"Fretted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... intrigue that was stirring the rulers of two nations; she was coming close to real adventure, and there she sat, with Pat lying on the hem of her skirt, and mourned that she was fifty or a hundred years too late for even a glimpse at romance! And fretted because she was helping Pat herd goats, and because life was ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... said Ben, gloomily, who felt dreadfully fretted to think he couldn't earn money enough to do something nice for her. "We eat it all up as fast as we get paid," he had once said to ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... like a couple who lay down at night to peaceful slumbers, undisturbed by nervous dreams of ambition, and awoke in the morning refreshed and well prepared for the duties of the new day, which never found them fretted or flurried. ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... a second? Come with me, and you will never ask that question again. Get under the shade of St. Hilda's— see once those fretted roofs and those painted windows. Listen but once to that angel choir, and then dare to ask me what chapel I mean when I invite you to come and ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... to Redgauntlet Castle wi' a heavy purse and a light heart, glad to be out of the laird's danger. Weel, the first thing he learned at the castle was, that Sir Robert had fretted himsell into a fit of the gout, because he did not appear before twelve' o'clock. It wasna a'thegether for sake of the money, Dougal thought; but because he didna like to part wi' my gudesire aff the grund. Dougal was glad to see Steenie, and brought him into the great oak parlour, and ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... his just sense of a masterly capacity. He knew he was right; from the point of view of the prevalent Elizabethan policy towards Ireland, though not from Burleigh's, he was right. He raged at his want of official authority to correct the wrong. He fretted, moreover, at being left in Ireland at all. Ormond quarrelled with Grey, and was recalled in the spring of 1581. The lieutenancy of Munster was assigned jointly to Ralegh, Sir William Morgan, and Captain Piers. Ralegh continued discontented. He sighed for a wider sphere. ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... avow to you that they fretted because of her coquetry. One hour it seemed that Pitou had gained her heart; the next her encouragement has been all to Tricotrin. Sometimes they have said ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... and what has become of, you? I have received no letters for these two years, and I have fretted myself to death. I received your letter about the rascally court-martial; but perhaps you have not heard that the little scoundrel is dead. Yes, Peter; he brought your letter out in his own ship, and that was his death-warrant. I met him at a ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... was over, he was forced to keep the promise which he had given his father, and caused the king's daughter to be asked in marriage, and she was promised to him. His first betrothed heard of this, and fretted so much about his faithfulness that she nearly died. Then her father said to her: 'Dearest child, why are you so sad? You shall have whatsoever you will.' She thought for a moment and said: 'Dear father, I wish for eleven girls exactly like myself in face, figure, and size.' The father said: 'If ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... Pow'r, And all that Beauty, all that Wealth e'er gave, Awaits alike th' inevitable Hour. The Paths of Glory lead but to the Grave. Forgive, ye Proud, th' involuntary Fault, If Memory to these no Trophies raise, Where thro' the long-drawn Isle and fretted Vault The pealing Anthem swells the Note of Praise. Can storied Urn or animated Bust Back to its Mansion call the fleeting Breath? Can Honour's Voice provoke the silent Dust, Or Flatt'ry sooth the dull cold Ear of Death! Perhaps in this neglected ...
— An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751) and The Eton College Manuscript • Thomas Gray
... Hall before the record room was open, and he fretted and stamped in the corridor until a youthful clerk with spats, pimples, and an imitation diamond scarf-pin condescended to listen to his wants. In twenty minutes he was away again, and he was lucky enough to catch Judge Barklay before ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... offered to interrupt or question the queer old man. None dared. One or two of the party had already had a taste of his quality when fretted or interfered with, and no one desired to draw upon himself the sharp "talk" of ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... I must say, that, in many respects, her situation will be more comfortable on account of this removal, when the first shock is over; for to watch an invalid, and to undergo all the changes of a temper fretted by suffering, suited ill with her age and habits. The funeral, which took place yesterday, was decent and private, becoming our father's eldest son, and the head of a quiet family. After it, I asked Hay Donaldson and Mr. Macculloch[34] to look over his papers, in case ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... voice of Sir William. She started as at a summons from the tomb. No other form was visible but that of the pilgrim bending over his staff. Her eye wandered wildly around the hall, as if she expected some phantom to start from its recesses. A richly-fretted screen, behind which the minstrels and lookers-on occasionally sat at the festival, stood at the lower end of the apartment. A slight rustling was heard; she was about to rush towards the spot, when the voice was again audible, and apparently at her side. Slowly the hood of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... free. It was made of cowhide, and sewed together on the back, while in the inside was set a thimble against which the needle was to be pressed in doing the hard sewing, while the leather protected the skin from being fretted by ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... biter, and the two clamoured for it, silently, by gestures of the hands and eyes, but with haste and passion. At this point, said my mother, her dream always ended, and she never knew who had the apple. She fretted greatly because of it, and was hardly ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... instructions for the concert at his Ferragosto on the first of August; and—most vexatious of all—a couple of goldsmiths came with their work, and with rival models of a button for the Pontifical cope. Giuseppe fumed and fretted while the Holy Father put on his spectacles to examine the great silver vase which was to receive the droppings from his table, its richly chased handles and its festoons of acanthus leaves, and its ingenious masks; and its fellow which was ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... following the scene in the amphitheatre. The four had been escorted back along the tongue of flooring into a hall with walls of fretted stone and sumptuous colorings. The floor was strewn with rich rugs woven of some vegetable fibre. There were divans and low chairs. At brief intervals, servitors, always smiling, passed carrying trays with wines ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... a coach at Falmouth that would take me within a few miles of my home, so I quickly took my place, and then fretted and fumed as we slowly rumbled on. It was towards afternoon when the coach arrived at the spot where I could be set down, and there with fast beating heart I watched the retreating conveyance, while I stood not ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... the man the look of a wild boar easing his tusks against a tree, horrible, yet content to be abhorred, splendid, because so strong and lonely. But the prospect was not comfortable. Little as he knew of his father, Richard could make no mistake here. The old King was in a picksome mood, fretted by rage: angry that his son should kneel there, more than angry that he had not ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... of those men who rather wish to believe in themselves than do it. He was always on the look-out for flaws upon his mettle. He thought that Gudrid was unapproachable, and when he found that she was not, fretted to make her so. But Gudrid herself was not at all unapproachable. She liked the company of her equals in age, and saw no reason why young men should not be anxious to talk to her, or why, if they hung about with the generality at the lower end ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... and thence to the servant's hall, and thence, after a very brief lapse, to the kitchen, where I was very little better than a Scullish and Plate-washer, and not half so well entreated as Cicely of the Cinders is here. I pined and fretted; but time went on, and to my misfortune I was growing taller and shapelier. I had a very clear skin, and very black hair and eyes, and, though I say it that shouldn't, as neat a leg and foot as you would wish to see ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... Fretted as he was with his absence, Varney received his profligate servant with a rebuke of unusual bitterness. "Drunken villain," he said, "thy idleness and debauched folly will stretch a halter ere it be long, and, for me, I care not ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... blood-feuds work in Scotland to know how much I dread and how I pray they may never awaken here. The blessed King Harry of Monmouth kept them down by the strong hand, while he won all hearts to himself. It is my prayer that his young son may do the like, and that my Lord of York be not fretted out of his peaceful loyalty by the Somerset "outrecuidance", and above all that my own son be not the make-bate; but Richard is proud and fiery, and I fear—I greatly fear, what may be in store ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... calling the reserves from the nearest station," fretted Garrick. "Of course, we have to do that to cover the place, but we'll have to work quickly now, for I don't know how fast a tip may travel in this subterranean region. Here, I'll pay the taxi charges now and save ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... down to yonder rising sun, As did the Parsee worshiper of old, But bend in homage when its race is run, And watch it sink in purple-fretted gold. And thus to thee, oh Hayes! the tried, the true, On battle-field and in the civic chair, Our heart's deep gratitude, thy meed and due, (As closes far too soon thy proud career), Goes out with benedictions pure and high: Oh may thy ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... reward, nay not even for pity of the love, for ever he bore him frank and merry, and had such kind good-will to all folk worthy who were about him, that none had deemed of him but that was heart-whole, and bore about no pain that fretted his life. So much she owed him, I say, yea and was glad to owe him, and so fain she was to hear and see this friend, that scarce might she think of her life on the earth and he not a part of it in ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... again I wondered at my irritation, my sense of restlessness. The little salesman was not responsible, though he had fretted me like a buzzing fly. It was rather that I had taken an intense dislike to the man calling himself Van Blarcom; that the girl, despite her haughtiness, had somehow given me an impression of uneasiness—of fear almost—as ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... the little bush, And drove away the leaves November left; then clambered up And fretted ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... passed, and she fretted. In the afternoon the Goldite News broke its record. It printed an extra—a single sheet, in glaring type, announcing the capture of the convicts. By a bold and daring coup, it said, the entire herd of criminals, all half starved and weakened by privations, ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... that to which the Sheikh drew his attention, for a party of about a dozen unhappy fellaheen, joined together by a long chain, which in several cases had fretted their black skins into open sores, were being driven along by a Baggara mounted upon a slight, swift-looking camel, from whose high back he wielded a long-lashed whip, and flicked with it from time to time at the bare skin of one of the slaves who cringed along ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... everywhere. There is rime and snow under a burden of mist. Everything is white. Paradis moves—a heavy pallid ghost, for we two also are all white. I had placed my shoulder-bag on the other side of the parapet, and it looks as if wrapped in paper. In the bottom of the hole a little snow floats, fretted and gray in the black foot-bath. Outside the hole, on the piled-up things, in the excavations, upon the crowded dead, snow rests ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... it was tried in harness, from what the natives believe to be "broken heart,"—certainly without any cause inferable from injury or previous disease.[1] It is observable, that till a captured elephant begins to relish food, and grow fat upon it, he becomes so fretted by work, that it kills him in an ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... that others (as the Bps of Chester, Winchester, Calcutta) do not object to our principles at all, but to certain principles which they conceive to be ours. The effect of both, I hoped, wd be that our friends, who were fretted by these charges, wd see that neither we nor (wh alone signifies) Catholic truth is condemned, that others mt be better disposed towards us, and that the hint mt be taken in some charges this year. Anyhow, that there wd seem less of a ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... picturesquely set on a rocky slope at the junction of the Min and the Yangtse. But how changed was the Great River since I crossed it at Lung-kai, four hundred miles to the west. There it dashed furiously along, dammed in between precipitous cliffs and fretted to foam by rocky reefs. Now it flowed broad and deep and quiet between soft wooded banks, bearing many craft on its ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... Comboloio[159] lies A Koran of illumined dyes; And many a bright emblazoned rhyme By Persian scribes redeemed from Time; And o'er those scrolls, not oft so mute, Reclines her now neglected lute; And round her lamp of fretted gold 560 Bloom flowers in urns of China's mould; The richest work of Iran's loom, And Sheeraz[160] tribute ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... suddenly, that he tumbled back with the flower into the bottom of the boat. Then Rosamond, almost wild at the danger it was in as he struggled to rise, hurried to save it, but somehow between them it came in pieces, and all its petals of fretted silver were scattered about the boat. When the boy got up, and saw the ruin his companion had occasioned, he burst into tears, and having the long stalk of the flower still in his hand, struck her with it across the face. ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... a lowly cell; In the homes of poverty, smoke-begrimed, With the sober-minded she loves to dwell. But she turns aside From the rich man's house with averted eye, The golden-fretted halls of pride Where hands with lucre are foul, and the praise Of counterfeit goodness smoothly sways; And wisely she guides in the strong man's despite All things ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... for reinforcements. Presently a band of Whig bludgeon-men arrived, and the Whigs of Salisbury Court then snatched up pokers, tongs, pitchforks, and legs of stools, and sallied out on the Tory mob, who soon fled before them. For two days the Tory mob seethed, fretted, and swore revenge. But the report of a squadron of horse being drawn up at Whitehall ready to ride down on the City kept them gloomily quiet. On the third day a Jacobite, named Vaughan, formerly a Bridewell boy, led them on to revenge; and on Tuesday they stormed ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... eyes could see visions of mighty things and his soul could dream unmeasured dreams. His heart beat responsively to an inward voice which assured him that he might equal and surpass the greatness of Destiny's greatest sons. He fretted for a larger world, knowing that in it he could conquer. In Hamilton Burton dwelt the soul of a Napoleon or a Caesar ... he ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... hummed pleasantly as he dressed himself, by the aid of a large mirror which he had taken for a bad debt, and which was the only ornament of the plainly furnished little room. Mr. Quigg was a man of business, and never fretted with cravats, nor made himself unhappy on the subject of hair. Three turns and a pull adjusted the former; and a half dozen well-directed dabs with a stiff brush regulated the latter. Fifteen minutes after he began his toilet, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... afternoon. A sunny stillness brooded over it; long shadows from the pointed turrets lay upon the fine white sand of the driveway and dipped along the gray walls of the chateau, which the hand of man had fretted with lace-like sculpture. In an angle of the courtyard two idle lackeys in scarlet liveries and powdered hair played with a little terrier. As Mr. Jefferson and Calvert approached, they ran forward, one taking the horses and the other opening the great entrance door ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... satisfaction stood back from the leaping fire. His father tossed him a bucket, and with it swinging from his hand, he made through the wood towards a music of water. Goldenrod and farewell-summer and the red plumes of the sumach lined his path, while far overhead the hickories and maples reared a fretted, red-gold roof. Underfoot were moss and coloured leaves, and to the right and left the squirrels watched him with bright eyes. He found the stream where it rippled between banks of fern and mint. As he knelt to fill the pail, ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... of the sunshine the walk through the battle-field was depressing. A chafing wind fretted through the naked limbs of the oaks and chestnuts, and drew moans from the pines and the hemlocks. The brown, dead leaves rustled into little tawny hillocks, behind protecting logs and rocks. Frequently those ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... night, the shrouds whistling with frost and the sheets glued in ice,—a song with the wind in its burden and the spray in its chorus. The monster raised his head and flared the fiery eyeballs upon her, then fretted the imprisoned claws a moment and was quiet; only the breath like the vapor from some hell-pit still swathed her. Her voice, at first faint and fearful, gradually lost its quaver, grew under her control and subject to her modulation; it rose on long swells, it fell in subtile ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... some maniacs are—the bloated ruin of what was once a living witness to the soul within—I could fancy that death may have sanctified it with even more beauty than this bust of the self-tormented young man shows. Have we not all seen the anguish of thought-fretted faces smoothed out by the hands ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... adopted no more fatal tone with Ruth at that moment. All the afternoon she had been a complicated tangle of fretted nerves. Her quarrel with Kirk, Bailey's visit, a conscience that would not lie down and go to sleep at her orders, but insisted on running riot—all these things had unfitted her to bear up ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... on the picture on the wall, went farther, Rose knew; but whether into the past or the future, or whether it was searching into the reason of this new eagerness of hers to be away and at work, she could not tell. However it might be, it vexed and fretted her, and she showed it by sudden impatient movements, ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... Some mysterious emotion held him mute, and he was only aware of a vague irritation that fretted him without any seemingly adequate cause. Dr. Dean meanwhile pursued his investigations with the lighted taper, and presently, turning round on the assembled little group of bystanders, ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... matter where— An ancient pile of building stands: The Huntingdons and Hattons there Employed the power of fairy hands To raise the ceilings fretted height, Each panel in achievements clothing, Rich windows, that exclude the light, And passages, that lead ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... doctor must be sent for. Alas! her own ailments, neglected and unheeded, were growing beyond the reach of medicine. Anxious fearful—gnawed by regret for the past—the thought of famine in the future—she daily fretted and wore herself away. She had cultivated her mind during her secluded residence with Mr. Beaufort, but she had learned none of the arts by which decayed gentlewomen keep the wolf from the door; no little holiday accomplishments, which, in the day of need turn to useful trade; no water-colour ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... don't mind saying now that I was, though I would not confess it to Rose, who fretted enough for ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... that was nothing by comparison with what stood on the other side. I detested distinctions that were connected with mortification to others; and, even if I could have got over that, the eternal feud fretted and tormented my nature. Love, that once in childhood had been so mere a necessity to me, that had long been a reflected ray from a departed sunset. But peace, and freedom from strife, if love were no longer possible, (as so rarely it is in this world,) was the clamorous ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... bed," she said, "for I am dog-tired. But I don't feel so fretted now I have told you. I wish I did not like him. I should not care if I did not. ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... by shrubs and stunted trees, in and out of gloomy defiles of flinty rock, over sluggish and swiftly flowing streams. The days were hot, but the nights were bitter cold. Sometimes a blue miasmic haze settled down, and the dry raspy hides of the elephants grew damp and they fretted ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... in the history of the world; petted, encouraged, and caressed, and ignored, and repulsed, until in the insane weakness of my own nature I have let all manhood ooze out of me. I am unlike Hamlet, my dear Gertrude. I am both to be fretted and ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... glow in the evening light, opened out one of the finest valleys of the southern Appalachees. Lapped in it, far off, shrouded with rosy mist which she did not identify as transmuted coal smoke, a city lay, fretted with spires, already sparkling with electric lights, set like a glittering boss of jewels in the broad curve of ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... cultured, and many-sided males who formed its dominant class in the fifth and fourth centuries. Man turned towards man; and parenthood, the divine gift of imparting human life, was severed from the loftiest and profoundest phases of human emotion: Xanthippe fretted out her ignorant and miserable little life between the walls of her house, and Socrates lay in the Agora, discussing philosophy and morals with Alcibiades; and the race decayed at its core. (See Jowett's translation of Plato's "Banquet"; but for full light ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... was no appeal, and Mr. Prohack had the air of an ignorant outsider whose opinions were negligible. Further, he was absurd in that, though he assuredly had no desire whatever to go to the dance, he fretted at the delay in getting there. Even when they had all got out to the porch of the theatre he exhibited a controlled but intense impatience because Charlie did not produce the car instantly from amidst ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... was tossing slightly again, and the great siren was bellowing. Its repeated thunderous cries, which indicated fog, the lurching of the vessel, the sign, perhaps, of fresh storms and hardships to be gone through, vexed and fretted Frederick. From the adventurous doings in his brain, he was transported to the no less adventurous doings in reality. Awakening from his dreams, he found himself locked into a narrow cabin, plowing through the high ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... she would know nothing about it. He went to a florist's in New York and sent masses of flowers. And then—there was nothing more to do. He stopped in at the club and drank and gambled until far into the morning. He fretted gloomily about all the next day, riding alone in the Park, driving with his sister, drinking and gambling at the club again and smiling cynically to himself at the covert glances his acquaintances exchanged. He was growing used to those glances. He cared not the ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... in the field was the thing. Those rainy interludes in the pavilion which so develop the stoicism of the first-class cricketer had no power to make a philosopher of him. All their effect on him was detrimental: they turned him black. He fretted and raged. ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... well as could be expected, Grace's father wrote, though naturally very much worried. And Grace was worried too. If she could have engaged actively in a search for her brother perhaps she might not have fretted so. But it was harassing to sit idly by and let others ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... place to place, sometimes pulling a tooth and sometimes breaking a colt. He practiced his art with an outfit consisting of two pairs of iron forceps—one pair being saber-toothed while the other pair was merely saw-fretted—and he gave a man the same kind of treatment he gave a horse, only he tied the horse's legs first. But now electricity is in general use and no dentist's establishment is complete without a dynamo attachment which makes a crooning sound when in operation ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... thought was that this was a girl whose equal for loveliness and delight was not to be found between two oceans. Long and long ago that doubtfulness of himself which was closer to him than his skin had fretted Jurgen into believing the Dorothy he had loved was but a piece of his imaginings. But certainly this girl was real. And sweet she was, and innocent she was, and light of heart and feet, beyond the reach of any man's inventiveness. No, Jurgen had not invented her; and it strangely contented ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... at last, he made in toward shore, mooring to the warm-fretted end of a fallen and forgotten landing. A straggling orange-grove was here, broken lines of vanquished cultivation, struggling little trees swathed and choked in the festooning gray moss, still showing here and there the valiant golden gleam of fruit. ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... If Louis fretted his father by loitering and nonsense, his father was no less trying by standing over him with advice and criticisms which would have driven most youths beyond patience, but which he bore with constant good-humour, ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... from long experience that this threatening mark for his master's riata was in no gentle frame of mind, fretted uneasily as though dreading his part in the task before them. Patches saw the whirling rope leave Phil's hand, and saw it tighten, as the cowboy threw the weight of his horse against it; and then he caught a confused vision—a fallen, struggling horse with a ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... possible so to call that force which mastered him, had come to be an incessant malady. It poisoned everything, caused him to find his statecraft tedious, his power profitless, and his vices gloomy. But chief of all he fretted over the standards by which the lives of Melicent and Perion were guided. Demetrios thought these criteria comely, he had discovered them to be unshakable, and he despairingly knew that as long as he trusted in the judgment heaven gave him they must always ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... time ... to represent to her in delicate terms, the impropriety of her complaints, and acceptance of favors, even when they are voluntarily offered, from any but relations." Though he did not "touch upon this subject in a letter to her," he was enough fretted to end the renting of her plantation, not because "I mean ... to withhold any aid or support I can give from you; for whilst I have a shilling left, you shall have part," but because "what I shall then give, I ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... boats that swung from the buoys. On the one side there was the open sea, on the other the piled-up granite, which rose up like hand-built buttresses, composed of vast squared masses rising tier upon tier. At their foot the foam fretted and beat, and the forests of seaweed washed to and fro, presenting an almost impenetrable barrier to any one wishing to land; though here it was impossible, for the racing current formed another barrier, which a boat propelled by stout rowers ...
— A Terrible Coward • George Manville Fenn
... light unpleasant. They never felt the raptures that can dirl like darts through a man's soul from a woman's eye. They never tasted the honey that dwells on a woman's lip, sweeter than yellow marygolds to the bee; or fretted under the fever of bliss that glows through the frame in pressing the hand of a suddenly met, and fluttering sweetheart. But tuts-tuts—hech-how! my day has long since passed: and this is stuff to drop from the lips ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... earth, and then stopped and asked Rastignac for their fee. Eugene felt in vain in his pocket, and was obliged to borrow five francs of Christophe. This thing, so trifling in itself, gave Rastignac a terrible pang of distress. It was growing dusk, the damp twilight fretted his nerves; he gazed down into the grave and the tears he shed were drawn from him by the sacred emotion, a single-hearted sorrow. When such tears fall on earth, their radiance reaches heaven. And with that tear that fell on Father Goriot's ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... says that he wrote to make an offer for her, very handsomely, but grandpapa did not choose that both his daughters should go quite away; so he locked the letter up, and said no, and never told her, and she thought the captain had been trifling and playing her false, and pined and fretted, till she got into this nervous way, and fairly wore herself out, nurse says, and came to be what she is now, instead of the prettiest young lady in the town! And then, mamma, when grandpapa died, she found the letter in his papers, and one inside for her, that had ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was she to enter suddenly into all the activity of an English clergyman's home? There were the schools, and the vestry meetings, and the sick and the destitute to be fretted after from Monday morning till Saturday night—Eustace and Marion hardly ever had a moment's respite or a leisure hour the whole week; whilst Sunday, of course, was the hardest ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... was well for France, it was well for the artistic industry whose history occupies our attention, that these things happened; but we, nevertheless, feel a weakness towards the man of genius and energy caged and fretted by prison bars, for he had shown initiative and daring, qualities of which the world has ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... hickory before my door, so had I my chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my nest. My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that "for yesterday, today, and tomorrow they have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward for yesterday forward for tomorrow, ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... want her!" fretted the little driver. "I wish she hadn't been out there. I wish we'd gone some other way. Yes, go ahead, if you want to!" she yielded, seeing Polly's wistful eyes. "I'll try to ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... time-tables, it happened that she knew the times of all the trains to London; to catch the next and last she would have to leave Turnhill at 5.55. She said that she would wait and see. Her work for the first number of the paper was practically done, but there was this mysterious conclave which fretted her curiosity and threatened exciting development; also the Majuba disaster would mean trouble for somebody. And in any event she hated the very thought of quitting Turnhill before the Chronicle was definitely out. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... with slender-steepled mosques, Turret from turret springing, dome from dome, Fretted with burning stones, And trellised with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... being determined that his son-in-law should be seen to act in co-operation with him. They met occasionally in Mr. Battle's chambers, and sometimes by appointment in Munster Court. "It is essentially necessary that you should know what is being done," said the Dean to his son-in-law. Lord George fretted and fumed, and expressed an opinion that as the matter had been put into a lawyer's hands it had better be left there. But the Dean had very much ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... and the tall, dirty old houses looked almost grand in the sunlight as we left Nine Elms. The distant city came nearer and shone brighter, and when the fretted front of the Houses of Parliament went by us like a fairy palace, and towers and blocks of buildings rose solidly one behind another in shining tints of white and grey against the blue summer sky, and when above the ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... emphasis, "as they wor ever an' always. Sure the master was never the same man since. I often heard the people sayin' how it was the love of brothers was betwixt them, an' more, for many a blood brother doesn't fret for his brother as the master fretted for Master Terence. He was never ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... ministrations, by neglecting all the duties of life! No wonder an indignant pang transfixed the lonely bosom of the virtuous doctor, solitary and unconsoled as he was. His laborious days knew no such solace. And as he fretted and pondered, no visions of Bessie Christian perplexed his thoughts. He had forgotten that young woman. All his mind was fully occupied chafing at the sacrifice of Nettie. He was not sorry, he was angry, to think of her odd position, and the duties she had taken upon herself. ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... Particular rooms that I had once been fond of occupying, were favourites no longer: particular habits that I had hitherto always practised in the country, I could only succeed in resuming by an effort which vexed and fretted me. It was as if my life had run into a new channel since my last autumn and winter at the Hall, and now refused to flow back at my bidding into its old course. Home seemed home no longer, except ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... personal genius with every event and detail of the remarkable period of history in which he had been called upon to act. This imperious conceit seemed to swallow up every other idea in his mind." The generals "fretted under this pragmatism" of one whose "vanity" directed the war "from his cushioned seat in Richmond" by means of the ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... found how matters stood, he didn't lose much time in finding out that she was willing to be his wife, and a mother to his boy and girl. That she was, a patient loving one. Oh! it often sticks me like a knife, when I think how many times I fretted her with my foolishness and my idle ways, and how 'twas a long time before I'd call her "mother." Often, when my father would be going to chastise Richard and myself for our provoking doings, especially ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... in a vicarage overrun with district visitors and mothers' meetings. His father, a strong evangelical, objected to various forms of public amusement, and Charles, though loyal and affectionate to his parents, fretted to find no outlet for his energies. He made a few friends and devoured many books, but his chief delight was to get away from town to old west-country haunts. Nor was his life at Cambridge entirely happy. His excitability was great: his self-control was not ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... full of grace and modesty, her temperament extreme. A unique combination! And if the tie between them was not real and secure, why should he have yearned for her company that night after the scenes with Concepcion and Queen. Those women challenged him, discomposed him, fretted him, fought him, left his nerves raw. She soothed. Why should he not, in the French phrase, "put her among her own furniture?" In a proper artistic environment, an environment created by himself, of taste and moderate luxury, she would be exquisite. She would blossom. And she would ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... to be found. Mr. Povey had discovered one in the person of Mrs. Gilchrist, the second wife of a farmer at Malpas in Cheshire, whose first wife had been a sister of the late John Baines. All the credit of Mrs. Gilchrist was due to Samuel Povey. Mrs. Baines fretted seriously about Sophia, who had given no sign of life for a very long time. Mr. Povey went to Manchester and ascertained definitely from the relatives of Scales that nothing was known of the pair. He did not go to Manchester especially ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... and fretted and swerved in their impatience; one or two overcontumacious bolted incontinently, others put their heads between their knees in the endeavor to draw their riders over their withers; Wild Geranium reared straight ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... show that I understood my rare Barbara of the steady vision. But all the same I fretted at having to start off at a moment's notice for anywhere—perhaps Havre, perhaps Marseilles, perhaps Singapore with its horrible damp climate, which wouldn't suit me—anywhere that tough and discomfort-loving Jaffery might choose to ordain. And I ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... looked when the beaked Viking ships nosed along the fretted shores of Rhode Island, when Columbus took the sea in his high-pooped caravals, when the Pilgrims saw the rocks and naked boughs of the New England coast. So it had been for centuries, roamed by wild men who had perished from its face and left no ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... model the figure of the First Consul, of whom he was about to make a colossal statue. This great artist came often, in the hope of getting his model to stand in the proper attitude; but Bonaparte was so tired, disgusted, and fretted by the process, that he very seldom put himself in the required attitude, and then only for a short time. Bonaparte notwithstanding had the highest regard for Canova. Whenever he was announced the First Consul sent me to keep him company until he was at leisure to give him a sitting; but ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... and his father, who were going to the south of Europe. I went to various coasts of the Mediterranean. I saw nothing but what was external; of the hidden life of Catholics I knew nothing. England was in my thoughts solely, and the success of the liberal cause fretted me. The thought came upon me that deliverance is wrought not by the many but by the few, not by bodies but ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... and waited for the dawn. There in the flickering light were the old tapestries—the princess stepping into her boat, Diana ranging through the wood. Nothing was changed in the room or its furniture. But the Laura who had fretted or dreamed there; who had written her first letter to Molly Friedland from that table; who had dressed for her lover's eye before that rickety glass; who had been angry or sullen, or madly happy there—why, the Laura who now for the second time watched the spring dawn ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... disease which seems to increase with civilisation. In their instance the old adage of Aristotle, simile gaudet simili, was exemplified to the letter; and the union confirmed in each a mind which, originally impatient of authority, fretted itself against the frame of society, simply because that frame was the result of order. They were never happy except when they went up to the palisades, struck upon them with their lath-blades, and when some ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... the Pyms socially than he had been wont to see of anyone, old memories had been awakened. He hoped they would soon go to sleep again, for, in passing, they had taken some of the restfulness out of Rhodesia's far horizons, and fretted the flow of the strong, silent river, with a vague discontent. Sometimes between him and those far horizons there was a face now—sometimes a voice—sometimes just a dim presence—the voice and the ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... his gay neighbours a thought; his head was full of plans for the improvement of the place, and it fretted him a little that on every hand he found himself unable to carry out his wishes for the want of ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... she said. "I cannot care for this place. I should have had a better chance of taking to it kindly if my grandfather had let me go home for a little while. Everything is an effort here." And it is to be feared that she gave way again, and fretted in a manner that Madame Fournier would have grieved to see. But there was no help for it; her heart was ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... carrying the war into the enemy's camp; for if the "young girl" has interfered with the freedom of the artist in France, what has she done in England and America? "What are they doing here?" cried Goethe once, teased and fretted by the presence of this restricting influence. "Why don't they ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... waved a little heartless wave which dropped in the middle as if a string were broken. But the shining hair blew out, as a waft of wind from the Bennan fretted a moving patch across ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... gloriously. The sun in far-splashing splendor slanted from peak to peak, painting purple shadows on the snow and warming the boles of the tall trees till they shone like fretted gold. The jays cried out as if in exultation of the ending of the tempest, and the small stream sang over its icy pebbles with resolute cheer. It was a land to fill a poet with awe and ecstatic praise—a radiant, imperial, and merciless ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... decisive result of the experiment, or explain away its failure. The least vivid fancy will have no difficulty in taking up the interrupted design, and by wholly enfeebling, or materially emboldening, the insignificant nature of Charles; and by according some half-dozen years of immunity to the 'fretted tenement' of Strafford's 'fiery soul',—contemplate then, for itself, the perfect realization of the scheme of 'making the prince the most absolute lord in Christendom.' That done,—let it pursue the same course with respect to Eliot's noble imaginings, or to young Vane's dreamy aspirings, ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... said Gillian, suddenly fretted, and with a sense of being hunted, 'I have plenty ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hell, and with the everlastingness of misery; but the point, the edge, and the poison of all these thoughts will still be galling, and dropping, and spewing out their stings into the sore, grieved, wounded, and fretted place, which is the conscience, though not the conscience only; for I may say of the souls in hell, that they all over are but one wound, one sore! Miseries as well as mercies sharpen and make quick the apprehensions ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... considerable fretted because he's broke off the long han' o' the clock; but I don't see much out o' the way about that. Ef a person thess remembers thet the long han' is the short han'—why, ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... armorial bearings of his house, sat Lord Greville, lost in silent contemplation. A chased goblet of wine with which he occasionally moistened his lips, stood on a table beside him, on which an elegantly-fretted silver lamp was burning; and while it only emitted sufficient light to render the gloom of the spacious chamber still more apparent, it threw a strong glare upon his expressive countenance and noble figure, and rendered conspicuous that richness of attire which the ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... the excuses for Dorothy's vacant place at table which Mrs. Hanway-Harley offered; for all that he read the reason of her absence, and his pride fretted under it ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... vanishing at the same time, accompanied by half the linen and poultry of the neighbourhood, were never heard of in our parts again; whilst the poor girl whom he had seduced and abandoned, with sense enough to feel her misery, although hardly sufficient to be responsible for the sin, fretted, moaned, and pined—losing, she hardly knew how, the half-unconscious light-heartedness which had almost seemed a compensation for her deficiency of intellect, and with that light-heartedness losing also her bodily strength, ...
— Jesse Cliffe • Mary Russell Mitford
... carelessness in losing sight of Jessie on that fatal day. No single creature attached a shadow of blame to her; on the contrary, it was the dearest wish of all to try to console her and assure her of her innocence in that respect. But it was of no avail. Her unceasing grief fretted away her strength, and six months later she was borne to St. Mungo's ancient burying ground to ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... heard a footfall near the cave, dreading lest it should prove to be that of our executioner. But as time dragged heavily on we ceased to feel this alarm, and began to experience such a deep, irrepressible longing for freedom that we chafed and fretted in our confinement like tigers. Then a feeling of despair came over us, and we actually longed for the time when the savages would take us forth to die. But these changes took place very gradually, and were mingled ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... giant Himalayas towered into the still clear air, the guardian barriers of an unknown land. The fretted pinnacles and tremendous ridges, clothed in their pure white mantle of everlasting snow, made a magnificent contrast to the dark, misty, wooded masses formed by the lower ranges of hills. In the early ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... Enna, or occasionally the older members of the family, yet it was an unusually happy winter to her, for Rose Allison's love and uniform kindness shed sunshine on her path. She had learned to yield readily to others, and when fretted or saddened by unjust or unkind treatment, a few moments alone with her precious Bible and her loved Saviour made all right again, and she would come from those sweet communings looking as serenely happy as if she had never known an annoyance. She was a wonder to all ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... 'The woman fretted for company,' said Simon, 'and vowed she was in fear of the Scots, so I even let her have her way and go down to ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... envy solid folk Who sit of evenings by the fire, After their work and doze and smoke, And are not fretted by desire. ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis
... eighteen years, confident that ere he died, a just and merciful God would give him this for which he lived and waited. Yet now that the season was at hand; now upon the very eve of that for which he had so long been patient, a frenzy of impatience fretted him. ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... but what an unquestionable fact, is the wayward irritability of some of the finest geniuses, which is often weak to effeminacy, and capricious to childishness! while minds of a less delicate texture are not frayed and fretted by casual frictions; and plain sense with a coarser grain, is sufficient to keep down these aberrations of their feelings. How mortifying is ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... thought and called it "lovely." Often by the side of the stream there was no footing at all, and the girls picked their way over the stones, large and small, wet and dry, which strewed its bed; against which the water foamed, and fumed, and fretted, as if in great impatience. It was ticklish work getting along over these stones; now tottering on an unsteady one, now slipping on a wet one and every now and then making huge leaps from rock to rock, which there was no other method ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... current was now in their favor and there was no more than a half mile to traverse under stress of furious exertion. The heavy canoe crashed through obstacles which had delayed the upward journey and they knew where to avoid the worst of the shoals. What fretted them was the fear that Blackbeard might have buried the sea-chest and descended the creek while they were engaged in this wild-goose chase. But this seemed unlikely and, moreover, old Trimble Rogers was the man to nose ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... I lived in this little world; it was dull and humdrum. The girls looked at the hill in wistful longing, and the boys fretted, and haunted Alexandria. Alexandria was "town,"—a straggling, lazy village of houses, churches, and shops, and an aristocracy of Toms, Dicks, and Captains. Cuddled on the hill to the north was the village of the colored folks, who lived in three or four room unpainted cottages, some ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... go. If the truth must be told, he fretted a little against the restraints of even such a moderate Puritan household as that of his father's. It was a considerable weariness to Anthony to kneel in the hall on a fresh morning while his father read, even though with fervour and sincerity, ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... that turned earth and air into one white tornado; but he could not see twice the length of his own arm, and we prevailed on him to come back. On the third night, the wind fell like a thing that had fretted out its strength. Morning revealed an ocean of billowy drifts, crusted over by the frozen sleet and reflecting a white dazzle that made one's eyes blink. Great icicles hung from the naked branches of the sheeted pines and snow was wreathed in fantastic ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... world this gospel was preached, there also, this that he had done should be told for a memorial of him!' How little he understood when he went back to his rural lodging that night, that he had written his name high up on the tablet of the world's memory, to be legible for ever. Why, men have fretted their whole lives away to win what this man won, and knew nothing of—one line in the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... It wasn't worth while worrying you about it, especially as we could not afford to go into mourning. Your step-mother fretted about that dreadfully, poor little woman; as if it could matter to her, when she had never seen the man in her life. She said if one had a baronet in one's family one ought to go into mourning for him. I can't understand the passion some women have for mourning. They are eager to smother ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... from Idumean palm, What ambergris, what sacerdotal wine, What Arab myrrh, what spikenard, would be thine, If I could swathe thy memory in such balm! Oh, for wrecked gold, from depths for ever calm, To fashion for thy name a fretted shrine; Oh, for strange gems, still locked in virgin mine, To stud the pyx, where thought would bring sweet psalm! I have but this small rosary of rhyme,— No rubies but heart's drops, no pearls but tears, To lay upon the altar of thy name, O Mimma Bella;—on ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... was the express image of his religious belief. The secret of his character and of his actions lay in perfect humility and an absolute faith. Events did not discompose him, because they were sent by One who best knew his own purposes. He was not fretted by the folly of others, or irritated by their hostility, because he regarded the humblest or the worst of mankind as objects, equally with himself, of the divine love and care. On all other points he examined himself so closely ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... the dim lattice o'er the floor of stone, And the high fretted roof and saints that there O'er Gothic windows knelt in pictured prayer. . . . The waving banner and the clapping door, The rustling tapestry and the echoing floor; The long dim shadows of surrounding trees, The flapping bats, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... work had left her. Bernardine fretted. She sat in the old bookshop, her pen unused, her paper uncovered. She was ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... not the least interesting, points of likeness in unlikeness have been left to the last. The contrasts between the hawthorn and nightingale of Provence, her "winds heavy with the rose," and the grey firths, the ice- and foam-fretted skerries of Iceland; between the remains of Roman luxury pushed to more than Roman effeminacy in the one, and the rough Germanic virtue exasperated to sheer ferocity in the other,—are almost too glaring ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... among his new-born blisses,— A six years' darling of a pygmy size! See, where mid work of his own hand he lies, Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses, With light upon him from his father's eyes! See, at his feet, some little plan or chart, Some fragment from his dream of human life, Shaped by himself with newly learned art,— ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... the spectacle of a powerful British army laying down their arms as coolly as if he had merely fought a successful skirmish, or repelled a dangerous raid. He had that rare gift, the attribute of the strongest minds, of leaving the past to take care of itself. He never fretted over what could not be undone, nor dallied among pleasant memories while aught still remained to do. He wrote to Congress in words of quiet congratulation, through which pierced the devout and solemn sense of the great deed accomplished, ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... new washstand with the elegant fittings, that had all made their appearance with her. Levin smiled at his own thoughts, and shook his head disapprovingly at those thoughts; a feeling akin to remorse fretted him. There was something shameful, effeminate, Capuan, as he called it to himself, in his present mode of life. "It's not right to go on like this," he thought. "It'll soon be three months, and I'm doing next to nothing. Today, almost for the ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... do when they look at color. He made a knot-hole of his fingers and squinted through. Next he retreated across the room and stood with his legs apart in the very attitude of wisdom. He cast a stern eye upon the picture and gravely tapped his chin. At last when the artist was fretted to an extremity, F—— came forward and so cordially praised the picture that the artist, being now warmed and comforted, presently excused himself in a high excitement and rushed away to start another picture while the pleasant spell was ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... quite close to her, only a few yards away—a solid square, the orderly ranks suggesting training and discipline that she had not looked for. Not a head turned in her direction as they went by and the pace was not slackened. Fretted by the proximity of the galloping horses, her own horse reared impatiently, but Diana pulled him in, turning in her saddle to watch the Arabs pass, her breath coming quick ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... through the forest, artificial townsfolk applaud. Yet a nesting-tree, a thousand leagues from city discords, gives forth better music with deeper meaning and higher message—albeit the songster sings only from love of song. The fretted folk of the great cities cannot understand the witching fascinations of a wild life in a wild, free, tameless land, where God's own hand ministers to eye and ear. To fare sumptuously, to dress with the faultless distinction that marks wealth, to see and above all to ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... his position. Gage had little money for secret service, it is true, and the provincials were stubborn foes whose true measure Burgoyne had not yet taken,[84] but he saw how poorly Gage had provided against the calamities which had come upon him. Burgoyne doubted the outcome, and fretted ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French |
