"Pestered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... possible for my friends and myself to move into another row? We are being pestered with a running commentary by that stout clergyman ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... of two centuries have passed away since Antoine Galland first turned some of the tales into French, and got stigmatised as a forger for his pains. Never was there such a sensation as when he printed his translations. For weeks he had been pestered by troops of roysterers rousing him out of bed, and refusing to go until the shivering Professor recited one of the Arab stories to the crowd under his window. Nor has the interest in them in any way abated. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... conscience, and Mrs. Crowl had never made application for their remission, though she often slapped her children in vexation instead. They were used to slapping, and when nobody else slapped them they slapped one another. They were bright, ill-mannered brats, who pestered their parents and worried their teachers, and were as happy ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... companies were on shore in the island of Flores, some providing ballast for the ships, others filling water, and others refreshing themselves from the land with such things as they could procure either for money or by force. Owing to this, our ships were all in confusion, pestered, rummaging, and every thing out of order, very light for want of ballast; and what was most of all to their disadvantage, the half of the men in every ship was sick and unserviceable. For in the Revenge, there were ninety sick; in the Bonaventure, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... never again apply any little talents he may possess to such purpose: and I have said that I shall be happy to praise him whenever I find that he has abjured these objectionable topics." It was Sydney Smith who said of Jeffrey he would "damn the solar system—bad light—planets too distant—pestered with comets. Feeble contrivance—could make a better ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... young officer on horseback looked earnestly into the carriage, and recognized some faces that he had seen before; so he rode along by our side, and we pestered him with queries and observations, to which he responded more civilly than they deserved. He was on General McClellan's staff, and a gallant cavalier, high-booted, with a revolver in his belt, and mounted on a noble horse, which trotted hard and high ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... all the invitations were accepted, someone was sure to say: "You know, my dear, your mother was far the prettiest girl in Edinburgh. Oh, Christina, you were!..." It was true, too, a French artist who had come to Scotland to decorate Lord Rosebery's ballroom at Dalmeny had pestered Mrs. Melville to sit to him, and had painted a portrait of her which had been bought by the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Ellen had never had a clear idea of what the picture was like, for though she had often asked her mother, she had never ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... wits of that age could obtain from the public was so small, that they were under the necessity of eking out their incomes by levying contributions on the great. Every rich and goodnatured lord was pestered by authors with a mendicancy so importunate, and a flattery so abject, as may in our time seem incredible. The patron to whom a work was inscribed was expected to reward the writer with a purse of gold. The fee paid for ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I throwed him in there!" said Pete lightly. "That's the man who brought me the keys and pestered me to go away with him. Say, sheriff, better watch out! He told me he had a gun, and that he had ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... himself. He saw he would be all right when the tribe returned to the main island, and right enough where he was, if he kept by the lagoon, yet he had a mind to make things righter if he could. So he told the high chief he had once been in an isle that was pestered the same way, and the folk had found a ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... show me a few of them, but I have been pestered with them for years, and this year ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... the elements provoked occasional judgments in the shape of a "hoast" (cough), and the head of the house was then exhorted by his women folk to "change his feet" if he had happened to walk through a burn on his way home, and was pestered generally with sanitary precautions. It is right to add that the gudeman treated such advice with contempt, regarding it as suitable for the effeminacy of towns, but not seriously intended for Drumtochty. Sandy Stewart "napped" stones on the road in his shirt-sleeves, wet or fair, ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... to my country, in these days of war, I do what I can. Until finally flattened out by the War Office, I pestered them for such employment as a cripple might undertake. As an instance of what a paralytic was capable I quoted Couthon, member of the National Convention and the Committee of Public Safety. You can see ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... outraged. The truth is, the Poteets, and the Pringles, and the Hightowers of Hog Mountain had their own notions of what constituted Union men. They desired to stay in the United States on their own terms. If nobody pestered them, they ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... "I have been pestered to death by men who aspired to my hand, and my uncle declares there is no possibility of my finding peace ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... lid. A week ago she roamed the street, a draggle and a slut, A by-word of the Boulevard and everybody's butt; A week ago she haunted us, we heard her whining cry, We brushed aside the broken blooms she pestered us to buy; A week ago she had not where to rest her weary head . . . But now, oh, follow, follow on, for Marie ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... glaring to be indefinitely prolonged. But Thackeray was full of it; and we often feel that the characters in The Newcomes or Philip might legitimately complain that their talk and tale are being perpetually interrupted and pestered by people out of other books. Within his narrower limits, Trollope was a more strict and masterly realist than Thackeray, and even those who would call his personages "types" would admit that they are as vivid as characters. It was a bustling but a quiet world that he described: ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... stood watching the curious scene, and replying rather curtly to the eager salesmen, who pestered him perpetually to buy anything and everything—food, saddlery, pocket-knives, horse-shoes, fire-arms, and swords—he became conscious of a stir and flutter among the crowd. It presently became strangely ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... so much to say against it, that I was pestered into vowing I would go! Tell me not, Mr. Prendergast,—I should not mind giving up to you;' and she looked ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "Nora's been pestered by the cops, and she wants me to have them called off," said Bat. "And she's asked me to go out to Stanwick and see what ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... country there are private book clubs and societies that have won places of enviable distinction both here and abroad, and naturally among the foremost of these are the ones which have been pestered by "imitators." The following significant remarks are taken from the president's annual address to the members of an ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... importance to Adelle, as we shall shortly discover. Fate once more in the person of a feeble Clark was about to play her an unkind trick. For John, reduced to complete incompetence by his life and his habit of drink, pestered by the accumulating claims upon Clark's Field, had consented to an "arrangement" that certain capitalists had presented to him through their lawyers. They had urged him to sell to them all the remaining equity that he held in the property, giving a quitclaim deed for himself and his wife and ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... this subterfuge is unworthy of you. You know perfectly well why I distinguished you. Others pestered me with their attachments and nonsense, and you spared me that annoyance. In return, I did all in my power to show you the grateful friendship I thought you worthy of. But you have broken faith; you have violated the clear, though tacit understanding that subsisted ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... conversation, monstrously pretty, vastly little; ... hence your eminent shoe-maker, farriers, and undertakers.... It is to the same muddy source we owe the many falsehoods and absurdities we have been pestered with concerning Lisbon. Thence your extravagantly sublime figures: Lisbon is no more; can be seen no more, etc., ... with all the other prodigal effusions of bombast beyond that stretch of time or temper to enumerate. Ib. p. 22. See post, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... levied in his department on big affairs. Anybody would take Giroudeau for a fool at first sight, but he has just enough shrewdness to be an inscrutable old file. He is on picket duty; he sees that we are not pestered with hubbub, beginners wanting a job, or advertisements. No other paper has his ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... give ye the sense of a man, Mr. Sanborn," she said, "while He was a makin' on ye. If ye'd go to bed, now, instead o' snivelin' round here, you might be good for somethin' in the mornin', when there'll be plenty to do. Anyhow, I'm not goin' to be pestered by the sight on ye any longer," and Hannah banged the kitchen-door violently ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... without. I've been once before, so I know, Madam Doubtful. You'll see ever so many officials will ask to look at Miss Morley's ticket. Why? Because the place would get choked up with artists I suppose. And also they want to sell their own photos. You'll be pestered to buy post-cards outside ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... and credit could supply. She chose that famous one in which the best of monarchs is represented in a frock-coat with a fur collar, and breeches and silk stockings, simpering on a sofa from under his curly brown wig. She had him painted in a brooch and wore it—indeed she amused and somewhat pestered her acquaintance with her perpetual talk about his urbanity and beauty. Who knows! Perhaps the little woman thought she might play the part of ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fight," began Armitage sneeringly. He turned suddenly toward Yeasky. "I have been pestered and worried for a week now. I know I was shadowed in New York. Now that I 've a clue I am not going to ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... "stood to." We returned for a bathe and breakfast in the open, while the destroyers used to pass to and fro between Cape Helles and the Gulf of Saros, and a pearly haze brooded over Imbros. Then back to the trenches, which were always dusty and fly-pestered, to visit men always under fire, but full of bravery and patience. Diarrhoea and dysentery were already sending many of them from the Peninsula. The trenches were often noisome. Only in the evening, with Imbros growing fainter in the fading day and Samothrace rising ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... open plains we were more or less pestered with ticks of various sizes. These clung to the grass blades; but with no invincible preference for that habitat; trousers did them just as well. Then they ascended looking for openings. They ranged in size from little red ones as small as the ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... northern forest in summer is desperately hard work. The moss is ankle deep, the underbrush thick; fallen logs lie across each other in hopeless confusion, through and under and over which one must make his laborious way, stung and pestered by hordes of black flies and mosquitoes. So that, unless you have a strong instinct of direction, it is almost impossible to hold your course without a compass, or a bright sun, to ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... did not agree that it was freedom, when even here at Arranstoun he had been pestered to ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... I don't think you'll ever take a fortune out of Ophir. I bought a claim there the other day. The man pestered me, so I gave him five thousand for it, just to get rid of him. It's ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... sticks, was a pot, and soon the mistress was preparing supper. It was dark before we had settled for the night, which was so warm that sleeping under the trees was no hardship. Jabez covered the dying fire with damp litter, the smoke of which kept off the mosquitos, which pestered us dreadfully. ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... "he hasn't the look of a knave who might fear a trailing of constables at his heels; and yet—and yet his wits have him pestered about something that lies back ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... promise that. You don't know how Kutuzov is pestered since his appointment as Commander in Chief. He told me himself that all the Moscow ladies have conspired to give him ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... National and Solemn League, and particularly as this Union imbodys and units us in this land in the strickest conjunction and association with England, a land so deeply already involved in the breach of Covenant, and pestered with so many sectaries, errors and abominable practices, and joins us in issue and interest with these that are tollerators, maintainers and defenders of these errors, which the Word of God strictly prohibits, and our sacred Covenants plainly and expressly abjures. ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... and ambitious of fame; such as came not to the House with a malevolent spirit of contention, but with a preparation to consult on the public good, and rather to comply than to contest with Majesty: neither dare I find {28} that the House was weakened and pestered through the admission of too many YOUNG HEADS, as it hath been of LATTER times; which remembers me of the Recorder Martin's speech about the truth of our late Sovereign Lord King James, {29} when there were ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... de Grammont was provoked at so ill-timed a jest, more especially as it carried along with it some appearance of truth. "Mr. Matta," said he, "do you think it can be very agreeable for a man who plays with such ill-luck as the Count to be pestered with your insipid jests? For my part, I am so weary of the game, that I would desist immediately, if he was not so great a loser." Nothing is more dreaded by a losing gamester, than such a threat; and the Count, in a softened ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... people and Officer Sandy to listen to me," he thundered. "Because girls go to a college ain't no reason why they should be pestered" (his errors were truly elegant), "and next time I hear any such fool complaint there'll he some shiftin' of ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... but they were only fit for harness. I was so bothered every time I put my nose out of doors by applications from persons anxious to part with their property in horse-flesh, that I wished I had kept my intentions locked in my own breast. I was pestered for days about this business. There was an old Jew who came regularly to the house three times a-day to tell me of some other paragon that he had found. When he saw that it was really of no use, he then complained loudly that I had wasted his precious time, that he had given ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... both, he would have no possible chance of escape. He therefore consults his own interest and his own case by leaving them to carry on their trade of robbery or murder unmolested; and his master, the magistrate, is well pleased not to be pestered with charges against men whom he has no chance of getting ultimately convicted. It was in this way that so many hundred families of assassins by profession were able for so many generations to reside in the most cultivated and populous parts of our territories, and extend their ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... Kanady for some time, but that I was not going to begin speculation until I had knocked round a little. An invitation to liquor soon followed. The disagreeable consequence resulting from this admission soon became apparent. I was much pestered towards evening by offers of investment in things varying from a sand-hill to a city-square, or what would infallibly in course of time develop into a city-square. A gentleman rejoicing in the name of Vose Palmer insisted upon inter viewing me until a protracted hour of the night, with a view ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... becomes of vast moment to a Pharaoh, whose ears are dinned with the buzz of myriad winged plagues, mingled with angry cries from malcontent and fly-pestered subjects; or to the summer traveller in northern lands, where they oppose a stronger barrier to his explorations than the loftiest mountains or the broadest streams; or to the African pioneer, whose cattle, his main dependence, are stung to death by the Tsetze fly; or the fariner whose eyes on the ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... to a worm that trodden on would "turn into a torpedo." He had begun to be tormented by the dyspepsia, which "gnawed like a rat" at its life-long tenement, his stomach, and by sleeplessness, due in part to internal causes, but also to the "Bedlam" noises of men, machines, and animals, which pestered him in town and country from first to last. He kept hesitating about his career, tried law, mathematical teaching, contributions to magazines and dictionaries, everything but journalism, to which he had a rooted repugnance, ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... over to the O. K. House, followin' the comin' of the stage, an' leads the old gray mother in to the side of her son, an' leaves her thar. Enright tells her, as we turns cat-foot to trail out so she won't be pestered by the presence of us, as how Peets'll come back in a hour to see her, an' that as all of us'll be jest across the street, it'll be plenty easy to fetch us if she feels like company. As we starts for the Red Light to get ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... beginning to dress. "If you really have seen any one, I'll wager you are right in thinking it's the old marquis. That is just the sort of thing I have imagined him being up to. What he wants though in the old part of the house is more than I can think. He has pestered me to get back there ever since I showed him over the place the day he arrived. Are you ready? Bring a candle, and some matches. Ill just take my gun along on general principles. I don't care how soon we get rid of the Marquis de Boisdhyver, but ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... unnatural. But it was a question very difficult to answer. No man likes to say that a woman has pestered him with unwelcome love, and certainly Lord George was not the man to make such a boast. "Dearest Mary," he said, "on my honour as a gentleman I am ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... geographers than allowable either in reason, or approved by experience, as well it may appear by the dangerous trending of the Scythian Cape set by Ortellius under the 80th degree north, by the unlikely sailing in that northern sea, always clad with ice and snow, or at the least continually pestered therewith, if haply it be at any time dissolved, beside bays and shelves, the water waxing more shallow towards the east, to say nothing of the foul mists and dark fogs in the cold clime, of the little power of the sun to clear the air, of the uncomfortable nights, so ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... the courts, it was a sweet reprieve to be allowed to hurry off to my quiet cottage, and hear the one dear voice of my household, and examine the quiet pictures. These never stunned me with clamors; I was never pestered by them to determine the meum et tuum between noisy disputants, neither of whom is exactly right. There, my eye could repose on the sweetest scenes—scenes of beauty and freshness-the shady verdure of the woods, the rich variety of flowers, and pure, calm, transparent ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... a body could blame me, either. But it all comes of me bein' so obligin'. If it wuzn't fer my tender heart, I'd never kep' Tom's father, nor took Mis' Browning's young one, then I could come and go as I pleased and not be pestered this way. There ain't many that'd do fer others what I do, and I never git no thanks fer it, neither. If I hadn't had father to board all these years, I might have somethin' laid up fer a rainy day, and there ain't nobody but what'll say I'm ...
— Rosa's Quest - The Way to the Beautiful Land • Anna Potter Wright
... has not the conveniency of mounting her lower tier of guns, but carries them in her hold till she draws near Cape St. Lucas and is apprehensive of an enemy. Her hands, too, are as few as is consistent with the safety of the ship, that she may be less pestered with the stowage of provisions. But on her return from Acapulco, as her cargo lies in less room, her lower tier is, or ought to be, always mounted before she leaves the port, and her crew is augmented with ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... is like treading on sands of gold for that reason, I am never so. I cannot walk home from office but some officious friend offers his damn'd unwelcome courtesies to accompany me. All the morning I am pestered. I could sit and gravely cast up sums in great Books, or compare sum with sum, and write PAID against this and UNP'D against t'other, and yet reserve in some "corner of my mind" some darling thoughts all my own—faint memory of some ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... necessarily preclude the possibility of any class acquiring that grace of repose, that perfection of ease, which cultivation, example, and a conscious knowledge of the world gives to the beau-monde of Europe; on the other hand, in the absence of this, you are seldom pestered with the second-hand ladies'-maid airs of your pretenders to exclusive gentility, so common ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... dat he make a pass at Runt. Now, den, right dar whar ole Brer Wolf slip up at. He lak some folks w'at I knows. He'd 'a' bin mighty smart, ef he had n't er bin too smart. Runt wuz de littles' one er de whole gang, yit all de same news done got out dat she 'uz pestered wid ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... pity he could not have lighted on rather earlier in the season. Having occasion to change his abode, he sent on his window-plants, calceolarias and geraniums, to that which he intended to occupy several days before he went himself, and immediately found that he was pestered with flies, whereas previously he had enjoyed perfect immunity from the nuisance. A more agreeable remedy cannot be conceived. Next autumn let our windows be a blaze of brilliancy, so that all visitors to the Centennial ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... Club. At this club, which was formed only in 1913, the artists may go at any time to secure a model—which is a distinct boon. The old way was for the model to call on the artist, the result being that the unfortunate man was pestered with dozens of girls for whom he had no use, while the one model he really wanted never appeared. The club combines the advantages of club, employment bureau, and hotel. There is no smoking-room; ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... are a cool hand,' says he. 'And that friend of yours too. He pestered me coming here every day for a fortnight till a captain I'm acquainted with was good enough to give him a berth. And no sooner he's provided for than he turns you on. You youngsters don't seem to mind whom ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... I walked out in my garden of lilies There I saw endible, crindible, cronable kernt Ofttimes pestered my eatable, peatable, partable present, And I called for my man William, the second of quillan, To bring me a quill of anatilus feather That I might conquer the endible, ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... giving it a death-blow at the outset. A great deal of feeling was excited among the people, and some effort made to prejudice the women against acting as jurors, and even threats, ridicule and abuse, in some cases, were indulged in. Their husbands were more pestered and badgered than the women, and some of them were so much inflamed that they declared they would never live with their wives again if they served on the jury. The fact that women were drawn as jurors was telegraphed all over the country, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... to lie in the rain and weather, in the open air, in the burning sun, and upon the hard boards, and to dress our meat, and to carry all manner of furniture, wherewith [the boats] were so pestered and unsavoury, that what with victuals being most fish, with the wet clothes of so many men thrust together, and the heat of the sun, I will undertake there was never any prison in England that could be found more unsavoury and ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... and found them to be excellent meat. We took in also a monstrous quantity of ducks, and cocks and hens, the same kind as we have in England, which we kept for change of provisions; and if I remember right, we had no less than two thousand of them; so that at first we were pestered with them very much, but we soon lessened them by boiling, roasting, stewing, &c., for we never wanted while we ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... most averse or negligent to reflect on a general miscarriage, which, though of great consequence, is little taken notice of. When it is considered what a pudder is made about ESSENCES, and how much all sorts of knowledge, discourse, and conversation are pestered and disordered by the careless and confused use and application of words, it will perhaps be thought worth while thoroughly to lay it open. And I shall be pardoned if I have dwelt long on an argument which I think, therefore, needs ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... Fleet; and easiest of all the Counter, where untried prisoners were commonly kept to await their trial. Alexander, the keeper of Newgate, was wont to go to Bishop Bonner, crying, "Ease my prison! I am too much pestered with these heretics." And then an easement of the prison was made, by ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... river, but were soon lost among ascents and descents, narrow stairs, precipitous gardens, and noisy paper-mills. Probably no unassisted stranger ever made his way out of Amalfi on to the mountain slopes. They had scorned to take a guide, but did so at length in self-defence, so pestered were they by all but every person they passed; man, woman, and child beset them for soldi, either frankly begging or offering a direction and then extending their hands. The paper-mills were not romantic; the old women who came along bending under huge bales of rags were anything but picturesque. ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... from Davis and Stern, I suppose, on business. I always tell them not to send me people, but to cable. Why didn't they cable? They know I don't like Americans coming here. I'm pestered to death with them—that is, I used to be—and I should be still, if I didn't ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... run off I know not where, but as he makes his bed, must he lie on't; and if he run away for his pleasure, may stay away for mine. I have been pestered with this lot too long, and only bore with him for poor sister Martha's sake; but 'tis after his father that the graceless lad takes, and thus ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... I had inherited a high-strung, passionate temper from my mother, and a strong self-will from my father, which made a combination hard to subdue. In my later days I have come to realize that I must have tantalized and pestered my mother beyond all reason, and too often, no doubt, at times when her life was harassed, and her patience severely tried by the misconduct of one or more of her step-children, who, by the way, I never thought were blessed with the sweetest of all sweet tempers, ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... which the late castellan, poor man, remitted in my favour. So he hunted out another of his servants, who was my friend, and sent me food by this man's hands. The meat was tasted for me now with good grace, and no need for altercation. The servant in question told me that the Pope was being pestered every day by Monsignor di Morluc, who kept asking for my extradition on the part of the French King. The Pope, however, showed little disposition to give me up; and Cardinal Farnese, formerly my friend and patron, had declared that I ought not to reckon on issuing from that prison ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... and then as to his progress, and received vague answers in reply, and Loman never remembered a fag that pestered him less with lessons. Stephen was, in fact, settling down into the slough of idleness, and would have become an accomplished dunce in time, had not Mr Rastle come to the rescue. That gentleman caught the ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... your father will be all that must be here of the family. I shall shut up the house and come straight to you. I know that I am needed; but you mustn't say a word about pay—I can't stand it, I have had too much affliction to be pestered about wages." ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... happy who, by her blandishment, can detain him in conversation for five minutes. Yet they own they understand less than half of what he says. Vexed with one to whom we were talking, we thought rationally, for permitting herself to be "so pestered by a popinjay,"—"He is so clever," was the reply; "such an odd creature, too. I wish you knew him. He is in such a strange humour to-night. Do you know he tells me he wishes to marry an English girl? See! he is gone into the balcony yonder to look at the moon." To be sure ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... when he gave him his oats. The other three followed him very close, except Eudemon only, whose horse's fore-right or far forefoot sank up to the knee in the paunch of a great fat chuff who lay there upon his back drowned, and could not get it out. There was he pestered, until Gargantua, with the end of his staff, thrust down the rest of the villain's tripes into the water whilst the horse pulled out his foot; and, which is a wonderful thing in hippiatry, the said horse was thoroughly cured of a ringbone which he had in that foot ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... was very considerable. I had my horses to buy, my establishment to arrange, my entree into the genteel world to make; and, having announced my intention to purchase horses and live in a genteel style, was in a couple of days so pestered by visits of the nobility and gentry, and so hampered by invitations to dinners and suppers, that it became exceedingly difficult for me during some days to manage my anxiously desired visit ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... said, "if you want a raise don't let the whole factory know about it, otherwise we would be pestered to death here. Remember, also," he continued as he sat down again, "you are only working for us a few weeks—and don't go so quick ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... of a better, she will do." That was what they said. They approached her carefully, for they suspected that she might be vicious. Poor old Felice, she had never harmed even the flies that pestered her. "They are going to put me at the plough," she thought. "It is a long time since I did work of any kind,—nothing, in fact, since Petit-Poulain was born. Poor Petit-Poulain will miss me; but I will soon return." With these thoughts she turned ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... be pestered with me at any hour. And I'd be proud to have you drop over to visit me now and then too. I live on that point yander. Neither me nor my house is worth coming to see. It's only got one room and a loft ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... that friend of Catulus! Which way am I to turn? By heaven, I would start at once for Arpinum, only that I see that the most convenient place to await your visit is Formiae: but only up to the 6th of May! For you see with what bores my ears are pestered. What a splendid opportunity, with such fellows in the house, if anyone wanted to buy my Formian property![233] And in spite of all this am I to make good my words, "Let us attempt something great, and requiring much thought and leisure"? ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... King of that sort was an insult to their dignity, they sent to Jupiter a second time, and begged him to take away the sluggish King he had given them, and to give them another and a better one. Jupiter, annoyed at being pestered in this way, sent a Stork to rule over them, who no sooner arrived among them than he began to catch and eat the Frogs as fast ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... realized that she was the Effect and baby doll in question. She flushed, and her ears tingled. She thought of the Arabian Nights tale, where the searcher after the Golden Water was pestered by voices of those who had been turned to black ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... Ginevra Fanshawe been my companion in that drawing-room, she would not have suffered me to muse and listen undisturbed. The presence just gone from us would have been her theme; and how she would have rung the changes on one topic! how she would have pursued and pestered me with questions and surmises—worried and oppressed me with comments and confidences I did not want, and ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... was inquisitive and ingenious. He pestered his father, after the visitor had gone, for an explanation as to what he ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... which I should take the vessel home, it appeared to me that in all probability we should have been much less pestered by the ice on our way to Spitzbergen, if, instead of hugging the easterly ice, we had kept more away to the westward; I determined therefore—as soon as we got clear of the land—to stand right over to the Greenland shore, on a due west course, and not to attempt to make any southing, ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... "now we can talk unmolested, Shorely. I should think you would be pestered to death by all manner of idiots who come ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... quit ever' one of 'em in turn when they come to long division.) He went thoo a whole week o' disagreeable lessons once-t at one school 'cause he was watchin' a bird-nest on the way to that school. He was determined them young birds was to be allowed to leave that nest without bein' pestered, an' they stayed so long they purty nigh run him into long division 'fo' they did fly. Ef he'd 'a' missed school one day he knowed two sneaky chaps thet would 'a' robbed that ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... the time I was pestered with questions; so that, had I not been determined, I should scarce have been allowed to sleep; moreover, so much was writ about me, and my power to hear, and divers stories concerning tales of love, that I had been like to have grown mazed to take note of it all; yet some note I did take, ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... are really pretty. Mine, however, is beginning to show wear. I have had it for three years. The last time we played over at Kermoor, a hook came loose on the shoulder where my waist fastens. It was a trifle but it almost caused me to lose that game. It pestered me until I could scarcely think of anything else. I made up my mind then that I'd never be placed in such a position again. While I have it in mind, I am going over those hooks and eyes and sew them so tight that ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... to be afraid; if the Russians came he would drive them away himself. This confident assurance did not seem to have the effect of relieving my mother's fears, but it served to free me from all timidity as regards my father. After that I wanted to write to him every day and pestered Mahananda accordingly. Unable to withstand my importunity he would make out drafts for me to copy. But I did not know that there was the postage to be paid for. I had an idea that letters placed in Mahananda's hands got ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... return to D'Aubusson, and will tell him it is by my orders that you are resting. Your wounds are not very deep, but you must have lost a good deal of blood, and were you to exert yourself now, and be pestered with questions, it would probably bring on an attack of fever. There is nothing to do at present, for it must be some days before they can land ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... ends, and we saw the train steam off in another direction. The hold-up of the train had taken place at a depressing spot. We were completely stranded, without provisions or any other necessities, and at an isolated spot where it was impossible to obtain any supplies. The passengers pestered the guard for information, and at last the officers, to still any further enquiry, declared that they were going to do something, to carry ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... that has ever got Eloise pestered with odious attentions from the men. Instead of making 'em smirk and act rough, but playful, it made 'em think that life, after all, is more serious than most of us suspect in our idle moments. It certainly is a face to make men think. And inspiring ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... black hogs wallowing before every door, and they grunted at us with a kind of courtesy and affability as if the town were theirs, and it was their part to be hospitable to strangers. Many donkeys likewise accosted us with braying; children, growing more uncleanly every day they lived, pestered us with begging; men stared askance at us as they lounged in corners, and women endangered us with slops which they were flinging from doorways into the street. No decent words can describe, no admissible image can give an idea of this noisome place. ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... behind the organ, over the growing staleness of life in a sailors' mission. And also I was being pestered by a tall, frigid old maid in purples and blacks, who had fixed her eye on me as a heathen ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... 1586, a Protestant zealot, a soldier, [1] writes:—'When the belles tole to the Lectorer, the trumpetts sound to the Stages, whareat the wicked faction of Rome lawgeth for joy, while the godly weepe for sorrowe. Woe is me! the play houses are pestered when the churches are naked. At the one it is not possible to gett a place; at the other voyde seates are plentie.... Yt is a wofull sight to see two hundred proude players jett in their silks where five hundred pore people sterve ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... I have already said, I was blamed for, very early in my career but by learned trees, with grave and dignified complaisance. These saplings, on the contrary, pestered me with silly nicknames. For example, they took a malicious delight in calling me Skabba, which means an untimely ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... cook-house dixies, picks and shovels, bully and biscuit boxes and a hundred-and-one articles necessary to the work of the Medical Corps in the field: all this had to be man-handled through the sand up to our camp about a mile away. And the sun blazed, and the flies pestered and stung and buzzed and fought with each other for the drops of sweat streaming down your face. How long should we be here? When were we going into action?... The suspense was brain-racking. The diarrhoea increased: everyone went ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... "He pestered the life out of me," explained Joe ruefully, "and I finally told him I'd ask you fellows. But I suppose we can't take two more. Nine would—um—be rather overdoing ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... the youthful Crichton sententiously, "do not disturb yourself with those problems, which are already disposed of. In twenty years the sultan will become a monk, to get rid of the chief sultana, who has pestered his life out with her notions of woman's rights, and who wore the Bloomer costume before the Crimean war. As for the question about China, it is better to let sleeping dogs lie: it has been a great mistake to arouse China, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... more. The other man a year's rent for a cottage and garden, and two years' rent for the gardens of two cottages unoccupied. I am just returned from Norwich where I have been to speak to F. I have been again pestered by Pilgrim's successor about the insurance of the property. He pretends to have insured again. A more impudent thing was probably never heard of. He is no agent of mine, and I will have no communication with him. I have insured myself in the Union Office, and have lately received my second ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... transferred my worship to Artimisia Briggs, who was a year older than Mary Miller. When I revealed my passion to her she did not scoff at it. She did not make fun of it. She was very kind and gentle about it. But she was also firm, and said she did not want to be pestered by children. ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... with a lighter breast, rejoicing in the caution which had delayed me from any rash manifestation of suspicions now seen to be absurd. I smiled as the thought arose: what if this suspected stranger should also be pestered by an active imagination, and should entertain similar suspicions of me? He must have seen in my eyes the look of recognition which I saw in his. On hearing of the murder, our meeting may also have recurred to him; and his suspicions would have this ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... is very good-natured he gets much pestered—a discovery which I daresay you have made, or anyhow will soon make; for I do want very much to know whether you have sown seed of any moss-roses, and whether the seedlings were moss-roses. (196/2. Moss-roses ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... really too modest even to seem to adopt the flattering sentiment they convey—"You know, my dear madam, that your description will be read by every body who is any body, and that through it my simple home will become classic ground. If I permit you to direct the tourist tribe to it, I shall be pestered out of my life when summer comes, by travelling artists, would-be poets, and romantic ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... young men waiting at my house. I have been pestered from deputations and speeches since the Land League. A shaggy giant ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... to be pestered, ma," said Pearl, as she began on a generous helping of bacon and eggs. "Home is the best place, ma, and I never knew just how good it was to have home and folks of my own, as the day I went to school and found no children there. Isn't it queer, ma, how hard ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... to the road which led to Colchester and London. Down that avenue on this May afternoon an aged, white-haired man, with quick black eyes, was walking, and with him three children—very beautiful children—a boy of about nine and two little girls, who clung to his hand and garments and pestered ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... that the retaking of such fugitives became easy, as it was only necessary to search the wards for them. City owners of escaped slaves besieged Brinnaria for years and as it was reported that her intercessions were invariably effective, her fame increased and petitions for her assistance pestered her. ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... of immense furniture. The more room is taken up by knowledge, the less remains for credulity. The more a man is acquainted with things, the more willing to give up the ghost. Every town and village, within my knowledge, has been pestered with spirits; which appear in horrid forms to the imagination in the winter night—but the spirits which haunt Birmingham, are those of industry ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... you know I promised to stay with mother; but the fact is that I'm so pestered and hunted down by that rascally press-gang, that I don't know what to do. They're sure to nab me at last, too, and then I shall have to go away whether I will or no, so I've made up my mind as a ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... be forever pestered as to Dunwich? This is the third time of late that I have heard of Dunwich from wandering folk. Begone thither and gather tidings for yourselves, which I hope will please you as ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... poor most of his life. He lived with his mother and his brother Giovanni, an artist like himself, but not nearly so brilliant. Masaccio could not spend his life in painting but had to eke out the family fortunes by keeping a little shop near the old Badia, and being pestered day and night by his creditors he was forced again and again to go to the ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... his horses, his outfit, and the dog Fox, and made his abode with Wilson Moore. The cowboy hailed Wade's coming with joy and pestered him ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... from the servant who interrupted and pestered at his shoulder, and he said, shortly ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... safe here," he said at last, "safer than anywhere else, I think, for your father cannot come back until the King goes to supper. For myself, I have an hour, but I have been so surrounded and pestered by visitors in my apartments that I have not found time to put on a court dress—and without vanity, I presume that I am a necessary figure at court this evening. Your father is with Perez, who seems to be acting as master of ceremonies ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... us boys. We were not overmuch pestered with schooling. Mainly we were trained to be good Christians; to revere the Virgin, the Church, and the saints above everything. Beyond these matters we were not required to know much; and, in fact, not allowed to. Knowledge was not good for the common people, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... years old. De work I done was choppin' de grass out of de cotton and pickin' de cotton. What's become of them old army worms dat had horns, dat us chillun was so scared of while pickin' cotton? I never see them dese days but I'd rather have them than dis boll weevil I's pestered wid. ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... gave the message. Gerard was not enchanted "Dost wake a tired man to tell him that? Am I to be pestered with 'mijaurees' by night as ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... guerrillas under Rodrigo Galan. It was a weird predicament. Two days before, they were peaceful settlers in the land—omne solum forti patria—their blood-flecked swords as ploughshares fleshed in earth's warm bosom.... But tyrannical confiscation of the soil they tilled loomed foreboding.... Pestered nigh unto forceful phrases with shooing robbers of both sides out of their melon patches, and fired at last by the sentiment that it behooved them to sally forth and regulate things themselves.... They only lacked a Cincinnatus. Their ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... has its drawbacks," she began. "I am a lone widow; I am known to have an excellent business, and to have saved money. The result is that I am pestered to death by a set of needy vagabonds who want to marry me. In this position, I am exposed to slanders and insults. Even if I didn't know that the men were after my money, there is not one of them whom I would venture to marry. He ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... side a Gardner was brought to bear on a bit of cover where the Arabs clustered thickly. Ere the sun was quite above the horizon the loud sharp report of the former cheered the hearts of those who had been so hemmed in and pestered, and a second or so after there was a second bang as the avenging shell burst right among the bushes a thousand yards off. At the same time the ger-r-er of the machine-gun told that its handle was turning, and its deadly missiles tearing through the light cover. The ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... me something") arose. We gave them another stick of wood all round; at which their cries were redoubled. In short, they treated us very much as some earnest Christians do the Lord,—asked for everything they could think of. Old Trull was especially pestered by one woman, who stuck to him with a continuous whine of "Pillitay, pillitay!" He had already given her his jack-knife, and now borrowed it to cut off several of the brass buttons on his jacket. But so far was she from being satisfied ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... supposed, and I beg your pardon; but I was going to say that Mr. Champfort, who saw the fracas between my lord and me, about the key and the door, the night of my lady's accident, has whispered it about at Lady Singleton's and every where—Mrs. Luttridge's maid, ma'am, who is my cousin, has pestered me with so many questions and offers, from Mrs. Luttridge and Mrs. Freke, of any money, if I would only tell who was in the boudoir—and I have always answered, nobody—and I defy them to get any thing out of me. Betray my lady! I'd sooner cut my tongue out this minute! Can she have such a ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... a bottle in a tavern brawl! Clancarty gave himself forth as a representative of the English Jacobites, but d'Argenson, in his 'Memoires,' says he could produce no names of men of rank in the party except his own. D'Argenson was pestered by women, priests, and ragged Irish adventurers. In September 1745, the Earl Marischal and Clancarty visited d'Argenson, then foreign minister of Louis XV. in the King's camp in Flanders. They asked for aid, and the scene, as described by the spy Macallester, on Clancarty's information, was curious. ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... You're really rather a dear, John, and I daresay I shall get to love you quite well ... but I don't now. Why should I? I haven't known you very long ... and you've rather pestered me, ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... Rupert Cummins, Junior; and very junior he was for his age, too—I will say that. He was a perfectly handsome little boy; but you might call him a blubberhead if you wanted to, him always being scared silly and pestered and rough-housed out of his senses by his little girl cousin, Margery Hemingway—Mrs. W.B.'s little girl, you understand—and her only seven, or two years younger than Junior, but leading him round into all ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... Alliance we sat upon a bench where Lord Wellington and Bluecher perhaps met, and drank to their healths in Vin de Bordeaux. In spite of the corn, there are still bits of leather caps and bullets and bones scattered about in the fields, and you are pestered with children innumerable with relics of all sorts. We had heard magnificent accounts on our road here of all that was to be done on the field, balls, fetes, sham fights, processions, and I do not know what, but they have all ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... Perhaps, after the manner of lovers, she found splendid lights and vistas in the Charlie Brede the rest of us considered rather ordinary. Or perhaps, since she had lived her solitary life so long, pestered and haunted by her mother, any pair of lips would have awakened in her the same powerful and primitive impulses. He was her man, and she wanted him, and she was not to get him. I have even thought that she did not love him at all: ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... woman, and Talleyrand replied, "C'etait donc Monsieur votre pere qui n'etait pas bien," we hold the witticism to have been cruel because unjustifiable. A man should be privileged to say his mother was beautiful, without inviting such a very obvious sarcasm. But when Madame de Stael pestered Talleyrand to say what he would do if he saw her and Madame Recamier drowning, the immortal answer, "Madame de Stael sait tant de choses, que sans doute elle peut nager," seems as kind as the circumstances warranted. "Corinne's" ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... "Why, to read the things that a few of these here Washington correspondents used to write when they was in America yet, you would think every one of them was pestered to death with telephone messages from the White House where Mr. Tumulty says if the newspaper feller has got a little spare time that evening the President would consider it a big favor if he would step around to the White House, as Mr. Wilson would like to ask him an advice ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... poor man ... And so, Long Dick, a kindly fellow, When you could keep him from the can, And Meg, his easy-going wife, Had taken her into their van; And kept her since her parents died ... And she had lived a happy life, Until Fat Pete's young wife was taken ... But, ever since, he'd pestered her ... And she dared scarcely breathe or stir, Lest she should see his eyes aleer ... And many a night she'd lain and shaken, And very nearly died of fear— Though safe enough within the van With ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... Little lawlessness pestered the gold settlements. The Dominion promptly despatched to Dawson a body of her famous mounted police. Our Government, more tardily, made its authority felt from St. Michaels, near the Yukon mouth, all the way to the Canadian border. On June 6, 1900, Alaska was constituted a civil and judicial district, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... sit down, sick. He vomited, and this eased him, so he could go on again. His legs and feet were full of nettles and thorns; the gnats and mosquitoes pestered him horribly, for his piece of blanketing did not cover him. He fought them with a leafy branch, and threshing about him, he toiled ahead, cleverly using his crooked stick to conceal ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... like "Capt. Blank, Blankth Blank Regt., Blankth Fighting Force, c/o G.P.O." What will happen is that we shall go suddenly and without time to explain, and, when our friends are told, their faces will cloud over, not with sorrow at our departure but with annoyance at being pestered with the news of it again. It is a ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... carefully cut round the seals—"and the other missives away in my writing-case until I am alone—" Here Uncle Paul unfolded a letter upon the top of which was stamped the Royal Arms, and smoothed it out upon the tablecloth—"and read it in peace, without being pestered by an impertinent boy. Bless my heart! Why, Pickle, my boy! Hark here! It's a letter from the Government. Jump up and shout, you young dog! Hang Bony and all his works! ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... being pestered in the Ice, hee had used words tending to mutinie, discouragement, and slander of the action, which easily took effect in those that were timorous; and had not the Master in time preuented, it might easily have overthrowne the Voyage: and now lately ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier
... sobriquet was in as familiar use among them as her real name, but her touch on the bell did not suggest the imperiousness of royalty. Aunt Rachel was an old family servant, faithful, fat, and important, and Aunt Rachel hated to be hurried. She said "it pestered her, an' made her spile the vittles." She answered promptly this time, however, entering with the great waiter of hot and tasty dishes before the bell had ceased its faint tintinnabulation. Berkeley, a tall fair man, whose right sleeve was fastened ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... business had been fairly large, he had nothing of the faculty of the captain or the manager, who can let details alone and occupy himself with principles. He had a stock of copper bolt-stave in the front shop, and he poked about and pestered the men to know if any of it could be found melted. Then it occurred to him the next instant, and before the inquiry about the bolt-stave could be answered, that he had lost his account-books, and he began to try to recollect what one of his principal customers owed him. ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... Burlington House, a beggar whined his tale of woe in their ears. Mavis saw Windebank give the man something, the handsomeness of which made the recipient open his eyes. A flower-seller, who had witnessed the generous act, immediately pestered Windebank to buy of her wares, an example at once followed by others of her calling. He gave them all money, at which some of them forced their wired flowers upon him, whilst others ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... however, final arrangements were made, and the party passed on in peace. Ten days later, again on a Sunday, they were once more pestered by a great man demanding dues. Livingstone replied by simply defying him. He might kill him, but God would judge. And on the Monday they left peaceably, thankful for their deliverance, some of the men remarking, in view of it, that they ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... College, cadit quaestio," replied the Rector, "Smirke's visits at Fairoaks will cease of themselves, and there will be no need to bother the widow. She has trouble enough on her hands, with the affairs of that silly young scapegrace, without being pestered by the tittle-tattle of this place. It is all an ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... contract a fortunate marriage when he incautiously defends the Chevalier in conversation, fights a duel, and, although his antagonist is only wounded, he finds his reputation blighted by the stigma of Jacobitism. After a long illness at Vienna where he is pestered by Catholic priests, he recovers his health at Spa, and falls in love with a young English girl. Her parents gladly give their consent, but Maria seems unaccountably averse to the match. And when our hero is assaulted by a jealous footman, he perceives that the lady has fixed her affections on a ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... secretive an old maid may be, there is one sentiment which will always avail to make her break her fast from words, and that is her vanity. For the last three years, Hortense, having become very inquisitive on such matters, had pestered her cousin with questions, which, however, bore the stamp of perfect innocence. She wanted to know why her cousin had never married. Hortense, who knew of the five offers that she had refused, had constructed her little romance; ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... his music: but she knew that he was famous: it flattered her to think that she had loved him,—(and that she had rejected him).—She reminded him of it jokingly without much delicacy. She asked him for his autograph for her album. She pestered him with questions about Paris. She showed a mixture of curiosity and contempt for that city. She pretended that she knew it, having been to the Folies-Bergere, the Opera, Montmartre, and Saint-Cloud. According to her, the women of Paris were all cocottes, bad mothers, who had as ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... system of life in the hospital. The brethren, she said, had a yearly stipend, (the amount of which she did not mention,) and such decent lodgings as I saw, and some other advantages, free; and instead of being pestered with a great many rules, and made to dine together at a great table, they could manage their little household-matters as they liked, buying their own dinners, and having them cooked in the general kitchen, and eating ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... the cow-fires, lighted when the animals come to be milked. The poor creatures are so pestered and tormented by gnats and flies—of which Finland has more than her share—that fires are kindled towards evening, a dozen in one field sometimes, where they are to be milked, to keep the torments away. The cows are wonderfully clever, ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... their connection had lasted for many years, though they were as closely bound to each other as if they had been married, and although Charlotte Guindal pestered him with entreaties, and upset him with continual quarrels on the subject, and, in spite of the fact that he believed her to be absolutely faithful to him, and worthy of his most perfect confidence and love, yet Monsieur ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... to their streams, and use them as a relish to their vegetable diet. The Bashinje refused to sell any food for the poor old ornaments my men had now to offer. We could get neither meal nor manioc, but should have been comfortable had not the Bashinje chief Sansawe pestered us for the customary present. The native traders informed us that a display of force was often necessary before ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... by the natives, because when field-pieces first arrived in Natal inquisitive Kafirs pestered the soldiers to show them how they were fired. The answer given was always "By-and-bye!" Hence the ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... world is an island, and do not know what a continent is!" Columbus too did not wish to believe the savages; he preferred to believe that Cuba was the continent. Yet as a navigator Columbus was honest, and no doubt would have gone farther and proved the natives right had he not been pestered by a grumbling crew. His men were dissatisfied at the long tropic voyage which never appeared to bring them one inch nearer wealth, and they clamored to return to Isabella. So mutinous did they become that he decided to turn back, but it was with a heavy heart. Again he must write to the sovereigns ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... sea-officer, who had obtained in 1511 letters of marque for himself and his two sons, to make reprisals upon the subjects of Portugal. The council-board of England, at which the earl of Surrey presided, was daily pestered by complaints from British merchants and sailors against Barton, and at last it was decided to put him down. Two ships were, therefore, placed under the commands of sir Thomas and sir Edward Howard, an engagement took place, and sir Andrew Barton was slain, bravely fighting. A ballad in two parts, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... believe in 'em now? and he made Answer, Oh, yes, he had known a Serving-Wench in Oxon depone she had beene nipped and haled by 'em; and, of Crickets, he sayd he had manie Times seene an old Wife in Buckinghamshire, who was soe pestered by one, that she cried, "I can't heare myself talk! I'd as lief heare Nought as heare thee;" soe poured a Kettle of boiling Water into the Cranny wherein the harmlesse Creature lay, and scalded it to Death; and, the next Day, became as deaf as a Stone, and remained soe ever ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... were two women correspondents, poor souls, who were indeed sad and lonely. They were very ambitious and wanted to go to Cuba with the army, but the War Department wisely forbade any such a move and then my trouble began. At all hours of the day or night I was pestered by these same women. One of them represented a Canadian paper and was most anxious to go. She tried every expedient and tackled every man or woman of influence that came along. Even dear old Clara Barton ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... fear a repetition of their former discomfiture. To be trampled under foot by the hostile power seemed indeed no remote possibility, now that the Lacedaemonians had procured an ally in the person of the Persian monarch, and they were in little less than a state of siege themselves, pestered as they were by privateers from Aegina. On all these grounds the Athenians became passionately desirous of peace. (16) The Lacedaemonians were equally out of humour with the war for various reasons—what with their garrison duties, one mora at Lechaeum and another at Orchomenus, and ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... substance within was taken out, and filled up again with the part of a sponge, wherein was vinegar, and other confections against the pestilent airs; the which he most commonly smelt unto, passing among the press, or else when he was pestered ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... and Ralph liked him for keeping it. The young fellow watched everything going on in the cab in a shrewd, interested fashion, but he neither got in the way of the cross-grained Fogg, nor pestered ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman |
