"Fretted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... head. But he spoke nothing. His lips and brows were rigid in apparent calculation. Wilfrid kept his position for a minute or so; and then, a little piqued, he moved about. He had inherited the antipathy to the discussion of the money question, and fretted to find ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... has looked for them. I cannot tell you how many Montfort ladies, in all these generations, have fretted their nerves and worn out their finger-nails, hunting for this Lost Casket. I specially requested your Aunt Faith, Margaret, not to mention it to you or your cousins when you were here together. I had seen so many vain searches, and heard of so many heart-burnings, ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... candles and lamps; and then and not until then, could we see the slope and contour of the roof. A few bats were flitting about, disturbed for the first time. To the left, a vast white pillar extended from floor to roof. It was pure white and about five feet in diameter all the way up. It was fluted, fretted, draped and spangled. I never in my life saw anything more chaste and lovely. I thought of the countless ages it must have taken to form that monument: of the streams of clear water that had fallen and ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... perhaps expected to hear that he fretted and petted very much after he was first blind, but really it was not so; and though occasionally he may have grumbled a little, it was only when he was slightly peevish, as children will sometimes be, and I believe he would have found something to grumble ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... plain enough: the mountain did not want to be clad. The heather fretted over this until it grew green again, and then it started forward. "Fresh ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... had been captured by officers, and would be taken back to New York and thrust into the Tombs to await the action of the grand jury, based on the recovery or death of Mr. Cameron. This would be fatal to all his hopes. While the boy pondered and fretted over the matter, the long roll of a drum came around a cliff-corner, and then a file of ragged soldiers, or what seemed to be such, showed in the moonlight, with a diminutive drummer-boy, pounding for dear life, ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... learned something from him. Unlike Turgenev, both Chekhov and Andreev study mental disease. Their best characters are abnormal; they have some fatal taint in the mind which turns this goodly frame, the earth, into a sterile promontory; this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, into a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. Neither Chekhov nor Andreev have attempted to lift that black pall of despair ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... gone off somewhere. It was too early for the ladies. Ray fretted and worried, wondering what this new move could portend, when he heard a row in the back-yard; and in came Hogan, ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... once more and once more, and yet once more again, but it is no use. It is utterly impossible to cuddle down and obey orders and go to sleep like a brave soldier-man. The more you try it the more squirmy and itchy you feel; for at such a time one is usually fretted by the repeated ticklings of some bothersome fly. He will sneak along the edge of the pillow and rub his hands together in front of him, and then he's ready. Down he swoops upon your nose, hitting it precisely in the same ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott
... lay in the plain, here and there broken by clearings or open glades; in one or two places could be seen the roofs of villages, with the tower of a church rising gravely among trees. On the horizon ran a blue line of downs, pure and fine above the fretted gold of the forest. The air was very still, with a fresh sparkle in it, and the sun shone bright in a cloudless heaven; it was a day when the heaviest heart grows light, and when it seems the bravest thing that can be designed to ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... who always scratched the enemy's skin. The painter knew more about fencing than art. He was a champion with various weapons; he could box, and was even skilled in the favorite blows of the prize fighters of the slums. "Useless as a drone, and as dangerous, too," fretted his father. And yet in the back of his troubled mind fluttered an irresistible satisfaction—an animal pride in the thought that this ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... foliage of the trees hung quite motionless, and the fans which were plied unceasingly made the only possible approach to a breeze. Everything was so still that the voice of the river was distinctly audible as it fretted and surged along its rocky bed, distant at least a mile. The scene was full of the dim, mysterious look which makes summer starlight so fascinating. White dresses, shadowy faces, suggestive outlines of form ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... miserable for the rest of the term. It was unsatisfactory to the Fifth, who felt the luck was against them, and that the cloud overhead seemed to have stuck there for good. It was unsatisfactory to Stephen, who raged and fretted twenty times a day on his brother's behalf, and got no nearer putting him right than when he began. And undoubtedly it must have been unsatisfactory to Oliver, a banished man, forgetting almost the use of tongue and ears, and, except his brother, not being ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... ago was I weary of voices Whose music my heart could not win; Long ago was I weary of noises That fretted my soul with their din; Long ago was I weary of places Where I met but the human ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... the Berkeleyan Idealism. A universe of inane mathematical points, attracting and repelling each other, must appear to the ordinary mind a sorry substitute for the firm-set earth, and the majestically-fretted vault of heaven, with its planets, stars, and galaxies. It takes a special education to reconcile any one to this theory. Even if it were everything that a scientific hypothesis should be, the previously established modes of speech would be a permanent ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... his soul be compared? From those first uncertainties, those faltering elations, the Vision, dimly discerned as yet, lures him with tremulous ecstasies to eternise the fleeting, and in columned enclosure and fretted canopy to uprear an image which he can control of the arch of heaven and the unsustained architecture of the stars. These out-reach his mortal grasp, outwearying his scrutiny, blinding his intelligence; but, master of the image, his soul knows again by reflection ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... again: could he tell her, please, why Mr. Smith wrote so seldom to Tilly? Poor Tilly was unhappy at his long silences—fretted over them in bed ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... with bees, the little Strelka brook bubbled and fretted like a tea-kettle, and the sun rose gloriously; its rays fell between the leaves of the lime-tree, and threw patches of light on the strange face of one of the strangest and most incomprehensible men ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... harmony, the unconscious skill of the modelling hand—galls us and puts us to shame by his daily errors; the long-lost mother, whose face we begin to see in the glass as our own wrinkles come, once fretted our young souls with her anxious ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... more'n we 'zackly keered about. Might hev spared a few an' got along jest ez well, 'cordin' ter my notion. Den de ole woman's been kinder peaked this summer, an' some two or free ob de babies hez been right poorly, an' Sal—wal, she got a leettle fretted, kase yer know we both wuks purty hard an' don't seem ter git ahead a morsel. So she got her back up, an' sez she ter me dis mornin': 'Berry,' sez she, 'I ain't a gwine ter go near cousin Nimbus', I ain't, kase ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... 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
... nurse had 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 on this errand. About ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... least of it, annoying, and not conducive to the tranquillity of his mind. A thousand awkward possibilities suggested themselves at once to his brain, and as he carried a somewhat excitable disposition under his heavy and phlegmatic exterior, he fumed and fretted himself for the next half hour into an impatience which only found vent in the prosaic and everyday performance of dressing himself. Ah!—if those who consider a Prime Minister great and exalted, could ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... came to St. Cloud to 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 Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... monotonous custom of doing everything by clockwork being a tedious concomitant of old age. Maud could not calculate on his absence at any particular hour of the day unless he were on duty, and the bare notion that she should wish thus to calculate fretted and chafed her beyond measure. It was a relief to hear the door-bell once more, and prepare to confront the worst. A London servant never betrays astonishment, nor indeed any emotion whatever, beyond a shade of dignified and forbearing ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... floe being soiled and streaked with rust-coloured Tantramar mud. But under the transfiguring touch of the moon the unsightly levels changed to plains of infinite mystery—expanses of shattered, white granite, as it were, fretted and scrawled with blackness—reaches of loneliness older than time. So well is the mask of eternity assumed by the mutable moonlight and ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... suspense dragged at Duane's spirit. Like a leashed hound with a keen scent in his face Duane wanted to leap forth when he was bound. He almost fretted. Something called to him over the bold, wild brow of Mount Ord. But while Fletcher stayed in Ord waiting for Knell and Poggin, or for orders, Duane knew his game ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... inimitable pages of the "Presbytere," he devoured books, all sorts of books,—indeed, all the books he could get hold of in his uncle's well-stocked library. And many an hour of his sunny boyhood did he pass at the window in the house where he was born, gazing dreamily at the mullions, arches, and fretted work of the old Cathedral, or at the distant flight of the swallows, while in his mind he dwelt upon some brilliant saillie of Montaigne or Rabelais. His marked fondness for sketching showed itself in numerous and picturesque outlines, all of which bore the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... He fretted, pished, and pshawed. "Very good," I thought; "you may fume and fidget as you please: but this is the best plan to pursue with you, I am certain. I like you more than I can say; but I'll not sink into a bathos of sentiment: ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... glass, rare porcelains, medals, rough metal work, manuscript, a scroll of music, a pot of growing flowers, and—and—(this seemed oddest of all) a row of electric buttons, which Mr. Gryce no sooner touched than the light which had been burning redly in the cage of fretted ironwork overhead changed in a twinkling to a greenish glare, filling the room with such ghastly tints that Mr. Gryce sought in haste another button, and, pressing it, was glad to see a mild white radiance take the place of the ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... 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 the day that we ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... Meanwhile Murray fretted very much under the careless and indifferent management of Highley. The executors did not like to be troubled with his differences with his partner, and paid very little attention to him or his affairs. Since his mother's ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... immortality of the soul. But it was not so much a demand upon him—he had come to rely upon those demands, as it was—he had an odd, altogether absurd sense of its being a fear for him. She looked uncomfortable, fretted; and suddenly he was startled to see her searching eyes blurred by something that must ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... friends. Eric did not shrink now from such conversation as was pursued unchecked in his presence by nearly every one; nay, worse, it had lost its horror, and he was neither afraid nor ashamed to join in it himself. This plague-spot had fretted more deeply than any other into the heart of the school morality, and the least boys seemed the greatest proficients in unbaring without a blush, ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... was dead silence between these two, the strings of whose lives Fate was inextricably mixing in her fingers, palsied by age, and fretted by the constant tugging and straining of those other threads which, in moments of senile anger or childishness, she gets into such ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... Nuremberg. The clock had stopped, and the count, with whom the hours pass but slowly, fretted himself at not being able to count them; so I asked our attendant to bring hither a craftsman to put it in order, first sending her with a note to you asking for permission for him to come; as you were out your deputy signed ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... made Yussuf quite miserable, by telling him of the doctrine that all unbaptized infants went to eternal fire; and as he knew that I had lost a child very young, it weighed on his mind that perhaps I fretted about this, and so he said he could not refrain from trying to convince me that God was not so cruel and unjust as the Nazarene priests represented Him, and that all infants whatsoever, as well as all ignorant ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... enveloped in huge black shawls, carrying babies and leading older children by the hand. Cowboys, Indians and soldiers raced their horses through the swarming street with reckless skill. Automobiles honked and fretted. The street cars, bulging humanity at every door and window, strove in vain to relieve the situation. Several children and numerous pigs and chickens were run over. From the unpaved street to the cloudless sky rose a vast ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... Boeotian Enfield. We are plain people, and our talk is of corn, and cattle, and Waltham markets. Besides I was a little out of sorts when I received it. The fact is, I am involved in a case which has fretted me to death, and I have no reliance except on you to extricate me. I am sure you will give me your best legal advice, having no professional friend besides but Robinson and Talfourd, with neither of whom at present I am on the best ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... the deceitfulness of this present life,—the interpretation whereof I will declare to thee anon. The unicorn is the type of death, ever in eager pursuit to overtake the race of Adam. The pit is the world, full of all manner of ills and deadly snares. The tree, which was being continually fretted by the two mice, to which the man clung, is the course of every man's life, that spendeth and consuming itself hour by hour, day and night, and gradually draweth nigh its severance. The fourfold asps signify the structure ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... eyes. Ann, who saw how hard this was for him, found also that to attempt to check or distract him was even worse. When, sitting in her father's room, which was on the other side of the wall, she heard his fretted, hurried pacing feet, her face lost its dimpled cheerfulness. She wondered if her mother would not have discovered some way of clearing the black cloud distracting his brain. Nothing would induce him to go down to the boarders' dining-room for his meals, ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... And in chastest beauty joyest, Forms most delicate, pure, and clear, Frost-caught star-beams, fallen sheer In the night, and woven here In jewel-fretted tapestries. ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... to be the case) our skipper succeeded in getting to land, he would be certain to report all the crew that were not in his boat as drowned—as, in fact, they all were except myself. I fumed and fretted to reach land, but that was all I could do, and when at last we got to Valparaiso, I lost no time in sending ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... on the parapet of the bridge, and swung my feet over the water that frothed and fretted at the central pier below. Above the bridge the stream broadened into a cress-bespangled pool, over which the sapphire dragon-flies hovered, and its earlier course was hidden by the big oak trees that bent towards each other from either bank. Through their speckled ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... at the castle," said Thal miserably. "The man Derec, from Walden, had thrown a bomb at you. You seemed to be dead. But Don Loris was not sure. He fretted, as he does. He wished to send someone to make sure. The Lady Fani said; 'I will make sure!' She called me to her and said, 'Thal, will you fight for me?' And there was Don Loris suddenly nodding beside her. So I said, 'Yes, my Lady Fani.' Then she said; 'Thank you. ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... with a fine face, and the serenest eyes I ever met. One of the earlier comers had often spoken of a friend who had remained behind, that those apparently worse wounded than himself might reach a shelter first. It seemed a David and Jonathan sort of friendship. The man fretted for his mate, and was never tired of praising John, his courage, sobriety, self-denial, and unfailing kindliness of heart—always winding up with—"He's an out-and-out fine feller, ma'am; you see if ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... have been deeper than in the south. The company at Bath, that wanted to attend the Queen's birth-day, were strangely incommoded: many carriages of persons, who got, in their way to town from Bath, as far as Marlborough, after strange embarrassments, here met with a ne plus ultra. The ladies fretted, and offered large rewards to labourers, if they would shovel them a track to London; but the relentless heaps of snow were too bulky to be removed; and so the 18th passed over, leaving the company in very uncomfortable circumstances at the ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... mitres moving slowly across the road followed by the Grand Dukes and the Emperor, the clear voices of the choir cutting through the frosty air, the ladies of the Court standing near the window and crossing themselves as the Czar stood motionless beneath the gilded and fretted canopy,—I could have recalled it all ... but I swore profanely and declared emphatically that ALL RELIGION WAS A COBWEB AND A SNARE to emancipated minds.... I pretended to get violently MAD about it and told him ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... the harbour, and that no one was anywhere about the 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 ...
— A Terrible Coward • George Manville Fenn
... silent heroism goes unpraised in the world, while we stand on the highways, and prate of our discrimination, our quick insight! Jack might be praised for his self-denial, but the higher appreciation was withheld. Even Sylvie was fretted at times, because he would get interested in all things pertaining ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... popular idol chose to tell them, but they withheld their judgment. Unluckily these rumours reached Crawley's ears; some friendly ass "thought he ought to know," as is always the case when anything unpleasant is said, and it fretted and annoyed ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... amused at his partner's mishap; on the contrary, he was more than a little concerned by it, but fatigue had rendered him absurdly hysterical, and the constant friction of mental, spiritual, and physical contact with Tom had fretted his soul as that sawdust inside his clothes had fretted his body. "He, he! Ho, ho!" he chortled. "You don't shove. Oh no! All the same, whenever I stop pullin' ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... devastation of Kansas by outlaws and guerrillas. Commenting upon the fact that a company of armed slave owners had crossed the borders at night, and destroyed the homes of a group of Northern settlers, Sumner said: "Border incursions, which in barbarous lands fretted and harried an exposed people, are here renewed, with this peculiarity, that our border robbers do not simply levy blackmail and drive off a few cattle, they do not seize a few persons and sweep them away into captivity, ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... an old and venerable cathedral, where the dim yellow light fell with a rich but solemn glow upon the fretted capitals, or the grotesque tracings of the oaken carvings, lighting up the fading gildings of the stately monuments, and tinting the varied hues of time-worn banners. The mellow notes of a deep organ filled the air, and seemed to attune the sense to all ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... shot up above the horizon. The world already knew it as The Stars and Bars. And, beside it, from its pointed lance, whipped and snapped and fretted another flag—square, red, crossed by a blue saltier edged with white on which glittered ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... here in twilight? Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows, Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish, Baring teeth that leer like skulls' tongues wicked? Stroke on stroke of pain,—but what slow panic, Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets? Ever from their hair and through their hand palms Misery swelters. Surely we have perished Sleeping, and walk hell; ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... little. "They're like wet wood this evening," he would say; "they won't kindle at all!" And then he would look round to see what kind of people they were; and sometimes he would find them laughing at the wrong time, when they ought not to have laughed, and that vexed him; and he fretted, and was an unhappy man, and at last fretted himself into ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... If the delay fretted the Maid's spirit, she never spoke with anger or impatience; much of her time was spent in a little chapel in the crypt of the church at Vaucouleurs, where stood an image of Our Lady, before which she would kneel sometimes for hours ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... involuntary fault If Memory to these no trophies raise, Where thro' the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault The pealing anthem swells ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... my gudesire 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 ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... fretted and fumed at the delay, he knew it would not be best to insist on having his way. Soon, however, they were in the saddle again ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton
... She came up yesterday; and we have taken Lodgings for two months in the Regent's Park. And I positively stay behind here in the old Place on purpose to write to you in the same condition you knew me in and I you! I believe there are new Channels fretted in my Cheeks with many unmanly Tears since then, 'remembering the Days that are no more,' in which you two are so mixt up. Well, well; I have no news to tell you. Public Matters you know I don't meddle with; and I have seen scarce any Friends even while in London here. Carlyle but once; ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... saucy Kate. I would once have vowed that thou wouldst fear not to speak aloud every thought of thy heart. But love changes all, I ween, and makes sad cowards of the boldest of us. And so thou didst wait till he declared his love, and fretted out thy ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the island, and sometimes, in bad weather, will sweep right over the coral and pour through the shallow channel between Tugulu and Pingelap; and then the calm, placid waters of the lagoon will be fretted and disturbed until fine weather comes again. But bad weather is a rare event in those seas, and usually the lagoon of Pingelap is as smooth as a sheet of glass. And all day long you may see children ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... working out its way Fretted the pigmy body to decay, And o'er informed the tenement ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... outwardly, and she drew her hand away. Allison remembered the long, happy hours they had spent together before Isabel came into his life. Now that she was gone, the old comradeship had returned, the sweeter because of long absence. Rose had never fretted nor annoyed him; she seemed always ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... makes the fearless isles so free! And 'tis a strange and noble pile, Pillared into many an aisle: Every pillar fair to see, Marble—jasper—and porphyry— The Church of St. Mark—which stands hard by With fretted pinnacles on high, And Cupola and minaret; More like the mosque of orient lands, Than the fanes wherein we pray, And Mary's ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... principally to the unusual mildness of the weather. This impeded movement in all quarters, by preventing the formation of ice and of the usual hard snow surface, which made winter the most favorable season for land transportation. Chauncey at Sackett's Harbor chafed and fretted over the detention of the stores and guns for his new ships then building, upon which he was reckoning for control of the lake. "The roads are dreadful," he wrote on February 24, "and if the present mild weather continues we shall experience difficulty." A week later, ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... himself? It is hardly necessary to declare that from that moment he resolved that he would abide by no such order. Jolliffe on the next morning informed the squire that the order had been broken, and the squire fretted and fumed, wishing that Jolliffe were well buried under the mountain in question. "If they all is to do as they like," said Jolliffe, "then nobody won't care for nobody." The squire understood than an order if given must be obeyed, and therefore, with many inner groanings of the spirit, ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... the streets and shaded lanes in the dim green coolness of evening, lounged in the orchard hammock, drifted down the little river, past still pools, reed-bordered, under vaulting sycamores, over hurrying reaches fretted with pebbles, forgot everything except one another and their fancies and made, as youth must, love. That was the programme complete, except for the talk, the fascinating, never-ending talk. Volumes on volumes of ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... monarch been forced to meet such conditions, but in all the mighty line of Pharaohs no feebler king than Meneptah could have faced them. In treating with the issue he had fretted and fumed, promised and retracted, temporized with the Hebrew mystic or stormed at him, hesitated and resolved, and reconsidered and deferred while his realm descended into the depths of ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... for some time gazing out, saw a late, lopsided moon swim into the sky and by its light the yard below develop a beauty of glistening leaves and fretted shadows. The windows of the houses beyond the fence shone bright, glazed with a pallid luster. Even Mrs. Meeker's stable, wherein she kept her horse and cart, the one relic saved from better days, stood out darkly picturesque amid the frosted silver ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... god's fantasy, ere he came His serious worlds and suns to frame; Such an immortal passion Quiver'd among the slim hewn stone. And in the nights it seemed a jar Cut in the substance of a star, Wherein a wine, that will be poured Some time for feasting Heaven, was stored. But within this fretted shell, The wonder of Love made visible, The King a private gentle mood There placed, of pleasant quietude. For right amidst there was a court, Where always musked silences Listened to water and to trees; And herbage of all fragrant ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... hear the last of that blunder if she gets hold of it," he fretted. "Say, Polly, don't tell—her ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... of fretted stone and admirably carved wood emanations seemed to rise as from the long-forgotten past—tons of incense burnt hundreds of years ago, and millions of closely packed supplicants, rich and poor, following each other in secula ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... Mansouri's return then became extreme. In vain he fretted, fumed, and cried "Allah! Allah!" It did not make the slave retum a minute the sooner, who, good man, would have gone quietly to rest had he not been called upon to appear ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... I "fretted"—as the servants expressed it—to such an extent as to affect my health; and I fancy it was because my father's attention was called to the fact that I was fast fading after the mother and sister whose death (and my own loneliness) I bewailed, that he roused himself from ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... an Exhalation, with the sound Of Dulcet Symphonies and voices sweet, Built like a Temple, where Pilasters round Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid With Golden Architrave; nor did there want Cornice or Freeze, with bossy Sculptures grav'n, The Roof was fretted Gold. Not Babilon, Nor great Alcairo such magnificence Equal'd in all thir glories, to inshrine Belus or Serapis thir Gods, or seat 720 Thir Kings, when Aegypt with Assyria strove In wealth and luxurie. Th' ascending pile Stood fixt her stately highth, and strait the ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... evident determination of the British Government speedily to terminate the affair, one way or the other, threw Napoleon into a paroxysm of passion; and at the diplomatic reception of May 1st, from which Lord Whitworth discreetly absented himself, he vehemently inveighed against its conduct. Fretted by the absence of our ambassador, for whom this sally had been intended, he returned to St. Cloud, and there dictated this curious ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... tell you. You see I was determined it should turn out that way. I said, what was the use of being lame and being a burden to you unless there was something meant by it. I'd have fretted dreadfully if I hadn't felt that there was something to come out of it. And it has come.... Peter, you'd rather I'd saved you for this than anything that might ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... Germanica"; he was daily expecting to hear whether or not the Academy had decided to immortalise his name by calling the plant Chenopodium Wennerstroemianium. At his wife's death-bed he was absentminded, almost unkind, for he had just received an answer in the affirmative, and he fretted because neither he nor his wife could enjoy the great news. She thought only of heaven and her children. He could not help realising that to talk to her now of a calyx with curved hairs would be the height of absurdity; but, he justified himself, it was not so much a question of a calyx ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... he experienced this sort of feeling before. He knew that he hated it, even while his whole spirit sang and soared in the new ecstasy. A moment ago he had been a tired man, fretted because his wife forgot to meet him; now there was something new in the world. And rapidly all the world became only a background, only a setting, for this extraordinary sensation. He sat up, after awhile, looked at the familiar porch, with the potted flowers, and Alix's boxes, where ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... skilful construction, the masonry in no part being more than seven inches thick. This spire is belted with three broad bands of panelled tracery, and there are eight pinnacles at its base, two on each corner of the tower. The ribs are fretted throughout the whole height with elegant crockets, thus imparting to the sky-line an appearance similar to the gusty spray on the borders of a rain-cloud. An admirer has said of it, "It seems as though it had drawn down the very angels to work ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... to find that they never appeared to lengthen. His interest in Dickie, he told himself, was purely impersonal. She told him of just the things he desired to hear most about. Kept him in touch with his world. Brought him news each day from the cannery; the business for which he hungered and fretted during each minute of his ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... what 'twere best to doe. Three Brains are too little agaynst one that is resolved to cheat. 'Tis noe Goode complayning to a Man; he will not see, even though unafflicted like Father, who cannot. Men's Minds run on greater Things, and soe they are fretted at domestic Appeals, and generallie give Judgment the wrong Way. Thus we founde it before, poor motherlesse Girls, to our Cost; and I reallie believe it was more in Kindnesse for us than himself, that ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... on to the reins in a perfect agony of doubt whether each moment would not be our last. I declare, on the faith of a traveler, it beat all the dangers I had hitherto encountered summed up together. Trees whirled by, waterfalls flashed upon my astonished eyes, streaks of sunshine fretted the gloom with a net-work of light that dazzled and confounded me. I could see nothing clearly. There was a horrible jumble in my mind of black rocks and blue eyes, pine forests and flaming red stockings, flying clouds and flying petticoats, the roar of torrents and the ringing voice of the maiden ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... classes, in Greece, and the brilliant, 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 on this important question the entire ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... impression past, the idea had made itself familiar to him. He had become composed enough to see such difficulties as it involved, and such consequences as it implied. These had fretted him with a passing trouble; for these he plainly discerned. As for the cruelty and the treachery of the thing he meditated doing—that consideration never crossed the limits of his mental view. His position toward the man whose life he had preserved was the position of a dog. ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... washed his hands at the 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 first time, ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... Milan Cathedral; the innumerable statues and fretted pinnacles show in dazzling relief against the intense blue sky. Through the open-work of the parapet is seen the vast Piazza, with its yellow toy tram-cars, and the small crawling figures which cast inordinately ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 12, 1891 • Various
... the hole, man,' Lucentio's very rude advice to Hortensio, will direct our attention to the variously shaped 'holes' which were made in the belly of all stringed instruments to let out the sound. On the lute, this hole was commonly a circular opening, not clearly cut out, but fretted in a circle of small holes with a star in the middle. But this was not the only way. A lute in South Kensington Museum has three round holes, placed in an oblique line, nearly at the bottom of the instrument.[14] ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... Bretagne, with the green seas leaping up its fretted sides and lacing them with rushing white threads as they fell. How often had Carette and I sat watching that white lacery of the rocks and swum out through the tumbling green to see it closer still. Good times they were, and my thought shot through ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... agreed, nothing loath to enjoying one another's company. There is nothing like a day spent together in waiting for an event, to bring out the characteristics of individuals. Mrs. Wyndham fretted and talked, and fretted again. Joe grew silent, pale, and anxious as the morning passed, while Sybil and Ronald seemed to enjoy themselves extremely, and talked without ceasing. Outside the snow fell thick and fast as ever, and the drifts rose ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... how they might. But this time he seemed as if his only idea was to get back. Not that he said much about it. The most I ever heard him say was, 'Well, Buck, I don't care how soon I get into Lane & Baumann's office,' an' he only said that once when he was fretted at losing a day by missing a boat ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... brought her flowers and presents, as he still liked to do, she took them gently, and thanked him; but he noticed that she laid them aside and seldom looked at them again. The spirit seemed to have gone out of her. And in his own heart Sydney raged and fretted—for why, he said to himself, should she not be like other women?—why, if she had a grudge against him, should she not tell him so? She might reproach him as bitterly as she pleased; the storm would spend itself in time and break in sunshine; but this terrible ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Mose had not been drinking; that, at least, was not in the list of his peculiar vices. He appeared to be thoroughly frightened—if not, he was a most consummate actor. In the light of what I already knew, I was considerably puzzled by this fresh manifestation. The Colonel fretted and fumed up and down the veranda, muttering something about these fool niggers all being alike. He had bragged considerably about Mose's immunity in respect to ha'nts, and I think he was rather dashed at his favorite's falling-off. ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... palaces formed by the Senior United Service, Athenaeum, Travelers' and Carlton Clubs. The other side has a charming prospect over St. James's Park. In summer this is really lovely, for all ugly objects are obscured by the foliage, amid which glimpses are obtained of the pinnacles and fretted towers of the palace of Parliament on the one hand, and those of its venerable neighbor, the majestic abbey, on the other. It was here that Bunsen passed his London days, and the reader of his memoirs will remember frequent references to the charms of his house. It may ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... Is there 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
... out upon his brow, and red flecks came over his checks, but that was not his wont. Grim was silent and bit his lip. Helgi made no sign, and he said never a word. Hauskuld went off with Bergthora; she came into the room again, and fretted ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... in earnest, and in such a hurry to be off that she could hardly stand still to have her hair brushed, and thought there were a great many unnecessary buttons and strings on her clothes that day. Usually she lay late, got up slowly and fretted at every thing as little girls are apt to do when they have had too much sleep. She wasn't a rosy, stout Daisy; but had been ill, and had fallen into a way of thinking she couldn't do anything but lie about, reading fairy-tales, and ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... tends that way; but it did seem to me that the whirl of the great maelstrom left but few people in a condition to think, or to form well-considered opinions, or to meditate much upon anything. Yes, I know it,—"The mind is its own place," (nothing was ever better said), and it may be fretted and frittered away to nothing in country quiet, and it may be strong and calm and full in the city throng. . . . And more and more do I feel that this nature of mine is the deep ground-warrant for faith in God and immortality. ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... Poor Nate fretted in confinement, but not for his own sake. He simply ignored his surroundings, not deigning to complain, or scarcely to notice; but sought every opportunity to ask eagerly after the welfare of Lucy and her little family. He overwhelmed Mr. Barrington ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... with antics and grimaces, And, after scores of monkey faces, With what would seem a gracious stoop, Pass'd through the crown as through a hoop. The beasts, diverted with the thing, Did homage to him as their king. The fox alone the vote regretted, But yet in public never fretted. When he his compliments had paid To royalty, thus newly made, 'Great sire, I know a place,' said he, 'Where lies conceal'd a treasure, Which, by the right of royalty, Should bide your royal pleasure.' The king lack'd not an appetite ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... of one of my brother's old shipmates, as rose to be better off," said Mrs. Miller, "for she's fretted about a captain, and cried bitter to go to him when I put her to bed." Then the two returned to the little parlour, and talked long and earnestly about the child, about the necessity for Mrs. Miller's now employing the services of "a girl," and ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... went feeling, he knew not why, for a certain day, a quarter of a century before, when he unpacked a box of books and papers from England. Most of them were still in the Fort. The association of this man with these things fretted him. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Mara was fretted at this question. She supposed Moses had come to tell her of his engagement to Sally, and that this was a kind ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... wind-scattered clouds. Looking westward the dark river wound away to the sea, ringed here and there by the highly decorated bridges of light-toned granite peculiar to Maasau. Revonde, in the sunshine, shone in the colours of a moss-grown stone, gray and green, the twin ridges on which it stood fretted and embossed to their summits with the palaces and pinnacles, the spires and towers, and gardens of the spreading city. The Grand Duke, as they rounded the mounting road to the parade ground, looked back upon Revonde with a lingering ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... a small strip of land, her situation was full of perplexities which we little ones could not at all understand. To be fed like the ravens and clothed like the grass of the field seemed to me, for one, a perfectly natural thing, and I often wondered why my mother was so fretted and anxious. ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... to have it when he comes, for he may need it, and then you will tell the folk you put in to be kind to him, for he will be grieved, poor lad, and to tell him that I was cheerful and happy up to the end. Don't let him know that I ever fretted, ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... one the rangers stretched out, feet to the fire. Gale found that he could not sleep. His eyes were weary, but they would not stay shut; his body ached for rest, yet he could not lie still. The night was so somber, so gloomy, and the lava-encompassed arroyo full of shadows. The dark velvet sky, fretted with white fire, seemed to be close. There was an absolute silence, as of death. Nothing moved—nothing outside of Gale's body appeared to live. The Yaqui sat like an image carved out of lava. The others lay prone and quiet. Would another night see any of ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... Infante, waiting there in the sun-drenched close, came presently the canons, austere, aloof, majestic in their unhurried progress through the fretted cloisters, with flowing garments and hands tucked into their wide sleeves before them. In a semi-circle they arrayed themselves before him, and waited impassively to learn his will. Overhead the ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... life for some time when she was about as old as I. I should not like mine to be as hers. Her young man proved false to her because she wouldn't agree to meet him one night, and it grieved mother almost all her life. I wouldn't ha' fretted about him, if I'd been she. She would never name his name, but I know he was a wicked, cruel man; and I hate to ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... to measure our progress towards Kurtz by, but I lost it invariably before we got abreast. To keep the eyes so long on one thing was too much for human patience. The manager displayed a beautiful resignation. I fretted and fumed and took to arguing with myself whether or no I would talk openly with Kurtz; but before I could come to any conclusion it occurred to me that my speech or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility. ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... specimen of the fan-vault which is rarely to be found in Continental architecture, but is the peculiar glory of the English style. It can truly be said that stone seems, by the cunning labour of the chisel, to have been robbed of its weight and density and suspended aloft as if by magic, while the fretted roof is achieved with the wonderful minuteness and airy security of a cobweb. Similar roofs appear in Bath Abbey (the architect of which was Dr. Oliver King, a member of King's), in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, in Henry VII's Chapel at Westminster, in Sherborne ...
— A Short Account of King's College Chapel • Walter Poole Littlechild
... confined in the yard, a pet lamb was given to one of the children, which the former soon discovered to be sharing a great portion of those caresses which he had been in the habit of receiving. This circumstance produced so great an effect on the poor animal, that he refused to eat, and fretted till he became extremely unwell. Thinking that exercise might be of use to him, he was let loose. No sooner was this done, than the dog watched his opportunity, and seized the lamb in his mouth. He was seen conveying ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... our youth, and whom we may be said almost to remember in our after-years; he who made that famous soliloquy on life, who gave the advice to the players, who thought "this goodly frame, the earth, a steril promontory, and this brave o'er-hanging firmament, the air, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours;" whom "man delighted not, nor woman neither;" he who talked with the grave-diggers, and moralised on Yorick's skull; the school-fellow of ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... darling, "I was always thinking how to tell you and what to do for the best. And sometimes I thought you ought to know it directly, and sometimes I thought you ought not to know it and keep it from my cousin John; and I could not tell what to do, and I fretted ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... catch the rogue, Messer Filippo was still very wroth, and inly fumed and fretted, being unable to make out aught from what the rogue had said save that Biondello was set on by some one or another to flout him. And while thus he vexed his spirit, up came Biondello; whom he no sooner espied than he made for ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... his lord's body and cast it back to pierce the foe who had sorely hit his lord. An armed man came to the death-stricken leader of the English to rob him of his jewels and his warrior's gear and fretted sword of fame. The dying man struck ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... corner in which he used to sleep, and there was the same iron bedstead, with a fever-fretted child lying upon it. He thought of the nights when he had cried himself to sleep, and of the mornings when he lay there weaving his fancies while a spider high above the window was spinning his web. There was the same old ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... doing with Tom Wilkins?" said Slade, in a fretted tone of voice. "He doesn't seem very choice ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur |
