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More "Meddlesome" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ears to the blessings a grateful nation would shower on us, if our visit had such a result; but I did not expect these things. I expected to be smeared from head to foot with Copperhead slime, to be called a knight-errant, a seeker after notoriety, an abortive negotiator, and a meddlesome volunteer diplomatist; but I expected also, if a good Providence spared our lives, and my pen did not forget the English language, to be able to tell the North the truth; and I knew that the Truth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... do things for other people. The word is now restricted to its bad sense of meddlesome. Cf. Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... not know the word of command, and so the wand went on just the same. In his rage, he took a chopper, and cut the wand in two, but instead of stopping it brought twice as much; a double lot of pails appeared, and at last the torrent of water washed away the house of the meddlesome man. ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... with quiet decision. "We have seen quite a little of that in the army, and it is my father's rule to get all the facts before passing judgment. My brother thought Mr. Stuyvesant's attendant garrulous and meddlesome." ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... to find some corner of those rocky wilds where no human being had ever set foot and to be the first person to behold it. What boy has not felt that Columbus had several centuries' advantage of him: that Balboa was a meddlesome old chap who might better have stayed in Spain and left American oceans to American boys to discover? Oh! the unutterable regret of youthful hearts that the Golden Fleece and the Holy Grail and other high adventures passed ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... strengthen Fort Cumberland, which was now to become headquarters; thus weakening the most important points and places, to concentrate a force where it was not wanted, and would be out of the way in most cases of alarm. By these meddlesome moves, made by Governor Dinwiddie from a distance, without knowing any thing of the game, all previous arrangements were reversed, every thing was thrown into confusion, and enormous losses and ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... in looks. The cutting away of his curls did not make such a difference in him as Mother had supposed. He was as charming to her; he was as much her own little boy as though no meddlesome hands had even been laid upon him. In size he was quite the same, and, as Mother stood peering in at him, she presently heard a small, far-away voice. In it was the whispered awe of a child who feels the bigness of the ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott
... that she was debating whether or not to speak some thought which she feared Del might regard as meddlesome. "When you finally do have to get out," she said presently, "it'll be like giving up ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... Mrs. Lander did not wish to go out, and she sent Clementina and Hinkle together as a proof that they were all on good terms again. She did not spare the girl this explanation in his presence, and when they were in the gondola he felt that he had to say, "I was afraid you might think I was rather meddlesome yesterday." ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... not approve of her going out or of her having company. The Larches was too far away, and as for Mr. and Mrs. Talcott, they were meddlesome people, whom he had never liked; besides, Mrs. Talcott was delicate, and the night threatened storm. Let her go to bed like a good girl, and think nothing about the money, which he would take care to put away in a very ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... in mentioning how it came about to you, Mr. L., as there undoubtedly was a great deal of 'interference with other men's matters' in the business. In short, the young man fell in the way of one of those meddlesome fellows, who go prowling about, distributing tracts, forming temperance societies, and ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... perceived this," she went on—"out of the abundance of one's affection and one's sympathy." It all blessedly came back to her—when it wasn't all, for the fiftieth time, obscured, in face of the present facts, by anxiety and compunction. "One was no doubt a meddlesome fool; one always IS, to think one sees people's lives for them better than they see them for themselves. But one's excuse here," she insisted, "was that these people clearly DIDN'T see them for themselves—didn't ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... a Popish priest is," he said. "A meddlesome busybody who pokes his nose into other men's secrets. But priest or no priest, I'll have no man coming to my house to make mischief ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... was still filled with rage at the meddlesome giant, because he had lost him the serpent, but he quietly picked up the boat and carried it home, Hymer taking the whales. Once more under his own roof, the giant's courage returned, and he challenged Thor to show his strength by breaking his drinking-cup. Thor sat down and, ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... with the disposition of the public lands were clearly exposed by one Robert Gourlay, a somewhat meddlesome Scotchman, who had addressed a circular, soon after his arrival in Canada, to a number of townships with regard to the causes which retarded improvement and the best means of developing the resources of the province. An answer from Sandwich virtually set forth ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... very meekly for Aunt Clara, "I've been thinking it over. I ought to blame you. But I can't. I've had all I could do blaming myself. Are you thinking I am a selfish, meddlesome old fool?" ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... order of events, such a circumstance as a marriage union between the daughter of Mr. Lester, and an individual like Fenwick, was not at all likely to occur. But a meddlesome woman, who, by the accident of circumstances, had found free access to the family of Mr. Lester, set herself seriously at work to interfere with the orderly course of things, and effect a conjunction between two in no way fitted for each other, either in external circumstances ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... not know exactly what she wanted my Father to do with me; perhaps she did not know herself; she was meddlesome, ignorant and fanatical, and she liked to fancy that she was exercising influence. But the wonderful, the inexplicable thing is that my Father,—who, with all his limitations, was so distinguished and high-minded,—should ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... bath, talked continuously, whistled, sang, was markedly erotic towards the physician, careless in exposing herself and often obscene in her talk. Most of her productions were determined by the environment. She was therefore quite distractible, very alert; sometimes she was meddlesome, again irritable, irascible. The following illustrates her productions: "Send for my husband, S.—He had one sister as big as that. She likes candy.... My father is underneath and my mother is on top because she is fat and he is skinny.... Wait till the sun shines, Nellie—we will be happy, ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... Herminia and Laias, Armenia and Giazza; Coulam for the older Coilum; Socotera for Scotra. With these changes may be classed the chapter-headings, which are undisguisedly modern, and probably Ramusio's own. In some other cases this editorial spirit has been over-meddlesome and has gone astray. Thus Malabar is substituted wrongly for Maabar in one place, and by a grosser error for Dalivar in another. The age of young Marco, at the time of his father's first return to Venice, has been arbitrarily altered from 15 to 19, in order to correspond ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... at him in bewilderment. "What do you mean?" she asked. "I hope Austin is grateful to her now—an' that he'll say so. At first he didn't like her at all, an' he's never taken to her same as the rest of us have—seems to feel she's bossy an' meddlesome. Howard an' I have spoken of it a thousand times. He began by resenting everything she did, an' then got so he didn't even mention ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... failed. All sects and parties sought ascendency rather than the public good; angry and inexperienced, they refused to compromise. Sectarianism was the true hydra that baffled the energy of the courageous combatant. Parliaments were factious, meddlesome, and inexperienced, and sought to block the wheels of government rather than promote wholesome legislation. The people hankered for their old pleasures, and were impatient of restraint; their leaders were demagogues ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... Old Man Coyote can grin. "I don't think any of us will be bothered by that meddlesome Bowser very soon again," said he, as he crept into his house for a nap. "If he had drowned in that river, I shouldn't have cried over it. But even as it is, I don't think he will get back here in a hurry. I must pass the ...
— Bowser The Hound • Thornton W. Burgess
... your hand and wade," gritted the Cap'n. "I ain't stoppin' you." He still scorned to explain to the meddlesome landsman. ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... be driven into the mud by a set of meddlesome civilians, who knew nothing about war. And to show them that he was not, he kept his army quiet, on the banks of the Potomac, all winter. And in this position he contemplated Mr. Beauregard, and Mr. Beauregard contemplated him, separated by twenty miles of mud. We had not got our war eyes ...
— Siege of Washington, D.C. • F. Colburn Adams
... in his amours, any more than that stormy lover, Achilles. Ichabod, therefore, made his advances in a quiet and gently insinuating manner. Under cover of his character of singing-master, he made frequent visits at the farmhouse; not that he had anything to apprehend from the meddlesome interference of parents, which is so often a stumbling-block in the path of lovers. Balt Van Tassel was an easy indulgent soul; he loved his daughter better even than his pipe, and, like a reasonable man and an excellent father, let her have her way in everything. ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... all this. She pressed on, and they gave way for her a little as she approached the table. Three constables stood around it to guard the dead body from the touch of meddlesome hands. On seeing Lady Vincent with the air of one having authority, the constable that guarded the head of the table guessed at her rank, and officiously turned down the white sheet that covered the dead body, and revealed the horrible object beneath—the ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... the inquiry; and Julia replied to her look as follows: first, she coloured very high; then, she hid her face in both her hands; then rose, and turning her neck swiftly, darted a glance of fiery indignation and bitter reproach on Dr. Meddlesome, and left the ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... Odin, Loki, and Hoener started on a journey. They had often travelled together before on all sorts of errands, for they had a great many things to look after, and more than once they had fallen into trouble through the prying, meddlesome, malicious spirit of Loke, who was never so happy as when he was doing wrong. When the gods went on a journey they travelled fast and hard, for they were strong, active spirits who loved nothing so much as hard work, hard blows, storm, peril, and struggle. There were no roads through the country ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... sadly liable to bathos, divided, indeed, between sentences ringing with the great words 'genius' and 'fame,' and others devoted to an indignant contemplation of the hassocks in the old pews, 'the touching and well-worn implements of prayer,' to quote his handsome description of them, which a meddlesome parson was about to 'hurl away,' out of mere hatred for intellect and ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the veritable product of the mighty sculptor's genius. That Michelangelo meant well to his illustrious ancestor is certain. That he took the greatest pains in executing his ungrateful and disastrous task is no less clear.[8] But the net result of his meddlesome benevolence has been that now for two centuries and a half the greatest genius of the Italian Renaissance has worn the ill-fitting disguise prepared for him by a literary 'breeches-maker.' In fact, Michael Angelo the poet suffered no less from his grandnephew than Michael Angelo the ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... of it!" Dolly stood up and angrily grasped the bell-handle. "It's not true. It's a meddlesome lie. They are jealous. People are always like that—it makes them furious to see another person prosper. They are mean, ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... questions imaginable, it seemed as though I were undergoing an examination poorly prepared, and I think I must have answered very stupidly. I was out of sorts, too, for often what looks like sympathy is mere inquisitiveness, and theirs impressed me as the more meddlesome, since I have a long while yet to wait for the happy event. Some time in the summer, early in July, I think. You must come then, or better still, so soon as I am at all able to get about, I'll take a vacation and set out for Hohen-Cremmen to see ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... to him, for Harry and myself were persona grata with the natives, who all knew that Hayes had a great liking for us. But to my astonishment and indignation, "Bully" turned on me furiously, called me a meddlesome young fool, prefixing the "fool" with some very strong adjectives, and then, losing all control of himself, he sprang at one of the members of the deputation—the youngest and strongest—and lifting him up in his ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... White Thunder, and the Hunter going with Washington. The latter understood very well that their object was to have an opportunity to win them over to the French. But Washington insisted upon their going with him, and rebuked Captain Joncaire for his meddlesome disposition. ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... rest of us, Christopher Quarles had his weaknesses. Whenever he failed to elucidate a mystery he was always able to show that the fault was not his, but somebody else's; either too long a time had elapsed before he was consulted, or some meddlesome fool had touched things and confused the evidence, or even that something supernatural had been at work. Once, at least, according to the professor, I had played the part of meddlesome fool, and one of my weaknesses being a short temper, it had required all Zena's tact to keep us from quarreling ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... the opportunity, I wish you would explain that I gave no opinion as to what might or might not be expedient under present circumstances at Cambridge. I do not want to seem meddlesome. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... made it while he was yet a 'prentice. I remember how I used to sit and watch him at his work. It would be grand, I thought, to be able to do as he did, and handle edge-tools without cutting my fingers, and getting my ears pulled for a meddlesome minx! He used to give me his mallet to keep and his nails to hold; and didn't I fly when he called for them! and wasn't I proud to be ordered about with them! And then, you know, there is the tall cabinet yonder; that it was that proved him the first of Edinburgh joiners, and worthy to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and through this accuser of what the city intended for those in this condition? Do not, members of the Boule, pass this vote. For why should I find you of such a disposition? 24. Because some one in a trial ever lost his property through me? But no one could prove that. Because I am meddlesome, and harsh and quarrelsome? But I do not chance to have such conditions of life for such actions. 25. But that I am violent and disorderly? But not even he would say that if he did not wish to lie about this as the other things. But that being in power in the reign of the Thirty I maltreated many ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... and puttin' in your meddlesome oar?" the Deacon said, turning to Waitstill. "The girl would never 'a' been there if you'd attended to your business. She's nothin' but a fool of a young filly, an' you're an old cart-horse. It was your job to look out for her as your mother told you to. ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... be good, but you virtuous and respectable people sometimes show a meddlesome thoughtfulness which degenerates like myself resent. Besides, I suspect your offer ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... the swelling of cervical glands is taken up. In his experience expectant treatment of these was best. He advises internal medication with the building up of the general health, or suggests allowing the inflamed glands to empty themselves after pustulation. After much meddlesome surgery we are almost back to his methods again. He did not hesitate to treat goitre surgically, though he considered there were certain internal remedies that would benefit it. In obstinate cases he suggests the complete extirpation of cystic goitre, but if the sac is allowed ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... young fisherman's back was getting very sore by this time, and he began to look about for the white side-streak which he had painted along the water-line of that new boat, to distract the meddlesome gaze of rivals from the peculiar curve below, which even Admiral Darling had not noticed, when he passed her on the beach; but Nelson would have spied it out in half a second, and known all about it in the other half. ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... miserable tenantry, whose conditions are far worse than American slaves. If she is really philanthropic, why refuse to do any thing for her own suffering poor throughout her vast dominions? This is proof positive, that John Bull is an old villain; a rotten, two-faced, bigoted, meddlesome old hypocrite. If abolitionists in the United States are really philanthropic, why have they not made some effort to relieve the suffering poor in their own midst; whose conditions in general, are far worse than Southern slaves? They have work enough ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... old duskened features, dark, piercing eyes, and penthouse brows, but the long and pendulous Chinaman moustaches had shrunk till they scarcely covered his mouth. The "devil's jaw" could boast only a small tuft of hair. There were wrinkles in "the angel's forehead." If meddlesome Time had also furrowed his cheeks, nevertheless the most conspicuous mark there was still the scar of that great gash received in the ding-dong fight at Berbera. His hair, which should have been grizzled, he kept dark, Oriental fashion, with ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... hereditary disease. But who knows? Those two lads may grow up to be friends, and kill the old feud. They cannot help respecting each other after such an encounter as that. I'll try and get hold of young Darley, and then of Mark; and perhaps I may be able to—Bah! you weak-minded, meddlesome old driveller!" he cried impetuously. "You would muddle, and spoil all, when perhaps a Higher Hand is at work, as it always is, to make everything tend toward ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... deprecatory "you know," and apologetic "I am sure I thought I was acting for the best," gave, considering her agitation, a tolerably accurate account of the whole interview. Her interlocutor saw plainly that she had acted from a sincere conscientiousness, and not from a meddlesome, mischievous interference; so he only thanked her for her kind interest, and suggested that he had now arrived at an age when it would, perhaps, be well for him to conduct matters, particularly of so delicate a nature, solely ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... who was spokesman at the treaty, maintained that hanging ought to be abolished, and the buffalo protected. On the whole, he accepted the conditions of the treaty, but, as his people were not present, he would not sign it, although he did sign it in the following year. Big Bear is a noisy, meddlesome savage, who is never in his glory save when he is the centre of some disturbance. He has always shown much delight in talking about war; and he would go without his meals to listen to a good story about fighting. He has the habit to, when the reciter ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... to him modest and meritorious Grecian citizens, at length reminds him that his vast wealth and power are of a tenure too precarious to serve as an evidence of happiness; that the gods are jealous and meddlesome, and often make the show of happiness a mere prelude to extreme disaster; and that no man's life can be called happy until the whole of it has been played out, so that it may be seen to be out of the reach of reverses. Croesus treats ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... such encouragement at home. Whatever she saw or heard in one place, she would be sure to report it in another; so that all the masters and misses who had the mortification to fall into her company, considered themselves as under the malicious inspection of a meddlesome spy; which they had the more reason to do, because she seldom failed to embellish her informations with the recital of several unfavourable circumstances of her own invention." "Indeed, Mr. Wiseman, said Betsey, my youngest ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... take umbrage at some fancied slight to his honour or disregard of his affections and suddenly "amok"? The wise adviser would be the first victim, no doubt, and death would be his reward. And underlying the horror of this situation there was the danger of those meddlesome fools, the white men. A vision of comfortless exile in far-off Madura rose up before Babalatchi. Wouldn't that be worse than death itself? And there was that half-white woman with threatening eyes. How could he tell what an incomprehensible creature of that sort would or would ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... fellows at the club may chaff me all you choose. I'm going to marry her and that's all there is to it. I'm my own master, do you understand? I have no family—no inquisitive, meddlesome relatives, thank God! If this marriage is going to cost me what friends I have—all right—let them keep away! Such friends are not worth having, anyway. My mind is made up and you know me. Once I make up my mind, nothing can alter it." Determinedly he ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... Winton to have grown up of a sudden. He had known all day that something was coming, and had been cudgelling his brains finely. From the fervour of his love for her, he felt an anxiety that was almost fear. What could have happened last night—that first night of her entrance into society—meddlesome, gossiping society! She slid down to the floor against his knee. He could not see her face, could not even touch her; for she had settled down on his right side. He mastered his tremors ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... older than you and I am a friend—of many years—of your mother. There's nothing I like less than to be meddlesome, but I think these things give me a certain right—a sort of privilege. For the rest, my inquiry will speak ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... this furnace came constitutional government in England, and republican government in America. We owe the origins of our political life to the influence of these German tribes, with their love of individual freedom and their stern hatred of meddlesome rulers, or a meddlesome state ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... fine old smoked-herring sort, such as the clown offers them in the circus, warranted never to spoil, if only kept dry enough. Your fresh wit demands a little thought, perhaps, or at least a kind of negative wit, in the recipient. It is an active, meddlesome—quality, forever putting things in unexpected and somewhat startling relations to each other; and such new relations are as unwelcome to the ordinary mind as poor relations to a nouveau riche. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... sympathy on a nation which brings on its fate by preferring monasticism to education; and never during the Spanish War did he or his government, to my knowledge, show the slightest leaning toward our enemies. Certain it is that when sundry hysterical publicists and meddlesome statesmen of the Continent proposed measures against what they thought the dangerous encroachments of our Republic, he quietly, but resolutely and effectually, put his foot ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... left the shed when Miss Grundy herself appeared, fretting about "the meddlesome old widow who had come there stickin' round before Mrs. ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... flagrant, shameless violations of the city ordinances and the state bird laws. In those days I never but once heard of a policeman on his own initiative arresting a birdshooter, even on Sunday; but whenever meddlesome special wardens from the Zoological Park have pointedly called upon the local police force for help, it has always been given with cheerful alacrity. In the fall of 1912 an appeal to the Police Commissioner resulted in a general ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... to believe in an unnatural god who apparently must be ever ready to answer anybody's prayerful cry and act as a general servant to humanity by distributing good things to those who beg for them; a sort of meddlesome god who enters into all the petty quarrels of hunan beings and generally settles them in ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... from the doorway toward the table; she had her hands closed upon what seemed trinkets, some of which glittered and dangled from them. She said, "Will you go to him and tell him that this meddlesome minx, here, had no business to say anything about me to him, and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... designs as to the oubliette. He did most sincerely wish Master Gottfried had never let Wildschloss know of the mode in which his life had been saved. Yet, while it would have seemed to him profane to breathe even to Friedel the true secret of his repugnance to this meddlesome kinsman, it was absolutely impossible to avoid his most distasteful ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... being meddlesome,' continued Percy, 'I thought I saw a way of being even with that scoundrel. Your papers had got into my pocket, and, as I had nothing else to do, I looked them over after parting with you, and saw a way out of the difficulty. I was coming in ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ingenuous little idiot had naively told her he was going to take her with him. It didn't really matter, of course; he didn't suppose Mrs. Leadbatter could exercise any control over Mary Ann, but it was horrible to be discussed by her and Rosie; and then there was that meddlesome vicar, who might step in ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... was my fault," Jack said, contritely. "I should not have tempted you to go on that unlucky trip last Tuesday. So you were seen near Richmond station by some meddlesome individual—probably when you got out of the trap! But it may turn out for the best; your father could not have been kept in ignorance much ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... murder of Buckingham (1592-1628), in whose hands he had been a mere tool, Charles gradually came to yield himself up to her unwise influence—not wholly indeed, but more than to that of Stafford even, or Laud. Little meddlesome Laud, made archbishop in 1633, proceeded to war against the dominant Puritanism, to preach passive obedience, and uphold the divine right of kings; while great Stafford, from championing the Petition of Right (1628), passed over to the king's ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... people, just as he could hardly refrain—in defiance of nautical etiquette—from interfering with his chief officer when the crew was sending up a new topmast, or generally when busy about, what he called, "a heavy job." He was meddlesome with perfect modesty; if he knew a thing or two there was no merit in it. "Hard knocks taught me wisdom, my boy," he used to say, "and you had better take the advice of a man who has been a fool in his time. Have another." And "my boy" as a rule took ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... talks there occurred a singular contact of minds. It was very well for me to spin sonorous generalities, but I had never till now dreamed of being so vulgar as to translate them into practice. I had always detested the meddlesome alarmist, who veils ignorance under noisiness, and for ever wails his chant of lugubrious pessimism. To be thrown with Davies was to receive a shock of enlightenment; for here, at least, was a specimen ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... So called from their habit of going entirely naked. One of them is said by Arrian to have said to Alexander. "You are a man like all of us, Alexander—except that you abandon your home like a meddlesome destroyer, to invade the most distant regions; enduring hardships yourself, and inflicting hardships on others." (Arrian, vii, ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... his extended career Mr. Wintermuth had been called upon to face many serious and unexpected crises. Conflagrations; rate wars; eruptions of idiotic and ruinous legislation adopted by state senates and assemblies composed of meddlesome agriculturalists, saloon keepers, impractical young lawyers, and intensely practical old politicians;—all these he had lived through not once, but often, and had always piloted the Guardian's bark to port in safety. ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... of making on a certain young lady, did not expect him—that is, Holmes—to notice anything beyond the limits of his work, or to recognize in any way his employer's secret intentions. But fortunately for us, this man Holmes is just one of those singularly meddlesome people whose curiosity grows with every attempt at repression; and when, coincident with that disastrous happening at the museum, all these loverlike attentions ceased and no calls were made and no presents sent, and gloom instead of cheer marked his employer's ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... carefully washed hands (for little hands will somehow get dirty, try sedulously though you and their owner may to prevent it), in the small tin, and it is placed in the oven with the other pies. It serves admirably at a doll's tea-party, and the meddlesome fingers have been kept busy, the restless mind contented, while ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... whatever renown he may have as a man of valor, who could offer what my master has offered now?" This outburst of his squire's infuriated Don Quixote. He began to foam at the mouth, and after having scolded the meek and meddlesome Sancho, he told him abruptly to go at once and saddle Rocinante. His hosts were astounded at his remarkable behavior and proposal, and did all they could to stay him from carrying it out, but he was not to be swayed. So they all followed ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... itself so innocently to his, still smitten to the heart by the beauty of it, and by the fear that he saw in it of his own stern aspect. He had never looked upon any woman before. He had been proud of it,—proud of his strength and cleverness, that needed no meddlesome female creature coming in between him and his business, between him and his religion. He had not let his hair and beard grow, knowing nothing of such practices, but in heart he had been a Nazarite from his youth up,—serving God in his harsh, unloving way; loving God, as he thought; certainly ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... "that there will be no occasion for applying to a Court of Chancery. There ought to be none. There is but one child, Mrs Vincent, whom you have seen this evening in the drawing-room. The great essential is to keep prying and meddlesome attorneys from thrusting themselves into the business. You acted as confidential secretary as well as tutor, while you ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... about Louisville, preparing for the forward movement, Gov. Morton, of Indiana, was frequently in Louisville, consulting with Gen. Buel, and offering suggestions as to army movements etc., and these, after a time, came to be regarded by Gen. Buel as meddlesome, and uncalled for, so much so, that he finally intimated to Gov. Morton that it would be as well for him to attend to his duties as Governor of Indiana, while he would attend to his as Commanding General of the forces in the field. It is important to mention this circumstance here, as ...
— Personal recollections and experiences concerning the Battle of Stone River • Milo S. Hascall
... existence. This trait of his character was composed of a little indolence, some disdain, and a shrinking from contests with certain forms of vulgarity—like a man who would face a lion and go out of his way to avoid a toad. His intercourse with the meddlesome journalist was that merely outward intimacy without sympathy some young men get drawn into easily. It had amused him rather to keep that "friend" in the dark about the fate of his assistant. Renouard had never needed other company than his own, for there was in him something ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... her contradictions only added to her charm. Isabel's agitation over the affairs of the Congdons led him close to the point of mentioning her name to note its effect upon Mrs. Congdon, but to do this might be an act of betrayal that would only confirm Isabel's opinion of him as a stupid, meddlesome person. Nothing was to be gained by attempting to hasten the culmination of the fate that flung him about like a chip on a turbulent stream. Fiends and angels might be battling for his soul, and Lucifer might take him in ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... prosperous and contented, looked around and saw naught but good, while millions of their fellowmen were bartered and sold like cattle! No doubt, there were comfortable optimists who thought Wilberforce a meddlesome fanatic when he was working with might and main to free the slaves. I distrust the rash optimism in this country that cries, "Hurrah, we're all right! This is the greatest nation on earth," when there are grievances ...
— Optimism - An Essay • Helen Keller
... to you may be death to her, for she has a heart, and a fine, and true, and deep one; may be death to yourself—for you, too, are honorable, and true, and noble; and that is why I love you, George, and why I speak to you thus, at the risk of being held meddlesome or impertinent." ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... fact that the conclusion reached by the English statesmen in 1874, was reached in Illinois in 1873; the conclusion that railroad companies ought to have the right to control their own affairs, fix their own rates of transportation, be free from meddlesome legislation, and, as has been said, work out their own destiny in their own way, just so long as they show a reasonable regard for ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... stood up with a cast in his eye, And he said, "Far too many baubles we buy; With all the Gosh factories closing their doors, And importers' warehouses lining our shores." But the Glugs cried, "Down with such meddlesome fools! What did our grandpas lay down in their rules?" And the Knight, Sir Stodge, he opened his Book: "To Cheapness," he said, "was the road they took." Then every Glug who was not too fat Turned seventeen handsprings, and jumped on his hat. They fined ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... silence, during which the Mayor's eyes rested on the culprit. Fiddles returned the look, head up, a smile on his lips that would have fooled the devil himself. Then his Honor turned to me and said: 'My memory is not always very good, but this time the cobbler's—who is a meddlesome person—is even more defective. Yes, I think it quite possible I was hunting on last Wednesday. I can sympathize with the young man as to the size of the rabbit. They are running very small this year. My decision, therefore, is that you can let the ...
— Fiddles - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... heart. She sat on her tossed bed, the sickness of disappointment heavy over her. An hour ago wealth was in her hand, ease was before her, and the future was secure. Now all was torn down and scattered by an old yellow paper which prying, curious, meddlesome old Sol Greening had found. She bent her head upon her hand; tears trickled between ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... magnificence of taste which would have made the houses and manners of modern stock-jobbers intolerable to them. Renaissance millionaires could be vulgar and brutal, but they were great gentlemen. They were neither illiterate cads nor meddlesome puritans, nor even saviours of society. Yet, if we are to understand the amazing popularity of Titian's and of Veronese's women, we must take note of their niceness to kiss and obvious willingness to be ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... no objection to your going in," she said to the policeman, "but I will not give up my keys to her. What right has she in our house any way." And I thought I heard her murmur something about a meddlesome ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... soon. "Meddlesome midwifery is bad" with animals as with women. After labor pains set in, give a reasonable time for the water bags to protrude and burst spontaneously, and only interfere when delay suggests some mechanical obstruction. If there is no mechanical obstruction, let the calf be expelled ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... Katharine, his eldest daughter. He gets it, and gives it to the "poor damsel," who is languishing, as he says, and who dies the next month,—all the sooner, I have little doubt, for this uncertain and violent drug, with which the meddlesome pedant tormented her in that spirit of well-meant but restless quackery, which could touch nothing without making mischief, not even a quotation, and yet proved at length the means of bringing a great blessing to our community, as we shall see by and by; so does Providence use our very ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the tailor's story, he shook his head for delight and showed astonishment, saying, 'This that passed between the young man and the meddlesome barber is indeed more pleasant and more wonderful than the story of that knave of a hunchback.' Then he bade the tailor take one of the chamberlains and fetch the barber out of his duresse, saying, 'Bring him to me, that I may hear his talk, ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... character and conduct caused him to be feared at bottom; though in conversation many pretended not to mind him in the least, others would only smile sourly at the mention of his name, and there were even some who dared to pronounce him "a meddlesome old ruffian." But for almost all of them one of Captain Eliott's outbreaks was nearly as distasteful to face as a ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... following quotation from Poetry (9 ['16]: 51) may serve as a starting-point in discussing Mr. Kreymborg's qualities: "An insinuating, meddlesome, quizzical, inquiring spirit; sometimes a clown, oftener a wit, now and then a lyric poet ... trips about cheerfully among life's little incongruities; laughs at you and me and progress and prejudice and dreams; says 'I told you so!' with an air, as if after a double somersault ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert
... cried Bixiou, "thou hast set thy finger on the weak spot. Meddlesome taxation has lost us more victories here in France than the vexatious chances of war. I once spent seven years in the hulks of a government department, chained with bourgeois to my bench. There was a clerk in the office, a man with a head on ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... not all. He is very meddlesome. He is always telling mamma what ought to be expected from a young lady like me, and getting her to annoy me about lessons and other things; at least, I think so. I know he thinks me quite childish; and sometimes he interferes between Clement and me. What do you think he had ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... generations of practice. Even a government inspector is looked upon with deep disfavor as one result of the demoralization brought about by liberal and other loose ways of viewing public rights. The private, self-constituted one, it may then be judged rightly, is regarded as a meddlesome and pestilent busybody seeking knowledge which nobody should wish to obtain, and another illustration of what the nineteenth century is coming to. Various committees of inquiry, from the Organized Charities and from private bodies of workers, visit manufactories ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... mutilated, altered phrases which seemed to him suspicious. Only one who has examined the manuscripts of the Buonarroti Archives knows what pains he bestowed upon this ungrateful and disastrous task. But the net result of his meddlesome benevolence is that now for nearly three centuries the greatest genius of the Italian Renaissance has worn a mask concealing the real nature of his emotion, and that a false legend concerning his relations to Vittoria Colonna has become inextricably ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... satisfaction than you shall contemplate him. The great poet has less a mark'd style, and is more the channel of thoughts and things without increase or diminution, and is the free channel of himself. He swears to his art, I will not be meddlesome, I will not have in my writing any elegance, or effect, or originality, to hang in the way between me and the rest like curtains. I will have nothing hang in the way, not the richest curtains. What I tell I tell for precisely what it is. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... with a laugh, "if you really want to know, I understand that every eighth of a mile is marked with a single small white rag; each quarter has a blue one; while the mile shows a plain red one. I hope some meddlesome fellow doesn't go to changing the signals on Brad, and make him think he's doing a record stunt. But I believe he's got some other secret sign of his own to ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... be meddlesome, but 'pears to me if you'd spoke out your feelings to Dick, you'd said, 'Tell Melinda Jones I don't want to see her, neither to-night nor any time.' Mebby I'm mistaken, but honest, do you want to ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... officials of municipalities thoroughly despise their mayors (up their sleeves). A mayor is here today and gone tomorrow, whereas a permanent official is permanent. A mayor knows nothing about anything except his chain and the rules of debate, and he is, further, a tedious and meddlesome person—in the ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... never mind, he's worth waiting for, with his fine house and immense wealth; I shan't care so much about Uncle Nat's money then, though goodness knows I don't want him turning up here some day and exposing me, as I dare say the meddlesome old ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... cleared up. We certainly ought not to usurp functions which do not properly belong to us: but, on the other hand, we ought not to abdicate functions which do properly belong to us. I hardly know which is the greater pest to society, a paternal government, that is to say a prying, meddlesome government, which intrudes itself into every part of human life, and which thinks that it can do everything for everybody better than anybody can do anything for himself; or a careless, lounging government, which suffers grievances, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Jane Austen's novel Emma, is the somewhat meddlesome wife of the village parson. Mr Knightley is a gentleman living at Donwell, in the neighbourhood. The rest of the people named are other neighbours and friends, one of them, Mr Woodhouse, being an old ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... and their days of privation, and he did not forget that all they had, they owed to that father. He witnessed his mother's smiles and blushes with some anxiety. One day, as he was going an errand to Neck of Land, he was accosted by a meddlesome ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... have a regular French and Indian war right on her premises. It was here the children came, just as you say, and it's our duty to see 'em settled in good homes, but I shall take a few days more to think 'bout it, and I'll let her know by Saturday night what we've decided to do.—That's the most meddlesome, inteferin', gossipin' woman in this county," she added, as Mrs. Silas Tarbox closed the front gate, "and I wouldn't have her do another day's work at this house if I didn't have to. But it's worse for them ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... now raging in America appears to me almost a phenomenon in political history. No such forbearance has been shown during the political history of the last two centuries. It is the single case in which the English Government and public, generally so meddlesome, have displayed most prudent and commendable forbearance in spite of great temptations to the contrary.' Lord John had opinions, and the courage of them; but at the same time he showed himself fully alive to the fact that no greater calamity could possibly overtake the ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... decorously and clerically walking through the gate when going to call on one of his parishioners. Rev. Joseph Metcalf of the Old Colony was complained of in 1720 for wearing too worldly a wig. He mildly reproved and shamed the meddlesome women of his church by asking them to come to him and each cut off a lock of hair from the obnoxious wig until all the complainers were satisfied that it had been rendered sufficiently unworldly. Some Newbury church-members, in 1742, asserted that their ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... excuse of duty!" said Zenobia, in a whisper so full of scorn that it penetrated me like the hiss of a serpent. "I have often heard it before, from those who sought to interfere with me, and I know precisely what it signifies. Bigotry; self-conceit; an insolent curiosity; a meddlesome temper; a cold-blooded criticism, founded on a shallow interpretation of half-perceptions; a monstrous scepticism in regard to any conscience or any wisdom, except one's own; a most irreverent propensity ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... himself of it, so as to avoid the risk of giving or of receiving serious affront, would be to push that whim of his into more than wonted exaggeration. Thus he could more decidedly and briefly come to the point; and should he, in doing so, appear too meddlesome, rather provoke a laugh than a frown-retiring from the ground with the honours due to a humorist. Accordingly, in his deepest nasal intonation, and withdrawing his eyes from ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... retorted Grace Ferrall hotly, "before they begin to bully you. There was no earthly reason for you to talk to Stephen. No disinterested impulse moved you. It was a sheer perverse, sentimental restlessness—the delicate, meddlesome deviltry of your race. And if that poison is in you, it's well for you to ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... (2) "Meddlesome Midwifery" is not so much a temptation for the midwife as the doctor, though she also may want to do too much. Patience combined with accurate knowledge when interference is urgently needed, is ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... appeared a new lease of life, that sleep, that "sweet restorer," was a stranger during the night. In the morning, however, a gloom was again cast over the spirits of some of the most superstitious by the remark of a meddlesome old West India captain, that undoubtedly Cochran, like the seers of olden times, made his calculations according to the "old style" of computing time. Thus twelve additional days were allowed to pass before they dared give a full ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... told his wife that old Brattle was the only man in the world before whom he would be afraid to speak his mind openly, and in so saying he had expressed a feeling that was very general throughout all Bullhampton. Mr. Puddleham was a very meddlesome man, and he had once ventured out to the mill to say a word, not indeed about Carry, but touching some youthful iniquity of which Sam was supposed to have been guilty. He never went near the mill again, but would shudder ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... goes on to describe in detail how, governed and possessed by one idea, and by a theory, to oppose which was "moral depravity," he proceeded to establish his intolerable system of discipline, based on dogmatic grounds—meddlesome, inquisitorial, petty, cruel—over the interior of every household in Geneva. What is there fascinating, or even imposing, in such a character? It is the common case of political and religious bigots, whether Jacobin, or Puritan, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... said; "and not only that, but I must refuse it to my guests, and have nothing of the kind in my house; not even those choice wines your uncle bought, Neither wine for myself nor ale for my servants! It was quite out of the question, you know. Mr. Warden was meddlesome to the very verge of impertinence about it, until I was compelled to give up inviting him to my house. He went so far as to doubt my being a Christian! And it was of no use telling him I followed our Lord's example more strictly by drinking ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... I continued, "you must not think me meddlesome—officious. I can no more wait for your permission to help you than if you were drowning. Perhaps for good reasons within me, I know, better than you, that you-and he—are on a slippery incline, and that whether you can ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... forgive me if I seem to you impertinent, meddlesome. I know quite well that this is no business of mine, but—but I know Mrs. Carstairs, and I know she has been made bitterly unhappy by this wretched misunderstanding. And I am sure, as sure as I am that you and I sit here to-day, that she never wrote one word of all those beastly letters—why, ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... the tide of progress, or the tide of culture. But the forces of reaction, threatened in their mediaeval management of things, have begun a cowardly guerilla warfare, a series of petty, cowardly, miserable, meddlesome tricks." ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... the unborn generation, whose parents had not then entered the matrimonial state. Whatever other purpose it subserved, except to show to other communities the "latest novelty" from California, is the unfathomable conundrum. John Crowe was a noisy, blatant, meddlesome fellow, the keeper of a livery stable on Kearny street, and a fierce denouncer of the Committee. There was nothing else to his discredit, so far as I could learn at the time. Reub. Maloney was a compound character—a good deal ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... however, our relative standing was the same here as it had been at the school. I gradually overcame the prejudices of the students, and gained their good will, while he was always giving offence by his meddlesome disposition and overbearing manners: yet his talents and force of character always procured him a few followers, whom he managed as he pleased. Of their aid he made use to gratify his malevolence towards me, for this feeling had grown with his growth, ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... my heart hath been heavy, fearing for thee from wild beasts or other mischances. Now praise be to Allah for thy safety!" I thanked him for his friendly solicitude and, retiring to my corner, sat pondering and musing on what had befallen me; and I blamed and chided myself for my meddlesome folly and my frowardness in kicking the alcove. I was calling myself to account when behold, my friend, the Tailor, came to me and said, "O youth, in the shop there is an old man, a Persian,[FN212] who seeketh thee: he hath thy hatchet and thy sandals which he had ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... whipped up Hosea and trotted off. I wondered whether he would come. He had said: "Delighted, I'm sure," but he had not looked delighted. Very possibly he regarded me as a meddlesome, gossiping old tom-cat. Perhaps for that reason he would deem it wise to adopt a propitiatory attitude. Perhaps also he retained a certain affectionate respect for me, seeing that I had known him as a tiny boy in a sailor suit, and had fed him at Harrow (as I did poor Oswald Fenimore at Wellington) ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... comfortably in a low chair by the south window in the music room, stopped his whittling when Berne Webster came in with Judge Wilton. "Meddlesome Mike!" thought the detective. ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... fallen out as I expected—I had just arranged to carry them both off to Clairdelune, and leave these usurpers in possession for as long as the Country would endure them—when you blunder in, like the meddlesome idiot you are, Baron, ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... streaked with sweat and his flanks were palpitating with fatigue when Lone rode up to the corral and dismounted. Pop Bridgers saw him and came bow-legging eagerly forward with gossip titillating on his meddlesome tongue, but Lone stalked by him with only a surly nod. Bob Warfield he saw at a distance and gave no sign of recognition. He met Hawkins coming down from his house and stopped ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... pleasantly—took off his hat to Judith and said he guessed he'd be going. And the men with whom he had been talking, including all of the milkers and all of the other workmen upon whom Nelson could get his meddlesome hands at short notice, all men whom Trevors had placed here, made known in hesitant speech or awkward silence that they were going with Nelson. There were good jobs open with the lumber company, it seemed. ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... remarks made in it. The writer observes:—'It must not be inferred when such remarks are absent from the reports that nothing is done. I have great difficulty sometimes in overcoming the feeling that my questions on these points are a meddlesome interference in private matters.' Bearing that remark in mind, I say here are instances which I am sure reflect as much credit on the individuals as on the interest they represent and the county to which they belong. I am sure ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... temper, or you would wonder no more. I tried it when I came to Croydon, and we kept on until about two months ago, when we had to part. I don't want to say a word against my own sister, but she was always meddlesome and hard to ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... in your nice frock. Do let the furniture alone, child. Ring for Bridget, if any thing wants cleaning. You're a real Meddlesome Matty, Bertha." ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... Wodgate had advantages of its own, and of a kind which touch the fancy of the lawless. It was land without an owner; no one claimed any manorial right over it; they could build cottages without paying rent. It was a district recognized by no parish; so there were no tithes, and no meddlesome supervision. It abounded in fuel which cost nothing, for though the veins were not worth working as a source of mining profit, the soil of Wodgate was similar in its superficial character to that of the country ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... inclined to evade the small complications of existence. This trait of his character was composed of a little indolence, some disdain, and a shrinking from contests with certain forms of vulgarity—like a man who would face a lion and go out of his way to avoid a toad. His intercourse with the meddlesome journalist was that merely outward intimacy without sympathy some young men get drawn into easily. It had amused him rather to keep that "friend" in the dark about the fate of his assistant. Renouard had never needed other company than his own, ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... seven-and-a-half dollars. In his rage at the price he exclaimed: "As a public man I have given twenty of the best years of my life to bringing about a friendly understanding between capital and labor. I have succeeded, and may God have mercy on my meddlesome soul!" ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... safe and vacant room in your establishment where I could bestow this meddlesome priest for a ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... should be the last place in which to indulge in idle talk. Such indulgence is against all the idealism of student life. Idle or meddlesome talk never helps any one, either the one who talks or the one who is discussed. If you have anything to say about other people, and if going to them will help you, the only friendly thing to do—it is not an easy thing—is to speak to the people concerned. ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... Pardoner he was "meddlesome as a fly." Now he lights upon a dane's skin hung in a church. Again, upon a magic-lantern. Yet again upon a traitor's head, and the prospect of London in the distance. He will drink four pints of Epsom water. He will learn to whistle like ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... to arrest us as rogues and vagabonds," Kosinski explained to me as we made our way towards a neighbouring coffee-shop for breakfast. "A pretty fix that would have been just now! We had scarcely settled down for a quiet sleep on the box when the meddlesome fool came up and asked our names and addresses, what we had there, what we were doing at that hour, and threatened to take us in charge unless we moved on. When I explained that we were simply waiting for our train he laughed, and said that was a likely tale! If you had not ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... their country upon the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. From these descended the late General Joubert, Commander-in-Chief of the Transvaal forces at the opening of hostilities. The administration of the colony by the Dutch East India Company being both arbitrary and meddlesome, some of the more independent spirits withdrew from the coast and moved inland, behind the difficult {p.005} mountain ranges that separate the narrow strip of sea-coast from the ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... in the woodland] But whilst Sir Kay and his court thus rested themselves, Sir Dagonet must needs be gadding, for he was of a very restless, meddlesome disposition. So, being at that time clad only in half armor, he wandered hither and thither through the forest as his fancy led him. For somewhiles he would whistle and somewhiles he would gape, and otherwhiles he would cut a caper or two. So, as chance would have it, he came by and by to that ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... replied, with a laugh, "if you really want to know, I understand that every eighth of a mile is marked with a single small white rag; each quarter has a blue one; while the mile shows a plain red one. I hope some meddlesome fellow doesn't go to changing the signals on Brad, and make him think he's doing a record stunt. But I believe he's got some other secret sign of his own to depend ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... but—why, you know she couldn't go there. And if you put her anywhere where a lady ought to be, in New Orleans, she would be—well, don't you see she would be about as far away as if she were in Milwaukee? Richling, I don't know how it looks to you for me to be so meddlesome, and I believe you think I'm making a very poor argument; but you see this is only one point ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... meditative, his look cast down and angry. Pelletier, very buoyant, simple, curious, looking at everything. Torcy, three times more starched than usual, seemed to look at everything by stealth. Effiat, meddlesome, piqued, outraged, ready to boil over, fuming at everybody, his look haggard, as it passed precipitously, and by fits and starts, from side to side. Those on my side I could not well examine; I saw them ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... thoroughly despise their mayors (up their sleeves). A mayor is here today and gone tomorrow, whereas a permanent official is permanent. A mayor knows nothing about anything except his chain and the rules of debate, and he is, further, a tedious and meddlesome person—in the opinion of ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... as though I were undergoing an examination poorly prepared, and I think I must have answered very stupidly. I was out of sorts, too, for often what looks like sympathy is mere inquisitiveness, and theirs impressed me as the more meddlesome, since I have a long while yet to wait for the happy event. Some time in the summer, early in July, I think. You must come then, or better still, so soon as I am at all able to get about, I'll take a vacation and set out for Hohen-Cremmen to see ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... police force paid not the slightest attention to these open, flagrant, shameless violations of the city ordinances and the state bird laws. In those days I never but once heard of a policeman on his own initiative arresting a birdshooter, even on Sunday; but whenever meddlesome special wardens from the Zoological Park have pointedly called upon the local police force for help, it has always been given with cheerful alacrity. In the fall of 1912 an appeal to the Police Commissioner resulted in a general order to stop all hunting and shooting in the Borough of the ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... resolution of a full-lipped yet firm mouth. "Sir!" said he, turning to the young King with a look in which the bonhomie of an indulgent Mentor was blended with genuine respect, "it will, no doubt, seem to your Majesty both meet and proper that we should not leave a meddlesome parson to let you know that our faithful hearts have been sorely exercised by that which is newly come to us out of France. Not to stay on sundry general advertisements and rumours that have reached us—and which seemed to glance at a very exalted personage—I ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... territory, was not yet controlled by the Dutch government. In the year 1897 a numerous band of Madangs had migrated into the extreme head of the Baram from the corresponding and closely adjoining part of the Rejang, largely owing to the pressure put upon them by the ever roving and meddlesome Sea Dayaks. Neither these Madangs nor the Kenyahs of the Batang Kayan had entered into friendly relations with the Sarawak government, and they had preserved a hostile attitude towards the Baram tribes. The Resident therefore determined to visit the Madangs, and to invite Kenyah chiefs from ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... word of it!" Dolly stood up and angrily grasped the bell-handle. "It's not true. It's a meddlesome lie. They are jealous. People are always like that—it makes them furious to see another person prosper. ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... and was my duty, to settle all other strikes, so after the peace of Portsmouth there were other persons—not only Americans, by the way,—who thought it my duty forthwith to make myself a kind of international Meddlesome Mattie and interfere for peace and justice promiscuously over the world. Others, with a delightful non-sequitur, jumped to the conclusion that inasmuch as I had helped to bring about a beneficent and necessary peace I must of necessity have changed my mind about war being ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... Mrs. Robbem. "She's always been treated kindly, and she wouldn't have thought of taking such a step, if she hadn't been put up to it by meddlesome Abolitionists, who are always interfering ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... fawvour to see sic a halesome clan—frae auchteen or thereawa' doon tu the wee toddlin' lassie was the varra aipple o' the e'e to a' the e'en aboot the place! But that's naither here nor yet there! A' gaed on as a' should gang on whaur the servan's are no ower gran' for their ain wark, nor ower meddlesome wi' the wark o' their neebours; naething was negleckit, nor onything girned aboot; but a' was peace an' hermony, as quo' the auld sang about out bonny Kilmeny—that is, till ae nicht.—You see I'm tellin' ye as it cam' to ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... or typhlitis ends in an abscess, and the pus sac is ruptured by meddlesome, unskilled treatment, scientific or otherwise, causing the pus to burrow toward the groin, surgery is the only treatment; there is no hope of recovery in such a case without establishing thorough drainage, and this means skilled surgical treatment. It will positively be a miracle if such ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... has to hide everything when one has little meddlesome good-for-nothings like you.... But come, out with it, confess that you took it.... I would rather it was that.... I sha'n't tell ...
— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck
... mention of my name every eye turned towards me, and I felt, rather than saw, the disfavour of the looks. No doubt they resented a storekeeper's intrusion into well-bred company, and some were there who had publicly cursed me for a meddlesome upstart. But I was not looking their way, but at the girl who sat on my host's right hand, and in whose dark eyes I thought I saw a ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... there, and everywhere," and she waved her pretty hands up and down; "he is the useful one to have for a friend!" Which sentiment the Piache much approved, as became his occupation; and once told Brimblecombe pretty sharply, that he was a meddlesome fellow for telling the Indians that the Good Spirit cared for them; "for," quoth he, "if they begin to ask the Good Spirit for what they want, who will bring me cassava and coca for keeping the bad spirit quiet?" This argument, however forcible the devil's priests ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... ready to do things for other people. The word is now restricted to its bad sense of meddlesome. Cf. Shakespeare, ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... Tanacharisson, Jeskakake, White Thunder, and the Hunter going with Washington. The latter understood very well that their object was to have an opportunity to win them over to the French. But Washington insisted upon their going with him, and rebuked Captain Joncaire for his meddlesome disposition. ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... civil war now raging in America appears to me almost a phenomenon in political history. No such forbearance has been shown during the political history of the last two centuries. It is the single case in which the English Government and public, generally so meddlesome, have displayed most prudent and commendable forbearance in spite of great temptations to the contrary.' Lord John had opinions, and the courage of them; but at the same time he showed himself fully alive to the fact that no greater calamity ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... unhappily said that wholly justified his caustic denunciation, "is a mere excuse for establishing a medical tyranny. And we have enough of this kind of tyranny already ... the world does not want the eugenist to set it straight.... Eugenics is simply the meddlesome interference of ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... brought up an ill report of your Lord, persuading others that He was a taskmaster. They also brought up an evil report of the good land, saying it was not half so good as some pretend it was. They also began to vilify His servants, and to count the very best of them meddlesome, troublesome, busybodies. Further, they could call the bread of God husks; the comforts of His children, fancies; the travel and labour of pilgrims, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Cumberland. The Acadian peasants, on the beautiful shores of the Bay of Fundy, Canadian historians tell us, "were a simple, virtuous, and prosperous community," though other writers give them less favorable character, speaking of them as turbulent, aggressive, and meddlesome. With remarkable industry they had reclaimed from the sea by dikes many thousand of fertile acres, which produced abundant crops of grain and orchard fruits; and on the sea meadows at one time grazed as ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... sorry to hear about it," said Mr. Blackthorne, "but I don't see that anything can be done. You see, one does not like to interfere in these sort of things. It seems officious rather, and meddlesome." ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... Johnstone as he left the room, and in a few moments returned with a check-book. "There's your thousand pounds. Now listen. Not a word to old General Willoughby. He is a meddlesome old sot. I shall slip away quietly. To deceive the Delhi scandal-mongers you must call here every day in my absence. Mademoiselle Delande will receive you. My daughter, of course, sees no one in my absence. And you can inform Delhi secretly, guardedly, that Madame Berthe ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... the value of standard realistic stories. In these readers was found the very moral story of the boy who won the day because of his forethought in providing an extra piece of whipcord. There was also "Meddlesome Matty," and the honest office-boy, the heroic lad of Holland, and the story of the newly liberated prisoner who bought a cage full of captive birds and set them free. These and many others still persist in memory, and point with ...
— All About Johnnie Jones • Carolyn Verhoeff
... of the troops from Winchester, to strengthen Fort Cumberland, which was now to become headquarters; thus weakening the most important points and places, to concentrate a force where it was not wanted, and would be out of the way in most cases of alarm. By these meddlesome moves, made by Governor Dinwiddie from a distance, without knowing any thing of the game, all previous arrangements were reversed, every thing was thrown into confusion, and enormous losses and expenses ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... 'prentice. I remember how I used to sit and watch him at his work. It would be grand, I thought, to be able to do as he did, and handle edge-tools without cutting my fingers, and getting my ears pulled for a meddlesome minx! He used to give me his mallet to keep and his nails to hold; and didn't I fly when he called for them! and wasn't I proud to be ordered about with them! And then, you know, there is the tall cabinet yonder; that it was that proved him the first ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... kill the old feud. They cannot help respecting each other after such an encounter as that. I'll try and get hold of young Darley, and then of Mark; and perhaps I may be able to—Bah! you weak-minded, meddlesome old driveller!" he cried impetuously. "You would muddle, and spoil all, when perhaps a Higher Hand is at work, as it always is, to make everything tend ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... was burned with overpowering force into my mind that houses and furniture, scrubbed floors, white curtains, bright tins and brasses, were the great, awful, permanent facts of existence; and that men and women, and particularly children, were the meddlesome intruders upon this divine order, every trace of whose intermeddling must be scrubbed out and obliterated in the quickest way possible. It seemed evident to me that houses would be far more perfect if nobody lived in ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... sleeping next, and taxing me for ivery snore a give. They've been after t' winders, and after t' vittle, and after t' very saut to 't; it's dearer by hauf an' more nor it were when a were a boy: they're a meddlesome set o' folks, law-makers is, an' a'll niver believe King George has ought t' do wi' 't. But mark my words; I were wed wi' brass buttons, and brass buttons a'll wear to my death, an' if they moither me about it, a'll wear brass buttons i' ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... I know? Because Chaldea was hiding under the studio window this afternoon and overheard all that passed between you and Garvington and that meddlesome Lambert. She knew that I was in danger and came at once to London to tell me since I had given her my address. I lost no time, but motored down here and dropped her at the camp. Now I've come to get you out of ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... peep at other folks, and pry into people's affairs? I can't imagine where you get your meddlesome ways from. There aint none in my family. Next time I catch you at it, I'll spank you good." Then, after a pause, "Well what else did ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... and he went home puzzled and fighting-mad. If, then, the Blue-grass people had handled with the firebrand corporate aggrandizement of toll-gate owners who were neighbors and friends, how would they treat meddlesome interference from strangers? Already one courteous emissary in one county had fled the people's wrath on a swift thoroughbred, and Burnham smiled sadly to himself ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... "You meddlesome bacon!" cackled the ungrateful bird; "if you don't take that orb directly back, I 'll sit on you till I hatch ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... consequence, and even rumors rising on the subject, Voltaire wrote once: "Give me a yard of ribbon, Sire [your ORDER OF MERIT, Sire], to silence those vile rumors!" Which Friedrich, on such free-and-easy terms, had silently declined. "A meddlesome, forward kind of fellow; always getting into scrapes and brabbles!" thinks Friedrich. But is really anxious, now that the chance offers again, to have such a Levite for his Priest, the evident pink of Human Intellect; and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... seriously in hand at bedtime, and argued the whole transaction with him, representing the dreadful consequences of meddling with people's private papers under trust. Here was poor Lucy taken away from home, and papa made very angry with Ulick, because Maurice had been meddlesome and mischievous; and though he had not been beaten for it, he would find it a worse punishment not to be trusted another time, nor allowed to ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and sixty persons had cause to rejoice with them. So be it! There were plans evolved already as to national fetes and wholesale pardons when that impudent and meddlesome Englishman at last got ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... nearest shop, sweating with fear lest she should follow him. Endued with riches and fortified by assurance, Mrs. Folliot was the presiding spirit in many movements of charity and benevolence; there were people in Wrychester who were unkind enough to say—behind her back—that she was as meddlesome as she was most undoubtedly autocratic, but, as one of her staunchest clerical defenders once pointed out, these grumblers were what might be contemptuously dismissed as five-shilling subscribers. Mrs. Folliot, in her way, was undoubtedly a power—and for reasons of his own Pemberton ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... one to believe in an unnatural god who apparently must be ever ready to answer anybody's prayerful cry and act as a general servant to humanity by distributing good things to those who beg for them; a sort of meddlesome god who enters into all the petty quarrels of hunan beings and generally settles them ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... he was a poet—one of those who write for ages yet unborn. Besides, his poems could be bought (of the publisher only; the railway bookstall men did not understand them) beautifully bound; really beautifully bound in white kid, with green ribbon—a very thin volume and very thin poetry. Meddlesome persons have been known to state that Cyril Squyrt's father kept a prosperous hot-sausage-and-mashed-potato shop in Leeds. But one must not always ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... the brig Herald and to Captain Beardsley's expressed wish that the act might lead to an open rupture between the United States and England, and he was glad to learn that there was to be no trouble on that score. But England could not long keep her meddlesome fingers out of our pie. She did all she dared to aid the Confederacy, and when the war was ended, had the fun of handing over a good many millions of dollars to pay for the American vessels that British built and British armed steamers had destroyed ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... servant as is possible to his sainted person. I left him an hour ago after we had left Deeping, for I came on here to see if you could receive him, not according to his rank, but as a plain guest, with the name of Thomas Williams; for there are those about who might be meddlesome, and His Majesty can only tarry for two or three days, waiting for a message from the Scots generals, to be brought by a trusty hand. I had feared that His Majesty would have overtaken me, for my horse cast a shoe, and came limping along for a mile or more, till at the smithy yonder ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... wearisome than the long line of alliances, triple and quadruple, the endless negotiations, the interminable congresses, the innumerable treaties, which make up the history of Europe during the earlier half of the eighteenth century; nor is it easy to follow with patience the meddlesome activity of English diplomacy during that period, its protests and interventions, its subsidies and guarantees, its intrigues and finessings, its bluster and its lies. But wearisome as it all is, it succeeded in ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... head of a cherub, who know what trouble is. You see where the shoe pinches, but your whole soul relucts from pointing out the tender place. You see why things go wrong, and how they might be set right; but you have a mortal dread of being thought meddlesome and impertinent, or cold and cruel, or restless and arrogant, if you attempt to demolish the wrong or rebel against the custom. When you draw your bow at an abuse, people think you are trying to bring down religion and propriety and humanity. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... which could not get free. The noise seemed to come from the roots, and people fancied it groaned least when the weather was wet, and made most noise in dry weather. This went on for nearly two years, until at last a meddlesome gentleman took an opportunity to bore a hole in the trunk. The result was that the elm ceased to groan. It was then decided to take the tree up by the roots and examine it; but nothing has ever been discovered to account ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... for some years longer, hardly affords many more events. It was not without troubles. At times came friendly support; at others, opposition from the authorities—the committee at home were sometimes ignorantly meddlesome, sometimes sordid in their fits of economy; insufficiently tested fellow-labourers came out and failed; promising converts fell away; the climate was one steady unrelaxing foe, which took victims out of every family: but all these things were as the dust of the highway, trials common ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... of the court then proceeded, and when his evidence was taken, Tilly Troffater mounted the stand, with an affected hesitancy, and a genuine restlessness of his little earthen eyes; eager to indulge his meddlesome humor, anxious for revenge upon, he little cared whom, and yet awed to a look of shuffling shame, by the commanding mien of the justice. Clambering to his place, he was ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... Beaumarchais. Franklin was content to leave these affairs to him, and did not at the time even know their real nature. But with Arthur Lee it was different. Of all characters in American history Lee is almost the hardest to endure. He was patriotic, and in a way honest, but meddlesome, suspicious, vain, and quarrelsome to an incredible degree. He immediately made up his mind that Deane was peculating, and never ceased writing accusatory letters until Congress recalled the unfortunate envoy. All this time he was also acting toward Franklin ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... connected with the disposition of the public lands were clearly exposed by one Robert Gourlay, a somewhat meddlesome Scotchman, who had addressed a circular, soon after his arrival in Canada, to a number of townships with regard to the causes which retarded improvement and the best means of developing the resources of the province. An answer from Sandwich virtually set ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... to please a fanatical clergy, delivered hundreds of his subjects to the stake, was more blameable than Pilate, for he represented a more absolute power than that of the Romans at Jerusalem. When the civil power becomes persecuting or meddlesome at the solicitation of the priesthood, it proves its weakness. But let the government that is without sin in this respect throw the first stone at Pilate. The "secular arm," behind which clerical cruelty shelters itself, is not the culprit. ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... me if I seem to you impertinent, meddlesome. I know quite well that this is no business of mine, but—but I know Mrs. Carstairs, and I know she has been made bitterly unhappy by this wretched misunderstanding. And I am sure, as sure as I am that you and I sit here to-day, that she never wrote one word of all those ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... out, Franck. Just for a minute." It struck me that perhaps I was a meddlesome fool. Wilks, of all of Grantline's men, was, I knew, most in his commander's trust. The signal could have been some part of this night's ordinary ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... Testament, that there are doubtless some few changes for the better, so obvious and so demanded beforehand by all educated opinion that to have neglected them would at once have stamped the revisers as blockheads and dunces; but that the set-off in the way of petty and meddlesome changes for the worse, neglect of really desirable improvements, bad English, failure in the very matter of pure scholarship just where it was least to be expected, and general departure from the terms of the Commission assigned to them (notably ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... have you made for fastening your boat?" asked Uncle Gerald. "To guard against its being tampered with by meddlesome persons, as well as to prevent its drifting away, you ought to secure it to a stake near the bank by means of ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... all be turned out, I know," complained the Barn Swallow, "and after we have as good as owned Orchard Farm these three years, it is too bad. Those meddlesome House People have put two new pieces of glass in the hayloft window, and how shall I ever get ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... affairs. In truth, Mehevi seemed to be the president of a club of hearty fellows, who kept 'Bachelor's Hall' in fine style at the Ti. I had no doubt but that they regarded children as odious incumbrances; and their ideas of domestic felicity were sufficiently shown in the fact, that they allowed no meddlesome housekeepers to turn topsy-turvy those snug little arrangements they had made in their comfortable dwelling. I strongly suspected however, that some of these jolly bachelors were carrying on love intrigues with the maidens of the tribe; although they did not appear publicly to acknowledge them. I ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... beg—that you will not think me meddlesome or impertinent. I have the matter very much at heart. It seems to lie in my path. I must see it. Surely you perceive some way of averting the disaster ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... I always opened this window, but I kept my venetian blinds half-closed, so that I might look out without having my idleness seen, and reported by a meddlesome neighbor. Morning and evening I glanced to the end of the quiet street that stretched its sunny length between the white country houses and lost itself among the old trees growing beyond the ramparts. I could see from there the occasional passers-by, all well known to me, the neighborhood ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... on her tossed bed, the sickness of disappointment heavy over her. An hour ago wealth was in her hand, ease was before her, and the future was secure. Now all was torn down and scattered by an old yellow paper which prying, curious, meddlesome old Sol Greening had found. She bent her head upon her hand; tears trickled ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... good, frank boy," said Aunt Madge, kissing his forehead. "And he won't toss his head,—just this way,—like a young lord of creation, when meddlesome aunties ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... sure I thought I was acting for the best," gave, considering her agitation, a tolerably accurate account of the whole interview. Her interlocutor saw plainly that she had acted from a sincere conscientiousness, and not from a meddlesome, mischievous interference; so he only thanked her for her kind interest, and suggested that he had now arrived at an age when it would, perhaps, be well for him to conduct matters, particularly of so delicate a nature, solely according to his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... of the captain-general was aroused. He consulted his legal adviser and factotum, a shrewd, meddlesome Escribano or notary, who rejoiced in an opportunity of perplexing the old potentate of the Alhambra, and involving him in a maze of legal subtilities. He advised the captain-general to insist upon the right of examining every convoy passing through the gates of his city, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... "Confound that meddlesome Yankee! what was he prowling around there for?" interrupted Mr. Scott, angrily. "He has no business prying into Harold Scott Mainwaring's affairs, and I'll have him understand it; let him attend to his own duties, and I think, from all reports, ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... has left a deeper impression on Northern memories than the shock of disappointment at Bull Run. Public men of weight had been pressing for an advance in November, and when the Joint Committee of Congress, an arbitrary and meddlesome, but able and perhaps on the whole useful body, was set up in December, it brought its full influence to bear on the President. Lincoln was already anxious enough; he wished to rouse McClellan himself to activity, while he screened him against excessive impatience or interference with his ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... their lordships of the upper-house know that voice, when after a long sleepy debate it aroused them from ambrosial slumbers, with biting sarcasm, and most disagreeably told truths. And most heartily did a certain proportion of their lordships curse the owner of that voice, for a talented, eloquent, meddlesome innovator. But on all his great estates he was adored by the labourers and town's-folk, though hated by the farmers and country 'squires; for he was the earliest and fiercest of the reform and ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... morning, that before night you will meet with some meddlesome, ungrateful and abusive fellow, with some envious or unsociable churl. Remember that their perversity proceeds from ignorance of good and evil; and that since it has fallen to my share to understand the natural beauty of a good action and the deformity of an ill one; since I am satisfied that the ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... person of substance he stopped that sort of nonsense. His wife, too, was a sensible person, the daughter of an old Pittsburgh family as solid and well-rooted as the McKanns. She would never have bothered him about this concert had not the meddlesome Mrs. Post arrived to pay her a visit. Mrs. Post was an old school friend of Mrs. McKann, and because she lived in Cincinnati she was always keeping up with the world and talking about things in which no one else was interested, music among them. She was an aggressive lady, with weighty ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... of the subjective plane, and also to every floating thought on the physical plane; they are obsessed by ideas from within and without and their actions bear witness to this statement. Some very meddlesome women, and those who are the terror of a quiet community, are nearly always those who are in the control of the slower psychic forces and unable to conciously direct their ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... "I am a meddlesome old woman!" said Mrs. Tree. "You wish I would leave you alone, James Stedman, and so I will. Old women ought to be strangled; there's some place where they do it, Cap'n Tree told me about it once; I suppose it's because they talk too much. She said she shouldn't ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... have never left, if these meddlesome abolitionists hadn't put it in their heads; but, darling, don't bother your brain about such matters. See what I have bought you this morning," said he, handing her a necklace of the purest pearls; ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... is in us that combats desire—urged him to close his ears to the voices, he cursed it for a meddlesome thing. Since Life had thrown down the gauntlet, he would take it up! If he had to travel the chambers of disgrace and discouragement, he would go on to the halls of sensual abandonment. Life had torn aside the curtain—it was for him to ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... the Temple was not actuated by patriotism, but solely by greed. Obviously there was a rich reward waiting for him in Vienna the day that he brought Louis XVII safely into Austrian territory; that reward he would miss if a meddlesome Englishman interfered in this affair. Whether in this wrangle he risked the life of the child-King or not mattered to him not at all. It was de Batz who was to get the reward, and whose welfare and prosperity mattered more than the most ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... experienced. The roughness of the trail, the absence of cultivated fields, the entire exemption from the restraints of civilization, were perfectly delightful after a dreary residence of nearly a year in Germany. Here, at least, there were no passport bureaus, no meddlesome police, no conceited and disagreeable habitues of public places with fierce dogs running at their heels, no Verbotener Wegs staring one in the face at every turn. Here all ways possible to be traveled were open to the public; here was plenty of fresh ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... What if that man should take umbrage at some fancied slight to his honour or disregard of his affections and suddenly "amok"? The wise adviser would be the first victim, no doubt, and death would be his reward. And underlying the horror of this situation there was the danger of those meddlesome fools, the white men. A vision of comfortless exile in far-off Madura rose up before Babalatchi. Wouldn't that be worse than death itself? And there was that half-white woman with threatening eyes. How could he tell what an incomprehensible ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... story," said the doctor with a smile. "I once had a half-grown eagle in a cage in my yard. The door was left open one day, and a meddlesome rooster hopped in to pick a fight. The eagle had been sick a week and seemed an easy mark. I watched. The rooster jumped and wheeled and spurred and picked pieces out of his topknot. The young eagle didn't ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... out, "spend this with your fellows" (by instinct he knew it was part of his role to be lavish), "and tell them to drink to that meddlesome blackleg." ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... shore Thor was still filled with rage at the meddlesome giant, because he had lost him the serpent, but he quietly picked up the boat and carried it home, Hymer taking the whales. Once more under his own roof, the giant's courage returned, and he challenged Thor ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... There is work to be done among those unhappy men that may be my purgation. The authorities shall hear me yet—though inquiry was stifled at Port Arthur. By the way, a Pharaoh had arisen who knows not Joseph. It is evident that the meddlesome parson, who complained of men being flogged to death, is forgotten, as the men are! How many ghosts must haunt the dismal loneliness of that prison shore! Poor Burgess is gone the way of all flesh. I wonder if his spirit revisits the ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... evils of the world in skyey dreams of good. How many good men, prosperous and contented, looked around and saw naught but good, while millions of their fellowmen were bartered and sold like cattle! No doubt, there were comfortable optimists who thought Wilberforce a meddlesome fanatic when he was working with might and main to free the slaves. I distrust the rash optimism in this country that cries, "Hurrah, we're all right! This is the greatest nation on earth," when there are grievances that call loudly for redress. That is false optimism. Optimism ...
— Optimism - An Essay • Helen Keller
... a little sermon now, because I've found out your one fault. It isn't very big yet, but, if you don't nip it in the bud, it will be like Meddlesome Matty's,— ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... letting would do nobody any harm, neither would there be much of that, for they scorned to use any weapon sharper than their fists or a good thick rung: the women and children would take stones of course. Nobody would be killed, but every meddlesome authority taught to let Scaurnose and fishers alone. Peter objected that their enemies could easily starve them out. Dubs rejoined that, if they took care to keep the sea door open, their friends at Portlossie would not let them starve. Grosert said he made no doubt the factor would ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... Morris Townsend; and on receiving this news the girl started with a sense of pain. She felt angry for the moment; it was almost the first time she had ever felt angry. It seemed to her that her aunt was meddlesome; and from this came a vague apprehension ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... walk in the fields, bird-nesting and botanizing, and had like to have been taken up as a poacher in Hilly Wood, by a meddlesome, conceited gamekeeper belonging to Sir John Trollope. He swore that he had seen me in the act, more than once, of shooting game, when I never shot even so much as a sparrow in my life. What terrifying rascals these woodkeepers ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... is born in a day. A baby is always six months old before he is twenty-one. Our fathers, who first reasoned that God made all men equal, said: "You sha'n't hang a man until you have asked him if he consents to the law." Some meddlesome fanatic, engaged in setting up type, conceived the idea, that he need not pay his tax till he was represented before the law: then why should woman do so? Now, I ask, what possible reason is there that woman, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... at the club may chaff me all you choose. I'm going to marry her and that's all there is to it. I'm my own master, do you understand? I have no family—no inquisitive, meddlesome relatives, thank God! If this marriage is going to cost me what friends I have—all right—let them keep away! Such friends are not worth having, anyway. My mind is made up and you know me. Once I make up my mind, nothing can alter it." Determinedly ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... weigh what you did, put it by with a generous gesture, Give the minds of the student your measure, impress them Forever that all of this sacrifice, service was noble, But done with mixed motives, the fruits of your meddlesome nature, Your hatred of churches and priests. Six lines are the record Of all of these years of hard plowing in quack-grass, while batting At poisonous flies and stepping on ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... happy one; and during the twelve years following the murder of Buckingham (1592-1628), in whose hands he had been a mere tool, Charles gradually came to yield himself up to her unwise influence—not wholly indeed, but more than to that of Stafford even, or Laud. Little meddlesome Laud, made archbishop in 1633, proceeded to war against the dominant Puritanism, to preach passive obedience, and uphold the divine right of kings; while great Stafford, from championing the Petition of Right (1628), passed over to the king's service, and entered on that policy of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... The turnip was empty, the Fairies asleep. The gardener on passing his turnip bed saw, 'Midst the flourishing green a queer looking flaw: "Why, how can this be? I'm sure yester-e'en, That turnip, as any, was thrifty and green. There may be a grub at its root, or perhaps, A bug at its top, they are meddlesome chaps; I'll wait until morning, the heat of the sun May have proven too much for a delicate one." In the meantime the Fairies waked up by his words, Laughed and chuckled together as happy as birds. "Before he comes round, we'll have ...
— Nestlings - A Collection of Poems • Ella Fraser Weller
... for being meddlesome,' continued Percy, 'I thought I saw a way of being even with that scoundrel. Your papers had got into my pocket, and, as I had nothing else to do, I looked them over after parting with you, and saw a way out of the difficulty. I was coming in the morning to return them and propound my plan, ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... explored the recesses of North America. France in the age of De Monts and Champlain possessed adequate resources, if only her effort had been concentrated on America, or if the Huguenots had not been prevented from founding colonies, or if the crown had been less meddlesome, or if the quest of beaver skins farther north had not diverted attention from Chesapeake Bay and Manhattan Island. The best chance the French ever had to effect a foothold in the middle portion of the Atlantic coast came to them in 1604, when, before any rivals ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... trouble for Mary. She felt, however, that the two great questions, the marriage of herself to Louis, and Brandon to any other person, were, as she called it, "settled"; and was almost content to endure this as a mere putting off of her desires—a meddlesome and impertinent interference of the Fates, who would soon learn with whom they were dealing, ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... "He's a meddlesome, impertinent young scamp!" says Aunt Tillie, growin' red under the layers of rice powder. "Haven't I a right to marry without consulting him, ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... openly that under his ministry, men might cabal with impunity, for he was not a dangerous enemy." If the cabalists had been living in that confidence, they were most wofully deceived. Richelieu was neither meddlesome nor cruel, but he was stern and pitiless towards the sufferings as well as the supplications of those who sought to thwart his policy. At this period, he wished to bring about a marriage between the Duke of Anjou, then eighteen years old, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... have dangers, From meddlesome strangers, Who spy on our business and are not content To take a smooth answer, Except with a handspike ... And they say they are murdered by poor ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... the right royal results of the admirable but somewhat unyouthful qualities they adored in the young Queen. They have no right to sneer because a place of honor is given in Her Majesty's household to that meddlesome, old-fashioned German country cousin, Economy; for did not they all rejoice in the early years of the reign to hear of this same dame being introduced by those clever managers, Prince Albert and Baron Stockmar, into the royal palaces, wherein she ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... Perhaps he was only a curious, meddlesome person. I have frequently been bothered by such individuals. They want to see all the working parts of an automobile or motor-boat, and they don't care what damage ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... the members of which had acquired the unreasonable habit of thinking and speaking for themselves during the preceding reign, he determined at once to put a stop to such grievous abominations. Scarcely, therefore, had he entered upon his authority, than he turned out of office all the meddlesome spirits of the factious cabinet of William the Testy; in place of whom he chose unto himself counselors from those fat, somniferous, respectable burghers who had flourished and slumbered under the easy ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... occurred a singular contact of minds. It was very well for me to spin sonorous generalities, but I had never till now dreamed of being so vulgar as to translate them into practice. I had always detested the meddlesome alarmist, who veils ignorance under noisiness, and for ever wails his chant of lugubrious pessimism. To be thrown with Davies was to receive a shock of enlightenment; for here, at least, was a specimen of the breed who exacted respect. It ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... "I would not by my good-will be meddlesome in matters that concern me not, but it seemeth me all is scarce well with you. If so be that I can serve you any way, I trust you will ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... active from inability to keep quiet; their activity may be without purpose, or out of all proportion to the purpose contemplated. The officious are undesirably active in the affairs of others. Compare ALERT; ALIVE; MEDDLESOME. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... about him, his cheeks certainly would have burned. Indeed, I am afraid that they would have blistered. Such excitement! Everybody had a different idea, and nobody would listen to anybody else. Old Mr. Mink lost his temper and called Grandpa Otter a meddlesome know-nothing. It looked very much as if the convention was going to break up in a sad quarrel. Then Mr. Coon climbed up on the Big Rock and with ...
— The Adventures of Jerry Muskrat • Thornton W. Burgess
... shoes in your hand and wade," gritted the Cap'n. "I ain't stoppin' you." He still scorned to explain to the meddlesome landsman. ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... Force, a meddlesome French commissary, i. 82; energy and activity of, i. 132; escape of, from prison at ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... to the new-fangled power of electricity which Dr. Franklin had just discovered and was making so much talk about, and was so recklessly tinkering with in Philadelphia at that very time. The doctor had strongly disapproved of Franklin's reprehensible and meddlesome boldness, but he felt that it was best, nevertheless, to write and obtain the philosopher's advice as to the feasibility, advisability, and the best convenience of having one of the new lightning-rods rigged upon his medical back, and running thence up through his wig, ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... forward that they could not shake off their unwelcome escort. The calves had been tended occasionally in the dusk by a man with a lantern, and they hailed this one as a beacon of hope. Finally even Judith, desperately impatient to be gone, agreed that they would have to turn back and put the meddlesome creatures into their pasture and lay up the fence before they ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... more than that stormy lover, Achilles. Ichabod, therefore, made his advances in a quiet and gently insinuating manner. Under cover of his character of singing-master, he made frequent visits at the farmhouse; not that he had anything to apprehend from the meddlesome interference of parents, which is so often a stumbling-block in the path of lovers. Balt Van Tassel was an easy indulgent soul; he loved his daughter better even than his pipe, and, like a reasonable man and an excellent father, ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
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