"Pother" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is! I told you that, at first sight, she is an odd piece; but as soon as you know her, in very truth, there's not a better sort in the whole world. Say good-morrow to her without making any pother ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... strain; and with it came crowding back all the insidious doubts and anxieties that even Lilamani's wisdom had not entirely charmed away. He felt torn at the moment between anger with Roy for causing all this pother; and anger with Jane, who, for all her lack of tenderness and tact, was right—up to a point. It was just Family Herald heroics about "not crossing the threshold." At least—rather to his surprise—he found himself half hoping it was. Roy and Lilamani could frankly detest her—and there an ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... week after, the wind sallied forth, And, in anger or merriment, out of the north, Coming on with a terrible pother, 15 From the peak of the crag blew the giant away. And what did these school-boys?—The very next day They went and they built ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... seemed such hard lines, just when I had succeeded in getting into favor, to go and spoil it all in that unhappy way. Now that I had become acquainted with their style of singing, the supposed fib, about which there had been such a pother, seemed a very venial offense compared with my attempt to lead the singing. Nevertheless, when the concert was over, not a word was said on the subject by any one, though I had quite expected to be taken ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... reason did not influence him, nor his personal danger. He saw a large hook in the wall to which he could cling when the exquisite crash came, and pictured a welter of broken machinery and timber ten feet below him, and the immense pother that the affair would create ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... trouble about so very little. What would become of us without philosophy, without this reasonable contempt of things frivolous, transient and fugitive, about which the greedy and ambitious make such a pother, fancying them to be solid! This is to become wise by stripes, you will tell me; well, if one do become wise, what matters it how?—I read a great deal; I devour my Books, and that brings me useful alleviation. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... story is the tragedy, suggested with a poignancy almost too vivid, of the wretched elder woman, tortured in mind and body, morbidly aware of the contrast between her own decay and the vitality of her rival. As to Inglebury and Mary, the causes of all the pother, they struck me as conspicuously unworth so much fussing over; and, when their final flight together landed them—well, where it did, I could only feel that the neighbourhood was to be congratulated. But, as you see, I had by this time become unwillingly interested. So there you have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... was a deal of pother about a capuchin who had stared at the Madonnino of Anguissola! The matter was out of all proportion to the stir it made, and I conveyed in my next words some notion of ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... gently tapped him on the shoulder, saying, "Master Merry, you're fetched!" Time was annihilated, and memory dumbfounded!—The entertainment that had been looked forward to for days, counted by the hours, and put so many mammas in a pother, is gone!—The hands of the hall-clock are almost perpendicular—it wants but half-an-hour of midnight!—Several anxious mammas have sent several times for their several little ones; and the several servants have been sent away ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... Neuendorff, but it sat out on the floor of the hall, which reverberated like a drum. Mme. Janouschoffsky, an exceedingly capable artist, was the Santuzza, Mrs. Pemberton Hincks the Lola, Mrs. Jennie Bohner the Lucia, Payne Clarke the Turiddu, and Herman Gerold the Alfio. While all this pother was making, "Cavalleria Rusticana" was already three weeks old in Philadelphia, where Mr. Gustav Hinrichs had brought it forward with his American company at the Grand Opera House; Minnie Hauk, with a company ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... had somewhat spent itself, she retreated to her brothers, to whom she poured out a full and animated account of the night's happenings. They all agreed that Mademoiselle must have rats in the upper story to make such a pother over the adventure, though Maxwell, who held himself to be approaching years of discretion, gave it as his opinion that the whole thing was a piece of bad luck and an experiment not ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... gods, That keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads, Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch, That hast within thee undivulged crimes Unwhipp'd of justice. Close pent-up guilts, Rive your concealing continents, and cry These ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... airily. "What a pother!" she cried. "What does it matter whether poor little Alice Adams goes to ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... this time, while they were talking together, some black clouds gathered about the giant's middle, and burst into a tremendous storm of thunder and lightning, causing such a pother that Hercules found it impossible to distinguish a word. Only the giant's immeasurable legs were to be seen, standing up into the obscurity of the tempest; and, now and then, a momentary glimpse of his whole figure, mantled ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... there had been many rooks in the trees beyond the wall of Holy Innocents, between it and the Brewery. But, gazing aloft, he saw that these were sea-gulls, wheeling and mewing and making a mighty pother. And then—O wonder!—as he rubbed his eyes he looked up at a tall cliff, a wall of rock rising sheer, and a good hundred feet from its base where the white water was breaking. The boat had drifted almost within the back-draught, ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... truth, a dawning perception of the possibilities of this kind of reasoning chilled the enthusiasm of the Aryan-hunters a good deal; it was the bare bodkin that did quietus make for much philological pother and rout. No; if you are to prove racial superiority or exclusiveness, you had much better avail yourself of the simplicity of a stout bludgeon, than rely upon the subtleties of brain-mind argumentation; for time past ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... crowds, the beauty of the streets, The city's growth, its splendour, size, "You're dying to be off," he cries; For all the while I'd been stock dumb. "I've seen it this half-hour. But come, Let's clearly understand each other; It's no use making all this pother. My mind's made up, to stick by you; So where you go, there I go, too." "Don't put yourself," I answered, "pray, So very far out of your way. I'm on the road to see a friend, Whom you don't know, that's ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... said Dean. "Yes, we do. We should like to get some of it as curiosities. But oh, I say, doesn't it seem like all pother about what the doctor said? There's none of the cool air from the veldt coming in here under the waggon tilt." ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... is all this pother about? For what cause do they embitter their own and other people's lives? That a man should publish three or thirty articles a year, that he should finish or not finish his great allegorical picture, are questions of little interest to the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fool. Did I not tell thee that there are no Gods? lo! you now! for what should they have roused this trumpery pother, if not to strike me? Tush, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... should be next to feel the refreshing torrent. We let slip the garment of timorous covering very easily when nudity is commonplace. Vait-hua was to teach me to be modest without pother, to chat with those about me during my ablutions without concern for the false vanities of screens or even the shelter of rocks as in the river in Atuona. In such scenes one perceives that immodesty is in the false shame that makes one cling to clothes, rather than in the simple virtues ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... reach me. It roared overhead, but, save an occasional sigh, as if of sympathy with their suffering brethren abroad in the woild, the hermits of this cell stood upright and still around the sleeping water. But my heart was a well in which a storm boiled and raged; and all that "pother o'er my head" was peace itself compared to what I felt. I sat down on the seat at the foot of a tree, where I had first seen Miss Oldcastle reading. And then I looked up to the house. Yes, there was a light there! It must be in her window. She then could ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... a hurrying stream of vehicles had rumbled into the courtyard, setting down the servants and effects of his Highness of Wirtemberg, and of the lady who ruled his destiny. Frisoni was in a mighty pother; he ran round the room excitedly, moving a chair, smoothing out a fold in the curtains, drawing a table to another position. He hopped hither and thither like some gay little monkey. Suddenly a tremendous shout went up from the three thousand Italian workmen who had been permitted to assemble near ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... and a very great pother he made, insisting that the whole company should instantly hasten back to town, as if they remained there the pale death would speedily overtake them, and it would therefore boot them little to have escaped from the red death. And indeed the plague ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... "Sure, the pother o' life. It's an' up an' down, so fast it makes a body dizzy in their wits. That boy, Fayetty, one day as good as a fine fish o' Friday; the next—eatin' me heart out with the worry. Never a doubt I doubt 'twas himself belabored the old man ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... Quakeress, wrathful and sullen, had scarce understood what the whole pother was about. She was hard of hearing, and Petty Constable Pyot was at great pains to explain to her that by the major-general's orders the body of the murdered man should be laid decently under shelter, until such time as proper burial ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... find gall Hid in the hanging chalice of the rose: Which think you better? If my mood offend, We'll turn to business,—to the empty cares That make such pother in our feverish life. When at Ravenna, did you ever hear Of any romance in Francesca's life? A love-tilt, gallantry, or anything That ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... after a severe and dangerous confinement, gave birth to a dead child. Immediately after the intelligence had been made known, a servant, having upon some business passed outside the gate of the castle-yard, was met by Jacque, who, contrary to his wont, accosted him, observing, 'So, after all the pother, the son and heir is still-born.' This remark was accompanied by a chuckling laugh, the only approach to merriment which he was ever known to exhibit. The servant, who was really disappointed, having hoped for holiday times, feasting and debauchery with impunity during the rejoicings ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... tried to throw herself in front of the door; I pushed her aside so roughly that she fell, and, I believe, hurt herself slightly. She immediately filled the house with her cries; and later, in the trial, made a great pother about what she was pleased to call an attempt to murder her. I at once entered Edmee's room; there I found the abbe and the doctor. I listened in silence to what the latter was saying. I learnt that the wounds in themselves were ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... letter over. Mahon fretted. He could see on its face the Division headquarters stamp—Lethbridge—but why all this ceremony and pother about an official note that came almost every day? He recalled suddenly that his wife would be holding lunch for him—with fresh fish he had seen unloaded little more than an hour ago from the through train from Vancouver. ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... Peace. So some rats of amphibious nature Are either for the land or water. But here our authors make a doubt, Whether he were more wise, or stout. Some hold the one, and some the other; But howsoe'er they make a pother, The diff'rence was so small, his brain Outweigh'd his rage but half a grain; Which made some take him for a tool That knaves do work with, call'd a Fool; And offer'd to lay wagers that As Montaigne, playing with his cat, Complains she thought him but an ass, Much more she ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... me; I am growing shiftless. When I came on board I decided to marry Arthur, and have done with the pother. Now I am at the same place as when I left home. I don't want to marry anybody. Have you noticed ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... of their chiefs, as the law can make them: but the original attachment still remains, and is founded on something prior to the feudal system, about which the writers of this age have made such a pother, as if it was a new discovery, like the Copernican system. Every peculiarity of policy, custom, and even temperament, is affectedly traced to this origin, as if the feudal constitution had not been common to almost all the natives of Europe. For my part, I expect to see the use of trunk-hose ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... could wait if Marka were the only disquieting feature. But what about Taghati and the Russian activity? What on earth is going on or about to go on in this square inch of mountain land to make all the pother? If it is a tribal war on a first-class scale then we must know about it, for it is in the highest degree our concern too. If it is anything else, things look more than doubtful. All the rest I don't mind. It's open and ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... fast, Your fiery Metal is too hot to last; Your Fevers come so thick, your Claps so plenty, Most of you are threescore at five and twenty. Our Town-bred Ladys know you well enough, Your courting Women's like your taking Snuff; Out of mere Idleness you keep a pother, You've no more need of one than of the other. Ladies— Wou'd you be quit of their insipid noise, And vain pretending take a Fool's advice; Of the faux Braves I've had some little trial, There's nothing gives 'em credit ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... pother in the Lords because the FIRST COMMISSIONER OF WORKS had set up a Committee to advise him with regard to the preservation of ancient monuments, including cathedrals and churches, without first consulting the ecclesiastical ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... bleat in their desolate pasture. The wind shakes the house. A loon, seeking, I suppose, some quieter resting-place than on the troubled waves, was seen swimming just now in the cove not more than a hundred yards from the hotel. Judging by the pother which this "half a gale" makes with the sea, it must have been a terrific time, indeed, when that great wave rushed ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... multiple echoes of her own first utterance of the word. Why wasn't the world full of love, when love made happiness? Why did people hide their natural kindliness as if it were something shameful? Why shouldn't people say what they thought and act as they were inclined? Why all this pother about what one's neighbour thought, when this pother was not energized by any good will? Why was truth avoided as the plague? Why did this young man have one name on the hotel register and another on ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... his ministers keep such a pother, And all about changing one whore for another, Think I to myself, what need all this strife, His majesty first had a whore of a wife, And surely the difference mounts to no more Than, now he has gotten a wife of a whore. Now give me your judgment a very ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... smash! You'll have it all in a crash. Jabber, smash, bother! You'll have the worst of the pother. ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... or mother Tell the woes of wilful waste; Scorn their counsel, scorn their pother— You can hang or ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... famed commander, wept and made a pother, At conquering only half the world, but Drake had conquer'd t'other; And Hercules to brink ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... Pother (Doctor), an apothecary, "city register, and walking story-book." He had a story ['a] propos of every remark made and of every incident; but as he mixed two or three together, his stories were pointless and quite unintelligible. "I know ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... fall of blows—a shower of blows, kicks and cudgel-thwacks, to smother the angry conflagration. God knows how it all came about?" He smiles again, reflectively, over the recollection of the lovely quiet evening it was, the terrific discordant pother that arose,—the lovely and hushed night that presently resumed her reign. The incident looks fantastic now. "An imp must have had a hand in it!" is the poet's fanciful induction; "A glow-worm could not find his mate, it was he responsible ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... Jessica, you will not forsake me now; you will put away your perversity and love me simply and unreservedly? There are difficulties before me, I know; but I am not afraid if only my heart is at peace. I am free, and if there is any power in my brain, any skill in my right hand, I will make such a pother that the world shall hear me. I will not die till I am heard. And so I ask you to help-me. With your love I shall be made bold, and no opposition and no repeated reverses shall trouble me. And in the end your happiness is ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... a week after the Wind sallied forth, And, in anger or merriment, out of the North Coming on with a terrible pother, From the peak of the crag blew the Giant away. And what did these School-boys?—The very next day They went and they ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... and saved very little either in inn charges or in the pother of State by the device. And if I remember correctly, I made no pretence at wine-selling on these occasions. Honestly now, what the devil does the Comte de Montaiglon do ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... fool, by thriving too, too fast, Like AEsop's fox becomes a prey at last. 60 Nor shall the royal mistresses be named, Too ugly, or too easy to be blamed, With whom each rhyming fool keeps such a pother, They are as common that way as the other: Yet sauntering Charles, between his beastly brace,[53] Meets with dissembling still in either place, Affected humour, or a painted face. In loyal libels we have often told him, How one has jilted him, the other sold him: How that ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... took Mrs. Pettifer in to dinner that night and she found him poor company. He tried indeed by fits and starts to entertain her, but his thoughts were elsewhere. He was in a great pother and trouble about Stella Ballantyne, who sat over against him on the other side of the table. She wore no traces of the consternation which his words had caused her a couple of hours before. She had come ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... roped-in, canvas-walled circuses, and its gathering of wanderers from every corner of Europe, speaking every European tongue. Neuilly was as busy as it well might be about its yearly business, and could scarcely have made more fuss and noise and pother if it had known that not only the King of France, but every crowned head in Christendom, proposed to pay it ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... staggered and plunged and bumped along, extricating his boat-bonnet now from a bower of raspberry-bushes, now from the branches of a brotherly birch-tree,—"better," thought he, "were I seated in what I bear, and bounding gayly over the billow. Peril is better than pother." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... both spoke at once and shrilly, the unfortunate Commissary learnt little of the matter at issue between them. Not until the united efforts of all the men present had silenced feminine vociferation was it possible to understand what in the world the pother was about. The old gentleman, to whom in courtesy priority of speech was accorded, made the ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West
... the groom, "ye are NOT the young spark who is to marry Mistress Amy at the Hall, yet makes a pother and mess of it all by a duel with Sir Roger de Cadgerly, the wicked baronet, for his over-free discourse with our fair Maudlin this very eve? Ye are NOT the traveler whose post-chaise is now at the Falcon? Ye are not he that was bespoken by the ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... the good people to help us!" she cried. And with that she ran up-stairs, and I after her, in a great pother of haste. For the candle in her hand was the only bit of fire we had, and I did not want it blown out if I could ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... way to the end of the table and drew out the chair opposite Miss Carmichael with a degree of assurance that precipitated the rest of the table into a pretty pother. ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... drawn, the bridge went down with a clatter, and Bertran de Born came out—a fine stout man, all in a pother, with a red, perplexed face, angry eyes, hair and beard cut in blocks, a body too big for his clothes—a man of hot blood, fumes and rages. Richard at sight of him, this unquiet sniffer of offences, this whirled ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... Machiavel himself one now reads only by compulsion. "What is the use of arguing with anybody that can believe in Machiavel?" asks mankind, or might well ask; and, except for Editorial purposes, eschews any ANTI-MACHIAVEL; impatient to be rid of bane and antidote both. Truly the world has had a pother with this little Nicolo Machiavelli and his perverse little Book:—pity almost that a Friedrich Wilhelm, taking his rounds at that point of time, had not had the "refuting" of him; Friedrich Wilhelm's method would have been briefer than Friedrich's! ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... that his wee face was all in a pucker o' bewilderment, as he listened t' the sad strains o' Toby Farr's music, jus' as though he knowed he wasn't able t' rede the riddles of his life, jus' yet awhile, but would be able t' rede them, by an' by, when he growed up, an' expected t' find hisself in a pother o' trouble when he mastered the answers. I didn't know his name, then, t' be sure; had I knowed it, as know it I did, afore the night was over, I might have put down my flute, in amazement, an' stared an' said, "Well, well, ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... running around, dandy-looking Pickaninnies hopping about, and Joblilies swimming in the lake. We asked what it all meant, and were told that "she was going to marry the barber;" and then they all tittered, and we could not for the life of us tell what this pother meant. When we told a Garuly that we wanted to see the Great Panjandrum himself, and to find out whether there was a bag of gold at the end of the rainbow, he took our one-eyed beetle, and gave the four-leaved clover to a Pickaninny. Together they took them into the house, and a Joblily ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... Irish situation in which a British government seemed determined to make itself as un-English as possible. If there had not been the patriotic urge to assert our essential Americanism more strongly than ever, there still would have been a reaction against all the pledging and the handshaking, the pother about blood and water, the purple patches in every newspaper asserting Anglo-Saxonism against the world. I remember my own nervousness when, in 1918, after the best part of a year in England, in England's darkest days, I came back full of admiration for the pluck of all England and the enlightenment ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... in my young memory, and would have done so even had I not had that tangible memento of them. Who were they, those two of whom that one strange glimpse had befallen me? What, I wondered, was the previous history of each? What, in particular, had all that tragic pother been about? Mlle. Ange'lique I guessed to be thirty years old, her friend perhaps fifty-five. Each of their faces was as clear to me as in the moment of actual vision—the man's fat shiny bewildered face; the taut white face of the woman, the hard red line ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... in such a pother, out in the world," Isabelle remarked to Margaret, as she turned over the leaves of her husband's letter. "The President is calling names, and a lot of good people are calling names back. And neither side seems to like being called names. John doesn't like it, and he calls ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... peer. Let me extol a cat, on oysters fed, I'll have a party at the Bedford-head; Or even to crack live crawfish recommend; I'd never doubt at Court to make a friend. 'Tis yet in vain, I own, to keep a pother About one vice, and fall into the other: Between excess and famine lies a mean; Plain, but not sordid; though not splendid, clean. Avidien, or his wife (no matter which, For him you'll call a dog, and her a bitch) Sell their presented partridges, and fruits, And humbly live on ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... waves, and, beating them down, maintained an unvarying, stubborn poise. But although she refused to vacillate or shuffle to the wooing efforts of the uneasy waters, she progressed not without noise and pother; foamed and fumed mightily at the bow and left behind her a wake, receding almost as far as the eyes might reach. Captain Macpherson looked after the bubbles, cast his glance aloft at the bulging ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... in, or cognisant of, "antiquarian old womanries," as Sir Walter called them, may ask "what all the pother is about," in this little tractate. On my side it is "about" the veracity of Sir Walter Scott. He has been suspected of helping to compose, and of issuing as a genuine antique, a ballad, Auld Maitland. He also wrote about the ballad, as a ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... is enough! Was it round?—and thick?—and had it letters and devices graved upon it?—yes? Oh, NOW I know what this Great Seal is that there's been such worry and pother about. An' ye had described it to me, ye could have had it three weeks ago. Right well I know where it lies; but it was not ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... From words they almost came to blows, When luckily came by a third: To him the question they referred, And begged he'd tell them if he knew, Whether the thing was green or blue? "Sirs," cries the umpire, "cease your pother, The creature's neither one nor t'other. I caught the animal last night, And view'd it o'er by candle-light: I marked it well—'twas black as jet. You stare; but, sirs, I've got it yet: And can produce it"—"Pray, sir, do: I'll lay my life the thing ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... turned away. It is lashing rain to-day, but to-morrow, rain or shine, I must at least make the attempt; and I am so weary, and the weather looks so bad. I could half wish they would arrest me on the beach. All this bother and pother to try and bring a little chance of peace; all this opposition and obstinacy in people who remain here by the mere forbearance of Mataafa, who has a great force within six miles of their government buildings, which are indeed only the residences of white officials. To understand ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... herself in another. But the difference! In Adolphe a coal from the altar of true passion has touched lips in themselves polluted enough, and the result is what it always is in such, alas! rare cases, whether the lips were polluted or not. In Delphine there is a desperate pother to strike some sort of light and get some sort of heat; but the steel is naught, the flint is clay, the tinder is mouldy, and the wood is damp and rotten. No glow of brand or charcoal follows, and the lips, untouched by it, utter nothing but rhetoric and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... and behind such repugnance lay hostility to Lord Aberdeen's vacillating policy on the Eastern Question. The nation accepted Lord Palmerston's resignation in a matter-of-fact manner, which probably surprised no one more than himself. The Derbyites, oddly enough, made the most pother about the affair; but a man on the verge of seventy, and especially one like Lord Palmerston with few illusions, is apt to regard the task of forming a new party as a game which is not worth the candle. The truth is, Palmerston, like other ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... not last for long. But this grave pother that's just now agog May reach such radius in its consequence As to outspan our lives! Yes, Bonaparte And Alexander—late such bosom-friends— Are closing to a mutual murder-bout At which the lips of Europe ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... best, the bravest, the cleverest, or the oldest in blood—to rule being formally recognized and set down on paper, it became necessary to ascertain at stated intervals who were the most. The lords of the soil, instead of being inducted into power on the death of their parents with great pother of ointment, Te Deum, heraldry, drum and trumpet, were chosen every ten years by a corps of humble knights ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... ways at the entrance, we found the top of the mountain so fertile, healthful, and pleasant, that I thought I was then in the true garden of Eden, or earthly paradise, about whose situation our good theologues are in such a quandary and keep such a pother. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... it may be assumed that no one is either capable or desirous of speaking the truth; why, then, make such a pother about it as to the past? There we have carried the investigation of truth to such an extreme that nowadays very few of us dare believe anything. Opinions are difficult to secure when a quarter of an hour in the library will prove either side of any question. ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... handle which the autocratic, czar-like ordinance of banishment to Bermuda offered him against his enemy. It is nearly always in the power of a party politician to distort and misrepresent the act {17} of an opponent, however just or blameless that act may be. Brougham made a great pother about the rights of freemen, usurpation, dictatorship. As a lawyer he raised the legal point, that Durham could not banish offenders from Canada to a colony over which he had no jurisdiction. He enlisted other lawyers on his side to attack the composition ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... pretty toy we got for Peg, A priest has hooked, the cursed plague I— The thing came under the eye of the mother, And caused her a dreadful internal pother: The woman's scent is fine and strong; Snuffles over her prayer-book all day long, And knows, by the smell of an article, plain, Whether the thing is holy or profane; And as to the box she was soon aware There could not be much blessing there. ...
— Faust • Goethe
... like his person, it is all fuss and bustle. This is his idea of a tragic scene: A little fellow comes bustling in, goes bustling about, and runs bustling out." Here Mr. Cibber left the room, to give greater effect to his description, but presently returned in a mighty pother, saying: "'Give me another horse!' Well, where's the horse? don't you see I'm waiting for him? 'Bind up my wounds!' Look sharp now with these wounds. 'Have mercy, Heaven!' but be quick about it, for the pit can't wait for ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... of Brand, Braund, and Barnes, is a Banter on Criticks, and Genealogists, who make such a Pother about the Orthography of Names and Things, that many Times, three Parts in four of a Folio Treatise, is taken up in ascertaining the Propriety of a Syllable, by which Means the Reader is left undetermined; having nothing but the various Readings on a single Word, and that probably, ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... Master Cupid; They stood a moment, as though stupid, Until they recognised each other. They complimented with some pother, When Time overtook them in his walk, And then all three fell into talk Of what each one had done for man. And ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... to their feet of three camels by voice persuasion alone is no mean performance, but no voice, not even the vocal chords of the Archangel Gabriel, would have moved the cause of all this pother, for at the word of command, in a tone which should have put fear of death into her black heart, she slightly shifted her hind-quarters and ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... shall not be in the least mortified. If you say, "What does he mean by calling this paper On Two Children in Black, when there's nothing about people in black at all, unless the ladies he met (and evidently bored) at dinner, were black women? What is all this egotistical pother? A plague on his I's!" My dear fellow, if you read "Montaigne's Essays," you must own that he might call almost any one by the name of any other, and that an essay on the Moon or an essay on Green Cheese would be as appropriate ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... With a knowing wink in his funny old eye. He grasps by the top an immense fool's cap, Which he calls a philosophaster-trap: And rightly enough, for while these little men Croak loud as a concert of frogs in a fen, He first singles out one, and then another, Down goes the cap—lo! a moment's pother, A spirit like that which a rushlight utters As just at the last it kicks and gutters: When the cruel smotherer is raised again Only snuff, and but little ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... minutes cleared the puzzle. The office of the company is on the Strand above the Savoy. Mrs. Farmingham went to the manager and showed him a lot of papers she had in an official-looking envelope. After a good bit of official pother the porters carried out a big portmanteau, a sort of heavy leather traveling case, and put it into the carriage. Mrs. Farmingham came to Hargrave where ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... it were Pic-nic to-day, my dear mother, How happy and gay I should be! How joyful without any studies to pother, Away in the woods ...
— Our Gift • Teachers of the School Street Universalist Sunday School, Boston
... membership—fifteen or so, and membership is ranked as the highest honor of the college. But in God's name, what is all this pother? Are there not already enough jealousies without this one added? Does not college society already fall into enough locked coteries without this one? No matter how keen is the pride of membership, it does not atone for the disappointments and ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... the captain, "I know nothing about him. But he came to your factor and wanted to take the first ship that cleared, and seemed in such a mortal pother that Mr. Horsley suspicioned something, and gave me a slant to look out for him. And all the time we lay off Bristol, my fine fellow kept himself well ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... Waynflete from his enemies. To do it I had left mother and sister, and home and lands. To do it I had come out openly on the side of rebellion and treason. The sword had been at my breast, and the wind of a bullet had stirred the hair of my head. I might have spared my pains. All this pother of mine was over the man sitting yonder, heartily enjoying his dinner. All my heroics had ended in my being ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... at the door a minute afore and was afeared to come in 'cause of you, mistress. Give me that dish o' bacon, Betty. The man who saw his breakfast tumbling on the floor is in a sad pother." ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... immense pother, by parliamenting and palavering in all corners of your empire, to decide such a question as that! I say, if that is the function, almost any human creature can learn to discharge it: fling out your orange-skin again; and save an ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... us bested to take care of two instead of one, and my lady, moreover, in a pother about her son, and Sir Lancelot stirred to make a hue and cry all the more? No, no, sir, bide in peace in the safe homestead where you are sheltered, and learn to be a man, minding your exercises as well as may be till the ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have nothing now to do but set my house in order, and live the hours between this and sunrise with what quiet I may. I am ready for either freedom or death. Life is not so incomparable a thing that I can not give it up without pother." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... couldn't then be bagg'd; Should it in forward paws be taken, Or roll'd along, or dragg'd? Each method seem'd impossible, And each was then of danger full. Necessity, ingenious mother, Brought forth what help'd them from their pother. As still there was a chance to save their prey,— The sponger yet some hundred yards away,— One seized the egg, and turn'd upon his back, And then, in spite of many a thump and thwack, That would ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... of the prison close. He would wait on, always holding himself discreetly aloof from the middle breadth of the picture, until the officiating clergyman had done with his sacred offices; would wait until the white-faced wretch on whose account the government was making all this pother and taking all this trouble, had mumbled his farewell words this side of eternity; would continue to wait, very patiently, indeed, until the warden nodded to him. Then, with his trussing harness tucked under his arm, ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... the meeser-r-rable pother," growled Mac Tavish. "The word he just gied the gillies! It was as much as to say, 'I'll be coomin' along wi' ye from noo on.'" The old man's hankerings were helping his persistent hope, in spite of his respect for the Morrison trait of devotion ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... "Oh, pother! go on!" exclaimed Rhoda. "Give it me, if your tender conscience won't let you. I say, Phoebe, you'll be a regular prig and prude, ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... the deceas'd Lady may have taken its Residence in that Fowl. And you wouldn't surely run the Risque of eating up your Aunt? To boil a Fowl is, doubtless, a most shameful Outrage done to Nature. Pshaw! What a Pother you make about the boiling of a Fowl, and flying in the Face of Nature, replied the Egyptian in a Pet; tho' we Egyptians pay divine Adoration to the Ox; yet we can make a hearty Meal of a Piece of roast Beef for all that. Is it possible, ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... long flash spoke of the sunlit peaks and the dead march of snow; and there, a league away, grey Pau was basking contentedly, her decent crinoline of villas billowing about her sides, lazily looking down on such a fuss and pother as might have bubbled out of the pot of Revolution, but was, in fact, the hospitable rite daily observed on the arrival ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... shall do on the dawn will be to scan the sea. Something unusual must have occurred to put the pirates to all this pother." ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... distressed person in the neighborhood that wants it badly, as you may judge, or I wouldn't be trudging off with it at this hour of the night. Katty, you go to bed, and let Barney stay up till I come back—did you mind my words, I repate—read you both out, if ever a syllable comes to Father Pother's ears, or anybody's else's ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... long, it is not very wide, For two are the most that together can ride; And e'en there 'tis a chance but they get in a pother, And jostle and cross, and run foul of ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... said, "why such pother over such a trifle? If your name be, no longer, Madeline Spencer, tell me what it is. I shall be profoundly glad to call you by it—or any name ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... his air was French-Roman; that is, more Romanesque than Roman. The Indian ponies, much excited, kept careering through the wood, around the encampment, and now and then, halting suddenly, would thrust in their intelligent, though amazed faces, as if to ask their masters when this awful pother would cease, and then, after a moment, rush ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... would have dropped for no telling how many hundreds of feet. Of course it was only a chance that I happened to be touching elbows with the child, and naturally I only did what anyone would have done in the same circumstances, but the whole family were tremendously grateful and made a great pother over it. By the way, speaking of rescues, have you heard about the thing that happened to the two Van Norden girls at Bailey's Beach last week? I must tell ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... away, and was seized by Hippias, who begged him to get out of the noise and pother, and caught hold of his slack arm to bear him into a conveyance; but Richard, by wheeling half to the right, or left, always got his face round to the point where young Tom was manoeuvring to appear at his ease. Even when ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and I have heard it said of his Majesty that he was delighted to see his courtiers wearing the French fashions outside their heads, provided they didn't carry the French ideas within. You are too young, doubtless, cavaliere, to have heard of the philosophers who are raising such a pother north of the Alps: a set of madmen that, because their birth doesn't give them the entree of Versailles, are preaching that men should return to a state of nature, great ladies suckle their young like animals, and the peasantry own their land like nobles. Luckily you'll hear little of this infectious ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... O hosier; deem me not absurd That I should thank thee for so apt a word. 'Tis thus that Modesty our language trims: Where men say "legs" she softly whispers "limbs." And, while they fume and rage in angry pother, Stills the big D—— and substitutes a "bother." Speaks not of "trousers"—that were sin and shame; "Continuations" is the gentler name. Turns "shirts" to "shifts," and, blushing like the rose, Converts the lowly stocking into "hose." Thus thou, my hosier, profferest me a pair Of these, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 21, 1892 • Various
... 'chagrin' and 'shagreen'; 'can' and 'ken'; 'Francis' and 'Frances'{111}; 'chivalry' and 'cavalry'; 'oaf' and 'elf'; 'lose' and 'loose'; 'taint' and 'tint'. Sometimes the difference is mainly or entirely in the initial consonants, as between 'phial' and 'vial'; 'pother' and 'bother'; 'bursar' and 'purser'; 'thrice' and 'trice'{110}; 'shatter' and 'scatter'; 'chattel' and 'cattle'; 'chant' and 'cant'; 'zealous' and 'jealous'; 'channel' and 'kennel'; 'wise' and 'guise'; ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... evening, and back comes the lord and master. What a bustle and a pother this home-coming meant we know well, since we know what he expected. Such a running and fetching of bowls of warm water to wash his feet, and comfortable shoes to ease him; such a hanging on his words and admiring ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... he despised himself acutely. Of course, he had hours and moods when he felt that he must lift up his voice and shout aloud to all men—What? That he did not know exactly what he did believe? For, in reality, that was all the whole pother was amounting to. What was the use in starting the alarm, when the whole great crisis might be merely a matter of imagination, of indigestion, even, as Doctor Keltridge had diagnosed it? In that case, the best, the only ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... Where the eager crowd is moiling, struggling on with weary tread! Battling with stockjobbing ladies, meeting all their wiles and tricks, or embarking in the Hades of the city's politics! But forgotten is the pother, all the work day cares are gone, when she comes home to dear father with his nice clean apron on! There's your chair, he says; "sit in it; supper will be cooked eftsoons: I will dish it in a minute—scrambled eggs and shredded prunes." It is good to watch him moving round the stove with ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... yet he could hardly help smiling at the pother. "What," said he, "have I to do with all this? I have paid for everything; I am surely entitled to go away if I like. Remember, that if I lose my passage to Boston, you ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... vntyes the Poke, Which out of it sent such a smoke, 650 As ready was them all to choke, So greeuous was the pother; So that the Knights each other lost, And stood as still as any post, Tom Thum, nor Tomalin could boast Themselues of ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... chaos, omnium gatherum[Lat], medley; mere mixture &c. 41; fortuitous concourse of atoms, disjecta membra[Lat], rudis indigestaque moles [Lat][Ovid]. complexity &c. 59a. turmoil; ferment &c. (agitation) 315; to-do, trouble, pudder[obs3], pother, row, rumble, disturbance, hubbub, convulsion, tumult, uproar, revolution, riot, rumpus, stour[obs3], scramble, brawl, fracas, rhubarb [baseball], fight, free-for-all, row, ruction, rumpus, embroilment, melee, spill and pelt, rough and tumble; whirlwind &c. 349; bear garden, Babel, Saturnalia, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Sanguis martyrum semen Ecclesiae; though it would seem this Church is indeed of the purely Invisible, Kingdom-come kind: Militant here on earth! Triumphant, of course, then, elsewhere! Ah, good Heaven, but I would I were out far away from the pother! ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough
... her brows and shrugged impatient shoulders. Here was a deal of pother about a trifling affair. "His lordship saw you as he entered, sir, and inquired of me who ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... medley; mere mixture &c 41; fortuitous concourse of atoms, disjecta membra [Lat.], rudis indigestaque moles [Lat.] [Ovid]. complexity &c 59.1. turmoil; ferment &c (agitation) 315; to-do, trouble, pudder^, pother, row, rumble, disturbance, hubbub, convulsion, tumult, uproar, revolution, riot, rumpus, stour^, scramble, brawl, fracas, rhubarb, fight, free-for-all, row, ruction, rumpus, embroilment, melee, spill and pelt, rough and tumble; whirlwind &c 349; bear garden, Babel, Saturnalia, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... like a chain of mountains; at Bedford they touched their caps, but in Dunstable they crawled upon their bellies. I thought the landlady would have kissed me; such a flutter of cordiality, such smiles, such affectionate attentions were called forth, and the good lady bustled on my service in such a pother of ringlets and with such a jingling of keys. 'You're probably expected, sir, at the Place? I do trust you may 'ave better accounts of his lordship's 'elth, sir. We understood that his lordship, Mosha de Carwell, was main bad. Ha, sir, we shall all feel his loss, ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... so far as it went. Now for the gas-bags, the sausages; for these observation balloons were the real object of all this nocturnal pother. ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... me to express my gratification. 'Twas a mysterious business altogether—this whim to make the Shining Light ready for sea. I could make nothing of it at all. And why, thinks I, should the old craft all at once be troubled by all this pother of block and tackle and hammer and saw? 'Twas beyond me to fathom; but I was glad to discover, whatever the puzzle, that my uncle's faith in the lad he had nourished was got real and large. 'Twas not for that he bred me; but 'twas the only reward—and that a mean, poor one—he might have. ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... "What a pother for a bed of flowers!" I hear you say, "draining, subsoiling, sulphuring, sanding, covering, humouring, and then sunstroke or consumption at the end!" So be it, but when success does come, it is something worth while, for ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... father sent I was not told; but two days later, a little before sundown, I saw a plain, honest-looking man ride slowly up the road in a great pother of dust. He was clad in homespun, with a broad straw hat; wore a patriarchal beard; and had an air of a simple rustic farmer, that was, in my eyes, very reassuring. He was, indeed, a very honest man and pious Mormon; with no liking for his errand, though neither he nor any ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... making all this pother about being deprived of the classics? Surely he cannot have failed to realise that it is impossible to understand and appreciate the classics properly without having learnt Latin and Greek? But you cannot learn Latin and Greek without learning the grammar. He not only on ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... a bridge has to be made, there is an infinite pother and worry about building the piers, coffer-dams, and heaven knows what else. Some swing their bridges to avoid this trouble, and some try to throw an arch of one span from side to side. There are a thousand different tricks. In Belfort they ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... which eugenists raise such a pother, are surely not the worst curses that mankind has to bear. Some of the greatest men in history have had them; whole nations have had them and survived. The truth about them is that, save in relatively rare cases, they do very little damage. The horror ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... All alone with himself, I believe, on my soul, He'd manage to get betwixt somebody's shins, And pitch him down bodily, all in his sins, To the grave polar bears sitting round on the ice, All shortening their grace, to be in for a slice; Or, if he found nobody else there to pother, Why, one of his legs would just trip up the other, For there's nothing we read of in torture's inventions, 250 Like a well-meaning dunce, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... such an accusation is hardly courteous, but, stripped of its verbiage, that is the accusation as it is made. Now, as there are usually at least some smouldering embers of fire where there is smoke, there is just one small item of truth behind all this pother. No Catholic, scientific man or otherwise, who really honours his Faith would desire wilfully to advance theories apparently hostile to its teaching. Further, even if he were convinced of the truth of facts which might appear—it could only be "appear"—to conflict with that teaching, ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... would have prevented this foul deed from taking place. However, I can understand your wanting to accomplish the adventure without my aid; but we must think now what had best be said and done. As the lady belongs to the court, there is sure to be a fine pother about the matter, and you and all who were there will be examined touching your share of the adventure, and how you came to be upon the spot. The others will, of course, say that they were there under your direction; ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... guardian friend or mother Tell the woes of wilful waste: Scorn their counsel, scorn their pother, You can hang or drown ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... stingy old father, who permitted her to get into the scrape, would come up like a man and pay what he ought to pay, there would be no more pother about this business. He hasn't lived up to his bargain. The—Mr. Pless has squandered the first million and now he wants the balance due him. A trade's a trade, John. The old man ought to pay up. He went into it with his eyes open, and I haven't ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... flamens Do press among the popular throng, and puff To win a vulgar station: our veil'd dames Commit the war of white and damask, in Their nicely-gawded cheeks to the wanton spoil Of Phoebus' burning kisses: such a pother, As if that whatsoever god, who leads him, Were slyly crept into his human powers, And gave him ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... something of an upset the other day when a gentleman came in—a titled man, too, he was, and I think he told me he'd wrote on the topic, and I 'appened to cite out something about 'Ercules and the painted cloth. Dear me, you never see such a pother. But as to this, what you've kindly confided to us, it's a piece of work we shall take a reel enthusiasm in achieving it out to the very best of our ability. What man 'as done, as I was observing only a few weeks back to another esteemed ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... But what a pother about a simple act of charity! In order to repeat it habitually I shall have to rely on the fortuitous attendance of a boy and a policeman, or have a policeman and a boy permanently attached to my person, which would ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... else unless it is announced with a thunderclap. So long as he is physically imprisoned in crowds by day and even by night his attention will flicker and relax. It will not hold fast and define clearly where he is the victim of all sorts of pother, in a home which needs to be ventilated of its welter of drudgery, shrieking children, raucous assertions, indigestible food, bad air, ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... "Oh pother! It's not that I'm not a man, or a laggard in love; but I'd like to know what you'd do to a girl dumb with grief over the recent loss of her mother, who was her only relative worth counting, sick from God knows what exposure and privation, ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... you has any idea of the real France living under oppression, or of the reserve of vitality in the French provinces, or of the great mass of the people who go on working heedless of the uproar and pother made by their masters of a day.... Yes: it is only natural that you should know nothing of all this: I do not blame you: how could you? Why, France is hardly at all known to the French. The best ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... a pother about nothing. She's all right. They're in a very healthy place; a little seaside village, where it has been quite cool, they say, so far. And they will return before long, because they mean to spend the autumn in Scotland. Yes, they say it ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Bill—practically everything that happens in England has something to do with the Land Bill—and Lloyd George was in a free state of perspiration over it; and the papers were full of it and altogether there was a great pother over it. ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... circulated. Dreyfus was an officer, the military were suspect; Dreyfus was a Jew, the Jews were suspect. People began talking about militarism, about the Jews. Such utterly disreputable people as Drumont held up their heads; little by little they stirred up a regular pother on a substratum of anti-semitism, on a substratum that smelt of the shambles. When something is wrong with us we look for the causes outside ourselves, and readily find them. "It's the Frenchman's nastiness, it's the Jews', it's Wilhelm's." Capital, brimstone, the freemasons, the Syndicate, the ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... post-office, and cast a sidelong glance at the effigy of the man hanging on the wall, as he was marched up to the desk where O'Grady sat in magisterial dignity; and, therefore, when he found it was only for driving a gentleman to a wrong house all the pother was made, his heart was lightened of a heavy load, and he answered briskly enough. The string of question and reply was certainly an entangled one, and left O'Grady as much puzzled as before whether Andy was stupid and innocent, or too knowing to let himself be caught—and ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... between some Bohemians and some Hungarians. A fracas was always conducted with rapiers and daggers in those days, and must have been a picturesque, if inconvenient, event. It was all about a lady too, which sounds quite likely: it was said that she was not worth all the pother: this is the sort of thing some people would say. As a consequence of this fracas several Bohemians were executed for robbery with violence, which sheds a different light on the incident, but I do not think it matters much at this ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... admiringly, "what a wonder tha' art! Tha' always sees a way out o' things. They was quite in a pother yesterday. They didn't see how they was to manage without orderin' up more food—they felt that ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... have been gratified could he have seen the posthumous pother that he made by dying at this juncture. For in life he had only been important in his own eyes, and the world had taken little heed of him. This same keen-sighted world would not regret him much now and ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... you love our handsome prince," said Giulietta; "and there is the great sin you are breaking your little heart about. Well, now, it's all of that dry, sour old Father Francesco. I never could abide him,—he made such dismal pother about sin; old Father Girolamo was worth a dozen of him. If you would just see our good Father Stefano, now, he would set your mind at ease about your vows in a twinkling; and you must needs get them loosed, for our captain is born to command, and when princes stoop to us ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... the friend who had come to help quarrelled shrilly, she murmured, 'Poor things! putting themselves in such a pother!' When, after a crash, Martha was heard to say, 'There's the cream-jug now! Well, break one, break three!' she only shook her head, and murmured that servants were not what they used to be. When Martha's friend's little boy dropped the urn—presented ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... Colonel, Could you but pull together, Orange and Green, a truce were seen To bigotry and blether. 'Tis they that keep the Emerald Isle In pother so infernal. Drop hate and fear, try love and trust, Brave SAUNDERSON, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... Where was the harm in it? Better lie to him than tell the truth to La Pompadour about that girl! Egad! Madame Fish would serve you as the Iroquois served my fat clerk at Chouagen—make roast meat of you—if she knew it! Such a pother about a girl! Damn the women, always, I say, Bigot! A man is never out of hot water when he has to ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... pother arose since Niecks' comprehensive biography appeared. So sure was he of his facts that he disposed of the pseudo-date in one footnote. Perhaps the composer was to blame; artists, male as well as female, have been known to make themselves ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... were those who had never yet paid their subscriptions. De Haan also kept up proprietorial rights of interference. In private life Raphael suffered much from pillars of the Montagu Samuels type, who accused him of flippancy, and no communal crisis invented by little Sampson ever equalled the pother and commotion that arose when Raphael incautiously allowed him to burlesque the notorious Mordecai Josephs by comically exaggerating its exaggerations. The community took it seriously, as an attack ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... by habit," he began after a long gaze upwards at the rooks now settling to roost and making a mighty pother of it. "But I'm afraid there's no getting round the fact that this afternoon I acted a lie. And yet, on the whole, ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch |
