"Encumber" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Many locks encumber the descending levels of the Stratford-on-Avon Canal, and they kept Sam busy. In the intervals the boat glided deeper and deeper into a green pastoral country, parcelled out with hedgerows and lines of elms, behind which here and there lay a village half hidden—a grey tower ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... fathers' voice Shall call my spirit, joyful in their choice; When, poised upon the gale, my form shall ride, Or, dark in mist, descend the mountain's side; Oh! may my shade behold no sculptured urns To mark the spot where earth to earth returns! No lengthen'd scroll, no praise-encumber'd stone; My epitaph shall be my name alone: If that with honor fail to crown my clay, Oh! may no other fame my deeds repay! That, only that, shall single out the spot; By that remember'd, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... shifts; flounder, boggle, struggle; not know which way to turn &c (uncertain) 475; perdre son Latin [Fr.]; stick at, stick in the mud, stick fast; come to a stand, come to a standstill, come to a deadlock; hold the wolf by the ears, hold the tiger by the tail. render difficult &c adj.; enmesh, encumber, embarrass, ravel, entangle; put a spoke in the wheel &c (hinder) 706; lead a pretty dance. Adj. difficult, not easy, hard, tough; troublesome, toilsome, irksome; operose^, laborious, onerous, arduous, Herculean, formidable; sooner said than done; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... priest? In olden times there were phantoms; they are interdicted by the police in civilized cities, and no cries are now heard issuing from the earth except from those buried in haste. Who has silenced death, if it has ever spoken? Because funeral processions are no longer permitted to encumber our streets, does the ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... doctrines of Leo Tolstoi, and especially in non-resistance, and the possessing little or no property to encumber their free souls. In the village they had become the guides of the Tahitians in the devious path ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... provisions, furniture, and clothes to my wife's father, who approves of the scheme, and to reserve nothing but a few necessary articles of covering; trusting to the furs of the chase for our future apparel. Were we imprudently to encumber ourselves too much with baggage, we should never reach to the waters of—-, which is the most dangerous as well as the most difficult part of our journey; and yet but a trifle in point of distance. I intend to say to my negroes—In the name of God, ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... eat nor drink with you," replied M'Brair. "I am come upon my Master's errand! woe be upon me if I should anyways mince the same. Hall Haddo, I summon you to quit this kirk which you encumber." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... recurring to the task in 1653, "did into verse" eight more. He thought these specimens worth preserving, and annexing to the volume of his poems which he published himself in 1673. As this doggerel continues to encumber each succeeding edition of the Poetical Works, it is as well that Milton did not persevere with his experiment and produce a complete Psalter. He prudently abandoned a task in which success is impossible. ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... childhood she had looked with awful veneration. This girl was regarded with an unfavourable eye by, all the competitors, honest Dinmont only excepted; the rest conceived they should find in her a formidable competitor, whose claims might at least encumber and diminish their chance of succession. Yet she was the only person present who seemed really to feel sorrow for the deceased. Mrs. Bertram had been her protectress, although from selfish motives, and her capricious tyranny was forgotten at the moment ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... should not encumber our pupils with accurate demonstration. The application of mathematics to mechanics is undoubtedly of the highest use, and has opened a source of ingenious and important inquiry. Archimedes, the greatest name amongst mechanic philosophers, scorned the ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... to labour painfully. The first thing I tossed away was my gun that fell, ringing and clattering, down the precipitous rocks below, and the next was my pack and thereafter my hatchet and pistols, so that by the time we reached the top of the ascent all I had to encumber me was my sword, and this I kept, since it was light and seemingly ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... and turned me to bitterness, when I was young and he might have led me. Her power and his idolatry made me jealous, and what I did in a fit of petulance was so fastened on that I could not draw back. Why did not he wait a little longer to encumber himself with that girl! No—that wasn't what I had to say— it's all over now. It is the other thing. ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... (passionately) I mean that you should not stifle love with civilization, nor encumber civilization with love. What have they to do with each other? You think you want a fellow student of economics. You are wrong. You think you want a dancing partner. You are mistaken. You want a revelation of ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... gentleman of his day, that he would have made the tour of Europe without ever touching the back of his travelling carriage. But perhaps we should be most struck with the total absence of those elegant little articles which now embellish and encumber our drawing-room tables. We should miss the sliding bookcases and picture-stands, the letter-weighing machines and envelope cases, the periodicals and illustrated newspapers—above all, the countless swarm of photograph books which now threaten to swallow up all space. A small writing-desk, with ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... play was written for the stage, it is this one. And on the stage there is nothing to take the place of the notes and introductory explanations that so frequently encumber the printed volume. On the stage all explanations must lie within the play itself, and so they should in the book also, I believe. The translator is either an artist or a man unfit for his work. As an artist he must have a courage that cannot even be cowed by his reverence for the ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... wedding Patin could no longer understand how he had ever imagined Desiree to be different from other women. What a fool he had been to encumber himself with a penniless creature, who had undoubtedly inveigled him with some drug which she had put ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... this particular branch of poultry was found in the town above mentioned as long ago as the Roman era. The Dorking's chief characteristic is that he has five claws on each foot; the extra claw, however, is never of sufficient length to encumber the foot, or to cause it to "drag" its nest, or scratch out the eggs. The colour of the true Dorking is pure white; long in the body, short in the legs, and a prolific layer. Thirty years ago, there ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... one other officer. We had also a very respectable library, in which, among many valuable works, conspicuously selected with an eye to our special objects, I recall with amusement certain ancient encyclopaedias, contributed apparently by well-wishers from stock which had begun to encumber their shelves. Howbeit, like Quaker guns, these made a brave show if not too closely scrutinized, and spared us the semblance of poverty in vacant spaces. Every military man understands the value of an imposing front towards the enemy. When I arrived, I was the sole occupant of the building; ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... in towns the earth begins to quake, everywhere we hear a terrible noise; the edifices give way, and are ready to fall down; the inhabitants rush out of their houses, run along the streets, which they encumber, and try to escape. The screams of frightened children and women bathed in tears are blended with those of the distracted men; all are on their knees, with clasped hands, their looks raised to Heaven, imploring its mercy ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... what they seem. The true truth about the cactuses runs just the other way; they are all stem and no leaves; what look like leaves being really joints of the trunk or branches, and the foliage being all dwarfed and stunted into the prickly hairs that dot and encumber the surface. All plants of very arid soils—for example, our common English stonecrops—tend to be thick, jointed, and succulent; the distinction between stem and leaves tends to disappear; and the whole weed, ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... halberdiers overawe the crowd—here, on the contrary, the simplicity of this primitive cult is touching and respectable in the extreme. These Copts who install themselves in their church, as round their firesides, who make their home there and encumber the place with their fretful little ones, have, in their own way, well understood the word of Him who said: "Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and do not forbid them, for of such is the kingdom ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... importance to the intelligence. An old soldier himself, he entertained the most unmitigated contempt for the Realista volunteers, whom he looked upon as a set of tailors, whose muskets would rather encumber them than injure any body else; and who, on the first appearance of regular troops, would infallibly throw down their arms, and betake themselves to their homes. As to the parties of insurgent guerillas which he was informed were beginning to show themselves ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His notebooks impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance office increases the number of accidents; and it may be a question whether machinery does not encumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity intrenched in establishments and forms, some vigor of wild virtue. For every Stoic was a Stoic; but in Christendom where is ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... voice: 'The past returns to clay, because I have prophesied evil before the gods! Prophesying evil before the gods, I have counselled the attack to bring my men to nothing; and these to whom I myself have given birth, where are they? Like the spawn of fish they encumber the sea! 'The gods wept with her over the affair of the Anunnaki;' the gods, in the place where they sat weeping, their lips were closed." It was not pity only which made their tears to flow: there were mixed up with it feelings of regret and fears for the future. Mankind once destroyed, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... There is little room for inquiry if one have the real feeling of life itself. Poetry is that which gleans most by keeping nearest to life. Books and firesides avail but little. Secretaries for the baggage of erudition do not enhance poetic values, they encumber them. Poetry is not declamation, it is not propaganda, it is breathing natural breaths. There is nothing mechanical about poetry excepting the affectation of forms. Poetry is the world's, it is everybody's. You count poetry by its essence, and no amount ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... properly conducted, so that it might always appear to have Respect for its Motive; And only to act in Obedience to that, as the ruling Principle, it would then comprehend the just Plan of good Breeding; But as this was formerly encumber'd with Ceremonies and Embarrassments, so the modern good Breeding perhaps deviates too far into Negligence and Disregard; —A Fault more unpardonable than the former; As an Inconvenience, evidently proceeding from the ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... on the contrary, means putting up one or two men whose names shall not encumber the ballot. Have you ever seen these ballots? They are a yard long and a yard wide. They have a hundred and twenty names on them and the people are expected to make a selection. They are to make a selection of ten out of fifty or one hundred ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... obedient genius? It was yours to have directed, yours to have raised and rejoiced in, the skill, the modesty, the patience of this entirely gentle and industrious race;—copyists with their heart. The common painter-copyists who encumber our European galleries with their easels and pots, are, almost without exception, persons too stupid to be painters, and too lazy to be engravers. The real copyists—the men who can put their soul into another's work—are employed at home, in their narrow rooms, ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... loved, Henry Clay's remark that he would rather be right than president notwithstanding. The absolute perfectionist is the most tiresome of men, and a waster of time and of nerves. The stickler, the fly-speckler, the bully and the sadist serve only to encumber those parts of the establishment which they touch; their subordinates spend part of their own strength clearing away the wreckage which these ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... principal part of the Iroquois forces was directed against the Neutrals. They carried two frontier villages, in one of which were more than 1600 men, the first at the end of autumn, the second early in the spring of 1651. The old men and children who might encumber them on their homeward journey were massacred. The number of captives was excessive, especially of young women, who were carried off to the Iroquois towns. The other more distant villages were seized with terror. The Neutrals abandoned their houses, ...
— The Country of the Neutrals - (As Far As Comprised in the County of Elgin), From Champlain to Talbot • James H. Coyne
... in His Majesty's Army it was certainly a peculiar collection, few or none of these articles being included in the Field Service regulations. Still, not more peculiar than some of the things with which solicitous friends and relatives encumber ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... negative, rather than positive; but, as books are comparatively worthless when they are not read, it becomes a matter of great moment to select such as will touch the public mind at a few points, at least. It is indeed possible, and, under the guidance of some persons, it would be natural, to encumber the shelves of a library with good books that might ever remain so, saving only the contributions made to mould ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... doctor have directed his flight toward Crickgelly? I trembled internally as the question suggested itself to me. Surely he would prefer writing to Miss Giles to join him when he got to a safe place of refuge, rather than encumber himself with the young lady before he was well out of reach of the far-stretching arm of the law. This seemed infinitely the most natural course of conduct. Still, there was the runner traveling toward Wales—and not certainly without ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... their course, no pilot guides; Like man intelligent, they plough the tides, Conscious of every coast, and every bay, That lies beneath the sun's all-seeing ray; Though clouds and darkness veil the encumber'd sky, Fearless through darkness and through clouds they fly; Though tempests rage, though rolls the swelling main, The seas may roll, the tempests rage in vain; E'en the stern god that o'er the waves presides, Safe as they pass, and safe repass the tides, With fury burns; while careless ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... the King of Glory shall come in." Nothing that we read is useful unless it calls up living things in the soul. To read a mystic book truly is to invoke the powers. If they do not rise up plumed and radiant, the apparitions of spiritual things, then is our labor barren. We only encumber the mind with useless symbols. They knew better ways long ago. "Master of the Green-waving Planisphere,... Lord of the Azure Expanse,... it is thus we invoke," cried the magicians ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... mated to one woman, To spend their days in holy matrimony— In fact, I have heard from one or two men, That one wife in a house is one too many— But, be this as it may, in China no man Who can afford it shuts himself to any Fix'd number, but is variously encumber'd With better halves, from twenty to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the sultan arose with the dawn, and prepared to execute his design, hiding his upper garment, which might encumber him; he then proceeded to the Palace of Tears. He found it lighted up with an infinite number of flambeaux of white wax, and perfumed by a delicious scent issuing from several censers of fine gold of admirable workmanship. As soon as he perceived the bed where the black lay, he drew his cimeter, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... its height and depth as far as it extended, and displayed in its precincts, at a little distance from the course of the stream, the towering and lordly castle to which it gave the name. The mist which continued to encumber the valley with its fleecy clouds, showed imperfectly the rude fortifications which served to defend the small town of Douglas, which was strong enough to repel a desultory attack, but not to withstand what was called in those days a formal siege. The most striking feature was its church, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... which, aloft before thee now, The misty chaplets wreathe— Not stopping once to breathe." One knight, whose nostrils bled, Betokening courage fled, Cried out, 'What if that current's sweep Not only rapid be, but deep! And grant it cross'd,—pray, why encumber One's arms with that unwieldy lumber, An elephant of stone? Perhaps the artist may have done His work in such a way, that one Might lug it twice its length; But then to reach yon mountain top, And that without a breathing stop, Were surely past a mortal's strength— Unless, indeed, it be no bigger ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... concealment, and watch their motions. There is no saying when the party with Miss Percival may return; they may have arrived while we have been away, or they may come to-morrow. It will be better, therefore, not to encumber ourselves with more prisoners unless ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... survive—to be perpetuated by the one possible means—if it withdraws all solicitude about the handicap this entails to women as a whole, introducing a spirit of laissez-faire competition between men and women, the women with sense enough to see the point will not encumber themselves with children. For each one of these who has no children, some other woman must have six instead of three. And some people encourage this ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... no killing. We will go down and see him together. We will let him know that the orders are probably already on the road for his arrest, and that he had best lose not an hour, but at once cross the water. I should not think that he would wish to encumber himself with women, for I never thought he showed the least affection to either his wife or daughter. At any rate, we will see that he does not take them with him. I will tell him that, if he goes, and goes alone, I will do my best to hush up the matter; and that, so long as he remains ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... become the most popular, and the most lasting in its popularity, for it has enduring qualities which belong to all ages and generations. The text is simply and clearly opened—critical explanations are given only when they are required—so as not to encumber, but to elucidate; and the practical applications are such as to suit all classes of persons."—Church of England ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... atoms and molecules in the cells, and of the cells in the organs and tissues of the body. The more rapid and vigorous this vibratory activity, the more powerful is the repulsion and expulsion of morbid matter, poisons and germs of disease which try to encumber or destroy ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... experience of twenty-five, and to this he superadded the active imagination of a newspaper man. A plot to rob the bank? These mysterious absences, that luggage which he doubted not was empty and intended for spoil! But why encumber herself with the two children? Here his common sense and instinct of the ludicrous returned and ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... shown that the rationale of a great deal of this is simply the attempt of men to obtain from social intercourse the largest amount of positive pleasure or amusement it can give by discarding the forms, the costly conventionalities, the social restrictions that encumber and limit it. One of the worst tendencies of a very wealthy society is that by the mere competition of ostentation the standard of conventional expense is raised, and the intercourse of men limited by the introduction of a number of new and costly luxuries which either ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... spirits—or be they, as the Saxons hold, but the delusions of an over-heated fancy, they do not now influence me; I speak the language of the natural, of the visible world.—You love not me, Annot—you love Menteith—by him you are beloved again, and Allan is no more to you than one of the corpses which encumber yonder heath." ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... girls no more will meddle With the painful piano-pedal, They'll only touch the pedal of their "Humber"; Like their grannies, they begin At an early age to "spin," But the road it is their spinning-wheels encumber. ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton
... and sandbanks which abound on the outside of the bay, continue to encumber the navigation after it is entered, and the fleet was in consequence compelled to anchor every night. This proceeding unavoidably occasioned much delay. The first day's sail carried us only to the ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... of a land breeze. In the morning he put off to sea in chase of the vessel, which he was unable to get up with till towards evening close to the land; after a brave defence, as the ship had many men, she at length yielded; and not chusing to encumber himself with so many prisoners, he landed a part of her company, and made the rest prisoners in irons in his own ship. Learning that this was one of the three ships belonging to Calicut of which he was in search, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... workwoman will not encumber herself with too many tools; but she will not shirk the expense of necessary implements, the simplest by preference, and ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... understand, in a mysterious kind of explanation,—which made the matter considerably darker than it looked before,—that the only chance of acquiring the requisite knowledge was through the clear, crystal medium of a pure and virgin intelligence, like that of the fair Alice. Not to encumber our story with Mr. Pyncheon's scruples, whether of conscience, pride, or fatherly affection, he at length ordered his daughter to be called. He well knew that she was in her chamber, and engaged in no occupation that could not readily be ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... lean favorably to the old pioneers and early settlers of an exposed frontier, which has suffered severely from Indian wars, and other causes of depression. With the exception of divorce cases, there were really no bad laws passed; and no disposition manifested to excessive legislation, or to encumber the statute book with new schemes. Local and specific acts absorbed the chief ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... kind of friend! say I; the friend who will encumber himself with the responsibility of thinking what's to become of you, when you are down in the world. Those tender-hearted souls who can't bear to think of your misfortunes are a much more numerous part ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... tent; within which I have seen you and your children lead a life of deeds as new to me the Jew, as they would be to Hypatia the Gentile. I have watched you for many a day, and not in vain. When I saw you, an experienced officer, encumber your flight with wounded men, I was only surprised. But since I have seen you and your daughter, and, strangest of all, your gay young Alcibiades of a son, starving yourselves to feed those poor ruffians—performing ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... good deal more before the opossum withdrew his cold and barren member from consideration; but the judicious fabulist does not encumber his tale with extraneous matter, lest ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... thus insatiable? why thus unreasonable? why encumber the world?—"Aye, but I fain would have my wife and children with me too."—What, are they then thine, and not His that gave them—His that made thee? Give up then that which is not thine own: yield it to One who is better than thou. "Nay, but why did He bring one into ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... as the Major was anxious not to encumber himself with all his heavy waggons to the junction of the Darling, as he would have to return again, a depot was formed, and the men divided. Mitchell, with a lightly equipped party following down the river, leaving Stapylton in ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... months of travelling in some of the roughest parts of the interior, I should advise a person in average health— and none other should travel in Japan—not to encumber himself with tinned meats, soups, claret, or any eatables or drinkables, except Liebig's extract ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... velvet shaded by long plumes, while of two squires behind, the one bore his helmet and lance, the other led a strong warhorse, completely cased in plates of mail, which seemed, however, scarcely to encumber its proud and agile paces. The countenance of the cavalier was comely, but strongly marked, and darkened, by long exposure to the suns of many climes, to a deep bronze hue: a few raven ringlets escaped from beneath his hat down a cheek closely ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... power is born of the time and the need, and not a burden to encumber us on our way. It is not of material nature; cannot be packed and stored away for some occasion that may arise, but is proportioned and adapted to the kind and ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... our notice. He had no verbiage. We do not merely mean by this that he never used a superfluous word (which, in fact, he rarely did), but that he kept quite clear of the hazy, half-relevant ideas which encumber meaning and are the chief source of prolixity. He threw away every idea that did not decidedly help on his argument, and expressed the others in the fewest words that would make them clear. He began at once where the pith of his argument began; ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... avow any connection or sympathy with him. I refer to some of the leaders of the political movement against slavery. They feel it to be their mission to marshal and use as effectively as possible the present convictions of the people. They cannot afford to encumber themselves with the odium which twenty years of angry agitation have engendered in great sects sore from unsparing rebuke, parties galled by constant defeat, and leading men provoked by unexpected exposure. They are willing to confess, privately, that our movement produced ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... pausing involuntarily, at sight of the stranger, they looked at each other. A man, perhaps, more, certainly not less than thirty years old, of powerful and impressive physique; very tall, athletic, sinewy, without an ounce of superfluous flesh to encumber his movements, in the professional palaestra; with a large finely modeled head, whose crisp black hair closely cut, was (contrary to the prevailing fashion) parted neither in the middle, nor yet on the side, but brushed straight back from the square ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... speed I could make, I stripped off my clothes and flung them upon the rocks. My shoes and stockings followed—even my shirt was thrown aside, lest it might encumber me, and just as if I was going in to have a bathe and a swim, I launched myself upon the water. I had no wading to do. The water was beyond my depth from the very edge of the reef, and I had to swim from the first plunge. Of course, I struck out directly for the ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... knapsack. "Yes," he said in a sorrowful tone, "dis Massa Leo's." I recognised it indeed as the one Leo had with him. Fatigue alone could have made him throw it aside; and perhaps, hoping soon to reach the Europeans of whom he had heard, he would no longer encumber himself with it. Securing it to the ox's back, we went on still more eagerly, looking carefully about on every side. I expected every moment to overtake Leo. We went on for another mile or more, when ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... Little goes without saying; the whole story is told; yet it is always easy to put aside the parasitical growth and get at the solid and useful idea. The book was not written for critics who desire to have everything summed up in a single sentence, and who are apt to praise the volumes which encumber the book-seller's shelves rather than those which run through seven editions in as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... yards is practically flat with the ground, for incendiaries have destroyed hundreds and hundreds of houses, and the Chinese commanders are favouring low-lying barricades, which are hard to pick out from the enormous mass of partially burned ruins which encumber the ground. Just as in South Africa we were reading only the other day, before this plight overtook us, that the hardest thing to see is a live Boer on the battlefield, so here it is the merest chance to make out the soldiery that is attacking us. Sometimes ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... should have been too late," Count Charles replied. "We lost no time when your messenger came, Guy, but it took some time to rouse the men-at-arms and to saddle our horses. You must have made a stout defence indeed, judging by the pile of dead that encumber your passage." ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... on my duties; but the skipper motioned me aside, saying that he'd put me into a watch and give me regular work to do as soon as we had got fairly to sea, for he "didn't want any idlers hanging round them to encumber the men." So, acting on the principle that "a nod was as good as a wink to a blind horse," I sheered over to the other side of the deck. Here, Sam Pengelly was standing by the taffrail, and from this coign of vantage we both watched with much interest the operation ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... they nearly came up to him, that he would loose his hold on his child; but the father's heart was strong within him. He flies, and the Sioux are close upon his heels! He fires and kills one of them. The other Sioux follows: he has nothing to encumber him—he must be victor in such an unequal contest. But the love that was stronger than death nerved the father's arm. He kept firing, and the Sioux retreated. The Chippeway and his young son reached their home ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... which truly resist the toil of men, and conspire against their fame; which are cunning to consume, and {112} prolific to encumber; and of whose perverse and unwelcome sowing we know, and can say assuredly, "An ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... not encumber the budget, for Cabinski has a custom of failing to pay his actors, particularly ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... while I was about a mortgage—never did I guess that I should be the man to encumber the Hazeldean estate—I thought I might as well add L20,000 as L10,000 to the total. Why should you be indebted at all to that Baron Levy? Don't have dealings with money- lenders. Your grandmother was a Hazeldean; ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... were and high, A sinner did encumber with both haunches, And he held clutched the sinews ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... once, and at once proceeded to make preparations. Chiefly we prepared by stripping ourselves bare of everything except "must-haves." A birch, besides three men, will carry only the simplest baggage of a trio. Passengers who are constantly to make portages will not encumber themselves with what-nots. Man must have clothes for day and night, and must have provisions to keep his clothes properly filled out. These two articles we took in compact form, regretting even the necessity of guarding against a ducking by a change of clothes. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... ascents to avoid landslips, and to surmount the enormous piles of debris which encumber this valley more than any other. We encamped at 10,050 feet, on a little flat 1000 feet above the bed of the river, and on its east flank. A Hydrangea was the common small wood, but Abies Webbiana formed the forest, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... Scotch Marriages in this chapter is taken from this high authority. What the lawyer (in the Prologue) says professionally of Irish Marriages is also derived from the same source. It is needless to encumber these pages with quotations. But as a means of satisfying my readers that they may depend on me, I subjoin an extract from my list of references to the Report of the Marriage Commission, which any persons who may be so inclined can ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... proceeded the later stages of the family. Whether things went equally well with Mr. Jernyngan and his Blanche (or either of his Blanches) does not seem to be recorded. (It has been thought better, though the taste of the moment seems to go rather the other way, not to encumber the reader with the original spelling, but ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... eternal and the general—they seek the truth and the meaning of life, they seek God, the soul, and when they are harnessed to passing needs and activities, like pharmacies and libraries, then they only complicate and encumber life. We have any number of doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, and highly educated people, but we have no biologists, mathematicians, philosophers, poets. All our intellectual and spiritual energy is wasted ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... Had he really begun to count on this? Do men know how their young daughters feel when the first suggestion comes that they are not regarded as born for perpetual daughterhood in the father's house? Would she even encumber his plans, if she clung still ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... know a man, Jessie,—a man I think much of, too,—who is very much drawn to one of those ladies. He has confessed as much to me. What advice shall I give him? He is a man that can please himself; he has abundant means, and no ties to encumber him." ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... Great be the manners of the bard. He shall not his brain encumber With the coil of rhythm and number; But leaving rule and pale forethought He shall aye climb For his rhyme. 'Pass in, pass in,' the angels say, 'In to the upper doors, Nor count compartments of the floors, But mount to paradise By ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... her hoping we could never furnish our house till I went again to the press. When Mrs. Chapone heard of my father's difficulties about Chelsea, and fears of removal, on account of his twenty thousand volumes,—"Twenty thousand volumes!" she repeated; "bless me! why, how can he so encumber himself? Why does he not burn half? for how much must be to spare that never can be worth his looking at from such a store! And can he want to keep them all? I should not have suspected Dr. Burney, of all men, of being such ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... controls own earnings. Husband and wife are equal guardians of children. Wife controls her separate property, can sue, etc., as if unmarried. Neither husband nor wife can convey or encumber real estate without consent of other; nor dispose by will of more than one half of the separate property without other's consent. If there are no children, the surviving husband or wife takes all the property, real and personal; if there ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... husbandry as being at once the work of a man of practical experience, which Cato was, and Columella was not, and of elegant and varied learning, to which Columella might, but Cato could not, pretend. There is, indeed, rather too great a parade of erudition, so much so as occasionally to encumber the work; but the general effect is very pleasing, and more particularly the third book, which shows us the calm and innocent life of one, who, during the turbulent and bloody climax of political strife, sought in the great recollections ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... question of villeinage and serfage finds no place in it. In the seventy years which had intervened since the last peasant rising, villeinage had died naturally away before the progress of social change. The Statutes of Apparel, which from this time encumber the Statute-book, show in their anxiety to curtail the dress of the labourer and the farmer the progress of these classes in comfort and wealth; and from the language of the statutes themselves it is plain that as wages rose both farmer and labourer ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... yet awhile," answered Olfan. "Take this," and he handed Leonard the spear of the third captain, who had left it when he started down the mountain, fearing that it might encumber him, "and drive him along with you at its point. Should we be overpowered, you may buy your lives as the price of his. But should we hold them back and you escape, then do with ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... value of this one thing is what he must stand or fall by, and his being able to do a hundred other things merely as well as anybody else would not alter the sentence or add to his respectability; on the contrary, his being able to do so many other things well would probably interfere with and encumber him in the execution of the only thing that others cannot do as well as he, and so far be a drawback and a disadvantage. More people, in fact, fail from a multiplicity of talents and pretensions than from an absolute poverty of resources. I have given instances of this elsewhere. Perhaps Shakespear's ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... thus gave new power to strike the lion again across the eyes. The beast fell backward, but drew the hunter with him with his paw, and another struggle took place upon the ground. He felt that the gun-barrel was his safeguard; and though it rather seemed to encumber his hands, he clung tenaciously to it. Rising up from the ground in terrible pain, he managed to thrust it into the throat of the lion with all his might. That thrust was fatal; and the huge animal fell on ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... preserved of his conversation during this period also, without specifying each scene where it passed, except one, which will be found so remarkable as certainly to deserve a very particular relation. Where the place or the persons do not contribute to the zest of the conversation, it is unnecessary to encumber my page with mentioning them. To know of what vintage our wine is, enables us to judge of its value, and to drink it with more relish: but to have the produce of each vine of one vineyard, in the same year, kept separate, would serve no purpose. To know that our ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... the work and thought of another man of genius fifty years before. The book of Malthus on the Principle of Population, mainly founded on the fact that animals increase in a geometrical ratio, and therefore, if unchecked, must encumber the earth, had been generally forgotten, and was only recalled with a sneer. But the genius of Darwin recognised in it a deeper meaning, and now the thought of Malthus was joined to the new current. Meditating upon it in connection with ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Montferrat, a review of all his troops, who were more formidable by their valor than by their numbers, since cavalry and infantry together did not amount to much above ten thousand men. In his long and perilous march he did not wish to encumber himself with useless supernumeraries, which would only impede his progress and increase the difficulty of supporting his army. These ten thousand veterans were to form the nucleus of a greater army, which, according ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... definition of the terms. If the same method were made use of in reasoning on other subjects, they would approach to the mathematics in simplicity and in truth, and the science of medicine in particular would be stripped of the heaps of learned rubbish which now encumber it, and would appear in true and native simplicity. Such is the method I propose to follow: I am certain of the rectitude of the plan; of the success of the reasoning it does not ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... I had seen it last on Aug. 15, 1868, on the emperor's fete-day, filled with the glittering Imperial troops. I saw it again, a wide, empty waste, bounded by four symmetrical barricades, dotted with slouching figures whose clothes and arms seemed to encumber them.... I thanked my friend for his politeness, and returned to my carriage. The young woman smiled at me, as much as to say: 'Is he not a fine fellow?' I thought he was; and there may be other fine fellows as much out of place in the ruffianly mass ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... months of Paris, and the tailors there, had rendered Philip much less conspicuous than formerly; but still people looked at him narrowly as he followed his brother along the street. The two lads had made up their minds to encumber themselves with no nurses, or womanfolk. The child should be carried, fondled, and fed by her boy-father alone. He believed that, when he once held her in his arms, he should scarcely even wish to give her up to any one else; and, in ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... more causes than are necessary to explain phenomena to him: and if by pure head-work combined with results of physical observation he can construct his universe, he must be a very unphilosophical man who would encumber himself with a useless Creator! There is something tangible about my method, says he; yours is vague. He requires it to be granted that his system is positive and that yours is impositive. So reasoned the stage coachman ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... out the lines of a rude star-fort, with curtains and jutting angles from which the curtains could be enfiladed. Through the dawn, while the British slept in the woods, the Frenchmen laboured, hacking and felling. Scores of trees they left to lie and encumber the ground: others they dragged, unlopped, to the entrenchment, and piled them before it, trunks inward and radiating from its angles; lacing their boughs together or roughly pointing them with a few ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... talker is to encumber his ideas with such a plethora of words as frequently prove fatal to their sense. Some of this class employ fine words because they are fine, with perfect indifference to the signification: others do it from "that fastidiousness," as one says, "which makes some men walk on the highroad as ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... that as they went forth they must expect to meet with dangers. "I send you forth as lambs in the midst of wolves." They were, however, to encumber themselves with nothing superfluous and they were to waste no time in idle ceremonies; they must journey as men who are impelled by one supreme motive. ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... Benefit can be expected from it; nor indeed is much to be hoped from his famous Purse: That Purse, it is said, was never empty, and such a Purse, may be sometimes convenient; but as Money will not purchase Peace, it is not necessary for a Man to encumber himself with a great deal of it. Peace and Happiness depend so much upon the State of a Man's own Mind, and upon the Use of the considering Cap, that it is generally his own Fault, if he is miserable. One of these Caps will last a Man his whole Life, and is a Discovery of much greater Importance ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous
... Peace, And banish dire Immanity and War. Strong Nature's bent, continual increase, Still counteracts Humanity's fond wish, The perpetuity of Peace, and Love; Alas! progressive Increase cannot last. Soon mourns the encumber'd land it's human load: Too soon arrives the inauspicious hour; The Natal Hour of the unhappy Man, Who all his life goes mourning up and down That there is neither bough, nor mud, nor straw That he may take to make himself a hut; No, not in all his native ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... hussars. How much more they carry to battle than at reviews. The hay in those great nets must encumber them. [She turns and sees that her daughter has become pale.] Ah, now I know! HE has just gone by. You exchanged signals with him, you wicked girl! How do you know what his character is, or if ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... trying to persuade me now that it was improper, now that I should be terrified to death now that I should become too ugly to be presentable; while the gentlemen made game of M. de Bellaise as a foolish young lover, who was so absurd as to encumber himself with a wife of whom he would soon weary, and whose presence would interfere with his enjoyment of the freedom and diversions of military life. He who was only just free from his governor, would he saddle himself with a ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... they glance thro' the shade, and Come down to your brow Like—eyes of the maiden Who calls on you now— Arise! from your dreaming In violet bowers, To duty beseeming These star-litten hours— And shake from your tresses Encumber'd with dew The breath of those kisses That cumber them too— (O! how, without you, Love! Could angels be blest?) Those kisses of true love That lull'd ye to rest! Up!—shake from your wing Each hindering thing: The dew of the night— It would weigh down your flight; And ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... no waiting on the part of the defenders, who began firing as soon as the advance commenced, with the result that several Indians dropped, to encumber the way and unsettle the serried band of plunging steeds, while the rest, on breasting the rocks, recoiled, and in a state of panic turned, regardless of yells and blows, to gallop back after the fashion of their ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... up her letter, to write another, which she addressed to the steamer which was to carry him the greater part of his long journey. She did not give her address; she told him how she believed it would be for his advantage not to encumber his noble career with concern for her. She had added that, if it were destined for them to meet, nothing would give her greater pleasure than to see him again. She ended by wishing him God-speed, a safe return, a successful and happy life. As the days passed, with ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... the two final payments on the timber; so that by the latter date they owned the land free of encumbrance save for the mortgage of $75,000. Since Newmark's plan had always contemplated the eventual foreclosure of this mortgage, it now became necessary further to encumber the property. Otherwise, since a property worth considerably above $300,000 carried only a $75,000 mortgage, it would be possible, when the latter came due, to borrow a further sum on a second mortgage with which ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... prisoners to be transported on board the Karteria; and as he could ill spare any of his provisions, and could not encumber his vessel with enemies who required to be guarded, he resolved to release them immediately. He therefore informed the Turkish commandant that he would send him to Missolonghi in a monoxylon, or canoe used in the lagoons, in order to procure two large flat-bottomed boats to take ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... my head, I think, will allow me on an average to go to every other meeting. But it is grievous how often any change knocks me up. I will further pledge myself, as I told Lyell, to resign after a year, if I did not attend pretty often, so that I should AT WORST encumber the Club temporarily. If you can get me elected, I certainly shall be very much pleased. Very many thanks for answers about Glaciers. I am very glad to hear of the second Edition (Of the Himalayan Journal.) so very soon; ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... such useless lumber Useful bookshelves so encumber? I will tell thee; for thy question Of wonders brings me to the best one. There's a future wonder, may be— Sure a present magic baby; (Patience, friend, I know your looks— What has that to do with books?) With her sounds ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... timber; the land is fertile in the extreme; and the rivers, streams, and lakes abound with fish. In short, had the Trent Canal been finished, instead of the miserable and decaying timber-slides, which now encumber that noble river, another million of inhabitants would, in ten years more, have filled up the forests, which are now only penetrated by the Indian or ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... have said in the strange, calm bitterness that possessed my soul: "What value has life to you and your deformed one? Poor, widowed, sickly, and despised, why should you wish to live? Why encumber me?" ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... Colonial life abreast of graver competitors. So the settler who built a loaf of station-bread into the earthen wall of his house, alleging that it was the hardest and most durable material he could procure, did not, we may believe, find a sense of humour encumber him in the troubles of a settler's life. For there were troubles. The pastoral provinces were no Dresden-china Arcadia. Nature is very stubborn in the wilderness, even in the happier climes, where ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... we availed ourselves of the confusion which always reigns among a ship's company preparatory to going ashore, to confer together and complete our arrangements. As our object was to effect as rapid a flight as possible to the mountains, we determined not to encumber ourselves with any superfluous apparel; and accordingly, while the rest were rigging themselves out with some idea of making a display, we were content to put on new stout duck trousers, serviceable pumps, and heavy Havre-frocks, which ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... abatement. He grew by degrees less civil, put on more of the master, frequently found fault, was captious, and seem'd ready for an outbreaking. I went on, nevertheless, with a good deal of patience, thinking that his encumber'd circumstances were partly the cause. At length a trifle snapt our connections; for, a great noise happening near the court-house, I put my head out of the window to see what was the matter. Keimer, being in the street, look'd up and saw me, call'd out to me in a loud ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... purposes of timber? Are there not soils and situations even in England, where none but timber-trees can grow? And is not the timber of many fruit-trees as useful as the timber of many of the lumber-trees which now encumber our soil? It is true, that, when wood constituted the fuel of the country, the growth of lumber-tree was essential to the comforts of the inhabitants; but that is no longer our condition. I conceive, ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... encumber'd hours The tuneful joys of truth serene, And twined our life's neglected flowers With nature's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... to less unpleasing themes, where, still expressing disapproval, one may do it with some grace, one of the few limitations to Mr. Hardy's great charm as a writer lies in his tendency to encumber his page with detail. At a supremely romantic moment one of his people sits down to contemplate a tribe of ants, and watches them through two whole printed pages. In another case a man in imminent deadly peril surveys through two pages the history of the geologic changes which ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... of Barrymore (1769-1793). Lord Barrymore was brilliant, eccentric, and dissipated, and in his short life he managed to spend 300,000 pounds and encumber his estates. He gambled, owned racehorses and rode them, played cricket, and hunted. He had a strong taste for the stage. At Wargrave-on-Thames he had a private theatre adjoining his house, and liked to make up companies with a mixture of amateurs and professionals. ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... topple and moulder into rest. A white smoke-wreath rising occasionally, enwraps a shattered wall as in a shroud. A gleam of flame shoots a grotesque picture of broken arches and ragged chimneys into the brain. Huge piles of debris begin to encumber the sidewalks, and even the pavements, as we go on. The streets in some places are quite choked up from walking. We are among the ruins of half a city. The wreck, the loneliness, seem interminable. The ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... SORIN'S house. Doors open out of it to the right and left. A table stands in the centre of the room. Trunks and boxes encumber the floor, and preparations for departure are evident. TRIGORIN is sitting at a table eating his breakfast, and ...
— The Sea-Gull • Anton Checkov
... patricians and commons; considering that amid these [troubles] there was an opportunity for an attack, they send their light-armed cohorts to commit depredations on the Roman territory. For [they concluded] either that the Romans would suffer that injury to pass off unavenged, that they might not encumber themselves with an additional war, or that they would resent it with a scanty army, and one by no means strong. The Romans [felt] greater indignation, than alarm, at the inroads of the Tarquinians. On this account the matter was neither taken up with great preparation, nor ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... The rain-drops encumber The hawthorn's crest: My thoughts have no number: You would not slumber If laid at my breast, Little sister, I'll rock ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... hold Freedom's columns all star-plumb! Yours was a watery grave, but Martyrdom And, hence, your resurrection with the number, Whose greatness greatens, as the Ages come To know why their pathway, no wrecks encumber. ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... convenient size which would admit of its being squeezed into any odd corner, but Dick the hostler got it in somehow, and Mr Chuzzlewit helped him. It was all on Mr Pinch's side, and Mr Chuzzlewit said he was very much afraid it would encumber him; to which Tom said, 'Not at all;' though it forced him into such an awkward position, that he had much ado to see anything but his own knees. But it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good; and the wisdom of the saying was verified in this instance; ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... of gold-embroidered drapery encumber her supple limbs; but her skirts are of the scantiest, (what Miss Flora MacFlimsey would call skimped,) and pitifully mean as to quality. By no means have the imperial looms of Benares contributed to her professional ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... introduced in stories; and he often blamed that idleness or laziness, as he thought it in me, which resisted his urgency. But I was averse to noting down, because I was conscious that it did better for me to keep the things in my head, if they suited my purpose; and if they did not, they would only encumber me. I knew that, when I wrote down, I put the thing out of my care, out of my head; and that, though it might be put by very safe, I should not know where to look for it; that the labour of looking over a note-book would never do when I was in the warmth and pleasure ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... That is a very characteristic right-about-face of the crowd, who one moment were saying, 'Hold your tongue and do not disturb Him,' and the next moment were all eager to encumber him with help, and to say, 'Rise up, be of good cheer; He calleth thee.' No thanks to them that He did. And what did the man do? Sprang to his feet—as the word rightly rendered would be—and flung away the frowsy rags that he had wrapped round him for warmth and softness of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... when it is in our power to take care of one thing, and apply ourselves to it, we choose rather to encumber ourselves with many—body, property, brother, friend, child, slave—and thus we are burdened and weighed down. When the weather happens not to be fair for sailing, we sit screwing ourselves and perpetually looking out for ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... were to go through the country as speedily as possible, for a great battle was expected. Trelawny's instructions were to capture certain towns and cities that lay in our way, to dismantle the fortresses, and to parole their garrisons. We could not encumber ourselves with prisoners, and so marched the garrisons out, paroled them, destroyed their arms, and bade them disperse. But, great as was our hurry, strict orders had been given to leave no strongholds ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... talk to the deaf; his heart and soul, with all his senses, are got among his bags, or he is gravely asleep, and dreaming of a mortgage. Tell a man of business, that the cares of the world choke the good seed; that we must not encumber ourselves with much serving; that the salvation of his soul is the one thing necessary: You see, indeed, the shape of a man before you, but his faculties are all gone off among clients and papers, thinking how to ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... the notes prolong, Now a wild chorus swells the song: Oft have I listen'd, and stood still, As it came soften'd up the hill, And deem'd it the lament of men 140 Who languish'd for their native glen; And thought how sad would be such sound, On Susquehanna's swampy ground, Kentucky's wood-encumber'd brake, Or wild Ontario's boundless lake, 145 Where heart-sick exiles, in the strain, ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott |
