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Roundabout   Listen
noun
Roundabout  n.  
1.
A large horizontal wheel or frame, commonly with wooden horses, etc., on which children ride; a merry-go-round; a carousel. (British)
2.
A dance performed in a circle.
3.
A short, close jacket worn by boys, sailors, etc.
4.
A state or scene of constant change, or of recurring labor and vicissitude.
5.
A traffic circle. (Chiefly British)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Roundabout" Quotes from Famous Books



... her down-stairs to the breakfast-table, flashed out at her from the fire, and re-duplicated itself brightly from the flanks of the urn and the sturdy flutings of the Georgian teapot. It was as if, in some roundabout way, all her diffused apprehensions of the previous day, with their moment of sharp concentration about the newspaper article,—as if this dim questioning of the future, and startled return upon the past,—had between them liquidated the arrears of some haunting moral obligation. ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... probably hasn't been in action at all yet. His troops were not among those sent to Tryon Creek, and he has to cover the roads leading in this direction. It's just because General Harkness is afraid that some of the Blue troops may have been detached to make a raid by a roundabout route that we ...
— The Boy Scout Automobilists - or, Jack Danby in the Woods • Robert Maitland

... communicated it to the council, where it instantly found adherents, and objectors, too. It was the third alternative. A circuitous road called the Quaker road, recently surveyed and just made, led in a roundabout way from the rear of the camp toward the Princeton road, which it entered two miles from that town. Washington's plan was to steal silently away in the night by this road, leaving bright fires burning to deceive the confident enemy, and ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... led Miss Adair and Mr. Farraday out into the wings in a roundabout path to the left stage-box, and paused with them out of sight of Mr. Rooney. Then the humanity came back into his face and voice as he spoke to ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess

... Emperor, if he has not gone to bed, or else the very first thing to-morrow morning. Remember, you must seem to have consulted no one. Make him read this letter; watch him as closely as you can; but, whatever happens, show that you hate these roundabout methods, and tell him again that you will never listen to anything but ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... arose, and Griffith, throwing off the roundabout in which he had appeared on deck, drew on a coat of more formal appearance, and taking a sword carelessly in his hand, they proceeded together along the passage already described, to the gun-deck, where they entered, with the ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... agitated, for it was horrible to think that his chum was lost under the sea, not knowing his way back to the Searcher, for they had come a roundabout way. ...
— The Wizard of the Sea - A Trip Under the Ocean • Roy Rockwood

... take a roundabout journey to Rome," said Mr. Sumner, "and so get all the variety of scene and emotion possible. Something that crowds every moment with interest will be ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt

... the date of that day. She said she had written before and torn the confession up ... it was so difficult to be just to him and true to herself.... It was a roundabout, involved, youthfully grandiloquent epistle in which Mildred announced that her love for Owen was dead, that nothing could ever resuscitate it; that she could not, would not, ever marry him, and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... slightly roundabout road, and reached the 15th in safety. On his way back he saw a troop of North Irish Horse. In the meantime the Divisional Headquarters had left Crepy in great state, the men with rifles in front, and taken refuge on a hill ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson

... plow being in between, and worked by a rope from each engine, or if by one engine, a capstan on the other head land, with a return rope working the plow backward and forward; or by what is known as the roundabout system, where the engine is fixed and the rope carried round about the field; or else plows and cultivators are worked by ropes from two capstans placed on the two head lands, and driven by means of a quick-going rope, actuated by an engine, the position of which is not changed. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various

... take it away. They were, in fact, rather like a kitten which knows it has a tail, and will fly round and round all day with the expectation of catching that desirable appendage. Sometimes indeed, by sheer perseverance, of which he had a great deal in a roundabout way, Ralph would achieve something, but, when this happened, something else, not foreseen by him, had always happened first, which rendered that accomplishment nugatory and left it expensive on his hands. Nevertheless they retained their ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy

... upon a rock and puffed. "I saw you up here—and a fellow doesn't think about taking a roundabout course ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower

... evidence or apology was brought to him. Knox had never been able to bear contradiction, especially when he was somewhat in the wrong; and those who wish to acquire new virtues must not postpone them to their last hours. His defence was roundabout and ineffectual; and all were glad when he parted from these details of his long life-struggle, so that his friends, with tears, might take their last look of his worn and wearied face. The effort had been too much for him, and henceforth he never spoke but with great pain. ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes

... carry them out in our times. Were any person now, to surround his residence with a deep and broad ditch, and observe those ceremonies when a visitor called upon him, we would call him insane; yet, that is precisely what we do with regard to the transfer of real estate, observing still the tortuous roundabout methods of conveying, resorted to in those days for the purpose of evading the oppressions of feudalism. Nay, the analogy is so strong, that in our Law Courts, and Deeds we still use the same barbarous Norman French jargon in which the parley was in those ancient ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne

... that he did not count much on what information might come from the head clerk. Blossom, in the mind of Dr. Lambert, was a person of not much strength of character. There had been certain episodes in his life, information as to which had come to the physician in a roundabout way, that did not reflect on him very well; though, in truth, he felt that the man was weak ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele

... came and sat on my bed when I was sick (for I am just getting well from a quite serious illness), and after some half dozen sighs, wished she were Anna Prentiss that she might be loved as intensely as she desired. This is a roundabout way of saying how very dear you are to me. What chatter-boxes girls are! I wonder how many times I've stopped to say "My dear, don't talk so much—for ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... desire it. The shrewd Roman said: "The gods will give us what is most appropriate; man is dearer to them than to himself." But the faithful Anglo-Saxon maintains that his prayer is none the less answered even if it be denied, and that it is made up to him in some roundabout way. It is inconceivable to the Anglo-Saxon that there may be a strain of sadness and melancholy in the very mind of God; he cannot understand that there can be any beauty in sorrow. To the Celt, sorrow itself is dear and beautiful, and the mournful wailing ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... roundabout way again, and then I saw another one. Three bonny bairns in blue were on that dead spruce tree; two close together as before, and the third—who seemed more lively—sitting alone. He lifted his crest a little, turned his head and ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller

... just yet. Under other circumstances he should be the first to know, but I want the news kept from him for a special reason. Besides, it would be better if he found out about it from others and through roundabout channels. His son up there I don't see doing any talking himself for some time if he does live. When he is able to talk, I believe he'll decide to keep his mouth shut or just accept the explanation given that he was fishing or something of that kind. ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd

... was so much water that the children were obliged to take roundabout ways; but that was sport to them. They vied with each other as to which could find the soundest ice. They were neither tired nor hungry. The whole day was before them, and they laughed at ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof

... I conducted that winter was by roundabout methods. I occasionally wrote my brother that I was wallowing in wealth, always inclosing a letter to Gertrude Edwards with instructions to remail, conveying the idea to her family that I was spending the winter with relatives ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams

... come suddenly upon "Gregg's" hoof prints and to have halted for consultation. Full half an hour they tarried there and the children began to clamor for the promised luncheon. Sauntering down by a roundabout way the veteran picked up an armful of dry twigs, sticks and dead boughs and tossed them down at the mouth of the cave. Then, behind the rock, he built a small fire of the dryest twigs he could find, ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King

... a slight noise behind her and she turned just in time to seize a small boy by the slack of his roundabout and arrest ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... that they quarreled and the brother threatened to shoot Gasca if he came near the place. Also, he told the border patrol some things about Gasca so that he was afraid to go over any more. Just after I met Gasca, he had heard, in a roundabout way as my people hear things, that the brother had been killed and the Indian woman had died of a sickness. Gasca wanted me to go over with him to find out if the treasure was still there—he felt sure that it was because he said the brother would be afraid to dispose of it without ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall

... do not find that Luther felt particularly elated by the news from Ratisbon. The formula which embodied their agreement seemed to him a 'roundabout and patched affair.' In connection with faith, as the only means of justification, too much, he thought, was said of the works which must spring from it; in connection with the justification given to the faithful through Christ, too much was said of the righteousness ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... take roundabout ways into note, While His short cut to fame is—the cut of his coat; Philip's Son thought the World was too small for his Soul, But our Regent's finds room in a laced button-hole. ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... no work that is meritorious and atoning." Obedience to law, then, by a creature, and still less by a sinner, can never atone for the sins that are past; can never make the guilty perfect "in things pertaining to conscience." And if a man, in this indirect and roundabout manner, neglects the provisions of the gospel, neglects the oblation of Jesus Christ, and betakes himself to the discharge of his own duty as a substitute therefor, he only finds that the flame ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... of her territory. As for France, the cause of the war is the instinct of self-preservation, that resists an invading host. As for Germany, the cause is her deep-seated conviction that every country has a moral right to the mouth of its greatest river; unable to compete with England, by roundabout sea routes and a Kiel Canal, she wants to use the route that nature digged for her through the mouth of the Rhine. As for England, the motherland is fighting to recover her sense of security. During the Napoleonic wars the second William Pitt explained the quadrupling of the taxes, ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... then up the path, as Coast must have done a few nights before. The housekeeper was in the pantry and there Peter sought her out. He noted the startled look in her eyes at the moment he entered the room and then the line of resolution into which her mouth was immediately drawn. So Peter chose a roundabout way of coming to ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs

... the uttermost parts of the earth. He had been building railroads in South America, Africa, and China, and had maintained so many lodges in this or that wilderness that he really feared he might be curiously awkward in adapting himself to the conventional requirements of civilization. In his long roundabout journey home he had stopped for a few weeks in both London and Paris; but to his mental discomfort, they had but served to accentuate his loneliness and whet his longings for the dear, unforgotten life of his ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... convinced himself, after about a year and a half of respectful aloofness, that the emotion which he felt towards Samuel Marlowe's grandmother-to-be was love, the fashion of the period compelled him to approach the matter in a roundabout way. First, he spent an evening or two singing sentimental ballads, she accompanying him on the piano and the rest of the family sitting on the side-lines to see that no rough stuff was pulled. ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... anxiety to relieve her of the task of riding to Lazette for the doctor had been spurious; he had merely wanted to be the first to carry the news of Doubler's death to Langford, and after leaving her he had undoubtedly taken a roundabout trail for the Double R. Possibly by this time he had settled with Langford and was on his way out of ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer

... a hill was the site generally chosen; the road ascending and descending in a meandering sort of zig-zig on its side. Rarely did our timid ancestors tempt the valley, often preferring a roundabout course over a line of hills, if by so doing the perils of the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... troop, my good Humphrey," he said, when the serving-man had finished. "Lady De Aldithely did well to trust thee with this lad. But now to my news once more. The king, in his wrath, will scour the country roundabout, and thou mayest not escape from him as thou didst from thine other pursuers. What dost thou elect to do?" ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger

... station, by a roundabout way, and then back by the turnpike. We can dine at the station or, better, at Golchowski's, at the Prince Bismarck Hotel, which we passed on the day of our return home, as you perhaps remember. Such a visit always has a good effect, and then I can have a political conversation with the ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... alight at his quarters from the stage, and immediately went in and closed their door. Mrs. Stannard had been with them awhile the evening previous. Ray was entirely out of danger and was sitting up again, but very quiet and weak. Gleason, it seems, had taken a roundabout way on his return, and had stopped two days at Fort Laramie, from which post he did considerable telegraphing. The mail coming direct from Fetterman brought those letters (which were sent by the sergeant) three days ahead of him, and not a lady in ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... even the greasy caretaker gone. By this time Gray was decidedly uncomfortable, and, to add to his discomfort, he conceived the notion that he was being followed. On second thought he dismissed this idea, nevertheless he took a roundabout course back ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... contented, comfortable if not energetic and advanced. This is not a pushing town: it has never known a boom. That I'm sure will some day come, but I hope not in my time. I have faith in the mountains that fold us roundabout; they are rich with the possibilities of coal and iron, and year by year are being more and more widely opened up and developed; year by year the ranks of flaming, reeking coke ovens push farther on beside the railway that penetrates our valley. But as yet their smoke ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance

... of all, there is the certainty about God's heart. Everywhere else we have only peradventures, hopes, fears, guesses more or less doubtful, and roundabout inferences as to His disposition and attitude towards us. As one of the old divines says somewhere, 'All other ways of knowing God are like the bended bow, Christ is the straight string.' The only means by which, indubitably, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... winding, roundabout march to Trintange. Here we were instructed to settle down for a week or ten days' halt, and many worse places might have been chosen. The country was very broken, with hills and ravines. Little patches of woodland and streams dashing down rocky channels on their way to join the Moselle ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt

... worthless or hardening experiences, upon a young, unsophisticated, innocent soul, is apt either to hold aloof, out of a sense of his own remoteness, or to draw near and become fascinated and elated by his discovery. It is only by a roundabout process that such men ever do draw near such a girl. They have no method, no understanding of how to ingratiate themselves in youthful favour, save when they find virtue in the toils. If, unfortunately, the fly has got caught in the net, the spider can come forth and talk business ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser

... teacher and the possibility of devoting all my time to my linguistic studies, I made such rapid progress in the acquisition of the language that I was able after a few weeks to understand much of what was said to me, and to express myself in a vague, roundabout way. In the latter operation I was much assisted by a peculiar faculty of divination which the Russians possess in a high degree. If a foreigner succeeds in expressing about one-fourth of an idea, the Russian peasant can ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... as the founder of a new democratic and modern order of poetry, greater than the old. But I do not propose to go over the whole list here; I only wish to indicate that the absorption is well commenced abroad, and that probably her poet will at last reach America by way of those far- off, roundabout channels. The old mother will first masticate and moisten the food which is still ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... he suddenly, "you have come by rough seas and mighty roundabout course to your happiness, but there be some do never make this blessed haven all ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... in the open, but under the spreading cottonwoods shadows were obscuring the lanes. Venters drew Jane off from one of these into a shrub-lined trail, just wide enough for the two to walk abreast, and in a roundabout way led her far from the house to a knoll on the edge of the grove. Here in a secluded nook was a bench from which, through an opening in the tree-tops, could be seen the sage-slope and the wall of rock and the dim lines of canyons. ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey

... and he saw Catharine leave her friends at the Rectory, for they were evidently going to stay the night there. Mrs. Cardew went into the house first, but Catharine turned down Fosbrooke Street, a street which did not lead, save by a very roundabout way, to the Terrace. Presently Mr. Cardew came out and walked slowly down Rectory Lane. In those days it was hardly a thoroughfare. It ended at the river bank, and during daylight a boat was generally there, belonging to an old, superannuated boatman, ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford

... 1802, when Gideon was ten years old, his father, after farming successfully for some years in the Georgia uplands was lured by letters from relatives in Tennessee to sell out and remove thither. Taking the roundabout road through the Carolinas to avoid the Cherokee country, he set forth with a wagon and four horses to carry a bed, four chests, four white and four negro children, and his mother who was eighty-eight years old. When but a few days on the road an illness of ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... opposite. In old men we must allow all this, especially if to age they add reputation and merit, for such fault-finding is not without use, and inspires those who are rebuked with both emulation and love of honour.[802] But all other persons must especially avoid and fear that roundabout kind of self-praise. For since generally speaking censuring one's neighbours is disagreeable and barely tolerable and requires great wariness, he that mixes up his own praise with blame of another, and hunts for fame by defaming another, is altogether tiresome and inspires disgust, for ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... Mrs. Caldwell will travel by the roundabout route which you suggest merely because you have a whim that we should not cross France," she remarked, looking ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux

... all classes, it is my profound conviction that a reasonable selflessness is very far from uncommon, very far from being confined to the "converted" of any religion. For forty years I have watched it growing and spreading before my very eyes. Reading the other way The Roundabout Papers, I was greatly struck by the antiquated cast of the manners therein described. Of course Thackeray, in his day, was reputed a cynic, and supposed to have an over-partiality for studying the seamy ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer

... slightest idea about the merits of any of them. Some one came up with her nicely the other night, at a party. He had suspicions, I suppose, that she was trying to pass for too much; at all events, he asked her a great many roundabout questions, which she was obliged to answer, and in doing so she let out the secret. Every body saw what sort of a ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth

... sight more'n a minute, but went smashing and crashing through the woods into the distance. 'Twas too hot to run after 'em, so I waited a spell and then loafed off in a roundabout direction toward where I see 'em go. After I'd walked pretty nigh a mile I heard Hammond whistle. I looked, but didn't see him nowheres. Then he whistled again, and I see his head sticking out of the ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln

... In a roundabout fashion Abner Balberry had heard that Nat had gone to Buffalo, and then he learned through a man who had been to New York that his nephew was in the metropolis. Abner had often longed to visit New York, and here he saw ...
— From Farm to Fortune - or Nat Nason's Strange Experience • Horatio Alger Jr.

... quality, as the grass in the woods of Australia is so thin, that it takes three acres to feed a sheep, and ten for a bullock. He generally employs two men, called stock-keepers, to look after them: these are mounted, and ought to employ their time in riding over and roundabout their master's run, to see that his cattle do not stray, and that his grass is not trespassed on by others. This, however, is more than most of these gentry condescend to do, many of them preferring the company of cattle-stealers and other vagabonds, with whom they are frequently leagued; and if ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson

... that he would put off his tour of inspection till the next day. Travelling in the buggy as he did, he must keep to the road which led to Derrick's, in very roundabout fashion, by way of Guadalajara. This rain would reduce the thick dust of the road to two feet of viscid mud. It would take him quite three hours to reach the ranch house on Los Muertos. He thought of Delaney and the buckskin ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... increased, because once more Fahey had got past the front door with the mail, whereas each night I had promised myself to waylay him and change his roundabout method of delivery. "If I live till tomorrow," I said crossly, "I'll see if he can't climb those steps and ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... our party have gone to England, intending to take a roundabout course and rejoin the vessel at Leghorn or Naples several weeks hence. We came near going to Geneva, but have concluded to return to Marseilles and go up through Italy ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... forsaken Lady A****, after she had accepted the consolations of Bacchus, that her name was properly signified in asterisks 'as she was now nightly an Ariadne in heaven through her God,' sounds to us a roundabout, with wit somewhere and fun nowhere. Sitting at the roast we might have thought differently. Perry Wilkinson is not happier in citing her reply to his compliment on the reviewers' unanimous eulogy of her humour and pathos:—the 'merry clown and poor pantaloon ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... "we are reminded of the Oriental fondness for the serpent. Some people like to say that it betrays the subtlety and slyness of the Oriental people. But they admired the serpent chiefly because, in their minds, it represented wisdom, the quiet and easy way of doing things, a little roundabout perhaps, but often better than the method ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry

... reach it. The Christian is called upon by his Master to live out and actualise God's ideal thought concerning him. Upon the map of his life is already marked out the road by which he is to reach the heavenly city; if, at least, he reaches it, as God intends, by the shortest way. There are no roundabout roads marked on the map in the Mount, and yet the Divine Plan of our life will be found inclusive of the minutest necessary details, just as an Ordnance map will tell you each feature of interest and importance as you go from place to place. It is of the utmost importance that we should take ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris

... most of the faults, of England. Any one who reads and understands him understands England. This method of studying Shakespeare by reading him has perhaps gone somewhat out of vogue in favour of more roundabout ways of approach, but it is the best method for all that. Shakespeare tells us more about himself and his mind than we could learn even from those who knew him in his habit as he lived, if they were all alive and all talking. To learn what he tells ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh

... be no word for it. "Skate" in English, and patiner in French, mean propelling oneself on iron runners over ice, and nothing else; whereas in German there is only the clumsy compound-word Schlittschuh-laufen, which means "to run on sledge shoes," and in Russian it is called in equally roundabout fashion Katatsa-na-konkach, or literally "to roll on little horses," hardly a felicitous expression. As a rule people have no word for expressing a thing which does not come within their own range of experience; for instance, no one would expect that Arabs, or Somalis, or the inhabitants of ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... entered the castle, which was now theirs, and held their wedding; and all the kings roundabout, who had been in the troll's debt, and were now out of it, came to the wedding, and saluted the youth as their emperor, and he ruled over them all, and kept peace between them, and lived in his castle ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various

... in a corner, waiting to hear how the Sergeant would find his way to the subject of Rosanna Spearman. His usual roundabout manner of going to work proved, on this occasion, to be more roundabout than ever. How he managed it is more than I could tell at the time, and more than I can tell now. But this is certain, he began with the Royal ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... men could give me little information about the river. The old channel had filled with silt, and the river was diverted into a roundabout course little more than a creek in width, then spread over whole delta. The widely spread water finally collected into an ancient course of the Colorado, known as the Hardy or False Colorado. As nearly as I could learn no one from Yuma had been through this new channel ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb

... visited us," said the Prince, "or when my late father went to see him, the journey was always made by sea; and, in order to do this, it was necessary to go in a very roundabout way between Itoby and Yan. Now, I shall do nothing of this kind. It is beneath the dignity of a prince to go out of his way on account of capes, peninsulas, and promontories. I shall march from my palace to that of my uncle in a straight line. I shall go across the country, ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton

... "The Roundabout Rambles and Tales Out of School are two large handsome volumes, full of stories of home, travel and adventure, and the elegance and finish of the engravings can scarcely be surpassed in juvenile literature. Without and within, they are a treasury of beauty ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston

... considered "picturesque" by citizens of the smaller farm villages standing bleakly where the prairie lanes intersected. To be able to live in Marmion was held to be eminent good fortune by the people roundabout, and the notion was worth working for. "If things turn out well we will buy a lot in Marmion and build a house there," husbands occasionally said to their wives and daughters, to console them for the mud, or dirt, or heat, or cold of the farm life. One by one some of those ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland

... rather roundabout way she made her confession, if it could be called such. It filled several sheets of paper, and it took over half an hour. It contained but little more than what my readers already know or suspect. ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer

... morning that those very savages rode out on the plains in a roundabout way, so as to get in advance of the Cheyennes, and then had hidden themselves on the top of a bluff overlooking the trail they knew the Cheyennes to be following, and had fired upon them as they passed below, killing two and wounding a number of others. ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe

... up a side street, he drove, by a roundabout way, back to his yard. Thereafter he took pains to keep himself informed of ...
— The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip - "Making Good" as Young Experts • Victor G. Durham

... the usual methods of doing business with the Government. ["Hear, hear!"] I am assuming that Governments in the past have done their business in the most perfect way. This is not a time for the usual roundabout methods ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... must camp. I crossed the river to an opening where the bear tracks were so thick that the spot seemed a playground for all these animals roundabout. The black bears on the western slope were timid and not dangerous; but I did not know about this species of ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

... returned Andrews. "The enemy's engine will reach Dalton in a minute or two—perhaps they are there now—and they can telegraph on to Chattanooga by way of the wires on the Cleveland line. It's a roundabout way, but it will answer their ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins

... off, and begin as before? It is fortunate indeed that we can do so, being both for a while longer in the day. But, alas! when I see "works of the late J. A. S.,"[63] I can see no help and no reconciliation possible. I wrote him a letter, I think, three years ago, heard in some roundabout way that he had received it, waited in vain for an answer (which had probably miscarried), and in a humour between frowns and smiles wrote to him no more. And now the strange, poignant, pathetic, brilliant creature is gone into the night, and the voice is silent ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the military police made us take a roundabout road, and the driver lost his way. Of course a limber is not quite the vehicle you would select for comfort, especially over roads that are stony or pave. The German flare lights could be clearly seen all the way, and they ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley

... nothing. For a few years I kept them all vividly in mind; three hundred rosy faces smiled at me, three hundred schoolboy jackets testified more or less distinctly to the paternal standing, from the velvet coat of the mayor's son to the floury roundabout of the baker's offspring; I still heard all their different voices; I saw where each one sat in school; I recalled their words, their attitudes, their gestures. Gradually all the faces melted into a rosy blur, the jackets into a uniform neutral tint; the gestures were blent in a vague ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various

... Margery Daw; we heard a rollicking shout, As the swing-boats hurtled over our heads to the tune of the roundabout; And Little Boy Blue, come blow up your horn, we heard the showmen cry, And Dickory Dock, I'm as good as a clock, we ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... Mrs. Gaston finished the garment upon which she had been working, she had not even unrolled the other roundabout, and it was now nine o'clock at night. A sense of her destitute condition, and of the pressing necessity there was for her to let every minute leave behind some visible impression, made her, after Henry and Emma were in bed, ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur

... looking carefully about, to ascertain that no person was near, he restored the letter to its nook, placed the key in its hiding-place, as he had promised the postman, and again rode homewards by a roundabout way. ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... have been specially invoked for the operation. But Fire is not only a great power on earth, it is also, in the shape of Lightning, one of the dreadest and most mysterious powers of the skies, and as such sometimes called son of Ana (Heaven), or, in a more roundabout way, "the Hero, son of the Ocean"—meaning the celestial Ocean, the great reservoir of rains, from which the lightning seems to spring, as it flashes through the heavy showers of a Southern thunder storm. In whatever shape he appear, and whatever his functions, Gibil is hailed ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin

... stories of the subway, the slums, the docks, and the streets of Eastern cities. But now, as he strode over to the saloon, he forgot that he was a writer of stories. A boyish longing possessed him to see much of the life roundabout, even to the farthest, faint ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... a roundabout way to put it before you, but you have hit the right nail clean on the head at once. We want to make their lives as sunshiny as we can, and not try to point out clouds where as likely ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn

... could have no terrors, if followed by such a funeral; and I determined that I would be buried in the same manner. This is the fact; but I am not now exactly of the same opinion. I had no idea at that time, that it was such a terrible roundabout way to St. Paul's. Here I have been tossed about in every quarter of the globe, for between twenty and five-and-twenty years, and the dome is almost as distant ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... The former owners are all dead, and the property fell into my father's hands in a roundabout way. You see, when he got it the land was worth but very little, and no great care was taken of ...
— The Young Bridge-Tender - or, Ralph Nelson's Upward Struggle • Arthur M. Winfield

... have been little sense in trying to follow him or to head him off, even by more roundabout courses. Ashby was now far enough away to elude any ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock

... supported by the State, compel travellers who go from Berlin to Bale to pass via Cologne and Frankfort, instead of taking the Leipzig route; or that such a company carries goods a hundred and thirty miles in a roundabout way (on a long distance) to favour its influential shareholders, and thus ruins the secondary lines. In the United States travellers and goods are sometimes compelled to travel impossibly circuitous routes so that dollars may flow into the pocket ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin

... prophecy, MacCailein and his men came home in the fulness of time. They came with the first snowstorm of winter, the clan in companies down Glenaora and his lordship roundabout by the Lowlands, where he had a mission to the Estates. The war, for the time, was over, a truce of a kind was patched up, and there was a cheerful prospect—too briefly ours—that the country ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... for walking. The way to the New-Town, along by the new shops, was always cheering and pleasant; yet we regretted that a street did not lead into the Zeil by the Church of Our Lady, and that we always had to go a roundabout way by the /Hasengasse/ or the Catherine Gate. But what chiefly attracted the child's attention, were the many little towns within the town, the fortresses within the fortress; viz., the walled monastic enclosures, and several other precincts, remaining from earlier ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... work, 'Lovell the Widower,' is 'a very clever sketch, but as a novel is rather drawn out.' 'The Roundabout Papers' make very pleasant reading. In one 'he compares himself to a pagan conqueror driving in his chariot up the Hill of Coru, with a slave behind him to remind him that he is only mortal.' In 1863, suddenly, Thackeray died, seven years before ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... by critics. Shakespeare—than whom it would not be easy to find a better judge of what belongs to wisdom and goodness—seems to have meant him for a wise and good man: yet he represents him as having rather more skill and pleasure in strategical arts and roundabout ways than is altogether in keeping with such a character. Some of his alleged reasons for the action he goes about reflect no honour on him; but it is observable that the sequel does not approve them to have been his real ones: his conduct, as the action ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... are hardly aware of the extent of the task which you are imposing on him; and if there were more of us I should not ask him, for these are not subjects which any one, especially at his age, can well speak of before a large audience; most people are not aware that this roundabout progress through all things is the only way in which the mind can attain truth and wisdom. And therefore, Parmenides, I join in the request of Socrates, that I may hear the process again which I have not ...
— Parmenides • Plato

... every foot of country for many miles around Centerville. They had roamed over Oak Ridge and the Sunset Mountains, camped on Wildcat Island, situated in Camelot Lake, and scoured the region roundabout. ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen

... astern from the boat-deck or from B deck to the steerage quarters, I often noticed how the third-class passengers were enjoying every minute of the time: a most uproarious skipping game of the mixed-double type was the great favourite, while "in and out and roundabout" went a Scotchman with his bagpipes playing something that Gilbert says "faintly resembled an air." Standing aloof from all of them, generally on the raised stern deck above the "playing field," was a man of about twenty to twenty-four ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley

... the editorial (Appendix 1) by eliminating unnecessary words and finding briefer equivalents for roundabout expressions. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... doubt. American citizens were imprisoned, interned in reconcentrado camps, and otherwise maltreated. The nationality of American sufferers was in some cases disputed, and the necessity of dealing with each of these doubtful cases by the slow and roundabout method of complaint to Madrid, which referred matters back to Havana, which reported to Madrid, served but to add irritation to delay. American resentment, too, was fired by the sufferings of the Cubans themselves as much as by the losses ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish

... In plan No. 3, the farmer, for instance, sells his vegetables to a wholesaler, who perhaps buys from other farmers and then sells small quantities of them to the grocer for sale to the consumer. This plan, as will readily be seen, is more involved than either No. 1 or No. 2, but a still more roundabout route is that of plan No. 4. In this case, for instance, the farmer sells his vegetables to a canning factory, where they are canned and then sold to the grocer, who sells them in this form to the consumer. ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... kind," commented Craig, as I followed him into the elevator. "It saves planning some roundabout way of meeting her and comes directly ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve

... would be that Ethan Pratt would behold himself growing old in the peaceful safe harbour of South New Medford, anchored fast by his heartstrings to a small white cottage, all furbished and plenished within, all flowers and shrubs roundabout, with a kitchen garden at its back, and on beyond an orchard of whitewashed trees where buff cochins clucked beneath the ripening fruit, and on beyond this in turn a hay meadow stretching away toward ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... or Fermoy. Even in Belfast itself the contrast was brought home to troops quartered in Victoria Barracks, all of whom were well aware that on the death of a comrade his coffin would have to be borne by a roundabout route to the cemetery, to avoid the Nationalist quarter of the city where a military funeral would ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... by Mr. John Temple, of the summers spent there, of how he had later gotten a job on a steamer carrying supplies to the allies; how he had helped to apprehend a spy, how the ship had been torpedoed, how he had been rescued after two days spent in an open boat, of his roundabout journey back to Bridgeboro, and the taking up again of his prosaic duties in the local ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... impelled to do, the pressure of Jack Fyfe's lips on hers left no room for anything but an amazing thrill of pure gladness. She was happy in his arms, content to rest there, to feel his heart beating against hers, to be quit of all the uncertainties, all the useless regrets. By a roundabout way she had come to her own, and it thrilled her to her finger tips. She could not quite comprehend it, or herself. But she was glad, weeping with gladness, straining her man to her, kissing his face, murmuring incoherent words ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... died than attempt to open a correspondence—after what he had seen in that London square. It is true that in his brief epistles home, which were all addressed to his father, since Mrs. Parsons was what is called "a poor scholar," he did try in a roundabout way to learn something about Isobel, but these inquiries, for reasons of his own, his parent completely ignored. In short, she might have been dead for all that Godfrey heard of her, as he believed that ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard

... lawyer that he knew nothing of this, although he had heard in a roundabout way that such an intention had been talked of; and he also at length succeeded in making Sir Abraham understand that even this did not satisfy him. The attorney-general stood up, put his hands into his breeches' pockets, and raised his eyebrows, as Mr Harding proceeded ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope

... had to say to you is something very general, and yet I prefer to choose this roundabout way. I do not know whether it is false or true delicacy, but I should find it very hard to talk with you, face to face, about friendship. And yet it is thoughts on that subject that I wish to convey to you. The application—and it is about that I am most concerned—you will ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... silly little dancer who could not get out of the plastic block; but I am moving forward little by little, even if I have to take three steps roundabout ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell

... from six to nine was eagerly received. No objection indeed was made to the testimony of a neighbor who professed to have overheard what he deemed an incriminating statement. As a matter of fact the remark, if made, was harmless enough.[17] Expert evidence was introduced in a roundabout way by the statement offered in court that a physician had suspected that a certain case was witchcraft. Nothing was excluded. The garrulous women had been give free rein to pile up their silly accusations against one another. Not until the trial was nearing its end does ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein

... said he, "there are two ways of getting out of a scrape: a long way and a short way. When you've tried the roundabout method, and failed, come to me, and I'll show you ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith



Words linked to "Roundabout" :   merry-go-round, devious, ride, circuitous, roundabout way, whirligig, junction, rotary, circle



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