and grumble until their ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... comprehension by an eloquent wink the while he discoursed long and loudly upon more innocent topics. They exchanged sally and quip through the forbidding grille until a warning grumble from the doorstep marked the expiration of the five minutes and the end of ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... At the objections stage, as at every other step in the selling process, you should dominate the other man. Tactfully keep him concentrated on the subject and on your application. If he starts to grumble that some man he has engaged previously was "no good," you can smile and reply, "You would not give me credit for anybody else's fine work, and of course you do not blame me for ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... as an American People's Club knows so well how to behave; dispersed quietly, without a grumble, or a recollection of the half value of the tickets lost. Miss Kent's carriage drove rapidly from a side door. In two hours, she was on board the night train ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... traditions and customary modes of thought, the less you are able to be pleased with them. If they demean themselves as fools and incapables, (as they sometimes do,) they bring grist to your mill; but if they show wisdom, courage, and constancy, they leave you to stand at your mill-doors and grumble for want of toll,—as in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... anything like an explicit reconciliation. They simply ignored a quarrel; and Mrs. Lapham had only to say a few days after at breakfast, "I guess the girls would like to go round with you this afternoon, and look at the new house," in order to make her husband grumble out as he looked down into his coffee-cup. "I guess we better all ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... after reading a little further. "'I oughtn't to grumble. Uncle Rimbolt is the kindest of protectors, and lets me have far too many nice things. Aunt has a far better idea of what a captain's daughter should be. She doesn't spoil me. She's like a sort of animated extinguisher, and ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... where they got nothing. And every man knows the convenience the line will be to him to get his bit of stuff to Galway market, and also that it will bring money into a country where there was none. They are as contented as can be, and we never hear a word of complaint. We have not heard a grumble since the line was started a year or two ago. These Home Rulers will say anything but their prayers, and them they whistle. Since the work came from the Tories it must be bad. There must be a curse on it. Now, my lads, shove it up, shove it up! (Excuse ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... want to tell you," he said gruffly, "that you're wasting your time and your money. These men in the ward are not really grateful to you one bit. They speculate before you come as to how much you are likely to give them, and when you are gone they compare notes and grumble if you have not ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... hour and no free time planned. There were even a number of chores to be done after supper. "Vacation" to Jack had hitherto meant long, cloudless days with leisure to read lazily in the hammock, or go swimming when he pleased and license to grumble when his father suggested that a little weeding would ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... Your wisest Englishmen justly complain of us, that our 'platform' is as yet a merely negative one; that we define what the South shall not do, but not what the North shall. Ere four years be over, we will have a 'positive platform,' at which you shall have no cause to grumble." ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... about the sentiment," said Rose, "but I am sure about the pie. If that were missing at dinner-time I know who would grumble. So I'll go, and attend to my duties." She had risen, and was confronting Scarlett. "Good-bye," she said, ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... Mahony could stomach. Flashing up from his seat, he strove to assert himself above the hum of agreement that mounted from the foreign contingent, and the doubtful sort of grumble by which the Britisher signifies ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... it is. It's always the case. But here's the soup. I hope you have brought a good appetite. You can't expect such a meal here as you would get in New York; but they do fairly well. I, for one, don't grumble about the food in London, as most Americans do. Londoners manage to keep alive, and that, after all, is ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... the carriage sighing so deeply that I was terrified lest the servant should hear. I shall never call on people unless I want to see them. It does seem such a farce to grumble because they are at home, and then to be sweet and ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Senhor Silva's place; and he was, I must say, the best shot of the party. We had been unsuccessful, however, on several occasions, and though there was no famine in the camp, we had very little meat fit to eat; while our black attendants were beginning to grumble greatly at being placed on short commons. This made us more than ever anxious to get some game. We had scoured the country towards the south for some distance, and falling in with no animals, we were induced to proceed ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... being just issued), an order came from Beaufort that we should be ready in the evening to unload a steamboat's cargo of boards, being some of those captured by them a few weeks since, and now assigned for their use. I wondered if the men would grumble at the night-work; but the steamboat arrived by seven, and it was bright moonlight when they went at it. Never have I beheld such a jolly scene of labor. Tugging these wet and heavy boards over a bridge of boats ashore, then across the slimy beach at low tide, then up a steep bank, and ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... way, for he turned with a curious look of relief and vexation to his brother. "We need not be always thinking of it, even if this were to be the end," he said. "Come down the avenue with me, Frank, and let us talk of something else. The girls will grumble, but they can have you later: come, I want to hear ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... stillest, yet most diligent of housewives, began at last that "spring-cleaning" which she makes so pleasant that none find the heart to grumble as they do when other matrons set their premises a-dust. Her handmaids, wind and rain and sun, swept, washed, and garnished busily, green carpets were unrolled, apple-boughs were hung with draperies of bloom, and dandelions, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of my father I shall speak in their proper place, but have given up this first chapter to him alone. My readers maybe will grumble that it omits to tell what they would first choose to learn: the reason why he had exchanged fame and the world for a Cornish exile. But as yet he only—and perhaps my uncle Gervase, who kept the accounts—held the key to ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... along toward the middle of the afternoon. Far off in the distance somewhere, an action was certainly going on, for the grumble of heavy cannonading came almost constantly ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... were about to leave him he at first looked greatly pleased, but he suddenly recollected that nothing ought to please him and so began to grumble about being left alone. ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... Gideon Vetch abruptly. "That is the way with you fellows who have ossified in the old political parties. You never see a change in time to make ready for it. You wait until it knocks you in the head, and then you wake up and grumble. Now, I've been on the way for the last thirty years or so, but you never once so much as got wind of me. You think I've just happened because of too much electricity in the air, like a thunderbolt or something; ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... sheep for 100 strings of beads. I wished to begin the exchange by being generous, and told his messenger so; then a small quantity of maize was brought, and I grumbled at the meanness of the present: there is no use in being bashful, as they are not ashamed to grumble too. The man said that Kabinga would send more when ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... investments. But that food will not always last; it is gradually exhausted, and we fail to feed them again, or in that proportion their necessities require. They languish and die; a disease seizes them, and we complain and grumble at the dispensations ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... kept very fashionable hours, and always waited dinner for himself till nine o'clock, there was still plenty of time; so, with a loud grumble about the trouble, he seized a large basket in his hand, and set off at a rapid pace towards the fairy Teach-all's garden. It was very seldom that Snap-'em-up ventured to think of foraging in this direction, as he never once succeeded in carrying off a single captive from the enclosure, ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... slightly elevated garden, is not only a favorite resort in summer, but is thronged every winter afternoon with people promenading or sitting under the snow-powdered trees in an arctic fairyland, while the mercury in the thermometer is at a very low ebb indeed. It is fashionable in Russia to grumble at the cold, but unfashionable to convert the grumbling into action. On the contrary, they really enjoy sitting for five hours at a stretch, in a temperature of 25 degrees below zero, to watch the fascinating horse races on ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... borrowed for public works must be raised from some source. The land revenue, which had been used for ordinary revenue purposes, is now beginning to drop; and since the colony is but slightly taxed, in comparison with its neighbours, it has no reason to grumble at an increase of taxation. Amongst the more important measures passed last session, was one for providing compensation for improvements to selectors surrendering their agreements, and for remission of interest to those who have reaped under a ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... plans of Pericles. These workmen didn't know the plans—they were only privates in the ranks, but they exercised their prerogatives to criticize, and while working to assist, did right royally disparage and condemn. Like sailors who love their ship, and grumble at grub and grog, yet on shore will allow no word of disparagement to be said, so did these Athenians love their city, and still condemn its rulers—they exercised the laborer's right to damn the man who gives ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... they were being made to suffer for the deeds of irresponsible whites. And, to make matters worse, strong opposition to proscriptive measures was called fresh rebellion. "When the Jacobins say and do low and bitter things, their charge of want of loyalty in the South because our people grumble back a little seems to me as unreasonable as the complaint of the little boy: 'Mamma, make Bob 'have hisself. He makes mouths at me every time I hit ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... had arrived at a period when the unknown and the forbidden were the alluring, and the lawful and the restraining were the irksome. Indeed Rory was wont to grumble that that young Scot was just going to ruin; he had never been made to mind anybody when he was little, and now he was just growing up clean wild. For since Rory had given up fiddling and dancing and had ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... pounds a week and his expenses besides, so it pays HIM pretty well. Well then, the shearers go to the squatters. "All right," say they, "we'll shear your sheep, but it's going to be twenty shillings instead of seventeen and six." The squatters grumble, but they've got to have their sheep shorn, and they pay the twenty shillings. Next year, I'm told, the word is to go round that it's to be twenty-two and sixpence. Well sir, we're to ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... course we had to be careful of spies, but I stuck the bottles in my pack when the officer wasn't looking. Well, we marched to the depot and were soon packed into the small uncomfortable coaches. We started to kick and grumble, but Rust said: "You are lucky to have coaches at all. Last time I went up I rode in a cattle-car," and he pointed out a lot of cars on which was painted "Capacity, so many horses, so many men." After that we hadn't ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... his own countrymen the comfortable things that he tells of the English; but we need not grumble at that. The father who is severe with his own children will freely admire those of others, for whom he is not responsible. Emerson is stern toward what we are, and arduous indeed in his estimate of what we ought to be. He intimates that we are not quite worthy ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... hundred miles through Eid's old wood, And devil an alehouse, bad or good,— A hundred miles, and tree and sky Were all that met the weary eye. With many a grumble, many a groan. A hundred miles we trudged right on; And every king's man of us bore On ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... found Bruin in such a state, who commenced to grumble and complain that it was all Reynard's fault that he had lost his tail. So Reynard pointed to his own tail and said, "Why, that's nothing; see my tail; they hit me so hard upon the head my brains fell out upon my tail. Oh, how bad I feel; won't you carry me to my little bed." ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... who had assumed and by his ability and astuteness maintained for thirty years the highest position in the country. There was, no doubt, a large amount of latent rebellion against this "one-man government," but those who were the most ready to grumble in private were in public, perhaps, the most servile of any. It is conceded that in many ways the Prime Minister was an able ruler, and compared with those who went before him was deserving of ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... a good thing if we too had a bit of music now and then," Juan Canito would grumble; "but the lad's chary enough of his bow on ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... vociferation, outcry, hullabaloo, chorus, clamor, hue and cry, plaint; lungs; stentor. V. cry, roar, shout, bawl, brawl, halloo, halloa, hoop, whoop, yell, bellow, howl, scream, screech, screak[obs3], shriek, shrill, squeak, squeal, squall, whine, pule, pipe, yaup[obs3]. cheer; hoot; grumble, moan, groan. snore, snort; grunt &c. (animal sounds) 412. vociferate; raise up the voice, lift up the voice; call out, sing out, cry out; exclaim; rend the air; thunder at the top of one's voice, shout at the top of one's voice, shout at the pitch of one's breath, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... "up to date," the wards were not even tidy, the staff was inadequate, overworked, and villainously housed, the resources very scanty, but for sheer selflessness and utter devotion to their work the staff of that hospital from top to bottom could not have been surpassed. I never heard a grumble or a complaint all the time I was there either from a doctor, a Sister, or an orderly, and I never saw in this hospital a dressing slurred over, omitted, or done without the usual precautions however tired ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... questions.) This, however, I have corrected in all the copies struck off after the first lot of 2500. I daresay there will be a new edition in the course of nine months or a year, and this I will correct as well as I can. As yet the publishers have kept up type, and grumble dreadfully if I make heavy corrections. I am very far from surprised that "you have not committed yourself to full acceptation" of the evolution of man. Difficulties and objections there undoubtedly are, enough and to spare, to stagger any cautious ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... conscious that my hands and face were whitened all over; the sponge had rolled away into a corner; and the noise of Nicola's operations was fast getting on my nerves. I had a feeling as though I wanted to fly into a temper and grumble at some one, so I threw down chalk and "Algebra" alike, and began to pace the room. Then suddenly I remembered that to-day we were to go to confession, and that therefore I must refrain from doing anything wrong. Next, with equal suddenness I relapsed into an extraordinarily ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... fashionable. The women mostly dress the same, and there are no stylish shapes in the men's 'oils' and guernseys. Then, they call no man 'master.' God is their employer, and from His hand they take their daily bread. And they don't set themselves up against Him, and grumble about their small wages and their long hours. And if the weather is bad, and they are kept off a sea that no boat could live in, they don't grumble like Yorkshire men do, when warehouses are overstocked and trade ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... of the quiet and stable home life of an island people, have done more than anything to make the Englishman a deceptive personality to the outside eye. He has for centuries been permitted to grumble. There is no such confirmed grumbler—until he really has something to grumble at, and then no one who grumbles less. There is no such confirmed carper at the condition of his country, yet no one really so profoundly convinced of its perfection. A stranger ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... existence, let alone an answer to the attractive riddle of what they look like. And there are, of course, certain superfine persons who, in the case of a famous artist, think very like the sitter, and are satisfied so long as they get an ornamental picture, or one well up to date. But the truly human grumble, and are more than justified in doing so. Their cravings have been disappointed; they had expected the impossible, and ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... him," she cried, "He's been behind my back long enough. If he never did no worse things behind my back than I do behind his, he wouldn't have cause to grumble. You ...
— Wintry Peacock - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • D. H. Lawrence
... all. The tools of the enemy "casualties," the spades and picks left behind in deserted villages, were all gladly piled on to the French soldiers' knapsacks, to be carried willingly by the very men who used to grumble at being loaded with even the smallest regulation tool. As soon as night had set in on the occasion of a lull in the fighting, the digging of the trenches was begun. Sometimes, in the darkness, the men of ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... Kit agreed. "I don't know that my neighbors grumble much because the rule works on your side. But peat is plentiful and we don't see why it can't be used when coal ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... that he interpreted as the growth of womanly tenderness and seriousness. "Ah!" he thought, again and again, "she's only seventeen; she'll be thoughtful enough after a while. And her aunt allays says how clever she is at the work. She'll make a wife as Mother'll have no occasion to grumble at, after all." To be sure, he had only seen her at home twice since the birthday; for one Sunday, when he was intending to go from church to the Hall Farm, Hetty had joined the party of upper servants from ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... Two of them seem to have rather bad teeth, too. Still, I don't grumble. Ah, well; good-night. (Wagonette rumbles off down the ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... actors and actresses announced on the posters had appeared, but all had sent letters full of kindly wishes; and the others—all the celebrities one had never heard of—had turned up to a man. Still, on the whole, the show was well worth the money. There was nothing to grumble at. ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... El-Safh ("the level ground of") Jebel Malih ("Mount Pleasant"?), which the broad-speaking Bedawin lengthen to Malayh. Our camel-men had halted exactly between two waters, and equally distant from both, so as to force upon us the hire of extra animals. We did not grumble, however, as we were anxious to inspect the Afran ("furnaces") said to be found upon the upper heights of the Sharr—of these apocryphal features more hereafter. Fresh difficulties! The Jerafin-Huwaytat tribe, that owns the country south of the Surr, could ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... remonstrances, he has given up walking before breakfast, and doesn't walk at any time half enough. I was in fault chiefly, because he both sate up at night with me and kept by me when I was generally ill in the mornings. So I oughtn't to grumble—but I do.... Love to dear M. Milsand. We are in increasing spirits on ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... it," said Gogyrvan Gawr, "I can of course lock up the pair of you, in separate dungeons, until the wedding day. Meanwhile, it occurs to me you should be the last commentator to grumble." ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... freedom of the world: This wretched state has starv'd them in its service; And, by your bounty quicken'd, they're resolved To serve your glory, and revenge their own: They've all their different quarters in this city, Watch for th' alarm, and grumble 'tis so tardy. ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... neay carrion can kill a craw." "It's a good horse that duz never stumble, And a good wife that duz never grumble." "Neare is my sarke, but nearer is my skin." "It's an ill-made bargain whore beath parties rue." "A curst cow hes short horns." "Wilfull fowkes duz never want weay." "For change of pastures macks fat cawves, it's said, But change of women ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... wet blanket! It's no use courting trouble, honey, as Willy Shakespeare says somewhere. Oh, well, if it wasn't Willy Shakespeare it was somebody else who said it, and it's just as true anyway. Take your umbrella and wait till the rain comes down before you grumble. I've got an exeat and I didn't expect it, and I'm going off my head a little. That's all! Don't worry yourselves about me. I'm ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... the sky held clear and bright and frosty, bitterly cold, everything crisp and sparkling in the sun; but there was no sign of fresh snow, and the ski-ers began to grumble. On the mountains was an icy crust that made "running" dangerous; they wanted the frozen, dry, and powdery snow that makes for speed, renders steering easier and falling less severe. But the keen east wind showed no signs of changing ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... Deane," said Smedley, for it was Jack's old poaching acquaintance. "The honest truth is, I found Nottingham too hot to hold me, and so here I am come to serve his majesty. It is a pretty hard life, I will own; but I have brought myself into it, and so I have determined not to grumble." ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... some of that then! I won't grumble if you make the pancakes thinner for the next two weeks. You have often done so before! I know that all right! When you were saving up for Clara's white dress, we didn't have anything decent to eat for ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... tragedy about him which for the moment overcame her. She had no joke ready, no sarcasm, no feminine counter-grumble. Little as she agreed with him when he spoke of the necessity of retiring into private life because a man had written to him such a letter as this, incapable as she was of understanding fully the nature ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... morning—not a living soul is near, Far, far away there is the faint grumble of the guns; The battle has passed long since— All is Peace. At times there is the faint drone of aeroplanes as They pass overhead, amber specks, high up in the blue; Occasionally there is the movement of a rat in the Old battered trench on which I sit, ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... crumbs of consolation for those who laugh at fate, and look good-humouredly for them; life's only evil to him who wears it awkwardly, and philosophic resignation works as many miracles as Harlequin; grumble, and you go to the dogs in a wretched style; make mots on your own misery, and you've no idea how pleasant a trajet even drifting "to ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... and brushed the dirt off his knees. "If there's anything that stirs my temper, it's this mumble-grumble, whiffle-and-hint business. Out and open, that's my style." He was reflecting testily on the ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... quite delightful! Now, when a wight Sits up all night Ill-natured jokes devising, And all his wiles Are met with smiles, It's hard, there's no disguising! Oh, don't the days seem lank and long When all goes right and nothing goes wrong, And isn't your life extremely flat With nothing whatever to grumble at! ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... very little value! Living alone at Scumberg's was not a pleasant life. Even going out in his brougham at nights was not very pleasant to him. He could do as he liked at Como, and people wouldn't grumble;—but what was there even at Como that he really liked to do? He had a half worn out taste for scenery which he had no longer energy to gratify by variation. It had been the resolution of his life to live without control, and now, at four ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... looked over the long ridges that lay stretched in rows before him, he was vexed, and began to grumble, and say, "The harvest would be backward, and all things would go wrong." At the mere thought of which he frowned more and more, and uttered words of complaint against the heavens, because there was no rain; against the earth, because it was so dry and unyielding; against ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... am an old soldier, am not apt to grumble at trifles, [illegible word] and blunderbusses! I never before got into such a snarl.—Mounting the ramparts of the enemy was mere child's play to it!" Here he began to take out the contents of the basket, ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... was scarcely fair that Sir Rupert's constituents should be disfranchised because it pleased a disappointed politician to drift idly about the world. These hints had their effect upon the disfranchised constituents, who began to grumble. The Conservative Committee was goaded almost to the point of addressing a remonstrance to Sir Rupert, then in the interior of Japan, urging him to return or resign, when the need for any such action was taken out of their hands by a somewhat ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... more, for the Presidents and constables all got mixed in together till a 'body couldn't tell t'other from which.' For his part he'd 'ruther be 'lected in the spring when crops was growin' an' tramps a-trampin', though if he was forced into it, better one time than never,' and a lot more funny grumble. She told him not to worry, that he'd never be 'forced,' much as he'd like it. I've decided that he must be elected, and without any 'forcing,' and I've the splendidest plan you ever heard. First, I'll give you a lesson. ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... no trouble. All sailors grumble, you know, Miss Arbuckle, and our boys imitate their elders in this respect. They will growl for a while, but just as soon as they work the ship with skill and promptness, we shall put into Brest, and make our trip down the Rhine. I think ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... Great-Uncle Hoot-Toot. "Eames gives him the best of characters. He says the boy is thoroughly to be depended upon, and that his work is well done, even to cleaning the pigs; and, best of all, he is never heard to grumble." ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... People grumble at the delay in publication, and are quite right in doing so, though it is impossible under the present system to be more expeditious, and it is not every senior secretary who would slave at the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... the satisfaction of said Duke, or Duke's Heirs; never quite to the satisfaction of the Church, which had been in possession, and was loath to quit, after hoping to continue. 'Give us back Herstal; it ought to be ours!' Unappeasable sigh or grumble to this effect is heard thenceforth, at intervals, in the Chapter of Liege, and has not ceased in Friedrich's time. But as the world, in its loud thoroughfares, seldom or never heard, or could hear, such sighing in the Chapter, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... for a lady, under conditions to his thinking so obviously indiscreet, the description was forestalled by the ingenuous young man, who, dissimilarly apprehensive and oblivious to the innuendo, was heard to grumble: ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... later, Grant," he used to say apologetically; "but as it's for our own convenience we ought not to grumble." ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... this bare result, Mr Wegg felt too sensibly relieved by the close of the labour, to grumble to any great extent. A foreman-representative of the dust contractors, purchasers of the Mounds, had worn Mr Wegg down to skin and bone. This supervisor of the proceedings, asserting his employers' rights to cart off by daylight, nightlight, torchlight, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... them at once when first they took to plundering. But having respect for their good birth, and pity for their misfortunes, and perhaps a little admiration at the justice of God, that robbed men now were robbers, the squires, and farmers, and shepherds, at first did nothing more than grumble gently, or even make a laugh of it, each in the case of others. After awhile they found the matter gone too far for laughter, as violence and deadly outrage stained the hand of robbery, until every woman clutched her child, and every man turned pale at the very name of Doone. For the sons and grandsons ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... ridiculous tiny seashell ashtrays that overflowed after two butts. He wanted desperately to get in and sprawl in the huge bat-winged chair by the fire and stroke the enormous old gray cat that would leap up and trample and paw his stomach before settling down to grumble to itself ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... allowance of a pint and a half each for the twenty-four hours did little more than increase their thirst. They could not safely alter their unpleasant situation, however, and they wisely made the best of it and did not grumble. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... was insensible for a few seconds; but as soon as he came to himself, and discovered that he was in a strange place, he began to grumble ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... them, who should have the egg; often the dog was foiled, although he was the stronger of the two. If he gained the victory, he ran joyfully to me with the egg, and put it into my hand. Kees, nevertheless, followed him, and did not cease to grumble and make threatening grimaces at him, till he saw me take the egg,—as if he was comforted for the loss of his booty by his adversary's not retaining it for himself. If Kees had got hold of the egg, he endeavoured to run ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... to sit for their portraits to Phillips. Though Byron was willing, and even thought it an honour, Southey pretended to grumble. To Miss Barker he wrote ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... all the means in his power to aid them. In return, the soldier professes for his officer an affection, a devotion, a sort of filial respect. Discipline, he knows, must be severe, and he does not grumble at its penalties. In battle, he does not abandon his chief; he watches over him, will die for his safety, will not let him fall into the hands of the enemy if wounded. At the bivouac he makes the officer's fire, though his own should die for want of fuel; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... able to do anything except the school work. Four of the children have had chills and fever, and I have had to rise at night to care for them. I have been trying to do the work of three people and not complain. Still I'd like to grumble a little, if I could find the right one to talk to. I am beginning to feel a little like Josiah Allen's wife, when she said, 'Betsy Bobbet, you're a fool, ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... keeping the idle, bastard children of other nations. He readily protects all those who tread upon English soil, but in return for this kindness he expects them, like bees, to be all workers. Drones, ragamuffins, and rodneys cannot grumble if they get kicked out of the hive. If 20,000 Englishmen were to tramp all over India, Turkey, Persia, Hungary, Spain, America, Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, South Africa, Germany, or France, in bands of from, say two to fifty men, women, and children, in a most wretched; miserable condition, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... have made my statement, what will be the consequence? Why, people will say, "that's all very well, all very true"—and nobody will take the trouble—the consequence is, that the public will go on, paying through the nose as before—and if so, let it not grumble; as it has no one to thank but itself for it. ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... single gentlewomen, who buy flannel for the poor at my shop, and they are very particular; as they ought to be, indeed: for morals are very strict in this county, and particularly in this town, where we certainly do pay very high church-rates. Not that I grumble; for, though I am as liberal as any man, I am for an established church; as I ought to be, since the dean is my best customer. With regard to yourself I inclose you L10., and you will let me know when ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... messengers, whose business it is to examine all the stores of corn collected for public distribution[584] or otherwise, to leave to each family sufficient for its needs, and to purchase the remainder from the owners at a fair market price. Co-operate with these orders of ours cheerfully, and do not grumble at them. Complain not that your freedom is interfered with. There is no free-trade in crime[585]. If you work with us you will earn good renown for yourselves; if against us, the King's reputation will gain by your loss. It is the sign of a good ruler ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... accordance with the custom which couples a driver with a gunner, they had lived happily together, with the one exception of meal-times. Louis, an intelligent man and the better informed of the two, did not grumble at the airs of superiority that are affected by every mounted over every unmounted man: he pitched the tent, made the soup, and did the chores, while Adolphe groomed his horses with the pride of ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... bring me face to face with Rupert Dunsmore and you won't have to grumble about the result, for I swear only one of us will go away alive. But how are you going to ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... any signs of, except of ill—humors, a good share of which he bestowed on me; though I was pleased to hear him play the flute, on which he was a tolerable musician. This second Egistus was sure to grumble whenever he saw me go into his mistress' apartment, treating me with a degree of disdain which she took care to repay him with interest; seeming pleased to caress me in his presence, on purpose to torment him. This kind of revenge, though perfectly to my taste, would have been still more charming ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... had fallen into a state of extreme neglect; the pack was one of the worst in the kingdom, the subscriptions were irregular, the kennel servants were ill-paid, the poor cottagers never received payment for losses when Reynard visited their hen-coops, and even the farmers began to grumble at needless damage to their hedges, and to refuse to "walk" the puppies. But the new Master had changed all this. He bore his share, but no more, of the expense caused by the reforms he at once introduced, and he reminded his ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... were no branches low down, he had to hug the trunk with arms and legs as a boy climbs. His lasso hampered his progress. When the slow ascent was accomplished up to the first branch, Kitty leaped back into her first perch. Strange to say Jones did not grumble; none of his characteristic impatience manifested itself. I supposed with him all the exasperating waits, vexatious obstacles, were little things preliminary to the real work, to which he had now come. He was calm and deliberate, and slid ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... Congressmen were equally bent on its defeat. In this dilemma, Lincoln sent for Senator Zack Chandler of Michigan, and proposed a compromise. "General Rosecrans," said he, "has a great many friends; he fought the battle of Stone River and won a brilliant victory, and his advocates begin to grumble about his treatment. Now, I will tell you what I have been thinking about. If you will confirm Schofield in the Senate, I will remove him from the command in Missouri and send him down to Sherman. That will satisfy the radicals. Then I will send ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... expected from the shepherds of Bethlehem and half sayings proper only to the authors of the Gospels. It ends with a villancico or carol. The second eclogue is far more realistic, and indeed resembles the English and French pastoral scenes. The shepherds grumble about the weather—it has been raining for two months, the floods are terrible, and no fords or bridges are left; they talk of the death of a sacristan, a fine singer; and they play a game with chestnuts; then comes the angel—whom one of them calls a "smartly dressed ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... Archdeacon Grantly to-day, and return home at once." That was the telegram which Mr Toogood received at his office, and on receiving which he resolved that he must start to Barchester immediately. "It isn't certainly what you may call a paying business," he said to his partner, who continued to grumble; "but it must be done all the same. If it don't get into the ledger in one way it will in another." So Mr Toogood started for Silverbridge, having sent to his house in Tavistock Square for a small bag, a clean shirt, and a toothbrush. And as he went down in the railway-carriage, before he ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... that yesterday's curious little moon may have changed our luck. All day it continued finer, and in the afternoon the wind freshened, and shifted a point or two for the better, sending us along, at higher speed and right on our course; so that we must not grumble, though the motion was still ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... nicely. We traveled in sleeping cars and not in the ordinary day coaches as did many of the players, and though we were obliged to sleep two in a berth we did not look upon this as an especial hardship as would the players of these latter days, many of whom are inclined to grumble because they cannot have the use of a private stateroom ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... come home, and would be astonished and perplexed by her absence. Surely, he would have the sense to dine by himself, instead of waiting for her; and she reflected with some glimpse of satisfaction that she had left everything connected with dinner properly arranged, so that he should have nothing to grumble at. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... a desperate spite against Burke? He got a lickin', in course, but what's a lickin' to a Englishman? Rot it all, the youngster en't a bad matey. He've led a dog's life, that he have, and I've never heard a grumble, ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... Ill-natured jokes devising, And all his wiles Are met with smiles, It's hard, there's no disguising! Oh, don't the days seem lank and long When all goes right and nothing goes wrong, And isn't your life extremely flat With nothing whatever to grumble at! ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... frequency, or iteration of small acts. And the same frequency of acts, but less subtile by reason of the clearer vowel a, is indicated in jangle, tangle, spangle, mangle, wrangle, brangle, dangle; as also in mumble, grumble, jumble. But at the same time the close u implies something obscure or obtunded; and a congeries of consonants mbl, denotes a confused kind of rolling or tumbling, as in ramble, scamble, scramble, wamble, amble; but in ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... audience awoke to the fact that these must be the Austrian dancers whose visit to New York had been so widely heralded. Captured at last, the nymph was submissive, and the dance which followed revealed artistry of an order with which most of the spectators were unfamiliar. Even Crosby Downs ceased to grumble and wedged himself down the side wall where he could have a better view. The dance ended amid applause and the audience now really aroused from its lethargy eagerly awaited the next rise of ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... her life she felt irritable, and inclined to grumble, and her racked nerves made the lonely hours appear doubly ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... you should not grumble," Terence said, "for we had some fighting on the way out, which is more than any of the other ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... were the long lines of trudging peasants, men, women and boys hurrying to the fields for the long weary hours of toil lasting often into the dark of night. But we were told they were working for their own profit, were their own masters, and did not grumble. This grinding toil in the fields, as practised here where nothing was wasted, could not of course be a happy or healthful work, nor calculated to elevate the peasant in intelligence, so as a matter of fact the great body of the country people, ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... in the morning arriving without a train appearing, my men began to grumble. In the excitement of this adventure they had omitted to prepare any food, and they were not now allowed to make fires, because the smoke evolved in culinary operations would have been immediately noticed by the enemy's outpost. We had therefore to remain hungry, ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... off the first joints of your fingers for them, and then you may write off the second joints, and all that they will say of you is, "What a remarkably short-fingered man!"'[42] But he had far too much self-respect to grumble at the inevitable results ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... you say that these proofs are not in my hands? Should you, however, desire to buy them, you are at liberty to do so. I give you the first option, and yet you grumble." ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... old lady grumble on, sat down to his bowl of steaming soup. "What do you say to dinner, Pascualet! Don't mind her! Your daddy is going to make the best sailor in the Cabanal out of you! Tell us, mama, what you got ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... excited, Wildwood," advised Marco. "Business is business, even if it is unpleasant sometimes. You've got the facts. Don't grumble at them. Let's see ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... you will, and stale at that," said the ugliest of his children, young Chilblain, giving his father's big toe a tweak as he passed, and grinning when he heard Frozen Nose grumble out, ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... shame. These are the masters that instruct us without rods and ferulas, without hard words and anger, without clothes or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if investigating you interrogate them, they conceal nothing; if you mistake them, they never grumble, if you are ignorant, they can ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... Don't grumble at me then, gentle reader, and swear at me that this damned fellow wasn't half clever enough to think all these smart things, and realise all these fine-drawn-out subtleties. You are quite right, he wasn't, yet it all resolved ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... make a will. In our State she can hold bonds and mortgages as her own. In our State she has a right to her own property. She can not sell it, though, if it is real estate, simply because the moment she marries her husband has a life-time right. The woman does not grumble at that; but still when he dies owning real estate, she gets only the rental value of one-third, which is called the widow's dower. Now I think the man ought to have the rental value of one-third ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... I dare say that everything will come right in the end. You have bagged two of the family—Papa heretic and Young Hopeful. Really you should not grumble if the third takes a little hunting, or wonder that in the meanwhile you are not popular with Mama. Now, listen. You know the young woman whom it was necessary that I should humour yesterday. She is ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... and dark-browed, steps forward, clears his throat, and with a half-surly inclination of the head begins, "Mr. Grandon," and then something intangible awes him a trifle. They may grumble among themselves, and lately they have found it easy to complain to Mr. Wilmarth, but the unconscious air of authority, the superior breeding, and fine, questioning eyes disconcert the man, who pulls himself together with the certainty ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... not show many interesting buildings beyond the keep and the long line of walls and drumtowers, there is so much concerning it that is of great human interest that I should scarcely feel able to grumble if there were still fewer remains. Behind the ancient houses in Quay Street rises the steep, grassy cliff, up which one must climb by various rough pathways to the fortified summit. On the side facing the mainland, a hollow, known as the Dyke, is bridged by a tall and narrow ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... Clod. Never grumble, Nor fling a discontent upon my pleasure, It must and shall be done: give me some wine, And fill it till it leap upon my lips: [wine Here's to the foolish maidenhead you wot of, The toy I ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... these seamen, that as soon as conveyed on board the British men of war, they are examined as to the length of time they have been at sea; and according to the knowledge and experience they appear to have, they are stationed; and if they grumble at the duty assigned them, they are called mutinous rascals, and threatened with the cat; the warrant officers are charged to watch them closely, lest they should attempt to pervert the crew, and to prevent them from sending letters from the ship to their friends. ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... do so," Malcolm said; "but in any case I am sure your wit would have come to the rescue, and you would have said that you had in fact bought them from your savings; but that thinking your husband might grumble at your little economies you had thought it best to say that they ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... favourite concetti; hardly even a metaphor; no taint of this new poetic diction into which we have now fallen, after all our abuse of the far more manly and sincere "poetic diction" of the eighteenth century; they will find no loitering by the way to argue and moralise, and grumble at Providence, and show off the author's own genius and sensibility; they will find, in short, two real works of art, earnest, melodious, self-forgetful, knowing clearly what they want to say, saying it in the shortest, the simplest, the calmest, the most finished ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... restoration of the open fireplace, and the removal of the cook-stove to a bit of shed just back; and though at first the young mother had fretted at the innovation, she found it so much more cheerful, and such a saving of candles in the long evenings, that she had ceased to grumble. ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... the car almost lost to sight in the crush; but Mr. van Buren, who is like a great, handsome Viking, pushed the people aside, and said things to them in Dutch which made some laugh and others grumble. ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... too much delicacy to grumble; but if the case of unappreciated genius is hard, it goes harder still with the stomach whose claims are ignored. Slighted affection, a subject of which too much has been made, is founded upon an illusory longing; for if the creature fails, love can turn to the Creator who has treasures ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... the least," I said. "Anything will be comfortable after Princetown. As long as you can fix me up with what I want for my work I shan't grumble ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... murmured for food, and God sent them manna, which they gathered every day except the Sabbath; but with all God's care and kindness the Israelites continued to grumble whenever any difficulty arose. Journeying forward, they entered another wilderness, called the Desert of Sin, and came to a place named Rephidim, where they found no water. They were very thirsty, and came to Moses murmuring ...
— Mother Stories from the Old Testament • Anonymous
... for a substantial night's rest. For the first time since breaking camp, on the night of March 28th, we unpacked our blankets and made a bed. It was after sunrise when we awoke. Far to the right we could hear the low grumble of artillery, sounding like the roar of distant thunder. Since four o'clock in the morning a great battle had been raging in front of Petersburg, from the Appomattox on the right, to Hatcher's Run on ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... when they retreat to the hills, and are ready for the cultivation of their fields there. This addition to the arable land has been a great boon to the people. I cannot say, however, judging by those with whom I have conversed, that they are satisfied. They grumble at the new tax imposed for the construction and maintenance of the canals, and also at the tax they have to pay for their holdings in the hills, though I believe it to be very light. They would gladly have all the benefits of a firm and improving ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... later, when the water supply ran low, and when there were so many leaks in the vessels that the pumps were working constantly, they began to grumble. But Columbus, who was a magician at reckoning sea distance, laughed at their alarm and said to them, "Drink all the water you like; we shall reach land in forty-eight hours." Next day no land appeared, but still he ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... air was filled with the long happy drone of the mill-stones as they ground the grain; and from farther away came the soft, stinging cry of a saw-mill. Its keen buzzing complaint was harmonious with the grumble of the mill-stones, as though a supreme maker of music had tuned it. So said a master-musician and his friend, a philosopher from Nantes, who came to St. Saviour's in the summer just before the marriage, and lodged with Jean Jacques. Jean Jacques, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the time will come when the self-will of your wife or some unforeseen expenditure will compel her to ask a loan of the Chamber; I presume that you will always grant her the bill of indemnity, as our unfaithful deputies never fail to do. They pay, but they grumble; you must pay and at the same time compliment her. I hope it will ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... continually did great damage to the besiegers. Michael Angelo, notwithstanding that he had made provision beforehand for whatever might occur, posted himself upon the hill. After about six months the soldiers began to grumble amongst themselves of I know not what treachery; Michael Angelo partly knowing about this himself, and partly by the warnings of certain captains, his friends, betook himself to the Signoria and discovered ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... wont to grumble that she was more interested in her work than she was in him, which was probably true, because her development had been a slow one, and it could not be said that she was greatly in love with anything in the world ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... did I feel how inexpressibly dear you were to me. You have been my father and my brother and my mistress and my tailor and my shoemaker and my hatter and my cook and my wine-merchant! You and I never misunderstood each other. I did not grumble when I saw what fine houses and good strong boxes you gave to other men. No! I rejoiced at their prosperity. I delighted to see a rich man,—my only disappointment was in stumbling on a poor one. You gave riches to ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... they demean themselves as fools and incapables, (as they sometimes do,) they bring grist to your mill; but if they show wisdom, courage, and constancy, they leave you to stand at your mill-doors and grumble for want of toll,—as in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... Ned, so suddenly that his mustang started and had to be checked and soothed. "Can't a fellow speak? I don't want to grumble, but it is ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... lying somewhere out on the barrens with the red-bound casket clutched in a frozen hand. So the skipper devoted a day to searching for him over the thawing, sodden wilderness behind the harbor. He took Bill Brennen and Nick Leary with him. The other men did not grumble at being left behind, perhaps because they were learning the unwisdom of grumbling against the skipper's orders, more likely because they did not care a dang if Foxey Jack Quinn was ever found or not, dead or alive. Quinn ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... along the road with rapid strides. Some of the feebler marchers showed signs of weariness and began to grumble at our speed. There was an ironical shout of "Double up in front," whereupon the front fours slowed ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... crowd, but to one. Indeed, if we were to take out of the gospels what Jesus said to small audiences, we should rob them of their choicest portions. So, if, when we get to the chapel we find that there are more pews than people, let us preach to those who are there. Why grumble at the few who have come, perhaps a long way? Let us feed these with the choicest of the wheat. It may be an historic time for anything you know. There may be someone there whom your sermon may lead to Jesus, and who himself ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... thou naughty hussy, wilt thou grumble at tarrying with me to care for thine own dear sister and brother? ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... paramount. Camilla could not endure this with an equal mind. "Bella, dear," she said, "we know what all that means. He has made his choice, and if I am satisfied with what he does now, surely you need not grumble." Miss Stanbury's illness had undoubtedly been a great source of contentment to the family at Heavitree, as they had all been able to argue that her impending demise was the natural consequence of her great sin in the matter of Dorothy's proposed marriage. When, however, ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... when we were young, didn't we go the pace—But now, oh, dear! oh, dear!—Well, never mind; go along, my dears, and make yourselves happy while you can. Love forever!" The old woman disappeared in the darkness of the alley, calling out, "Alfred, do not grumble, old darling. Here is 'Stasie who brings you ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... opposition should be peevish and cry out: some men did so from their hearts, admiring the Duke of Marlborough's prodigious talents, and deploring the disgrace of the greatest general the world ever knew: 'twas the stomach that caused other patriots to grumble, and such men cried out because they were poor, and paid to do so. Against these my Lord Bolingbroke never showed the slightest mercy, whipping a dozen into prison or into the pillory without the ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... of old Nun and his grandson also did so with sparkling eyes. The tribe of Ephraim, whose lofty pretensions had been a source of much vexation, was willingly allowed precedence on this march, and only the men of Judah were heard to grumble. Doubtless there was reason for dissatisfaction; for Hur, the prince of their tribe, and his young wife walked as if oppressed by a heavy burden; whoever asked them anything would have been wiser to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that men are never so much disposed to grumble and mutiny as when least employed. Hence an old captain, when there was nothing else to do, would issue the order to "scour the anchor." ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... think it would!" said Enid laughing. "Much too nice for us. They choose the driest books possible for schools. Patty, why don't you grumble too? It's quite aggravating to see you ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... the saturated mound in front. They were all wet through and through, with a great deal of their equipment below the water at the bottom of the trench. There they were, taking it all as a necessary part of the great game; not a grumble ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... of interviewing, the merchant and the captain were in accord, but Turcott did not cease to grumble between his teeth. ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... skill of the golfer is not being more severely tested. When we come to such monstrosities as holes of 600 yards in length, it is time to call out "Enough!" for by this time we have descended to slogging pure and simple, and the hard field work at which an agricultural labourer would have the right to grumble. So I repeat that the best hole for golfing is that good two-shotter which takes the ball from the tee to the green in two well-played strokes without any actual pressing. As for total length, it should be borne in mind that a links over 6000 ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... apprentices came into his yard he shot at them—sometimes only into the air in order to frighten them. He had a violent temper too, and especially when he had been drinking. Well, I suppose Beipst grumbled one day—he likes to grumble, you know—and so the farmer snatched up his rifle and fired at him. Beipst, you know, used to ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... been in a very much worse way had the wind come from another quarter, and driven us towards the land," he replied, gravely. "Some of the people had begun to grumble because we had been drifted so far off-shore. We may now be thankful that we were not caught nearer to it, and have already made so much offing. We shall very likely have it round again, and then we shall require all ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... know he had hardly left his lodgings before their hush was interrupted by the grumble ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... in raging rout, As when water wrestles with fire, Till to heaven the yeasty tongues they spout, Wave upon wave's back mounting higher; And as with the grumble of distant thunder, Bellowing it bursts from the dark ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... black gown rose near the accused; he was her lawyer.—The judges, who were fasting, began to grumble. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... itself, and make us sensible of our infantine faults; but this period of life had a different effect on Rosina, who had then contracted an unhappy disposition, which cannot better be described, than by the practices of those snarling curs that grumble incessantly, and seem always ready to run and bite at ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... fashion. After one of these feasts there was often much that was objectionable; and, wherever possible, farmers have abolished them, giving a small sum of money instead; but in places the labourers grumble greatly at the change, preferring the bacon and the beer, and the unrestrained license. It is noticeable how the women must have their tea. If it is far from home, the children collect sticks, and ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... that isn't fair," the eldest sister said, in a gentler voice. "You know I never blamed you. I only showed you that even a popular actress sometimes remembers that she is a woman. And if she is a woman, you must let her have a grumble occasionally." ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... of the army. The soldiers wondered at her bravery, and learned to like her more than anybody else. If food was scarce, the roads rough, and the marches long, they remembered, that Catherine was with them, and were ashamed to grumble. If she could stand the hardships and face the dangers, they thought rough ...
— Strange Stories from History for Young People • George Cary Eggleston
... is the only time for cooking. The decrees of an order for a detail are inexorable. A soldier must take it as it comes, for none ever know but what the next duties may be even worse than the present. As a general rule, soldiers rarely ever grumble at any detail on the eve of an engagement, for sometimes it excuses them from a battle, and the old experienced ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... that the British prosperous and the British successful, to whom warning after warning has rained in vain from the days of Ruskin, Carlyle, Matthew Arnold, should be called to account at last in their own household. They will grumble, they will be very angry, but in the end, I believe, they will rise to the opportunities of their inconvenience. They will shake off their intellectual lassitude, take over again the public and private affairs they have come ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... hard, and either dropped their bundles or fell out of line, with the result that we went into action with less than five hundred men—as, in addition to the stragglers, a detachment had been left to guard the baggage on shore. At the time I was rather inclined to grumble to myself about Wood setting so fast a pace, but when the fight began I realized that it had been absolutely necessary, as otherwise we should have arrived late and the regulars would have had very hard ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... Washing their pinafores clean and white And tucking them up in their cots at night. * * * * * Ask me not—for I cannot tell, I can only guess—how the end befell: A wifely word, an angry scowl, A bit of a grumble, a bit of a growl, A scolding here, a squabbling there, And here the sound of an ugly swear, A cry of despair from the sore opprest, A secret call to the "Miners' Rest," A sudden revolt from the brooms and mats, And a roar from a thousand throats—"Down ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various
... smiling face he promises that fifty sacks of corn shall be sent to the cemetery immediately, with oil to correspond. Only the workmen must go back to their work at once, and there must be no more chasing of poor Secretary Amen-nachtu. Otherwise, he can do nothing. The workmen grumble a little. They have been put off with promises before, and have got little good of them. But they have no leader bold enough to start a riot, and they have no weapons, and the spears and bows of the Prince's ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... glib-tongued, foul-mouthed creatures as they, who are bound not to see a good end! It isn't for them to indulge in those fanciful dreams of becoming primary wives, for there, will come soon a day when the whole lump sum of their allowance will be cut off! They grumble against us for having now reduced the perquisites of the servant-maids, but they don't consider whether they deserve to have so many as three girls to dance attendance ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... he did not like to come home and find his wife gone. He missed her as he would the sun from day. Althea was much inclined to remain at home; and Thornton would not often have found chance to grumble upon this score. He was not given to habits of self-denial; nevertheless, to secure good will and triumph over Sharp, he would encourage Althea to make frequent visits—nay, often insist upon it, against her inclination and his own private wish. If his wife could serve his policy, well and good. ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... Grant," he used to say apologetically; "but as it's for our own convenience we ought not to grumble." ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... o'clock in the morning, and the mate thought that the sailors would grumble; but he didn't care. "Aye, aye, sir," ...
— The Sandman: His Sea Stories • William J. Hopkins
... to lend themselves to any simulation of romance. After all, marching to the divine drumbeat was simply to follow the precepts ingrained in me as a child, but it is much easier to make a quick charge amid the blare of bugles than to plod along day after day to the monotonous grumble of the drum. I wished that the Professor had been a little more explicit, and yet his last words were always with me. It was as though they were intended for me alone, and I coupled them with his admonition to me that day long ago in the cabin: "Get out of the ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... after three o'clock when they returned to the theater. The rehearsal of the day's performance was in full swing. Cabinski was about to grumble at them for coming late, but Majkowska gave him such a crushing look that he merely ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... work down in Arizona. But you fellows wouldn't. We've seen some thing of the soldiery down in that part of the world, and they're the laziest crowd you ever saw. Why, the Army officers in Arizona sleep all day and grumble about the heat all night. They have tame Apaches to do their work for them. Oh, no, you wouldn't suffer down ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... however, as well as the rich, and even the Snarling Princess was obliged to submit to the disappointment at which she could only grumble. ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... to have little peace that night! Hardly had Dick finished his grumble and sauntered away, before her husband's step ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... presently—talking all the while—produced a card, and said in the politest way, "I think that is yours, madam?" and you remarked that this was the four of clubs, whereas you selected the five, he exclaimed, with pretence of irritation, "Well, what is there to grumble at?" and, looking again, you saw that it had changed to the five of clubs. There was nothing to do but to applaud and wonder. He swallowed cards, and produced them with a slight click from his elbow, the middle ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... held so assiduously, and without ever a wandering flutter, to the face of the man who was paying. But Freddie never noticed her. He chewed savagely at his cigar, looking about the while for things to grumble at or to curse. Rod? He is still writing indifferent plays with varying success. He long since wearied of Constance Francklyn, but she clings to him and, as she is a steady moneymaker, ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... morally bound to grumble at him] But I cannot approve of your running away like this. It isn't natural. [Then with selfish haste, fearing her words may change his mind and she will lose the baby.] But you always were a queer person—and a man must do faithfully ...
— The First Man • Eugene O'Neill
... the knowledge, and therefore with the joint responsibility, of the Chancellor? If the answer is in the negative, it is the "personal regiment" again, and people are angry: if the latter, they may disapprove of the step and grumble at it, but it is covered by the Chancellor's signature and they can raise no constitutional objection. Hence the demand usually made on such occasions for an Act of Parliament once for all defining fully and clearly the Chancellor's responsibilities. ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... these rogues have good dinners; even Bois l'Hery has his meals sent in to the prison from the Cafe Anglais, and poor old Passajon is reduced to live on scraps picked up in the kitchen. Still we must not grumble too much. There are others more wretched than we are—witness M. Francis, who came in this morning to the Territorial, thin, pale, with dirty linen and frayed cuffs, which he still pulled down ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... eats too much mince-pie, goes to his weekly lecture, and, seeing only half a dozen people there, proceeds to grumble at those half-dozen for the sins of such as stay away. "The Church is cold, there is no interest in religion," and so on: a simple outpouring ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... finer perceptibilities. But when he learnt, after the interchange of various hoarse and to him unintelligible bellowings, that he was to wait in that narrow damp lobby for the coming of his fellow- Commissioner, the grating on his feelings was even more discordant. He had not pluck enough left to grumble: but he grunted his displeasure. He grunted, however, in vain; for in about a quarter of an hour Alaric was close to him, shoulder to shoulder. He also wore a white jacket, &c., with a nightcap of mud and candle on his head; but somehow he looked as though he had worn them all his ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... cannot we, your High Mightinesses? Dunkirk, which, by all the Treaties in existence, ought to need no besieging; but which, in spite of treatyings innumerable, always does?' The High Mightinesses answer nothing articulate, languidly grumble something in OPTATIVE tone;—'meaning assent,' thinks the sanguine mind. 'Dutch hoistable, after all!' thinks he; 'Dutch will co-operate, if they saw example set!' And, in England, the work of embarking ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... noteworthy personages in our party are a dapper Frenchman, who is in business at Manchester, and a portly Londoner, both of whom are seeing Ireland for the first time. The Frenchman does not grumble at the weather, for he says that in Manchester it rains twice a day all the year round, save during the winter, when it commonly ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... cavities with which New York streets abound to another, than a whistle from the Captain stopped them. It was a false alarm given for my edification. Before they could get back into the engine-house I was conducted by the Captain into the dormitory, where I concealed myself under a bed. Without a grumble the men came up and literally walked out of their clothes, for boots, pants and everything are all one piece. They opened these carefully and laid them ready by the side of their beds, and in a few minutes were all snoring ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... given. In an hour or so, Lionel would arrive; those hateful nuptials, dooming Fawley as the nuptials of Paris and Helen had doomed Troy, would be finally arranged. In another week the work of demolition would commence. He never meant to leave Darrell to superintend that work. No; grumble and refuse as he might till the last moment, he knew well enough that, when it came to the point, he, Richard Fairthorn, must endure any torture that could save Guy Darrell from a pang. A voice comes singing low through the grove—the patter of feet on the crisp leaves. He looks up; Sir ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Yesterday, by a coincidence— [feeling the outside of his breast-pocket] letter from the wife— full o' complaints— haven't been to Bexhill, to her and the kids, for weeks. And to do Ellen Roper justice, she's not the woman to grumble without cause. [Picking up his hat and cane which he has placed upon the centre table.] Dash it all, home ties are home ties! [Polishing his hat with his sleeve.] And, taking one consideration with another— and after this— ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... of the burdens I am bearin', An' I grumble when I'm footsore at the rough road I am farin', But I strap my knapsack tighter till I feel the leather bind me, An' I'm glad to bear the burdens for the ones who come behind me. It's for them that I am ploddin', for the children comin' after; I would strew their path with roses and would fill ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... glory slumber comes Bosomed amid the archangelic choir; Not with the grumble of impetuous drums Deepening the ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... "Never grumble o'er that, woman," was his placid answer. "The dose will keep him awake all night. We must thank heaven we ha' the profit and none o' the pain ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... answered, "and I am not going to grumble at the change, seeing that this is holiday time. Berthun came to me last evening, and called me aside, and said that it was the king's wont to dress his folk anew at the time of the Witan, and then wanted to know if my vow prevented ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... "I suppose I mustn't grumble over two horses," said Christodulos. "I served under Hadgi Stavros, the King of the Mountains, in the War of Independence, and earned enough money to set ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... of a grumble, your honour, about our luck," said the man, respectfully. "We're all feeling as if it was time our watch ended, and as though we'd like a bit o' something to eat and drink. ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... their business to frame new reports at every convenient interval, all tending to denounce ruin, both on their contemporaries and their posterity. This denunciation is eagerly caught up by the public: away they fling to propagate the distress; sell out at one place, buy in at another, grumble at their governors, shout in mobs, and when they have thus for some time behaved like fools, sit down coolly to argue and talk wisdom, to puzzle each other with syllogism, and prepare for the next report that prevails, which is always attended with ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... the book last quoted (the wide, treeless, communal plain with its various labouring teams), or as some of the Lake touches in Lucrezia Floriani, or as the relieving patches in the otherwise monotonous grumble of Un Hiver a Majorque, are unsurpassable. Nor is this gift limited to mere paysage. The famous account of Chopin's playing already mentioned for praise is only first among many. But whether these things are supported by sufficient ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... efforts, in the early days of March, 1917, began to bear fruit. In spite of the warnings of the few loyal labor leaders still at liberty, the workers began to grumble and to talk revolt. Their stomachs were empty. On February 27, 1917, when the Duma went into session again, 300,000 workingmen had gone out on strike in Petrograd. The air was charged with electricity. Everybody realized ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... We grumble in our Fatherland; every stupid thing, every contrary trifle, vexes us there; like boys, we are always longing to rush forth into the wide world, and, when we finally find ourselves there, we find it too wide, and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... he seemed almost bound to go, to be under compulsion, as if his sister's strong will were forcing him to carry out his design. And his sister seemed almost hard-hearted to him, as if she were thrusting him away to get rid of him. He did not, indeed, dare to say this openly, but he began to grumble and complain a good deal about it, and Barefoot looked upon this as suppressed grief over parting—the feeling that would gladly take advantage of little obstacles and represent them as hindrances to the fulfilment of a purpose ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... store tax, a copra tax, and a tobacco tax. There are harbour dues and regulations, and other taxes. But the people are not taxed—only the traders. When the copra tax was levied, I lowered the purchasing price accordingly. Then the people began to grumble, and Feathers of the Sun passed a new law, setting the old price back and forbidding any man to lower it. Me he fined two pounds and five pigs, it being well known that I possessed five pigs. You will find them entered in the ledger. Hawkins, who is trader ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... addressing Finot; "they won't cost the management anything, for the chorus and the orchestra and the corps de ballet are to take them whether they like it or not; but your paper is so clever that nobody will grumble. And you are going to have your boxes. Here is the subscription for the first quarter," she continued, holding out a couple of banknotes; "so ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... different—everything strange—everything, except the heat, delightful. And as Fred said, "some folk would grumble in hell!" Trees, flowers, birds, costumes of the women, sheen of the sea, glint of sun on bare skins of every shade from ivory to ebony, dazzling coral roadway and colored coral walls, babel of tongues, sack-saddled donkeys sleepily bearing loads of coral for new ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... his face, but language and voice, an spite of its low grumble, told me the speaker was Kirby. The very coldness of his tone served to ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... copies struck off after the first lot of 2500. I daresay there will be a new edition in the course of nine months or a year, and this I will correct as well as I can. As yet the publishers have kept up type, and grumble dreadfully if I make heavy corrections. I am very far from surprised that "you have not committed yourself to full acceptation" of the evolution of man. Difficulties and objections there undoubtedly are, enough and to spare, to stagger any cautious man ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... tragedy," I muttered, and considering it, philosophising according to my wont, I tried to reconcile myself to this visit. "After all," I said, "I am on my own business, therefore I have no right to grumble." ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... blasphemies, but, alas! they were intoxicated, and may God forgive them, unhappy ones, for they knew not what they did. The poor, exhausted miners—for even well people cannot sleep in such a pandemonium—grumble and complain, but they, although far outnumbering the rioters, are too timid to resist. All say, "It is shameful," "Something ought to be done," "Something must be done," etc., and in the mean time the rioters triumph; ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... weather i' Lincoln," was Dan's dry answer. "Up at smithy, it's none so bad neither—yet. Just a touch of thunder we had this morning,—a bit of a grumble i' th' distance like: but I've known worser storms a deal. ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... there was a pretty good swell on the sea, an' things was floatin' about so's to make it dangerous. But we fished out a piece of canvas, which we rigged up ag'in' the stump of the mainmast so that we could have somethin' that we could sit down an' grumble under. What struck us all the hardest was that the bark was loaded with a whole cargo of jolly things to eat, which was just as good as ever they was, fur the water couldn't git through the tin cans in which they was all put up, an' here we was with nothin' to live on but ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... That is all—not too difficult a task for a clever man. Mr. Chesney reckoned on no power in Ireland likely to be seriously troublesome. The upper classes were either helpless and sulking, or helpless and smiling artificially. They might grumble in private or try to make themselves popular by joining the chorus of the Church's flatterers. Either way their influence was inconsiderable. Was there anyone else worth considering? The Orangemen were still a noisy faction, but their organization appeared to be breaking ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... about a month's time you should grumble and fall out with me for not writing, you will certainly be in some degree justified; for I think it must be near upon three weeks since I wrote to you, which is a sin and a shame. To say that I have not had time to write is nonsense, for in three weeks there are ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... with great good taste, ranged up the center of the room; and we sat down to a breakfast of steak, and ham, and eggs, and cold chickens, and fish balls, and hot rolls, and corn cakes, and brown bread-all prepared so nice and delicately, that even the most fastidious could have found nothing to grumble at. Indeed it was said of the the landlord of the "Independent Temperance," that he spared neither pains nor expense in the management of his house, which had gained much fame over the country, though it had thrice made him a bankrupt with three score ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... waste hour after hour, cricking his neck and squinting at his work from a corner, when thirty seconds and a little wit would move his work where he would get a good light and be comfortable; or he will work with bad tools and grumble, when five minutes would mend his tools and ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... fulfilled it often enough to keep her sense of it alive, but she much preferred to forage with him in the afternoon; that was poetry, she said, and the other was prose. He would have liked to talk the proposition over with her; to realize the compliment while it was fresh, to grumble at it a little, and to be supported in his notion that it would be bad business just then for him to undertake a task that might draw him away from his play too much; to do the latter well would take a great deal of time. Yet he did not feel quite that ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... on and Beatrice is now counted as quite an old nurse. She finds her work in the bungalows very pleasant and the soldiers find her most obliging. She works hard and is never tempted to grumble. ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... why food at country hotels in England is so bad? At Retby Lady Theodosia won't touch anything unless it is absolutely perfect. She sent a dish away yesterday just because a whiff of some flavouring she does not like came to her, but at the "Red Lion" she did not grumble at all; it must be for the same reason that wetting their feet doesn't give French people cold if it is at a national sport, that made her put up with the lunch because it was English and ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... congratulation that the British prosperous and the British successful, to whom warning after warning has rained in vain from the days of Ruskin, Carlyle, Matthew Arnold, should be called to account at last in their own household. They will grumble, they will be very angry, but in the end, I believe, they will rise to the opportunities of their inconvenience. They will shake off their intellectual lassitude, take over again the public and private affairs they have come to leave ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... opened and studying the old timbered houses, "it's getting almost absurd: like Father's story of the soldier who greeted his master every morning in India with 'Another hot day, sirr.' We thought if we got one good day out of the three we were to be on the road we wouldn't grumble, and here it goes on and on.... We must come back to Shrewsbury, Davie. It deserves more than ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... Shakespeare says somewhere. Oh, well, if it wasn't Willy Shakespeare it was somebody else who said it, and it's just as true anyway. Take your umbrella and wait till the rain comes down before you grumble. I've got an exeat and I didn't expect it, and I'm going off my head a little. That's all! Don't worry yourselves about me. I'm ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... men unworthy of the franchise. The temptation to value manners above morals, and pleasantness above honesty, is one that all of us have to guard against. And when we have held to a custom merely because it is old, have refused to consider fairly the reasons for its change, and are inclined to grumble when the change is carried out, we shall be none the worse for thinking of the people, young and old, who, in the time of Harrison and Shakspere, the "Forgotten Worthies"[82] and Raleigh, no doubt 'hated those nasty new oak houses and chimnies,' ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... there is implied a frequency, or iteration of small acts. And the same frequency of acts, but less subtile by reason of the clearer vowel a, is indicated in jangle, tangle, spangle, mangle, wrangle, brangle, dangle; as also in mumble, grumble, jumble. But at the same time the close u implies something obscure or obtunded; and a congeries of consonants mbl, denotes a confused kind of rolling or tumbling, as in ramble, scamble, scramble, wamble, amble; but in ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... at first named it after a little liquor cellar he kept in his early days in Philadelphia, called "The Shades," but some cowboy humourist, particular about the external fitness of things, had scraped out the letter "S," and so the sign over the door had been allowed to remain. Mike did not grumble. He had taken a keen interest in politics in Philadelphia, but an unexpected spasm of civic virtue having overtaken the city some years before, Davlin had been made a victim, and he was forced to leave suddenly for the West, where there was no politics, and where a ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... It's always the case. But here's the soup. I hope you have brought a good appetite. You can't expect such a meal here as you would get in New York; but they do fairly well. I, for one, don't grumble about the food in London, as most Americans do. Londoners manage to keep alive, and that, after all, ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... and how she used to grumble when I went to sup with the Duchess—my own mother—you know, because she used to give me chocolate, and she said it made me scream at night, and be over fat by day? Ah! that was before you used to come among us. It was after I went to France to my poor aunt ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... advance he did. After he had told us where to find the men, he had good reason to believe that the boats would be sent for them. We did not fall into the trap he set for us. I think it is all right as it is; but whether it is or not, it's no use to grumble about it." ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... there was my old aunt; and she would have helped us, but she could not, for the old woman is bed-ridden; so she did nothing but occupy our best room, and grumble from morning till night: heaven knows, poor old soul, that she had no great reason to be very happy; for you know, sir, that it frets the temper to be sick; and that it is worse still to ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... diligent of housewives, began at last that "spring-cleaning" which she makes so pleasant that none find the heart to grumble as they do when other matrons set their premises a-dust. Her handmaids, wind and rain and sun, swept, washed, and garnished busily, green carpets were unrolled, apple-boughs were hung with draperies of bloom, and dandelions, pet nurslings of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... prepared the invalid's dainty little dinners: the excellent beef-tea and soups, the jellies, rusks, and delicate puddings, were all Mrs. Finch's handiwork. Mrs. Pratt's cookery was not to be depended on, and though she pretended to grumble at other folks' interference, she was only too ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... ponies drew away, and there was nothing for him but to snuggle down with a buzz and a grumble among the wet bluebells and wait for daybreak, for sobriety and with it a new ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... Ford party in the first place, and doubly so from the later events of the night. So as she lay sleepless and listening, she heard the rattle of cooking things in the kitchen below and soon the odor of frying. With a little grumble she got up and put on the few garments ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... and my company to go along with them, I positively refused it, and rose up (for I was sitting on the ground) in order to go to the boat. One or two of the men began to importune me to go, and when I still refused positively, began to grumble, and say they were not under my command, and they would go. "Come, Jack," says one of the men, "will you go with me? I will go for one." Jack said he would; and another followed, and then another; and, in a word, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... until the time comes when the enemy's archives are published, such proof cannot, of course, be adduced on this particular matter. This time is still far distant. Why should the enemy publish their archives? They have won and have therefore no reason to grumble at the course of events. Thus I can at present only combat with counter-arguments the contention that I misunderstood the true state of affairs in America. The hypothesis of secret collusion between America and England seems in the present case unnecessary; the attitude of public opinion ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... I take the goods the gods provide me, and am contented with girls that have the eyes of their mother; but Roland, ungrateful man, begins to grumble that we are so neglectful of the rights of heirs—male. He is in doubt whether to lay the fault on Mr. Squills or on us,—I am not sure that he does not think it a conspiracy of all three to settle the representation of the martial De Caxtons on the ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Let em grumble. I allers found out that when a man is gettin up in the world, that, like carrion crows hoverin over a sick animal, grumblers fly about him, lickin their chops and watchin a good opportunity to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... was to wish that something dramatic would happen!" she thought. "Oh, if we could only have those dear, monotonous, pleasant days back again! I would never, never grumble about ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Mac after a thoughtful pause. "I must pass that along. I know from myself that the men will grumble when they think the women are going to make as much money as themselves. But when they richtly understand it's for their own sake, too, they'll ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... refectory, and the domestic buildings of the monks. The erection of the castle is dated in the twelfth century, and from this time we may consider the older abbey buildings around the church to have been deserted and left to ruin; but we can hardly grumble at a transfer which has given us so curious a combination of military and monastic ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... yell be comin' round him to get your daughters to keep house for him, and your sons edicated and made priests of; but now that the child takes a ginteel relish for beef and mutton, and wants to be respected, ye are mane an' low spirited enough to grumble about it." ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... gave myself over to eating to make up for a fast of nine long years. Thou hadst not a qualm because thou hast been fed on wine and porridge and beef gruel and whey. The clearness of thy body speaks for a pure stomach. Let the awfulness of my condition warn thee. Thou must never grumble when I take from thee weightier food than thou hast been used to. But, Lambkin, we have had a glorious voyage inasmuch as we have had both calm and storm; had I been privileged to do the ordering, we could not ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... all the circumstances thereunto belonging; nor in Physic without the concurrent knowledg of the sick mans habit, disease, cause, remedies, and many other particulars necessary to make a clear judgment upon the success? Yet notwithstanding, many will censure and grumble at the actions of the States-men, though their proceedings have been never so wise, and prudent, and oft-times from muttering and whispering, fall to down-right distast, and mutiny against their Superiors. So that the good success, in State-affairs, of ...
— A Short View of the Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries • Christopher Merrett
... at its bottom. But the man was stout in heart and full of hope. He set his seamen to work to drag along the coast, and for weeks they went on fishing up sea-weed, shingle, and bits of rock. No occupation could be more trying to seamen, and they began to grumble one to another, and to whisper that the man in command had brought them ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... am not able to do anything except the school work. Four of the children have had chills and fever, and I have had to rise at night to care for them. I have been trying to do the work of three people and not complain. Still I'd like to grumble a little, if I could find the right one to talk to. I am beginning to feel a little like Josiah Allen's wife, when she said, 'Betsy Bobbet, you're a fool, or ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... nervously fingering the knife he had taken from the sentinel on the bastion. The grunt was repeated; but the intruders remained still as death, and with a sleepy grumble the man who had been disturbed turned over on his charpoy, placed transversely across ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... you mean to do for me, old fellow?' asked Mr Lenville, poking the struggling fire with his walking-stick, and afterwards wiping it on the skirt of his coat. 'Anything in the gruff and grumble way?' ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... straw, then. You must be very new to the world, to grumble at this. How would you bear to lie on the field of battle on a frosty night, as I did t'other day, stark naked, with nothing to keep me warm but the carcass of a fellow I had been ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Hill (as we used to call it in those days), the nation flushed out in its usual hot-headed anger. The talk was all against the philosophers after that, and the people were most indomitably loyal. It was not until the land-tax was increased, that the gentry began to grumble a little; but still my party in the West was very strong against the Tiptoffs, and I determined to take the field and ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... nothing in his dress which would have made him a fit subject for a picture of rustic life. When he spoke, he was able to talk on subjects unconnected with agricultural pursuits; nor did I hear him grumble about the weather and the crops. It was pleasant to see that his wife was proud of him, and that he was, what all fathers ought to be, his children's best and dearest friend. Why do I dwell on these details, relating to a man whom I was not destined to see again? ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... it may be poisoned." Of course we had to be careful of spies, but I stuck the bottles in my pack when the officer wasn't looking. Well, we marched to the depot and were soon packed into the small uncomfortable coaches. We started to kick and grumble, but Rust said: "You are lucky to have coaches at all. Last time I went up I rode in a cattle-car," and he pointed out a lot of cars on which was painted "Capacity, so many horses, so many men." After that we hadn't ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... why they should get a meal ready merely because a timepiece says twelve o'clock. Let them wait until a man's hungry," he would grumble. Then, arrived at the cabin, he would be ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... apt, the master was exceedingly skilful; and, accordingly, Mrs. Walker's progress was very remarkable: although, for her part, honest Mrs. Crump, who used to attend her daughter's lessons, would grumble not a little at the new system, and the endless exercises which she, Morgiana, was made to go through. It was very different in HER time, she said. Incledon knew no music, and who could sing so well now? Give her a good English ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... back again, "But he will not grumble because too much sugar is used in the house. So let him take it then, let him ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... Job! you had two friends: one's quite enough, Especially when we are ill at ease; They're but bad pilots when the weather's rough, Doctors less famous for their cures than fees. Let no man grumble when his friends fall off. As they will do like leaves at the first breeze: When your affairs come round, one way or 'tother, Go to the coffee-house, and ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... who like warmth began to grumble a little—hypnotised by the Press. But the spell-of-hot-weather had had enough. "I'll go somewhere else, where I'm really welcome and they don't have contents bills," it said, and it crossed the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... us. Women and men wull be comrades more; there'll be fewer helpless lassies who canna find their way aboot without a man to guide them. But men wull like that—I can tell ye so, though they may grumble at the first. ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... me," said Margaret—"it is just what I wish on my own account, and I know it is comfortable to have a good grumble." ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... authority should be vested in the Seniors, and they saw no reason why it should be changed. A mere outburst of temper on the part of a few Juniors was nothing: it had happened before, and would no doubt happen again; it was as much the province of Juniors to grumble as of Seniors to rule. But they reckoned without Gipsy. That any girl of her age should be capable of welding the shifting dissatisfaction of the Lower School into one solid mass of opposition had never occurred to them. So far no Junior ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... most unlucky for some time now, and to tell the truth I may say always. But I am the last man in the world to grumble—as you, my dear Lingo, can testify. I always do the utmost, with a single mind, and leave the thought of miserable pelf to others, men perhaps who never saw a shotted cannon fired. You know who made ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... in black, 'why she will be true to herself. Let Dissenters, whether they be Church of England, as perhaps they may still call themselves, Methodist, or Presbyterian, presume to grumble, and there shall be bruising of lips in pulpits, tying up to whipping-posts, cutting off ears and noses—he! he! the farce of King Log has been acted long enough; the time for Queen Stork's tragedy is drawing nigh'; ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... feeling of honour in these things; but he did not for a moment think that any one acting with him would have dealings with Glump. On the Saturday morning, when the case was still going on, to the great detriment of Baron Grumble's domestic happiness, Glump had not yet been caught. It seemed that the man had no wife, no relative, no friend. The woman at whose house he lodged declared that he often went and came after this fashion. The respect with which Glump's name ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... decent, honest folk marry; but, 'od, lad, I'se plenish your parish wi' bastards, to see what ye'll mak o' that,' and away he went. He read Hooke's Pantheon, and made great use of the heathen deities. He railed sadly at the taxes; some one observed that he need not grumble at them as he had none to pay. 'Hae I no'?' he replied, 'I can neither get a pickle snuff to my neb, nor a pickle tea to my mouth, but they maun tax 't.' His sister and he were on very unfriendly terms. She was ill on one occasion; Miss Ballantyne asked how she was to-day. ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... morning, as Cardo drove off to Caer Madoc to catch the train at the nearest station, "I mustn't grumble at losing him so soon; he is doing the right thing, poor fellow, and I hope in my heart he may find his wife and bring her home. What a happy party we shall be! The only thorn in my flesh will be Essec Powell; I don't think I can ever get over ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... And it's lonely. As for you, Colum, you're sentimental about your birdhouses. And you dislike your job. You like the country merely because it is a symbol of a holiday. It is freedom from an irksome task. It means a closing of your desk. But if you had to live in the country, you would grumble in a month's time. Even a bullfrog—and he is brought up to ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... and as many as you can get," Trent answered shortly. "I have a 100 pound note with me. I shall not grumble if I get little change out of it, but I ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... unreasonable to grumble at the overheating of the "Sleeper" after abusing the under-heating of our British railways. Surely, though, there is a golden mean? I wish neither to be frozen nor boiled, and there can be no doubt but that the heating of most Continental trains is excellent, the power of application ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... eight days of interviewing, the merchant and the captain were in accord, but Turcott did not cease to grumble between ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... did not like to come home and find his wife gone. He missed her as he would the sun from day. Althea was much inclined to remain at home; and Thornton would not often have found chance to grumble upon this score. He was not given to habits of self-denial; nevertheless, to secure good will and triumph over Sharp, he would encourage Althea to make frequent visits—nay, often insist upon it, against her inclination and his own private wish. If his ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... the shore on the side whence the wind ought to come, if it had any spirit in it; tie the coracle to a stone, light your cigar, lie down on your back upon the grass, grumble, and finally fall asleep. In the meanwhile, probably, the breeze has come on, and there has been half-an-hour's lively fishing curl; and you wake just in time to see the last ripple of it sneaking off at the other side of the lake, leaving all as ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... me," said the sailor, "if I ever grumble at work, my name's not Jack Pencroft, and if you like, captain, we will make a little America of this island! We will build towns, we will establish railways, start telegraphs, and one fine day, when it is quite ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... "Farmers and landowners grumble because the land does not pay. Now for the fault. It is quite evident it is not the land, therefore, it must be the fault of the man. Very well, get the land from these landed proprietors, by sale preferred, and let it out to men, not by 1000 acres, as no man can farm well a thousand ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... Joses; no matter where we were, or what we were doing, you would have your grumble. I suppose ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... companions, on an errand. [Pleasant prison life.] Without stopping his game the fellow excused himself on the ground of being a prisoner, and one of his guardians proceeded in the midst of the intense heat to carry my troublesome message. Prisoners have certainly little cause to grumble. [Frequent floggings little regarded.] The only inconvenience to which they are exposed are the floggings which the local authorities very liberally dispense by the dozens for the most trifling offences. Except ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... healths and shaking hands. The tall sailor abruptly asked him how far it was, by the short cut, to a village where they proposed to pass the night—Kilbroggan?—Jeremiah started on his seat, and his wife, after a glance and a grumble at him, was obliged to speak for her husband. They finished their beer; paid for it; put up half a loaf and a cut of bad watery cheese, saying that they might feel more hungry a few miles on than they now did; and then they arose to leave the cabin. Jeremiah ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... she began to grumble about people who had money enough to travel all over the country at a minute's notice if they liked, and none to pay their debts—people who made promises by the hour together, and then sneaked off, leaving boxes with nothing inside ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... endowment of Maynooth College. Was such a feat of legerdemain ever seen? And can we wonder that the eager, honest, hotheaded Protestants, who raised you to power in the confident hope that you would curtail the privileges of the Roman Catholics, should stare and grumble when you propose to give public money to the Roman Catholics? Can we wonder that, from one end of the country to the other, everything should be ferment and uproar, that petitions should, night after night, whiten all our benches like a snowstorm? Can ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... with a martial swagger, and listening to a distant cannonade. As yet the only real hardships we have suffered have been that our fish is a little stale, and that we are put on short allowance of milk. The National Guards on the ramparts, I hear, grumble very much at having to spend the night in the open air. The only men I think I can answer for are the working men of the outer faubourgs and a portion of the Provincial Gardes Mobiles. They do mean to fight. Some of the battalions of the National Guards will fight too, but I should be afraid ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... would abandon their plot to desert the yacht at Alexandria. It was, according to Lark's secret information, only the "smart and would-be smart set" who had combined to spring this mine upon the management. The rest grumbled no more than it was normal for all pleasure-pilgrims to grumble; and as, roughly speaking, the contented travellers were all going on to Palestine after a week's wild sightseeing in Cairo, the colonel might be allowed to continue his voyage without the interruption of ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... decidedly. "I do not expect to have to take you away from Dr. Moncrief for the next eighteen months at least, and not then unless you work properly. Now don't grumble, Cashel; you annoy me exceedingly when you do. I am sorry I mentioned ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... that to grumble in the presence of that rich, despotic personality would require ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... listening men the noise dropped to a loud grumble; rose to a piercing shriek; wavered and leaped rapidly from note to note. It was increasing; rushing upon them with unbearable sound. The sense of something approaching, driving toward them swiftly, was strong upon Lieutenant McGuire. He tore the head-phones from his ears and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... our political power (the "primaries,") in the hands of saloon-keepers, dog-fanciers and hod-carriers, they could go on expecting "another" case of this kind, and even dozens and hundreds of them, and never be disappointed. However, they may have thought that to sit at home and grumble would some day right ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... May did not admit the plea, unless Adams were to sit inside and drive out of window; but then he was told of the impropriety of his daughters going out to dinner in gigs, and the expense of flies. When Flora talked of propriety in that voice, the family might protest and grumble, but were always reduced to obedience; and thus Blanche's wedding had been the occasion of Ethel being put into a hoop, and the Doctor into a brougham. He was better off under the tyranny than she was, in spite of the solitude he had bewailed. Young Adams was not the companion his father ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... unlucky blow, and quickly made an omelet of them. In despair at what he had done, he was on the point of knocking his head against the wall; at last, however, as all grief turns to hunger, feeling his stomach begin to grumble, he resolved to eat up the hen. So he plucked her, and sticking her upon a spit, he made a great fire, and set to work to roast her. And when she was cooked, Vardiello, to do everything in due order, spread a clean cloth upon an old chest; and then, taking a flagon, he went down into the ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... two days ago I wasn't going to await no remittances. You can't grumble if your breakfast waits a bit, if my bill's been waiting these five days, ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... some saving crumbs of consolation for those who laugh at fate, and look good-humouredly for them; life's only evil to him who wears it awkwardly, and philosophic resignation works as many miracles as Harlequin; grumble, and you go to the dogs in a wretched style; make mots on your own misery, and you've no idea how pleasant a trajet even drifting "to ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... by far the harder part of the task, were ready to drop with fatigue. It was now eight o'clock in the evening, and they had worked since six in the morning, and had scarcely had time to swallow their scant rations. Some of them began to grumble, and the engineer had to coax and threaten them to induce them to persevere for another hour. The moon was just rising behind the mountain ridges, and the beautiful valley lay, with its green fields, sprouting forests, and red-painted farm-houses, at Bonnyboy's feet. It was terrible ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... him grumble, "Of course, of course. I shan't make a penny." Then he caught hold of my arm. "Here, come along, someone to ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... Very sporting of your brother and all that, of course, though I'm blowed if I'd have done it myself; but why should you do anything? You're all right. Your brother stood out of the team to let you in it, and here you are, in it. What's he got to grumble about?" ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... in the factory. We heard the tale of a munition worker who was complaining in a cafe at having to work so hard. A Poilu who was en permission, and who was sitting at the next table, turned to him saying: "You have no right to grumble. You receive ten to twelve francs a day for making shells and we poor devils get five sous a day ...
— The White Road to Verdun • Kathleen Burke
... the captain, Gallant Kid, commands the crew; Passengers their berths are clapped in, Some to grumble, some to spew. "Hey day! call you that a cabin? Why, 'tis hardly three feet square; Not enough to stow Queen Mab in— Who the deuce can harbor there?" "Who, sir? plenty— Nobles twenty Did at once my vessel fill."— ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... subjects worked only twelve hours, and strange to say, quite as many black diamonds were produced as in the olden days. Then the workmen began to grumble once more, and the King ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various
... the hotel next morning, Eliza was not to be found. She was not in, and no one knew where she was. Mr. Hutchins was inclined to grumble at her absence as an act of high-handed liberty, but Miss Rexford was not interested in his comments. She went back to her work at home, and felt in dread of the visit which she had arranged for Alec Trenholme to make that day. She began to be afraid that, ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... to put up the things I should require, supposing he had heard all the particulars of the accident from Tardif. He was inclined to grumble a little at me for going; but I asked him what else I could have done. As he had no answer ready to that question, I walked away to the dining-room, where my mother and Julia were waiting; for dinner was ready, as we dined ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... as they delight in—greasy Jews, hairy Germans, Mulatto-looking Italians, squalling children, that run between your legs and throw you down, or wipe the butter off their bread on your clothes; Englishmen that will grumble, and Irishmen that will fight; priests that won't talk, and preachers that will harangue; women that will be carried about, because they won't lie still and be quiet; silk men, cotten men, bonnet men, iron men, ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... "Wir mussen durchhalten!" (We must hold out!) "No sacrifice should be too great for the Fatherland, no privation, too arduous to be endured if one but has the spirit to conquer." He paid particular attention to the rapidly increasing number of people who grumble incessantly over the shortage of food. The good man was clearly losing patience with those ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... the worst in the kingdom, the subscriptions were irregular, the kennel servants were ill-paid, the poor cottagers never received payment for losses when Reynard visited their hen-coops, and even the farmers began to grumble at needless damage to their hedges, and to refuse to "walk" the puppies. But the new Master had changed all this. He bore his share, but no more, of the expense caused by the reforms he at once introduced, and he reminded ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... new church; funerals; final visits, and where does the preparation come in? No show! Never mind; too satisfied to grumble to-night; "Alles zal wel recht komen" (all ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... England!' screamed the young man, like a witch in the air; then Burgundy began his grumble ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... is full o' deep ruts, An' we mun tak gooid heed lest we stumble; Man is made up of "ifs" and of "buts," It'seems pairt ov his natur to grumble. ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley
... his temper grown cooler under the influence of the night air, he was coughing, and the next night found him breathless. His anger had at first vented itself against his mother, whom he refused to see, and thus the whole labour of nursing him was thrown on Kate. She didn't grumble at this, but it was terrible to have ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... employers, all subordination, is at an end; the very air of Canada severs the tie of mutual obligation which bound you together. They fancy themselves not only equal to you in rank, but that ignorance and vulgarity give them superior claims to notice. They demand in terms the highest wages, and grumble at doing half the work, in return, which they cheerfully performed at home. They demand to eat at your table, and to sit in your company; and if you refuse to listen to their dishonest and extravagant claims, they tell you that "they are free; that ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... of the carriage sighing so deeply that I was terrified lest the servant should hear. I shall never call on people unless I want to see them. It does seem such a farce to grumble because they are at home, and then to be sweet and pleasant when ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... ahead with considerable trouble to a spot six hundred feet higher, where I halted for a while on a rocky island fairly clear of snow. As coolie after coolie arrived, breathing convulsively, he dropped his load and sat quietly by the side of it. There was not a grumble, not a word of reproach for the hard work they were made to endure. Sleet was falling, and the wet and cold increased the discomfort. There was now a very steep pull before us. To the left, we had a glacier beginning in a ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... had a tin box and some rags in his hands, and he began in an idle fashion to clean the brass railing to the steps. Theodore fell into conversation with him, carelessly and indifferently at first, but after a little with a sudden, keen interest as the boy began to grumble about his work. ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... said, "I hate to grumble at anything you propose, because you are always right; but you must pardon me for saying that I do not see what particular value my presence here has been ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... restricted rations in England; but no starvation and no sign of it. There were partisan criticisms and plenty of "grousing." The Britisher is never contented unless he can grumble—especially at his own government. But there was no lack of a real unity of purpose, nor of a solid, cheerful, bull-dog determination to hang on to the enemy until he came down. It is this spirit that has enabled a nation, which was almost ignorant of what military ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... also ceased to grumble at Harry's presence, and she cooked Jim appetising suppers as of old and she even spoke pleasantly to Harry. Jim fondly imagined that she was becoming as devoted to the bright, engaging little fellow ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... in every business for an honest, hard-worker. It will not do to presume otherwise; nor should one sit down to grumble or concoct mischief. The most perilous hour of one's life is when he is tempted to despond. He who loses, his courage loses all. There are men in the world who would rather work than be idle at the same price. Imitate them. Success is ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... anything, but I kept on doing whatever came along, and before I knew it ever so many duties slipped out of Mamma's hands into mine, and seemed to belong to me. I don't mean that I liked them, and didn't grumble to myself; I did, and felt regularly crushed and injured sometimes when I wanted to go and have my own fun. Duty is right, but it isn't easy, and the only comfort about it is a sort of quiet feeling you get ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... 'you go to the well and fetch the water, and I will pour it into the trenches that run between the patches of corn.' And as he did so he sang lustily. The work was very hard, but the sheep did not grumble, and by-and-by was rewarded at seeing the little green heads poking themselves through earth. After that the hot sun ripened them quickly, and soon harvest time was come. Then the grain was cut and ground and ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... listen to what I say, and you others also. I am not going to repeat this. We're the same as ship-wrecked men, and I am in command of this boat. Whatever I say goes, and I've handled worse fellows than you are many a time. Grumble all you please; I don't mind that, but if you try mutiny, or fail to jump at my orders, I'll show you some sea discipline you will not forget very soon. ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... up to the table and began to eat. They were blessed with good appetites, and did not grumble, as the majority of my readers would have done, at the scanty fare. They had not been accustomed to anything better, and their appetites were ...
— Bound to Rise • Horatio Alger
... her square abeam. And now the anxiety which I had all along felt began to be shared by the others, one or another of whom kept Cunningham's telescope continually bearing upon the barque. They began to fidget where they sat, to mutter and grumble under their breath, and to cast frequent looks at the sky astern, which had not materially altered its aspect since the morning, except that the haze had thickened somewhat. At last the boatswain could ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... had not the least trouble in selling this sketch to the Chronicle-Abstract. The editor probably understood its essential cheapness perfectly well; but he also saw how thoroughly readable it was. He did not grumble at the increased price which Bartley put upon his work; it was still very far from dear; and he liked the young Downeaster's enterprise. He gave him as cordial a welcome as an overworked man may venture to offer when Bartley came in with his copy, and ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... used to grumble about all these animals and said they made the house untidy. And one day when an old lady with rheumatism came to see the Doctor, she sat on the hedgehog who was sleeping on the sofa and never came to see him any more, but drove every Saturday all the way to Oxenthorpe, another town ten miles ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... him. "What can I see in your precious ugly black face that will induce me to give you anything but a good kicking?" "Patience and policy, messmate," I said. "Where is your philosophy? Let your steward give them a few biscuits and a dram, and get rid of them." To this proposal, after a grumble, he assented, ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... tears, and listen to Canon Wrottesley reading aloud, and you have had to be hearty to carol-singers and to waft holly-berries in the faces of mothers. Why don't you throw something at me when I come to your room in the middle of the night as cross as a bear with a sore head, and begin to grumble at you?' ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... to be obsequiously obeyed, "no questions asked," and no payment demanded; and as for the future, why - as Mr. Larkyns observed, as they strolled down the High - "I suppose the bills will come in some day or other, but the governor will see to them; and though he may grumble and pull a long face, yet he'll only be too glad you've got your degree, and, in the fulness of his heart, he will open his cheque-book. I daresay old Horace gives very good advice when he says, 'carpe diem'; but when he adds, ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... leads no no good. Look at those fellows at the Feathers; all were happy enough before Jim Holder, who is a scholar, came among them, and now since he reads to them they do nothing but grumble, and growl, and talk about I don't know what—corn laws, and taxes, and liberty, and all other nonsense. Now, what could you do more than you do now, if you larnt ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... paper an' the cost of pen an' ink. She just tells him very sweetly if he'll only wait a bit An' be seated in the parlor, she will write a check for it. She can write one out for twenty just as easily as ten, An' forgets that Pa may grumble: "Well, ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... Everything in this world is but temporary: why should temporary help be undervalued? Would you not pull out a drowning bather because he will bathe again to-morrow? The only question is—DOES IT HELP? Jonah might grumble at the withering of his gourd, but if it had not grown at all, would he ever have preached to Nineveh? It set the laird on a Pisgah-rock, whence he gazed into the ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... climate of Pau, the more surprised I am at the crowds of English who resort to this town for the winter: the greatest part of them, it is true, are not invalids, but persons seduced into this nook by its reputation, and arriving too late in the season to leave it. They grumble, and are astonished to find themselves no better off than if they had stayed at home; but they are, it would seem, ashamed to confess how much they have been deceived, and, therefore, remain silent on the subject of climate, content to praise ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... "the Rebels keep their best generals for their Home Guard. Lee and Early, and the rest of the crew, are lambs and sucking doves to Generals Starvation, Wear-'em-out, and Grumble,—especially that last-named fellow, who is the worst of the three, because he comes under our own colors, and we feel shy about firing on our own men. I believe we are all too apt to think that muscles are the vital forces, and that man lives by beef; but, boys, muscles are only hammers, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... can have the carriage," said Mrs. Sherman. "But, my good little Samaritan, I must warn you. That old woman is a pauper in spirit. She hasn't a particle of proper pride. People have done too much for her. She'll take all she can get, and grumble because it isn't more. So you mustn't be disappointed if, instead of thanks, you ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... even God in heaven creates His things no longer straight, and does not shrink from letting the peach-stones grow crooked. But no matter—what God does is well done," added the emperor, crossing himself devoutly; "even an emperor must not censure it, and must not grumble when his cup is not straight because God gave the peach- stone a hump. Well, perhaps, I may change it yet, and make the ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... thousand pities if his town habits and tastes grew permanent,—a bad thing for the Hazeldean property, that! And," added Randal, laughing, "I feel an interest in the old place, since my grandmother comes of the stock. So, just force yourself to seem angry, and grumble a little ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... light of experience and common sense, upon what factors their price seems mainly to depend? Two factors spring to mind at once; their cost of production and their usefulness. As regards the former, the case seems clear enough. We may indeed sometimes grumble that the price of this or that commodity is unconscionably high in comparison with its cost; but this only goes to show that we conceive a relation between price and cost as the normal, governing rule. If one commodity cost only a half as much to produce as another, we ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... effectively after Home Rule as before it. Captain Craig will dictate terms to us not from the last ditch, but from a far more agreeable and powerful position, the Treasury Bench. And we undertake not to grumble, for these are the ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... is true, Senor Don Quixote," said Carrasco; "but I wish such fault-finders were more lenient and less exacting, and did not pay so much attention to the spots on the bright sun of the work they grumble at; for if aliquando bonus dormitat Homerus, they should remember how long he remained awake to shed the light of his work with as little shade as possible; and perhaps it may be that what they find fault with may be moles, that sometimes ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... reply, sufficiently audible for his master's ear; the remainder escaped in a sort of grumble, the dregs of his ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... be sure," said the kind-hearted lawyer; "why, even your holy namesake, the very pattern of patient resignation, would grumble a bit now and then, when his troubles pinched him in a particularly sore place. So take another glass whilst I proceed with our subject: and so you see, doctor, your debts are paid—that's settled. Hold your tongue, Job; don't interrupt me, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... seem to think it quite so funny now as when they started in. They say they can't see where the pay is going to come in, and have begun to grumble," ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
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