FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • More 'Vexatious' Quotes from Famous Books

... and consequently when I was called I fell asleep again, and was thunderstruck to find on waking that it was ten minutes past eight. I have had no imposition, nor heard anything about it. It is rather vexatious to have happened so soon, as I had ...

— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

... had devoted herself to this old man who was now dead, and there had been moments in which she had thought that that sufficed. But it had not sufficed, and instead of being borne down by grief at the loss of her friend, she found herself almost rejoicing at relief from a vexatious burden. Had she been a hypocrite then? Was it her nature to be false? After that she reflected whether it might not be best for her to become a devotee,—it did not matter much in what branch of the Christian ...

— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... family, who was not fourteen. Their grandmother, ill with sorrow and terror, had to be cared for at once. Finally they met the young daughter coming back. In one case an old man and two infirm persons could not keep the daughter who was their sole support. And everywhere the enemy sneered, adding vexatious annoyance to their hateful task. In the house of the doctor, who is B.'s uncle, they gave his wife the choice between two maids. She preferred the elder and they said, "Well, then she is the one we are going to take." Mlle. L., the young one who has just got over typhoid and ...

— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne

... nor property are secure in Ireland, they are compelled to succumb to the threats of their temporary allies, and virtually to abandon even the emasculated measure which they dared to introduce, by consenting to postponements which must deprive it of all moral weight, and still further encourage vexatious opposition. But can the ministers suppose that the Irish liberals support them for any other purpose than that of attaining their own ends? Whatever may be their ultimate effects upon the condition of this country, it is clear that the ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... accepted the decision of their constituents to the extent that Mr. Shackleton's Bill, rejected in 1903, obtained second reading by 39 votes in 1904, and by 122 in 1905. But dislike of the measure had not abated; so many vexatious amendments were embodied in the Bill in Committee as to render it worse than useless; and at last all but the Tory members retired from the Grand Committee in disgust, and the Bill was discharged from the House. But in 1906 came the General Election, by which the ...

— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... something relaxed, as the guiding mind of the great minister ceased to have leisure to attend to it. The bishops, however, continued, each in his own diocese, to act with such vigour as they possessed. Their courts were unceasingly occupied with vexatious suits, commenced without reason, and conducted without justice. They summoned arbitrarily as suspected offenders whoever had the misfortune to have provoked their dislike; either compelling them to criminate themselves ...

— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... has no such chapter as the Negro's fifty years of freedom. The duty of the hour is to unshackle him and make him wholly free. When the Negro is free from the vexatious annoyances of color and has only the same problems of life as any other men, his contribution to the general welfare of his country will be greater than ...

— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... resolved I would never agree to. But before it came to this, she pressed my girl to describe the tyhaia, or head-dress, which she did so cleverly that the Quaker could not help saying mine was just such a one; and after several other similitudes, all very vexatious to me, out comes the kind motion to me to let the ladies see my dress; and they joined their eager desires of it, ...

— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe

... unpleasant. Many render [Greek: duocheres] 'inauspicious', 'ill- omened'; but as we do not know exactly what was in Demosthenes' mind, it is better not to give the word a meaning which it does not bear elsewhere. It may, however, mean 'vexatious'. ...

— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes

... some fresh misfortune occurred, the most vexatious of all being one which seems due to Palissy's own carelessness. The mortar used by the potter in building his kiln was full of small pebbles, and when the oven became very hot these pebbles split, and mixed with the glaze. Then the enamel was spread over the earthen ...

— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang

... pleasure at Mehun-sur-Yevre, where he could best conceal from prying eyes the idle occupations and degrading enjoyments which filled the time of the hero of other's swords. He had just concluded a peace with Savoy, and had rejected, as vexatious, the petitions of his subjects of Gascony, who were writhing under the exactions of his ministers. He felt that all was now at his feet; and he would not permit his loved ease and quiet to be disturbed by appeals to his justice and humanity. The people of Guienne, therefore, saw that ...

— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... The mere fact that, from of old, it had been looked upon as the worst sort of bad manners to have more than three diners on a sofa, and as scarcely less ridiculous to have fewer than three, had made the custom vexatious in the extreme, as it constrained all entertainers to arrange for nine guests or eighteen or twenty-seven and ruled out any other more convenient intermediate numbers. In the progressive circles of society and at the ...

— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... vitalizing association with an active creative experience. Anarchism comes when the Socialist repudiation of property is dropped into the circles of thought of men habitually ruled and habitually irresponsible, men limited in action and temperamentally adverse to the toil, to the vexatious rebuffs and insufficiencies, the dusty effort, fatigue, and friction of the practical pursuit of a complex ideal. So that it most flourishes eastwardly, where men, it would seem, are least energetic and constructive, and it explodes or dies ...

— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells

... the valleys was far from satisfactory. Not to recount, as among the causes, those political disabilities to which reference has been previously made, I will refer to some additional circumstances of a vexatious and depressing character. One was the hindrances to the obtaining the most indispensable religious books, such as Bibles, catechisms, hymn-books. With each parcel of Bibles and New Testaments, the moderator was obliged ...

— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold

... passing of the Home Rule Bill, reserving certain subjects to the Imperial Parliament and committing others to the Parliament of Ireland, as amounting to a compact which would be observed by men of common sense that there would be no capricious or vexatious interference by this Parliament with an action within the appointed sphere of the Parliament of Ireland. If such interference were attempted, the presence in this Parliament of eighty Irish members—a number which had been found to ...

— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey

... into the water, and a shivering woman went with it. But what would you, when "brabbling women slander and scandalize their neighbours, for which their poore husbands are often brought into chargeable and vexatious suits and ...

— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins

... they would accompany the royal party on its progress to the frontier. Pothinus clearly was beginning to fear the results of his "honourable entertainment," and did not care to have his guests out of his sight. It was vexatious to be thus at his mercy; but Cornelia was too joyous in soul, at that time, to bear the indignity heavily. They had to part with Monime and Berenice, but Agias went with them; and Cornelia sent off another letter to Italy, in ...

— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... morning. It was a shorter way than he had come, that by which her conductor took her, and in parts easy enough; but in other parts requiring his skill as well as hers to get her over them. He said not a word further; he served her in silence: the vexatious thing was, that he was able to serve her so much. Many a time she had to accept his hand to get past a rude place; often both hands were needed to swing her over a watercourse or leap her down from a rock. She was agile and light of foot; she did what ...

— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... Frank; who continued firm in his refusal; and when Sir Arthur and your brother had heard that I was so dizzy as to be in danger of falling, had not he supported me, they were satisfied. But such a meeting, between Frank and your brother, was quite vexatious: when the very reverse too was wished! However he is to visit us this morning; and I will then endeavour to do justice to the worth of Frank, and remove false impressions, which I have some reason to ...

— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... their deep sense of religion was the chief source of the energy which the Irish then displayed. They had not yet been driven into a fierce resistance by being forcibly deprived of their lands; although the Danes, when they carried their vexatious tyranny into all the details of private life - not allowing lords and ladies of the Irish race to wear rich dresses and appear in a manner befitting their rank - when they went so far as to refuse a bowl of milk to an infant, that a rude soldier might quench ...

— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... Cibo. For Cibo has many kinsmen at court who still resent the circumstance that the matching of his wits against Eglamore's earned for Cibo a deplorably public demise. So they conspire against Eglamore with vexatious industry, as an upstart, as a nobody thrust over people of proven descent, and Eglamore goes about in hourly apprehension of a knife-thrust. If he could make a match with you, though, your father—thrifty man!—would ...

— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... outposts, without special permission for the purpose. If any one had a complaint or request to make of the colonel, he procured one or more of the persons he had selected to come to his quarters on his behalf. This measure prevented frivolous and vexatious applications, and the still more dangerous approach of enemies in disguise. All these measures were entirely new; and, within eight or ten days, the whole system appeared to be in complete operation, and the face of ...

— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... were first attacked, acquitted us of wilful murder as we had been compelled to act in self-defence, but informed us it was necessary to appear before a jury next day for the satisfaction of the townspeople. This was vexatious. ...

— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman

... and bivouacked, on the closest terms of confidence, without receiving from him an unkind or ungenerous word, for seventeen months, although he was my immediate superior officer, and we had both gone through many hardships and vexatious trials together. This was the more remarkable as we were each of sanguine temperament and ...

— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... earl, "I am sorry that I cannot quite agree with you. No doubt this marriage is vexatious enough, but whether it is well to obliterate all traces of it, or rather to do away with it altogether, is ...

— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay

... Ariel, in the likeness of an ape, would make mouths at him. Then swiftly changing his shape, in the likeness of a hedgehog he would lie tumbling in Caliban's way, who feared the hedgehog's sharp quills would prick his bare feet. With a variety of such like vexatious tricks Ariel would often torment him, whenever Caliban neglected the work which ...

— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan

... of the one that was eager within him, a love that was complete, passionate, exclusive, unalterable. And from that moment it was as though he had come under the influence of another star, the beneficent rays of which were blending with his own; vexatious events grew slowly remoter, fewer, warier of attacking him, tardier in their approach. They seemed reluctantly to abandon their habit of selecting him as their victim. He actually saw his luck turn. And now that he has gone back, as it were, into the ...

— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck

... demur to being taken as an advocate of enfranchisement for him without certain safeguards. Yet I honor a somewhat wide use of the term, and discredit the system of individual election for the right (if I may so call it)—which, I believe, obtains—with its vexatious exactions as to mental and moral fitness, and the very objectionable feature, to my mind, of laying upon the band, as a collective organization, the obligation of assigning to the individual member seeking enfranchisement so much land, thus imposing upon it, in effect, the onus of conferring ...

— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie

... it his affectation to be boisterously frank and friendly upon short acquaintance, Storri met no vexatious delays in coming to an understanding with him. You are not to assume that Mr. Harley was truthful because he was boisterous or his frankness went freighted of no guile. It is commonest error to ...

— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... not know how to use it. The few domestic cares that she perceived to be her duty were gone through as weary tasks, and her mind continued involved in her own romantic world, where she was oblivious of all that was troublesome or vexatious. Now and then she was aware of a sluggish dulness that seemed to be creeping over her higher aspirations—a want of glow and feeling on religious subjects, even in the most sacred moments; and she wondered and grieved at a condition, such as she had never experienced in what she had thought ...

— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge

... on the 13th of July 1795, that they were discovered by the fleet. At eight o'clock, Admiral Hotham, finding that they had no other view than that of endeavouring to get off, made the signal for a general chace. The baffling winds, and vexatious calms, which render every naval operation in this country doubtful, soon afterwards taking place, a few only of our van ships could come up with the enemy's rear about noon. These they so warmly attacked, ...

— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison

... mass of legislation is, of course, that upon mechanic's liens, which are burdensome to a degree that is vexatious, besides being subject to amendment almost every year. In a general way, no land-owner is free from liability for the debt of any person who has performed labor or furnished materials on the buildings ...

— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... to allow him to go off unmolested. They advanced with all the force they could command, and, though they were not powerful enough to engage him in a general battle, they harassed him and embarrassed his march in a very vexatious manner. They laid ambushes in the narrow defiles through which he had to pass; they cut off his detachments, and plundered and destroyed his baggage. Pyrrhus at length sent back a body of his guards under Ptolemy, his son, to drive them away. Ptolemy attacked the Spartans and fought them ...

— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... to slip through their fingers. That was vexatious, it is true; but they had captured one of the most notorious of criminals—Joseph Conturier. Surely there was ...

— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau

... few days. His emotional mood had passed for the time at all events; it was succeeded by an apathy that was dull without being restful. And in its general effect his interview with Bob was vaguely vexatious in spite of its cordial character. It left with him a notion which he rejected but could not quite get rid of—the notion that he was taking, or (if all were known) would be thought to be taking, an unfair advantage. Bob had said he was born to it and that he could not ...

— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... Shakspere "knew Latin pretty well," and, on Ben Jonson's evidence, he knew "less Greek." That he knew ANY Greek is surprising. Apparently he did, to judge from Ben's words. My attitude must, to the Baconians, seem frivolous, vexatious, and evasive. I cannot pretend to know what was Shakspere's precise amount of proficiency in Latin when he was writing the plays. That between his own knowledge, and construes given to him, he might easily get at the meaning of all the Latin, not yet translated, which ...

— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang

... affairs to occupy his mind to burden himself with the intricate rights, powers, and privileges of a new episcopate, sought by a few colonials scattered through the American wilderness;—too many vexatious secular affairs in the colonies, and too heavy war-clouds darkening his European horizon. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, in 1715, made one futile attempt to interest the king, and then gave up any hope of the immediate ...

— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

... times drove me almost crazy; for there is nothing so Vexatious as the hackneyed tricks and hoaxes and pleasantries of a veteran band of theatrical vagabonds. I relished them well enough, it is true, while I was merely one of the company, but as manager I found them detestable. They were incessantly bringing ...

— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... pain, even to death. It is a noble triumph of grace when such a test is well borne, and turned by patience into an occasion for God. When Nicholas Ridley, for a long year and a half (1554-5) was committed at Oxford to the vexatious domestic custody of the mayor and his bigoted wife, Edmund and Margaret Irish, it must have been nothing less than a slow torture to one whose fine nature had been used for years to the conditions of civil ...

— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule

... her husband, who was governor of that province for a short period before his death in 1686. After this event, she was absorbed for some years in settling his affairs, which were left in great disorder, and in protecting the fortunes of her two children. This involved her in long and vexatious lawsuits which she seems to have conducted with admirable ability. "There are so few great fortunes that are innocent," she writes to her son, "that I pardon your ancestors for not leaving you one. I have done what I could to put in order our affairs, in which there is left ...

— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason

... the work of God in the souls of others.—"For thy meat," said the apostle, "destroy not the soul for whom Christ died." He might have added, "and in whom Christ lives." Weak and erring, trying and vexatious, that fellow-believer may be, yet there is a chamber in his nature in which God has already taken up His abode. The conflict between the light and darkness, the Christ-spirit and the self-spirit, may be long and arduous, but the issue is certain. ...

— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

... week in Manchester he requested and received from his father the price of a railway ticket for London. The trip to the vast and strange city must have been made with only the vaguest of plans for the future. The despairing youth seemed to have no other purpose than to rid his father of his vexatious presence. There were friends in London, on one of whom Francis was directed to call for a weekly allowance from home. But a temperamental reluctance kept the young man away from those who could help him, and even the weekly allowance after a while came to be unclaimed. ...

— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson

... there is no such thing as repose. We are always up and doing with a mind for any adventure. We act, strive, think, suffer and are glad to no purpose. We leave outside the portals of Sleep all troublesome incredulities and vexatious speculations as to probability. I float wraith-like upon clouds in and out among the winds, without the faintest notion that I am doing anything unusual. In Dreamland I find little that is altogether strange or wholly new to my experience. No matter what happens, I am not ...

— The World I Live In • Helen Keller

... was fully equalled by the disgust of his subjects. His haughty severity and vexatious etiquette revolted their pride as well as their plain dealing; and the moral qualities of their new sovereign were considered with loathing. The commercial and political connection between the Netherlands and Spain had given the two people ample opportunities for mutual acquaintance. The dark, ...

— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... coffee house, he became a mark for the insolent derision of fops and the grave waggery of Templars. Enraged and mortified, he soon returned to his mansion, and there, in the homage of his tenants and the conversation of his boon companions, found consolation for the vexatious and humiliations which he had undergone. There he was once more a great man, and saw nothing above himself except when at the assizes he took his seat on the bench near the Judge, or when at the muster of the militia he saluted ...

— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... in so far as it is international, may at present be carried on mainly in half a dozen of the principal languages of Western Europe. Even so, their multiplicity is vexatious. But outside the world of business other languages are entering the field, and striving for equal rights. The tendency is all towards self-assertion on the part of the nationalities that are beginning a new era of national life and importance. The language difficulty in the ...

— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark

... Bristol- bound steamers, The Hilda, Mercury, and Maria Toser, were blown up in the neighbourhood of Lundy Island. Commerce has, so far as possible, been diverted into safer channels, but in the meantime, however vexatious these incidents may be, and however grievous the loss both to the owners and to Lloyd's, we may console ourselves by the reflection that since a submarine cannot keep the sea for more than ten days without refitting, and since the base has been captured, there must come ...

— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the Serapis and carried terror to the English by approaching close to their coast with his doughty Bonhomme Richard; Marion and Sumter kept up constant hostilities with the British in South Carolina; and the vexatious character of the war was evidently wearying the patience, and wearing upon the ...

— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle

... prescribed maxims of Mesdames Appleton and Hamilton; and as effects cannot be satisfactorily comprehended without the causes are made known, so it becomes necessary, not only that the chapter should be written, but, what is still more vexatious, absolutely necessary that it ...

— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... on the instant to be propitiated. Putting his hat aside he sat down, and having introduced himself, made reference to Ballarat and his acquaintance with the lawyer's father: "Who directed me to you, sir, for advice on a vexatious affair, in which I have had ...

— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... heard within the shuffling slippers and vexatious scraping cough of the detestable master. Marneffe opened the door, but only to put himself into an attitude and point to the stairs, exactly as Hulot had shown him the door of his ...

— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... time did not pass away thus without some vexatious cares to ruffle it. The affair of the American ships was not yet over, and he was again pestered with threats of prosecution. "I have written them word," said he, "that I will have nothing to do with them, and they must act as they think ...

— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey

... vexatious periods of student life is examination time. This is almost universally a time of great distress, giving rise in extreme cases to conditions of nervous collapse. The reason for this is not far to seek, for upon the results of examinations frequently depend momentous consequences, ...

— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson

... in this pocket. But I think there's more in the other. Oh, mercy, there's nothing at all except this pair of woollen gloves I had forgotten. Not another thing. And no wonder. There's a hole in it the size of an egg. Now, if that isn't vexatious. I had some real nice things in that pocket. A wee ammonite, I remember. Och, well, it can't be helped. I'm afraid you've seen ...

— The Judge • Rebecca West

... I am a full-blooded Briton, and Juliana is what you may call an English half-breed. In the bottom of our hearts we have a hankering for monarchy. The lion, who permits nobody else to poach on his preserves, is our symbol. While the vexatious child and I are not at all alike in other things, I know she admires as much as I do a ...

— A British Islander - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... a well-known and established fact, that nothing so far conduces to the domestic happiness of all circles as the golden system of living within one's income. Luxuries cease to be so if after-reflection produces vexatious results; comfort flies before an exorbitant and unprepared-for demand; and the debtor dunned by the merciless creditor sinks into something worse than a cipher, as nothingness is denied him, and the one standing before him but aggravates, and multiplies his painful annoyances. The great secret ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 6, 1841, • Various

... advocates and assessors of the court that he was annoyed at having to meddle with such a case! Prudens, too, at once dismissed a Christian brought before him, perceiving from the indictment that it was a case of vexatious accusation; tearing the document in pieces, he refused, according to the imperial command, to hear him without the presence of his accuser. All this might be officially brought under your notice, and by the very advocates, who ...

— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... of the muses, exasperated at this vexatious perseverance of the painter, who he imagined had come to tease and insult him, "I would," said he, "sacrifice a cock to Esculapius, were I assured that any person had been taken up for extirpating such a troublesome Goth as you are from the face of the earth. As ...

— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... proposition, and by feeling so many eyes turned upon her, did not immediately make any answer; then a vexatious remembrance intruded itself, and she replied, with what that individual would have thought most ...

— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... each new-comer anxiously enquires the result of the last search,—which only serves to increase the disappointed gentleman's excitement. The affair has been unnecessarily expensive, for, in addition to the loss of his preacher, the price of whom is no very inconsiderable sum, he finds a vexatious bill running up against him at the bar. The friendship of those who have sympathised with him, and have joined him in the exhilarating sport of man-hunting, must be repaid with swimming drinks. Somewhat celebrated for economy, ...

— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... proud, vexatious fool, Who never could resolve. For once, however, He hath resolved. Betimes he goeth hence, Where honor can no ...

— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... Hilary, as he heard the departing steps; "they've locked me up safe enough. Was anything ever so vexatious?" ...

— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn

... Bohemians, for many years after the suppression of the Protestant worship among them, continued to pay saintly honours; and he continues to this day, in the reverence with which he is everywhere greeted,—a sort of galling and vexatious, because constantly-recurring memorial, of the system of mental thraldom, under ...

— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig

... occurred. Captain Landais, without any show of reason, claimed that the command, by right of seniority of commission, belonged to him. On the first night out the Alliance and Bonhomme Richard collided and were obliged to return to port for repairs. Vexatious delays prevented the sailing of the squadron until ...

— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis

... His lordship said, that the rule of the court allowed time enough for any one to proceed or defend; and if, for special reasons, he should give way to orders for timing matters, it would let in a deluge of vexatious pretenses, which, true or false, being asserted by the counsel with equal assurance, distracted the court and confounded ...

— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... around such questions as these, vexatious, no doubt, but pertinent, that controversy raged. The questions that eminent critics, writers, and dignitaries of divers churches discussed in public, while colonels, Socialists, and cultivated theosophical ...

— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell

... The suggestion opened a vein of vexatious thought in connection with his dilemma that ...

— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn

... getting as many hills and as little level ground over which a traveller could make play as possible; and where it did not lead over the tops of the highest hills, it wound round their bases, in such little, vexatious, up-and-down, wavy dips as completely to do away with all chance of expedition. The route was not along one continuous trust, but here over a bit of turnpike and there over a bit of turnpike, with ...

— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... pay the price, usually a vexatious one. Bores stopped him on the street to repeat ancient and witless stories. Invented anecdotes, some of them exasperating ones, went the rounds of the press. Impostors in distant localities personated him, or claimed to be ...

— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... again on that clause. He was beaten by the same majority. He moved again that the chairman should leave the chair. He was beaten again. He divided on the second clause. He was beaten again. He then said that he was sensible that he was doing very wrong; that his conduct was unhandsome and vexatious; that he heartily begged our pardons; but that he had said that he would delay the bill as far as the forms of the House would permit; and that he must keep his word. Now came a discussion by which Nancy, if she had been in the ventilator, [A circular ventilator, ...

— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... luck!" Jean stammered. "It is not worth speaking of, but it's vexatious all the same, to be here getting one's head broken for other folks, when those other folks are at home, smoking their pipe ...

— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... and I lay eggs," said the stork-mother; "but thou layest only once, and I lay every year. But neither of us gets any thanks, which is very vexatious." ...

— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... struggle with the representatives of the emperor Louis IV., who had invested his own son Louis with the mark of Brandenburg, enabled him to gain military experience and distinction. A victory gained by him in August 1332 was mainly instrumental in freeing Pomerania for a time from the vexatious claim of Brandenburg to supremacy over the duchy, which moreover he extended by conquest. Barnim assisted the emperor Charles IV. in his struggle with the family of Wittelsbach. He died on the 24th ...

— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... was youthful enough to have a strong taste for effect, and it was after a long and vexatious delay that Grisell was suddenly summoned to her presence, to be escorted by Master Groot. There she sat, on her chair of state, with the high tapestried back and the square canopy, and in the throng of gentlemen around her Grisell at a glance ...

— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge

... never had a day without something vexatious happening. Old Laptev's eyesight was failing; he no longer went to the warehouse, and the oculist told them that he would soon be blind. Fyodor had for some reason given up going to the warehouse and spent his time sitting at home writing something. Panaurov had got a post in another town, ...

— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... agent of the colonies of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, was cooling his heels in lords' waiting-rooms in London, America was treated exactly as Ireland was—that is, discriminated against in every way; not allowed to manufacture; not permitted to trade with other nations, except under the most vexatious restrictions; and the effort was continued to make her a mere agricultural producer and a dependent. All that England cared for us was that we should be a market for her manufactures. This same selfishness has been the keynote ...

— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... again wage sanguinary war and spill rivers of blood. The awful presentiment of escape and the consequences of it were ever lacerating his uneasy spirit, and thus he never allowed himself to be forgotten; restrictions impishly vexatious were ordered with monotonous regularity. Napoleon aptly described Lowe as "being afflicted ...

— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman

... many difficulties and great entreaties to avoid these vexatious and mortifying conditions; but the hour approaching which the Emperor had appointed for an audience, and the guards refusing to let him enter till he had satisfied the desires of the potter, he was obliged to submit to them; to promise the thousand sequins, to hang the pot about his ...

— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... first my feelings were hurt by many circumstances, when, on your mooting the question of the full restoration of my position, I detected the covert hatred of some and the equivocal attachment of others. For you received no support from either in regard to my vexatious to me: but much more so was the fact that they used, before my very eyes, so to embrace, fondle, make much of, and kiss my enemy mine do I say? rather the enemy of the laws, of the law courts, of peace, of his country, of all loyal men ! that they did not indeed rouse my bile, for I have utterly ...

— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... celibacy, recommending that priests be allowed to marry, and calling for the suppression of many of the cloisters. It is further urged that foundations for masses and for the support of idle priests be abolished, that various vexatious provisions of the Canon Law be repealed, and that begging on any pretext be prohibited. The twenty-fourth article deals with the Bohemian schism, saying that Huss was wrongly {72} burned, and calling for ...

— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... have two courses open to us. We may think the laws are unjust to the Negro, and incidentally to the 'poor white' man as well. If we do, we have a perfect right to agitate for changes; and we can do much to disclose, without heat, the actual facts regarding the complicated and vexatious legislative situation in the South, as regards the suffrage. Every change in the legislation upon this subject should, indeed, be jealously watched, that the principle of political equality between the races be not legally curtailed. The doctrine laid down in the Fifteenth ...

— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... the treatment to which she was subjected, with (as the event proved) only too much reason, and not, as sometimes happens at the present time, without just occasion, and, indeed, on the most frivolous and vexatious pretences. The knowledge that such is the case ought to make us very careful how we sit in judgment on our predecessors in regard to any charge brought against them. There is, however, undeniable evidence, proof which cannot be evaded, ...

— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... whole affair was unbearably vexatious and at last he felt that he could endure it ...

— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner

... nothing of the kind. Think of high upland glens and full brown rivers, and hillsides where there is always wind. Why do I tantalize myself and talk to a vexatious ...

— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... vowel), reserving the English a, as in "father," to represent the alif of prolongation or long Arabic a, since I should else have no means of differentiating the latter from the former, save by the use of accents or other clumsy expedients, at once, to my mind, foreign to the purpose and vexatious to the reader of a work of pure literature. In like manner, I have eschewed the use of the letter q, as an equivalent for the dotted or guttural kaf (choosing to run the risk of occasionally misleading the reader as to the original Arabic form of a word by leaving ...

— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous

... Whereupon he very earnestly asked, "What you do for cure him? Whip him?" I replied, "No; that, so far as my observation extended, I was under the impression that this was generally regarded by those who had suffered from its effects as one of those chronic and vexatious complaints which would not be benefited by the treatment he suggested, even when administered in homoeopathic doses, and I believed it was now admitted by all sensible men that it was better in all such cases to let nature take its course, ...

— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy

... needles. It is the rough handling, the jars, the tension of the heartstrings that sap the foundations of a woman's life and consign her to an early grave; and a Cherokee rose-hedge is not more thickly set with thorns than a literary career with grievous, vexatious, tormenting disappointments. If you succeed after years of labor and anxiety and harassing fears, you will become a target for envy and malice, and, possibly, for slander. Your own sex will be jealous of your eminence, considering your superiority an insult to their mediocrity; ...

— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... SLOWPOKE muttering): What vexatious things one's children are! A hundred thousand naughty ways! What I tell my daughter Betty might as well be told to ...

— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... be so,' said Laura; 'and though he is mistaken in imputing such motives, Guy's conduct has certainly been vexatious.' ...

— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and when the side of the ship went up, it felt almost overhead, and I could see absolutely nothing of the sea, which was vexatious, as that was obviously the point of interest. The rigging on that side was as full of men as a bare garden-tree might be of sparrows, and all along the lee bulwarks they sat and crouched like sea-birds on a line of rock. Suddenly we rolled, down went the leeside, ...

— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... against the oppression of the rich and powerful. But surely no pretence can be so ridiculous; a man might as well tell me he has taken off my load, because he has changed the burden. If the poor man is not able to support his suit, according to the vexatious and expensive manner established in civilized countries, has not the rich as great an advantage over him as the strong has over the weak in a state of nature? But we will not place the state of nature, which is the ...

— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... Ione was ordered home; and as Ada was not yet his wife, Fleetwood was able to carry her and her uncle to England, where, without the usual vexatious delays, his happiness was soon ...

— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... 149.] Clarendon, on the articles of high treason against Lord Kimbolton, Pym, Hampden, Hollis, Haslerigg, and Strode.—Swift. It proved a long and vexatious affair. ...

— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... disagreeing, quarrelsome, troublesome, stubborn, vexatious, undutiful, irreverent, , CP. ...

— A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary - For the Use of Students • John R. Clark Hall

... No. She was a woman, and a painter of women—a painter of women from the woman's point of view that desires the world only to think of woman in her pose as woman, reticent, careful to screen the impulsive, most of all the vexatious, the violent, and the irregular moods of femininity's temperament from the eyes of the passer-by; always eager to show woman dressed for the part, and well dressed. She was incapable of stating the deeps of character; and ...

— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall

... It did seem so vexatious that a small party of men should be able to keep up this system of warfare in the great manufacturing town. Here had my uncles brought a certain amount of prosperity to the place by establishing these works; the men had found out their worth and respected them, and everything ...

— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn

... way. Can your Lordship believe that, if he had any reasonable ground [for his conduct], I would not ascertain it, in order to give account of the matter to your Lordship, or that still less would I allow dissensions so vexatious to exist? I am very sorry to inform your Lordship of this, but I cannot do otherwise; for it is not right that this religious should place these forts in the condition in which he left Cagayan. For with authority ...

— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various

... its difficulties, both physical and political, to contend with. The correspondent has to report, that 'the postal arrangements still continue unsatisfactory and vexatious, no post having been received from Bloem Fontein for the last two months; and,' he indignantly adds, 'to make matters worse, the late magistrate's clerk and postmaster has resigned, owing to grave charges having been preferred against him by a party faction who would rule public opinion.' ...

— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various

... Columbus. Consider the disheartening difficulties and vexatious delays he had to encounter; the doubts of the skeptical, the sneers of the learned, the cavils of the cautious, and the opposition, or at least the indifference, of nearly all. And then the dangers of an untried, unexplored ocean. Is it by any ...

— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... the most vexatious of any I had yet undertaken; many still refused to come forward to be examined, and some on the most frivolous pretences; so that I was disgusted, as I journeyed on, to find how little men were disposed to make sacrifices for so great a cause. In one part of it I went over nearly ...

— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson

... open to all external things, fills it with a thousand fancies and questionings, pleasing or vexatious, absorbing the mind, and making it quite impossible to retire within one's self and be recollected. Then follow distaste, sloth, and ennui for all that savors ...

— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.

... recommended the Archbishop to the care of the Abbot of Pontigny, and exhorted him to bear with resignation the hardships of exile. When Thomas surrendered his bishopric into the hands of the Pope, his resignation was hailed by a part of the consistory as the readiest means of terminating a vexatious and dangerous controversy, but Alexander preferred honor to convenience, and refusing to abandon a prelate who had sacrificed the friendship of a king for the interests of the Church, reinvested him ...

— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... understanding, which, at another time, he sets no small value upon; tell him that it will blacken his reputation, which he had rather die for than lose; tell him that the pleasure of sin is short and transient, and leaves a vexatious kind of sting behind it, which will very hardly be drawn forth; tell him that this is one of those things for which God will most surely bring him to judgment, which he pretends to believe with a full assurance and persuasion: And yet for all this, he shuts his ...

— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift

... dull perhaps for spirited youth, in the scanty and foggy winter light. There is not so very much of that choice product generally called "society" by a man who has a house to let in an eligible neighborhood, and by ladies who do not heed their own. Moreover, it is vexatious not to have more rogues to ...

— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... audience with Madame, Duchesse d'Angoulme.(249) As I had missed, through a vexatious mistake, the honour she had herself intended me, of presentation in England, my own condescending royal mistress, Queen Charlotte, recommended my claiming its performance on my return to Paris. M. d'Arblay then consulted with the Vicomte d'Agoult, his intimate early ...

— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... in various ways, the relation of master and slave is disturbed by the presence of our army, and he considers it particularly vexatious that this, in part, is done under cover of an act of Congress, while constitutional guarantees are suspended on the plea of military necessity. The truth is that what is done and omitted about slaves is done and omitted on the same military necessity. It is a military ...

— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... which consisted in efforts for the suppression of Heresy and Blasphemy. Here was the natural outcome of the Presbyterianism with which the Parliament was charged, and here also the Parliament was very vexatious to the ...

— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... the highest reward which the Board of Longitude had publicly offered. But they would not certify that he had won the prize. On the contrary, they started numerous objections, and continued for years to subject him to vexatious delays and disappointments. They pleaded that the previous determination of the longitude of Jamaica by astronomical observation was unsatisfactory; that there was no proof of the chronometer having maintained a uniform rate during the voyage; and on the 17th of August, 1762, they ...

— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... occur, there was nothing to excite the public; the parish had either agreed with the patron, or had not noticeably dissented. But in the third case of positive 'objections,' which (in order to justify themselves as not frivolous and vexatious) were urged with peculiar emphasis, the attention of all men was arrested. Newspapers reverberated the fact: sympathetic groans arose: the patron was an oppressor: the parish was under persecution: and the poor clergyman, whose case was the ...

— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... that, good woman?" said Aymer de Valence, who was growing every moment more impatient at the loss of time, which was flying fast, in an investigation which had something vexatious in it, and even ridiculous. At the same time, the sight of an armed partisan of the Douglasses, in their own native town, seemed to bode too serious consequences, if it should be suffered to pass without being probed to ...

— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... from his vexatious defeat in the skirmish where the Widow Hopkins was his principal opponent, when he received a note from Miss Silence Withers, which promised another and more important field of conflict. It contained a request that he would visit Myrtle Hazard, ...

— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... which, perhaps from the greater refinement and deference of the people, seems to have been always a more agreeable residence to him than his own kingdom of Aragon, he received intelligence very vexatious, in the irritable state of his mind. He learned that the Great Captain was preparing to embark for Flanders, with his friend the count of Urena, the marquis of Priego his nephew, and his future son-in- law, the count of Cabra. Some surmised ...

— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... gentleman into VERY low company indeed. In fact, he was over head and ears in debt, raising money in every way he could, hook or crook, square or cross, to satisfy certain creditors, who were becoming nasty impatient and vexatious. I thought something might be made of this young gentleman, so finding there was no pride about him, I cultivated his acquaintance, examined his affairs, and put him up to the neatest little fakement ...

— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... had, in a fit of high-minded inadvertence, had gone through the ceremony of marriage with, one quotes the unpublished discourse of Mr. Butteridge—"a white-livered skunk," and this zoological aberration did in some legal and vexatious manner mar her social happiness. He wanted to talk about the business, to show the splendour of her nature in the light of its complications. It was really most embarrassing to a press that has always possessed a considerable turn for reticence, that ...

— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... parliament and holding public offices, a bill introduced by John Mitford, afterwards Lord Redesdale, gave complete freedom of worship and education, admission to the legal profession, and exemption from vexatious liabilities to all catholics who took an oath of an unobjectionable character. Pitt approved of the bill, and Fox supported it, though he wished that it had gone further, and declared his dislike of all tests. A bill placing Scottish catholics in virtually the same position as their ...

— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... and vexatious superior is like drawing clear water from a spring which flows through the jaws of a lion of bronze. It is like the riddle of Samson, Out of the eater came forth meat; it is hearing God's voice, and seeing God's will alone in that of ...

— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... sin is to be found in a perfect man. But sloth is to be found in a perfect man: for Cassian says (De Instit. Caenob. x, l) that "sloth is well known to the solitary, and is a most vexatious and persistent foe to the hermit." Therefore sloth is ...

— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... articles believed to be contaminated by cholera matters. By land, passengers from infected places are similarly inspected at the frontiers and their luggage "disinfected"—in all cases a pious ceremony of no practical value, involving a short but often a vexatious delay; only those found suffering from cholera can be detained. Each nation is pledged to notify the others of the existence within its own borders of a "foyer" of cholera, by which is meant a ...

— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... challenged M. Feuillet de Conches to a more explicit defense of the authenticity of his collection than he had yet vouchsafed; complaining, with some reason, that his delay in answering the charges brought against it "was the more vexatious because his collection was only attacked in part, and in many points remained solid and valuable." And this challenge elicited from M.F. de Conches a very elaborate explanation of the sources from which he procured his documents, which he published in the Revue des Deux ...

— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... the majesty of the throne. Julian was tormented by the importunities of a multitude, particularly of Egyptians, who loudly redemanded the gifts which they had imprudently or illegally bestowed; he foresaw the endless prosecution of vexatious suits; and he engaged a promise, which ought always to have been sacred, that if they would repair to Chalcedon, he would meet them in person, to hear and determine their complaints. But as soon as ...

— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... Virginia, Nevada.—"I am an enthusiastic student of mathematics, and it is so vexatious to me to find my progress constantly impeded by these mysterious arithmetical technicalities. Now do tell me what the difference ...

— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... being enamoured of a damsel, Bruno gives him a scroll, averring that, if he but touch her therewith, she will go with him: he is found with her by his wife who subjects him to a most severe and vexatious examination. — ...

— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio

... moyen age had a falcon on its wrist, and a jester in attendance, invariably. "They was a good deal in the open air, and it tells," was her tribute to the memory of this plate. She developed the subject further, incidentally. "Tryin' on is a change, of course, but liable to temper, and vexatious when the party insists on letting out and no allowance of turn-over. The same if too short in front. What was I a-sayin'?... Oh, Mrs. Prichard—yes! You was inquiring, ma'am, about the length of time I had known her. Just four years this Christmas, ...

— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... and more wisely, they always act exactly like other men. They know very well how to subdue all appetites and passions, and to despise both pain and pleasure; and this knowledge affords much delightful contemplation, and is easily acquired; but the practice would be vexatious and troublesome; and, therefore, the same wisdom which teaches them to know this, teaches them to avoid ...

— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... years, was impatient once more to embrace him. He had been, already, several months travelling towards him by land and water; and just as he was beginning to believe that the most difficult half of the journey had been accomplished, he found himself delayed by an obstruction vexatious ...

— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various

... of owning Bach that became peculiarly vexatious to Althea, who, in silence, but armed with new standards, was assembling her own forces and observed, in casting an eye over them, that she had heard five times as much music as Miss Buckston and might be granted the right of an opinion on it. She took satisfaction in a memory of Miss ...

— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... was sitting with the king and talking to him, and the king was very merry and drunk. Then Hjalte said, "Manifold splendour and grandeur have I seen here; and I have now witnessed with my eyes what I have often heard of, that no monarch in the north is so magnificent: but it is very vexatious that we who come so far to visit it have a road so long and troublesome, both on account of the great ocean, but more especially because it is not safe to travel through Norway for those who are coming here in a friendly disposition. But why is there no one ...

— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... through the parlor, and seeing that Jessie was getting tired with her vexatious brother, he asked what was the matter. She told him. He took the notes from Hugh, who was only too glad to give ...

— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester

... boy reasons who thinks that the world has come to an end for him after his first check, and who has no knowledge as yet of the medicine of time. My mother had but a vexatious life of it with me, for I was silent and melancholy; and though I never, indeed, offended her by uncivil word or deed, yet the sight of my dreary visage must have been a sore trial to her, and the glum despondency with which I accepted all her efforts to cheer ...

— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... wife who was worthy of you. Oxford is London, and better than London; and London is the world, and is German. How gladly would Pauli, that honest, noble German soul, stay, if he had but an occupation. The subjection of the mind by the government here becomes more vexatious, more apparent, more diabolical. One form of tyranny is that of Augustus, the more thorough, because so sly. They will not succeed in the end, but meanwhile it is horrible to witness. More firmly than ever I settle myself down here in Heidelberg, and will take the whole ...

— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... be free From the vexatious thoughts that come and go Through your imagination, and would have me Point out some royal road and lady-like Which you may walk in, and not wound your feet; You would attain to the divine perfection, And yet not turn your back upon ...

— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... becoming every day more and more like an absolute king that we must complain of him. He is certainly perfectly honorable as a man, an estimable father of a family, a tender spouse and a good economist, but it is vexatious to see how he allows all the trees of liberty to be felled and stripped of their beautiful foliage that they may be sawed into beams to support the tottering house of Orleans. For that, and that only, the Liberal press blames him, and the spirits of truth, in ...

— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... talents, by maintaining good order in his neighbourhood; by punishing the dissolute and idle; by protecting the peaceable and industrious; and, above all, by healing petty differences and preventing vexatious prosecutions. But, in order to attain these desirable ends, it is necessary that the magistrate should understand his business; and have not only the will, but the power also, (under which must be included the knowlege) of administring legal and effectual justice. Else, ...

— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... falling out from the rollers, the spatter of hammers and dull dragging of heavy weights. The engine of the nail works rent all other sound with an unaccustomed, harsh blast.... Jasper Penny was conscious of a deep, involuntary relief when he reached the comparative tranquillity, the secession of vexatious problems, ...

— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... in spite of all these promises—hidden, perhaps, from the profane—the calm of that countenance has something, I know not what, that is vexatious. More sad, more serious than gracious, that face is marked by the melancholy of constant meditation. For this reason Mademoiselle des Touches listens more than she talks. She startles by her silence and ...

— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... long and intricate (it might be said vexatious) transaction of this great affair for near five months together, all bitter oppositions, cunning practices, and perplexed difficulties being removed and overcome, through the goodness and assistance of the only wise Counsellor, the Prince of Peace, it pleased Him to give a good ...

— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke

... purity of the planks, and it is therefore not to be wondered at if I again administered a sound and hearty rating to the culprit, this time in the presence and hearing of all hands. It was all the more vexatious to me that, instead of expressing any contrition for his carelessness, Joe persistently maintained the surly demeanour he had exhibited more or ...

— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood

... Kazee, after a march of nine miles along the right bank of the Helmund, which here flows in a south-westerly direction; we could procure no supplies whatever, either for man or beast, which was the more vexatious as we had a very hard day's work in prospect for the morrow, and were anxious to recruit ourselves and cattle before attempting it. We managed well enough in spite of our compulsory fast, and on the 22d ...

— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem

... than our own Sense, yet nothing of which we think with more Partiality and Presumption. There have been some so bold, as to assume the Title of the Oracles of Reason to themselves, and their own Writings; and we meet with others daily, that think themselves Oracles of Wit. These are the most vexatious Animals in the World, that think they have a privileee to torment and plague every Body; but those most who have the best Reputation for ...

— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay

... its headquarters in and near Perry's Bend, some distance up the river, and the deduction in this case was easy. The Bar-20 cared very little about what went on at Perry's Bend—that was a matter which concerned only the ranches near that town—as long as no vexatious happenings sifted too far south. But they had so sifted, and Perry's Bend, or rather the undesirable class hanging out there, was due to receive a shock ...

— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford

... who knows you could doubt about your hearty sympathy with every one who makes any little advance in science. I still well remember my surprise at the manner in which you listened to me in Hart Street on my return from the "Beagle's" voyage. You did me a world of good. It is horridly vexatious that so frank and apparently amiable a man as Falconer should have behaved so. (It is to this affair that the extract from a letter to Falconer, given in volume i., refers.) Well it will all soon ...

— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... checks for the pieces, but marked them with the name of their destination; and there was that indefinable something in his manner which hinted his hope that you would remember the porter; but he was so civil that he did not snub the meekest and most vexatious of the passengers, and Basil mutely blessed his servile soul. Few white Americans, he said to himself, would behave so decently in his place; and he could not conceive of the American steamboat clerk who would use the ...

— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... two Courts of High Commission (in 1615 united in one Court) to try offences in morals and religion. The Archbishops presided, laity and clergy formed the body of the Court, and it was regarded as vexatious and tyrannical. The same terms, to be sure, would now be applied to the interference of preachers and presbyteries with private life and opinion. By 1612 the king had established Episcopacy, which, ...

— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang

... stare that seemed to resume and take in, in the moment of stupefaction, a world of new impressions. The memory of Mary staring, with her hair done in a new and becoming way, was to remain for Imogen as a symbol of the vexatious and altered, perhaps the corrupted life, that she was, after all, leaving for good in leaving her ...

— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... a dinner was amply sufficient for folks of their species, they had no need to look for an ox. With keen delight and an appetite to match they were just about to eat up the egg between them, when an unbidden guest appeared in the shape of Master Reynard the fox. This was a most awkward and vexatious visitation. How was the egg to be saved from the jaws of him? To wrap it up carefully and carry it away by the fore paws, or to roll it, or to drag it, were methods as impossible as they were hazardous. But Necessity, that ingenious ...

— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine

... not wisely taught sometimes feel that this new physical function is a vexatious hindrance to their happiness. It is often accompanied with pain, and its periodical recurrence interferes with their plans for pleasure, and they in ignorance sometimes say, rebelliously, "O, I hate ...

— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen

... boon. Not that all the pairs with which our unit was suddenly flooded by the authorities proved as silent as they were intended to be. Some of them squeaked; and the peregrinations of the orderly thus afflicted were perhaps more vexatious to the ear of a nervous patient at night than even the clatter of honest hobnails. And the soles were thin. A pair of ward-shoes lasted me on the average one month. If only worn within the ward they might ...

— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir

... use of the alcoholic solutions of aniline dyes for staining bacteria, and having for some months used solutions in glycerine instead, I have come to much prefer the latter. Evaporation of the solvent is avoided, and in consequence a freedom from vexatious precipitations is secured, and more uniform and reliable results are obtained. There is, moreover, with the alcoholic mixtures a tendency to "creep," or "run," by which one is liable to have stained more than he wishes—fingers, ...

— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various

... of metaphysical abstraction." We can only praise either as it is "clothed in circumstances." Commonly we are led to praise the one by getting too much of the other. Confounded in a tangle of fussy, vexatious, perhaps malicious restrictions, men cry loudly for liberty. When people all about us are doing things by their own sweet will, we are converted to praise of regulation and discipline and the wholesome restraint ...

— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... of 1601, Raleigh became involved in a vexatious quarrel between certain of his own Dorsetshire servants. The man Meeres, whom he had appointed as bailiff of the Sherborne estates nine years before, after doing trusty service to his master, had gradually become aggressive and mutinous. He disliked the presence of Adrian Gilbert, ...

— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... a practical comment on the nature of the change effected; and, from the harshness of the shepherds to whom the care of the interior had been entrusted, they served materially to add to the distress of their unhappy masters. They were getting continually impounded; and vexatious fines, in the form of trespass-money, came thus to be wrung from the already impoverished Highlanders. Many who had no money to give were obliged to relieve them by depositing some of their few portable articles of value, such as bed or body clothes, or, more distressing still, ...

— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... many in danger. At an entertainment given by Africanus, the governor of the second Pannonia, at Sirmium, some men having drunk rather too much, and thinking there was no witness of their proceedings, spoke freely of the existing imperial government, accusing it as most vexatious to the people. And some of them expressed a hope that a change, such as was wished for by all, might be at hand, affirming that this was portended by omens, while some, with incredible rashness, affirmed that the auguries of their ancestral house ...

— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... England. For example, when Lord Lister, who has revolutionized modern surgery, largely as a result of such experiments, wished to discover possibly some still better way of operating by further experiments, HE WAS OBLIGED TO GO TO TOULOUSE TO CARRY THEM OUT, as the vexatious restrictions of the law in England practically made it impossible for him to continue there these eminently ...

— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell

... the bark had reached a part of the lake where the waves were rolling with some force, it was found that the vast weight was too much to be lifted by the feeble and broken efforts of these miniature seas. The consequences were, however, more vexatious than alarming. A few wet feet among the less quiet of the passengers, with an occasional slapping of a sheet of water against the gangways, and a consequent drift of spray across the pile of human heads in the centre of the bark, were all the immediate personal ...

— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... the interests of public health alcohol may not be too easily or too cheaply obtainable, that (2) the restraints on its sale may be a source of revenue to the State, and that (3) at the same time this regulation of the sale may not be a vexatious and useless attempt to interfere unduly with national customs. States have sought to attain these ends in various ways. The sale of alcohol may be made a State monopoly, as in Russia, or, again, it may be carried on ...

— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... to the bitter disappointment of our young officers, proved an unlucky one. In all directions things went wrong. As for Marlborough, from the very opening he experienced the old Dutch thwartings and oppositions, and, after a short and vexatious summer, he closed the campaign almost abruptly, and much earlier than in former years. There was to be no ...

— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead

... illness by my flight just at this moment, and thus possibly have his death on my conscience." ("Darling, you are always right," he said, kissing the letter.) "Let us possess our souls in patience a little longer. I need not tell you how vexatious it will be to find myself nursing him in Homburg—out of the season even—instead of the prospect to which I had looked forward with my whole heart and soul. But what can one do? How true is the French proverb, 'Nothing happens but the unexpected'! ...

— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... to George and Mary Donner An Alcalde's Negligence Mary Donner's Land Regranted Squatters Jump George Donner's Land A Characteristic Land Law-suit Vexatious Litigation Twice Appealed to Supreme Court, and once to United States Supreme Court A Well-taken Law Point Mutilating Records A Palpable Erasure Relics of the Donner Party Five Hundred Articles Buried Thirty-two Years Knives, Forks, Spoons Pretty Porcelain Identifying Chinaware Beads ...

— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan

... the 23rd of December, Neb and Top were heard shouting and barking, each apparently trying to see who could make the most noise. The settlers, who were busy at the Chimneys, ran, fearing some vexatious incident. ...

— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... been created, was in early times criminally, and at a later period at least pecuniarily, liable for an unjust sentence.[632] We shall elsewhere have occasion to dwell on the value which the equestrian order attached to this immunity, and we shall see that its relief at the freedom from vexatious prosecution is of itself no sign of corruption. One of our authorities does indeed emphatically assert the ultimate prevalence of bribery in the equestrian courts:[633] and circumstances may be easily imagined which would have made this resort natural, if not inevitable. A band of capitalists ...

— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... this is a pettifogging vexatious course of procedure; and that his little Cousin the COMODIANT is not treating him very like a gentleman. "Is he, your Majesty!" suggests the Smoking Parliament.—About the middle of March, Dubourgay hears Borck, an Official not of the ...

— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... other money, and really and bona fide not know it, and so may offer it again as innocently as they at first took it ignorantly; and to bring such into trouble for every false shilling which they might offer to pay away without knowing it, would be to make the law be merely vexatious and tormenting to those against whom it was not intended, and at the same time not to meddle with the subtle crafty offender whom it was intended to punish, and ...

— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe

... pertinent piece of public criticism against a faineant admiral led to imprisonment in the King's Bench Prison, plus a fine of L100. Then came a quarrel with an old friend, Wilkes—not the least vexatious result of that forlorn championship of Bute's government in The Briton. And finally, in part, obviously, as a consequence of all this nervous breakdown, a succession of severe catarrhs, premonitory in his case of consumption, the serious illness of the wife he adored, and the death of ...

— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... discharge of the whole battery at once, sounding as the burst of one gun. My horse, exceedingly surprised, lifted his fore feet in the air on the instant; and otherwise testified to his discomposure; and I had some little difficulty to keep him to the spot and bring him back to quietness. It was vexatious to lose such precious minutes; however, we were composed again by the time the smoke of the guns was clearing away. I could hardly believe my eyes. There lay the cannon, on the ground, taken from their carriages; the very carriages themselves were all ...

— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell

... Christians, for was not this an attack on their Christian liberty to use intoxicating wine at the Lord's table, and would not this be awful? Moreover, it forbade a farmer to manufacture hard cider from his own orchard, and would not this be a hard and tyrannical law? This was vexatious, for we were fighting the saloon, and were not seeking to palter with such frivolous and intermeddling legislation. Nevertheless, in spite of these crafty attempts to excite popular odium against the amendment, it was adopted by a majority of more than eight thousand, and ...

— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... Your health, my darling, my studious quiet, our little kitchen delicacies, how they would all have suffered, how they would all have been sacrificed! And for what? Children are the last word of human imperfection. Health flees before their face. They cry, my dear; they put vexatious questions; they demand to be fed, to be washed, to be educated, to have their noses blowed; and then, when the time comes, they break our hearts, as I break this piece of sugar. A pair of professed egoists, like you and me, should avoid ...

— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... touch of bitterness, the injured miller had recently, in borrowing the five hundred pounds, been obliged to carry a little business to Wakem's office on his own account. A hook-nosed glib fellow! as cool as a cucumber,—always looking so sure of his game! And it was vexatious that Lawyer Gore was not more like him, but was a bald, round-featured man, with bland manners and fat hands; a game-cock that you would be rash to bet upon against Wakem. Gore was a sly fellow. His weakness did not lie on the side ...

— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... destroyed. Fanny saw the native sailors tossing overboard a blazing trunk; she stopped them in time, and behold, it contained my manuscripts. Thereafter we had three (or two) days fine weather: then got into a gale of wind, with rain and a vexatious sea. As we drew into our anchorage in a bight of Savage Island, a man ashore told me afterwards the sight of the JANET NICOLL made him sick; and indeed it was rough play, though nothing to the night before. All through this gale I worked four to six hours per diem, ...

— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of the country, without contributing anything to the real advancement of the arts. It embarrasses the honest pursuit of business with fears and apprehensions of concealed liens and unknown liabilities to lawsuits and vexatious accountings for profits made in good faith. (Atlantic Works v. Brady, 107 U.S. 192, 200 ...

— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... seemed to be a fair prospect that the building would fall of itself, which surely would be a great triumph. And, after all, might it not fairly be hoped that the pleasantness of the Vicarage garden, which Mr. Puddleham must see every time he visited his chapel, might be quite as galling and as vexatious to him as would be the ugliness of the Methodist building ...

— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... A vexatious delay occurred—one of those small but important matters to be attended to at the last minute which are forever turning up ...

— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould

... the individual; his self-love was bent on maintaining every prerogative and interest belonging to his guild. Established for life in his native town, in the midst of old colleagues, numerous relatives and youthful companions, he esteemed their good opinion. Exempt from vexatious or burdensome taxes, tolerably well off, owning at least his own office, he was above sordid preoccupations and common necessities. Used to old fashioned habits of simplicity, soberness and economy, ...

— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... you say to yourselves, is the state of things at present. You recount in detail the numberless impediments, great and small, formidable or only vexatious, which at every step embarrass the attempt to carry out ever so poorly a principle in itself so true and ecclesiastical. You appeal in your defence to wise and sagacious intellects, who are far from enemies to Catholicism, or to the Irish Hierarchy, and you have no hope, or rather you absolutely ...

— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... Sandford had bowed the visitor out, he returned to Monroe with an expression of weariness on his handsome face. "So many affairs to think of! so many people to see! Really, it is becoming vexatious. I believe I shall turn hunks, and get ...

— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... wa Mzi," the latter wordvexatious, troublesome. [I notice that in the MS. the name is distinctly and I believe purposely spelt with Hamzah above the Ww and Kasrah beneath the Sn, reading "Muus." It is, therefore, a travesty of the name Ms, and the exact ...

— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... the vexatious delays—had been a heavy tax upon us. We needed a vacation. We took it—six pleasant care-free days—hunting and fishing as we drifted through the sixty miles of southern Wyoming. There were ducks and geese on the river to test our skill with the ...

— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb

... ruinous. This is chiefly due to the almost prohibitive tariff imposed upon everything, from machinery to cigars, by the Canadian Government. During our stay much discontent also prevailed in consequence of the vexatious gold-mining regulations which had lately come into operation and which had already compelled many owners of valuable claims to sell them at a loss and quit the country. An Englishman residing here told me that so long as the present mining laws exist prospectors will do well to avoid Canadian territory, ...

— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... handling, the jars, the tension of the heartstrings that sap the foundations of a woman's life and consign her to an early grave; and a Cherokee rose-hedge is not more thickly set with thorns than a literary career with grievous, vexatious, tormenting disappointments. If you succeed after years of labor and anxiety and harassing fears, you will become a target for envy and malice, and, possibly, for slander. Your own sex will be jealous of your eminence, considering your ...

— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... be more ill-timed than this quarrel, or more vexatious to Leicester. The Count—although considering himself excessively injured at being challenged by a simple captain and an untitled gentleman, whom he had attempted to murder—consented to waive his privilege, and ...

— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... precarious glory of a foreign dignity. But he had not always firmness sufficient to adhere to this resolution: his vanity and ambition prevailed at last over his prudence and his avarice; and he was engaged in an enterprise no less expensive and vexatious than that of his brother, and not attended with much greater probability of success. The immense opulence of Richard having made the German princes cast their eye on him as a candidate for the ...

— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... Mallaig. I don't just understand why, but they're lookin' for you down that line. It's a vexatious business when your friends, meanin' the polis, are doing their best to upset your plans and you no able to enlighten them. I could send word to the Chief Constable and get ye through to London without a stop like a load of fish from Aiberdeen, but that would be spoilin' the fine character ye've ...

— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... has revolutionized modern surgery, largely as a result of such experiments, wished to discover possibly some still better way of operating by further experiments, HE WAS OBLIGED TO GO TO TOULOUSE TO CARRY THEM OUT, as the vexatious restrictions of the law in England practically made it impossible for him to continue there these ...

— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell

... right to a certain amount of unpaid labor from his tenants; his land was exempt from the taille, the most burdensome of taxes; and he had many other and diverse seigneurial rights, often, indeed, more vexatious to the tenant than they were profitable to the seigneur. [Footnote: Rambaud, Hist. de la Civilisation Francaise, II., 84-90.] These rights of land-holders were survivals from an earlier period; but they were survivals which still had great ...

— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney

... me completely disappeared. I was treated by him and the officers and men as badly as ever. My spirit was not broken, and perhaps I may at times have shown too refractory a disposition to please them. I was compelled, however, to submit to and obey their orders, annoying and vexatious as they often were. I did not show my feelings so much by what I said as by my looks, and I often stopped to consider whether or no I would do as I ...

— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston

... of individualists obey reluctantly, when they obey at all, any laws which they regard as unreasonable or vexatious. Indeed, they are increasingly opposed to any law, which affects their selfish interests. Thus many good women are involuntary smugglers. They deny the authority of the state to impose a tax upon a Paquin gown. The law's delays and laxity in administration breed a spirit of contempt, ...

— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck

... seduced them into their present bondage. And then the Olynthians, again,—how he cheated them, first giving them Potidaea and several other places, is really beyond description. Now he is enticing the Thebans by giving up to them Boeotia, and delivering them from a toilsome and vexatious war. Each of these people did get a certain advantage; but some of them have suffered what all the world knows; others will suffer whatever may hereafter befall them. As for you, I recount not all that has been taken from ...

— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... published discourse. To his guests Luther in those days remarked at the table: "Satan, like a furious harlot, rages in the Antinomians, as Melanchthon writes from Frankfort. The devil will do much harm through them and cause infinite and vexatious evils. If they carry their lawless principles into the State as well as the Church, the magistrate will say: I am a Christian, therefore the law does not pertain to me. Even a Christian hangman would repudiate the law. If they teach only free grace, infinite license will follow, and all ...

— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... rejoice over them, over their slain, their enemies, their tormenting enemies. This joy therefore, is a joy that flows from victory, from victory after a war that has lasted a thousand two hundred and threescore years. They shall rejoice, as they do that have a most potent, vexatious, and tormenting enemy lying dead at their foot, and as those that ride in triumph over them. They shall therefore rejoice as conquerors used to do, who make the slaughters of their spoiled enemies the trophy of ...

— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... be in the fashion without being a patriot. All gallantry had its first source from hence; and to want a warmth for the public welfare, was a defect so scandalous, that he who was guilty of it had no pretence to honor or manhood. What makes the depravity among us, in this behalf, the more vexatious and irksome to reflect upon, is, that the contempt of life is carried as far amongst us, as it could be in those memorable people; and we want only a proper application of the qualities which are frequent among us, to be as worthy as they. There is hardly a man to be found who ...

— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... of it? Now I will not mention her again,—I will refer to her, when I shall have vexatious occasion, as "that woman." And, indeed, "that woman" and Honorius set us up in comprehension of matters progressing. It seems that quite twenty years have passed since Sarah's soul slid through a knife-gash; that Honorius and Andronic, who have come from Smyrna, (why?) ...

— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... habitations, the little the people had there being destroyed this year by the freshets (inondations) which have carried off houses, cattle and grain. There is no probability that any families will desire to expose themselves hereafter to a thing so vexatious and so common on that river. Monsieur De Chauffours, who used to be the mainstay of the inhabitants and the savages, has been forced to abandon it and to withdraw to Port Royal, but he has no way to make a living there for his family, and he will unhappily be forced to ...

— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond

... passengers or freight. I have myself been detained two or three days at a place after steam was up, the gang planks, all but one, drawn in, and after the time advertised for starting had expired. On this occasion we had no vexatious delays, and in about three days Pittsburg was reached. From Pittsburg I chose passage by the canal to Harrisburg, rather than by the more expeditious stage. This gave a better opportunity of enjoying the fine scenery of Western Pennsylvania, and I had ...

— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant

... distant from her friends, and their backs, at the present moment, were more than half turned to her. It would be just possible for me to speak to her, without being observed by them, if I were both extraordinarily cautious and lucky. At any moment Wildred, who had perhaps gone to rectify some vexatious mistake about a table, might return. If I meant to take the step at all there was no time to be lost in ...

— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson

... alive to consequences; it is not the present moment, but the duration of life, that it regards; it seeks to proceed with a sure foot. And at this crisis, in the midst of all this irresolution, that was unspeakably vexatious to a man of his firm nature, Brand demanded of himself his utmost power of self-control. He would not imperil the happiness of his life by a hasty, importunate appeal. When at length he sat down, determined not to rise until he had sent her this message, he forced himself to write—at ...

— Sunrise • William Black

... is just going to be cut off," as a friend once expressed it; then soft and full of content, as if the aforesaid hen had laid an egg ten minutes before, and were still felicitating herself upon the achievement. It was vexatious that here, in the very home of Florida gallinules, I should see and hear less of them than I had more than once done in Massachusetts, where they are esteemed a pretty choice rarity, and where, in spite ...

— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey

... from convention? No. She was a woman, and a painter of women—a painter of women from the woman's point of view that desires the world only to think of woman in her pose as woman, reticent, careful to screen the impulsive, most of all the vexatious, the violent, and the irregular moods of femininity's temperament from the eyes of the passer-by; always eager to show woman dressed for the part, and well dressed. She was incapable of stating the deeps of character; and had she had the power, she would have looked upon it as something ...

— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall

... undertook a tour through the country, and the diversity and beauties of nature I met with in this charming season, expelled every gloomy and vexatious thought. Just at the close of day the gentle gales retired, and left the place to the disposal of a profound calm. Not a breeze shook the most tremulous leaf. I had gained the summit of a commanding ridge, and, looking round with astonishing ...

— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley

... towards her and coldly said, "Good evening Miss Mayhew;" then, after a second, added carelessly: "I admit that this worm-eaten bud is rather vexatious. It has—what is left of it—exquisite color, and in form nature had designed it to be perfect; but" (with a slight contemptuous shrug) "you see what it is," and he tossed it ...

— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... launches and fishing boats. The smoke nuisance was a vexatious trouble of the past. Life for the laborer and his family ceased to be a burden. Eight hours were given to conscientious labor, eight hours to physical, mental, and moral improvements, and eight ...

— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton

... and Puerto Rico with the United States, their nearest and principal market, justifies the expectation that the existing relations may be beneficially expanded. The impediments resulting from varying dues on navigation and from the vexatious treatment of our vessels on merely technical grounds of complaint in West India ports ...

— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison

... the reduction of so strongly fortified a place as Bastia; while Lord Hood, on the other hand, was sanguine of success. This difference of opinion between the heads of the forces led to a protracted and vexatious delay, during which we of the fleet busied ourselves successfully in raising the French thirty-eight-gun frigate, "Minerve," which her crew had sunk in San Fiorenzo harbour. This ship was afterwards added to our navy under the name of the ...

— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... he fights the battle, carried along by the devious tide of Paris—that great harlot who takes you up or leaves you stranded, smiles or turns her back on you with equal readiness, wears out the strongest will in vexatious waiting, and makes misfortune wait ...

— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac

... lived in Rome not by the favour of the king or of any other burgess, but by federal right. Legally unrestricted in the acquiring of property, they gained money and estate in their new home, and bequeathed, like the burgesses, their homesteads to their children and children's children. The vexatious relation of dependence on particular burgess-households became gradually relaxed. If the liberated slave or the immigrant stranger still held an entirely isolated position in the state, such was no longer ...

— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... At first, forbidden by strict quarantine, there was no communication between the sea and the shore, but all day long there were crowds of idlers ready to line the sea-wall and greet every ship that came in close enough with hearty repeated cheers. When the vexatious health-rules were relaxed, and troopships landed some of their passengers, there was endless fraternisation, eager discussion of coming operations, and unlimited denunciation ...

— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths

... attempt. The next thing was to convey the captured goods to the cutter. This occupied some time, as there were literally several boatloads of goods, to the value, I fancy, of a couple of thousand pounds. It must have been vexatious in the extreme, to any of the smugglers witnessing our proceedings, to see their property thus carried off before their eyes. It must have made them vow vengeance against those who captured it, and against us especially, who, they must have suspected, ...

— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston

... Princess Dowager of Wales, 1772; and the abridgement of the 'Roman History', 1772. But in the former year he had completed a new comedy, 'She Stoops to Conquer; or, The Mistakes of a Night', which, after the usual vexatious negotiations, was brought out by Colman at Covent Garden on Monday, the 15th of March, 1773. The manager seems to have acted Goldsmith's own creation of 'Croaker' with regard to this piece, and even to the last moment predicted its failure. But it ...

— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith

... has inquired into most things, but has never had a committee on "the Queen". There is no authentic blue-book to say what she does. Such an investigation cannot take place; but if it could, it would probably save her much vexatious routine, and many ...

— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

... a tiresome, proud, vexatious fool, Who never could resolve. For once, however, He hath resolved. Betimes he goeth hence, Where honor ...

— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... I can never say how much I detested these authors, who, taken in small doses, are far, indeed, from being attractive. Horace, to a lazy boy, appears in his Odes to have nothing to say, and to say it in the most frivolous and vexatious manner. Then Cowper's "Task," or "Paradise Lost," as school-books, with notes, seems arid enough to a school-boy. I remember reading ahead, in Cowper, instead of attending to the lesson and the class-work. ...

— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... relief she began to laugh. Immediately afterward, however, she sat down on the shingle and began to cry. It was too vexatious: what on ...

— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various

... evening was fine—I remember it—and she did not live far from me; we were neighbours. You see I knew Gertrude pretty well, and I liked her. There had been some love passages between us, but I had never been her lover; our story had got entangled, and as I went to her I hoped that this vexatious knot was to be picked at last. To be Gertrude's lover would be a pleasure indeed, for though a woman of forty, a natural desire to please, a witty mind, and pretty manners still kept her young; she had all the appearance of youth; and French gowns and underwear ...

— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore

... been in time repentance and improvement, by fancying he did no harm. Teasing Deborah served her right, he would tell himself, she was so ill-tempered and foolish; Diggory was a clod, and would do nothing without scolding; it was a good joke to tease Charlie; Eleanor was a vexatious little thing, and he would not be ordered by her; so he went his own way, and taught the merry chattering Lucy to be very nearly as bad as himself, neglected his duties, set a bad example, tormented a faithful servant, and seriously distressed his mother. Give him some great cause, ...

— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge

... women who desired to do their duty by the state, and though the wise emperors did everything in their power to encourage it, a very large proportion of the men of the upper classes regarded it as a burden and a vexatious interference with their liberty. It was not necessarily that they had any desire to be vicious, nor indeed would marriage be much of a hindrance to vice; it was that they desired to be free. The cause of their disinclination was the same as it is sometimes alleged to be ...

— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... incumberment of the vessel's deck, the great number of strangers among whom I found myself, the brutal style which the captain and his subalterns used toward our young Canadians; all, in a word, conspired to make me augur a vexatious and disagreeable voyage. The sequel will show that I did not deceive myself ...

— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere

... in an unfriendly way. Vessels have been seized without notice or warning, in violation of the custom previously prevailing, and have been taken into the colonial ports, their voyages broken up, and the vessels condemned. There is reason to believe that this unfriendly and vexatious treatment was designed to bear harshly upon the hardy fishermen of the United States, with a view to political effect upon this Government. The statutes of the Dominion of Canada assume a still broader and more untenable jurisdiction over the ...

— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson

... all so great that even religion does not impel you to any dangerous excesses. Nevertheless, devotion often causes strange metamorphoses. Unquiet, agitated, miserable within yourself, it is to be feared that your temperament will change, that your disposition will become acrimonious, and that the vexatious ideas over which you have so long brooded will sooner or later produce a disastrous influence upon those who approach you. Does not experience constantly show us that religion effects changes of this kind? What are called conversions, what devotees regard as special acts ...

— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... Immediately the proof of four noble descents was demanded. The movement of letters was slow, that of officials even slower, and the delays in securing copies and authentications of the various documents were long and vexatious. ...

— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... aggravating in themselves. She is not only a common scold, but a babbling woman, who often hath slandered and scandalized her neighbors, for which her poor husband is often brought into chargeable and vexatious suits and cast in ...

— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick

... whom she trusted, would relieve her need; that she did not care to live by any means that would offend Him, but in serving Him was well content in her poverty; and that she was confident that our Lord would not abandon her. Another poor woman resisted with equal courage no less vexatious importunities, refusing a quantity of gold worth more than eighty escudos, thus leaving her persecutor in amazement. Another woman, fearing that she would have to defend her body by force from so many and violent ...

— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson

... and when the bark had reached a part of the lake where the waves were rolling with some force, it was found that the vast weight was too much to be lifted by the feeble and broken efforts of these miniature seas. The consequences were, however, more vexatious than alarming. A few wet feet among the less quiet of the passengers, with an occasional slapping of a sheet of water against the gangways, and a consequent drift of spray across the pile of human heads in the centre of the bark, were ...

— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... sickness, madness, ruin of fruits and grains, and he who is already foolish will without doubt behave himself worst at the time of full moon.... What concern is it of mine what the astronomers have discovered in the moon or what they will yet discover?... It may be ludicrous and vexatious to devote oneself exclusively and unreservedly to this or that, any observation, any favorite object. Upon my earlier wanderings I met a rich Englishman who traveled only to waterfalls and battlefields. Ridiculously ...

— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger

... own eyes, and to transfer them to the apostle, the only way of reasonably accounting for so strange and outre a proceeding, is to suppose that St. Paul actually labored either under entire deprivation of vision, or under some severely painful and vexatious disease of the eyes: The meaning being, that so keenly did the Galatians sympathize with the apostle in his affliction, that they would willingly have become his substitutes by taking all his suffering upon themselves, if only it were ...

— Spare Hours • John Brown

... uncomfortable. Our forts gradually extended at the back of the enemy's town, on a ridge of swelling ground; while they kept pace with us on the same side of the river on the low ground. The inactivity of our troops had long become a by-word among us. It was indeed truly vexatious, but it was in vain to urge them on, in vain to offer assistance, in vain to propose a joint attack, or even to seek support at their hands; promises were to be had ...

— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... hope to grasp concerning this lymphatic, unimaginative race. They obey the laws—a criminal requires imagination. They never start a respectable revolution—you cannot revolt without imagination. Among other things they pride themselves on their immunity from vexatious imposts. Yet whisky, the best quality of which is worth tenpence a bottle, is taxed till it costs five shillings; ale, the life-blood of the people, would be dear at three-pence a gallon and yet costs fivepence a pint; tobacco, which could profitably ...

— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... obliged to remain until visited the next morning by the health officer; for the quarantine regulations of Sweden, although not so vexatious and absurd as in many other ports of Europe, were nevertheless very strict. A case of plague or yellow fever was never known in Gottenburg, or in any other port in Sweden, yet it was the universal belief among medical men that both diseases were contagious, and ...

— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... well how to subdue all appetites and passions, and to despise both pain and pleasure; and this knowledge affords much delightful contemplation, and is easily acquired; but the practice would be vexatious and troublesome; and, therefore, the same wisdom which teaches them to know this, teaches them to ...

— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... trained to the military career, and accustomed to a life of wild adventure, these were a most valuable reinforcement to Aben-Humeya's forces, and enabled him to carry on a guerilla warfare which proved highly vexatious to the troops of Spain. He made forays from the mountains into the plain, penetrating into the vega and boldly venturing even to the walls of Granada. The insurrection spread far and wide through the Sierra Nevada, and the Spanish army, now led by ...

— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris

... to relieve the Seminoles from vexatious demands on them for their slaves and other property, the United States stipulated to have the matter investigated, and to liquidate such as were satisfactory, provided the amount did not exceed seven thousand dollars. ...

— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright

... bastions were worthless. They were furnished with no stabling for horses. They could not be built near enough to render assistance to each other; the besieger was in danger of being himself besieged in them. In short, from these vexatious methods of warfare the English reaped nothing but disappointment and disgrace. The Sire de Bueil, one of the defenders, perceived this when he was reconnoitring.[843] In fact it was so easy to pass through the enemy's lines that merchants were willing to run the risk of taking ...

— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... scorned to run away, and before they could all be killed, they had torn to pieces half-a-dozen of the Texians, and dreadfully lacerated as many more. The evening was, of course, spent in revelry: the dangers and fatigues, the delays and vexatious of the march were now considered over, and high were their anticipations of the rich plunder in perspective. But this was the only feat accomplished by this Texian expedition: the Mexicans had not been ...

— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... off Circassians is concerned, my adoption of a uniform would most certainly get me into hot water with the military authorities of every town and village, owing to my ignorance of the vernacular, and cause me no end of vexatious delay. To this the quick-witted Frenchman replies by at once offering to go with me to the resident pasha, explain the matter to him, and get a letter permitting me to wear the uniform; which offer I gently but firmly ...

— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... "Vexatious; and yet, I think it is a matter upon which we ought almost to congratulate ourselves. Read those two letters, and give us ...

— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... known to him, to his great delight. He told us that the canoe was close at hand, but that Kalong had become alarmed at hearing the signal of the attack, and, at the risk of his life, had gone back to look for us. Grateful as I was to the faithful creature, the delay was very vexatious. Of course, however, we had no remedy but to wait for him. In the meantime we launched the canoe, and placed Eva and Nutmeg in the centre, with our provisions. Ungka jumped in after them. Blount and I were to ...

— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston

... act of filling his pockets, for the sum of his demerits amounts to no more than that," is too severely punished; and he adds, "the provocations to which a dramatic genius is exposed from the public are so much the more vexatious as they are removed from any possibility of retaliation, the hope of which sweetens most other injuries; for the public never writes itself." He concludes with an account, written in an Addisonian vein, of a club ...

— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... Crabwitz; Lady Mason is no more in danger of losing the property than you are. It is a most vexatious thing, but there can be no doubt as to what the ...

— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... for anger; yet she did not shew less kindness to the object of this vexatious circumstance: she held him in her arms while she sat at table, and repeatedly said to him, (though he had not the sense to thank her) "That she would always ...

— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald

... tendency of the system is to vitiate the best tempers, and to harden the most feeling hearts. "Never be kind, nor speak kindly to a slave," said an accomplished English lady in South Africa to my wife: "I have now," she added, "been for some time a slave-owner, and have found, from vexatious experience in my own household, that nothing but harshness and hauteur will ...

— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince

... The next three articles deal with sacerdotal celibacy, recommending that priests be allowed to marry, and calling for the suppression of many of the cloisters. It is further urged that foundations for masses and for the support of idle priests be abolished, that various vexatious provisions of the Canon Law be repealed, and that begging on any pretext be prohibited. The twenty-fourth article deals with the Bohemian schism, saying that Huss was wrongly {72} burned, and calling for union with the Hussites who ...

— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... who passed with the dilly-bag along a narrow aisle of the jungle, intent upon ridding herself of a vexatious encumbrance, and at the same time performing ...

— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... enough, but it was also vexatious, that such peaceful people as we were should be considered so terrible. I sent a bullet after the ship, to induce her to stop; she then hoisted the English flag, but never slackened her speed; so that finding we could get no satisfaction, we thought it advisable to take ...

— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue

... said Dora, pouting. 'I can't think what papa can have been about, when he chose such a vexatious thing to be my companion. Who wants a protector? I am sure I don't want a protector. Jip can protect me a great deal better than Miss Murdstone,—can't you, ...

— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... man climbed the cellar steps with vexatious phlegm: I don't think they moved one second faster than usual, though the hearth was an absolute tempest of worrying and yelping. Happily, an inhabitant of the kitchen made more despatch: a lusty dame, with tucked- ...

— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte

... that anger would confuse distinctions, and that his denial of having borrowed expressly on the strength of his uncle's will would be taken as a falsehood. He had gone to his father and told him one vexatious affair, and he had left another untold: in such cases the complete revelation always produces the impression of a previous duplicity. Now Fred piqued himself on keeping clear of lies, and even fibs; he often ...

— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... read Humeca, which is the plural form of ahmec, the title will signify, "Gift (Tuhfeh) of fools" and would thus represent a jesting alteration of the girl's real name (Tuhfet el Culoub, Gift of hearts), in allusion to her (from the slave-merchant's point of view) foolish and vexatious behaviour in refusing to be sold to the first comer, as ...

— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... alacrity and zeal as any of his followers. It was often grievous to me to hear some of the party observe, after we had passed over some difficult tract, that a better road might have been found, a little to the right or to the left. Such observations were the most unjust and vexatious, as in all matters of difficulty and of opinion, he would invariably listen to the advice of all, and if he thought it prudent, take it. For my own part, I can safely say, that I was always ready to obey his orders, and conform to his directions, confident ...

— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray

... eagerly. "Lots of boys would be for climbing and finding that out, and think how vexatious it would be after all that trouble! I just made the eggs and the young ones out of my own mind, ...

— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro

... keep the line in order, and Nelson even went out of his way to have a note of encouragement and kindness sent aboard the Superb (seventy-four guns) for Commander Keats, whose ship had been continuously in commission since 1801, and was in bad condition. Her sailing qualities were vexatious. Keats implored that he should not be disconnected from the main fleet now that the hoped-for battle was so near at hand, and being a great favourite of Nelson's, he was given permission constantly to carry a press of canvas; so the gallant ...

— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... end the trouble. Columbus could not get the vessels ready in time, and so the malefactors became more vexatious than ever. Later another treaty was made, still more humiliating to the Admiral, for he had to promise, first, that those of Roldan's men who were most anxious to return should be sent to Spain immediately; second, that those who chose to remain should receive gifts ...

— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley

... When a vexatious litigant began to contest the will by which Mr. Vane was Lord of Stoken Church, and Mr. Vane went up to London to concert the proper means of defeating this attack, Mrs. Vane would gladly have compounded by giving the man two or three thousand ...

— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade

... is vexatious," he said, "and my friend the Prefect shall pay for it, one of these days. But at any rate, the thing is now in our own hands, and there can be no cheating. Report and letter are what they should be—I might have guessed that the old villain ...

— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price

... He could guess how the story would be told. "We'll say no more about it, if you please. The young man is sorry. I forgive him. His offense was inadvertent even though vexatious. If he will profit by this experience I will gladly suffer the ...

— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine

... extant a wild story relating to some vexatious events that happened at his funeral, which, at the end of Congreve's Life, by a writer of I know not what credit, are thus related, as I find the account transferred ...

— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... world' it is most probable that one-fourth part of our readers are invalids. Why should they not have their little troubles, whims, and maladies studied and cared for? The disease which gives a title to this short notice is perhaps one of the most mysterious and vexatious to which our nature is liable; both its cause and cure are equally occult, and its modus operandi is scarcely intelligible. A contemporary thus playfully alludes to the subject in terms more funny than ...

— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various

... according to a ritual differing from his own. *x Sometimes indeed the zeal of his enactments induces him to descend to the most frivolous particulars: thus a law is to be found in the same Code which prohibits the use of tobacco. *y It must not be forgotten that these fantastical and vexatious laws were not imposed by authority, but that they were freely voted by all the persons interested, and that the manners of the community were even more austere and more puritanical than the laws. In 1649 a solemn ...

— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... his place was immediately filled by Sir Charles Darling, nephew of Sir Ralph Darling, who, forty years before, had been Governor of New South Wales. Sir Charles was destined to troublous times; for he had not been long in the colony ere a most vexatious hitch took place in the working of constitutional government. It arose out of a straggle with regard to what is called "Protection to ...

— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland

... the assessments in die beginning was not a lawyer (as the first governors were not lawyers—Madrid MS.), nor acquainted with the mischief that could happen later in the collections, he rendered them very confused and vexatious. Although, in its general understanding, and in the usage of the first years, it is seen that the tribute amounted to the value of eight reals, paid in what the Indian possessed and desired to pay, still in certain words and clauses regarding the assessments and the articles ...

— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair

... fared with the Spaniards in Florida? The good-will of the Indians had vanished. The French had been obtrusive and vexatious guests; but their worst trespasses had been mercy and tenderness, to the daily outrage of the new-comers. Friendship had changed to aversion, aversion to hatred, hatred to open war. The forest-paths were beset; stragglers were cut off; and woe to the Spaniard who should venture ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... correction were subjected to a strict superintendence; all associations, those only excepted which were of ancient standing, and recognised by the laws, were dissolved. He burnt all the notes of those who had been a long time in arrear with the treasury, as being the principal source of vexatious suits and prosecutions. Places in the city claimed by the public, where the right was doubtful, he adjudged to the actual possessors. He struck out of the list of criminals the names of those over whom prosecutions had been long impending, where ...

— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... republic, Solon had laid it down as a principle of his code, that as all men were interested in the preservation of law, so all men might exert the privilege of the plaintiff and accuser. As society grew more complicated, the door was thus opened to every species of vexatious charge and frivolous litigation. The common informer became a most harassing and powerful personage, and made one of a fruitful and crowded profession; and in the very capital of liberty there existed the worst species of espionage. But justice was not thereby ...

— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... pornographic articles with the mantle of virtue may deceive the artless, and give the less artless excuse for buying them without putting themselves to any inconvenience. In such cases it is extremely difficult to act without injustice and without doing injury to art and science by vexatious measures. This requires much tact and ...

— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... of the last search,—which only serves to increase the disappointed gentleman's excitement. The affair has been unnecessarily expensive, for, in addition to the loss of his preacher, the price of whom is no very inconsiderable sum, he finds a vexatious bill running up against him at the bar. The friendship of those who have sympathised with him, and have joined him in the exhilarating sport of man-hunting, must be repaid with swimming drinks. Somewhat celebrated for economy, his friends are surprised to find him, on this ...

— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... however, than to fall into the Enemies Hands. We could not command Success, but we have endeavord to deserve it. Disappointments are to be expected in so arduous a Conflict, and when they come fairly one can bear them with Patience & Fortitude; but when they happen through Misconduct, they are vexatious. I suspect there has been bad Mannagement, but I will not make up my Judgment till I am fully informd. The Moment an authentick & explicit Account arrives, you shall have it from me. I will not yet despair of ...

— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams

... of Catherine occupied my mind all the week following that vexatious adventure. Her image glittered on the leaves of the folios over which I bent in the library, close to my dear tutor; so much so that Plotinus, Olympiodorus, Fabricius, Vossius spoke of nothing else to me than a tiny damsel in a lace chemise. These visions rendered me lazy. ...

— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France

... more tumultuous emotions subsided, and they could talk again. She leant upon the wall, and he sat upon it so that he could keep an eye open for any returning dogs. Two, at any rate, were up on the hillside and keeping up a vexatious barking. ...

— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... the barrier of your teeth? Strange words and harsh! Vexatious words to hear! As if this bow must rob our chiefs of life and breath because you cannot bend it! Why, your good mother did not bear you for a brandisher of bows and arrows. But others among the lordly suitors will bend ...

— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various

... have been but just," I replied politely. "It will be very vexatious if they are not discovered some day," added the Governor, in a tone which indicated that he was ...

— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne

... status of the Chinese traders who come to the Philippine Islands. Vexatious dues have been levied upon the Chinese in Manila; they have been herded together in one dwelling, apart from the other residents of the city; and a special warden, with arbitrary power, has been placed over them. Besides, ...

— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various

... diaphragm is that of choking off air movement and consequently reducing evaporation. This gives exactly the same results as the use of moisture, but the machine is easier to operate and seemed to do away with the vexatious moisture problem which, together perhaps, with some fancied resemblance of felt diaphragms to hen feathers, has resulted in the widespread use of ...

— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings

... love. Love, for such a man, doubtless involved objects and ideas: it was love of persons. The same revulsion of feeling may, however, be carried further. Lucretius says that passion is a torment because its pleasures are not pure, that is, because they are mingled with longing and entangled in vexatious things. Pure pleasure would be without ideas. Many a man has found in some moment of his life an unutterable joy which made all the rest of it seem a farce, as if a corpse should play it was living. Mystics habitually look beneath the Life of Reason for the substance and infinity of happiness. ...

— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... am ill at ease; and as I walked to-day, far and fast in the sun-warmed lanes, my thoughts came yapping and growling round me like a pack of curs—undignified, troublesome, vexatious thoughts; I chase them away for a moment, and next moment they are snapping at my heels. Experiences of a tragic quality, however depressing they may be, have a vaguely sustaining power about them, when they ...

— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... were built for the new proselytes; and linen vestments, Bibles, and liturgies, and vases of gold and silver, were supplied by the pious munificence of Justinian. [86] The Jews, who had been gradually stripped of their immunities, were oppressed by a vexatious law, which compelled them to observe the festival of Easter the same day on which it was celebrated by the Christians. [87] And they might complain with the more reason, since the Catholics themselves did not agree with the astronomical calculations of their sovereign: ...

— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... please the eye, and when fairly advanced with their work will call in an expert, to (as they call it) put in their perspective for them, but as it does not form part of their original composition, it involves all sorts of difficulties and vexatious alterings and rubbings out, and even then is not always satisfactory. For the expert may not be an artist, nor in sympathy with the picture, hence there will be a want of unity in it; whereas the whole thing, to be in harmony, should be the conception of one mind, and the perspective as much ...

— The Theory and Practice of Perspective • George Adolphus Storey

... The proceeding did not prove to be the easy victory that the Administration had evidently expected. The struggle was protracted for three months; and it signalized Mr. Wilson's first serious conflict with the Senate—that same Senate which was destined to play such a vexatious and destructive role in his career. At this time, however, Mr. Wilson had reached the zenith of his control over the law-making bodies. It was early in his Presidential term, and in these early days ...

— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick