"Tedium" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and delivered to the old man-servant who acted as gardener, coachman, and general factotum to our household, and when we started off my father placed a book in my hands, that I might have something with me to beguile the tedium of the journey. My father accompanied me as far as Salisbury to bespeak the care and attention of the guard on my behalf, but finding that the only other inside passenger was an old gentleman of whom he had some slight ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... exponent and interpreter; and Dresham's leisure being devoted to the cultivation of remarkable women, his wife's attitude committed her to the public celebration of their remarkableness. For the conceivable tedium of this duty, Mrs. Dresham was repaid by the fact that there were people who took HER for a remarkable woman; and who in turn probably purchased similar distinction with the small change of her reflected ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... translation,(8) so far as I am aware, exists; and it seems to me that, even at the risk of fatiguing the reader (always capable of skipping at his pleasure), it is better to unfold the complete scene with all its tedium and badgering, which brings out by every touch the extraordinary self-command, valour, and sense of this wonderful Maid, the youngest, perhaps, and most ignorant of the assembly, yet meeting all with a modest and unabashed countenance, ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... procedure too slow to be practicable. Such an impression is inevitably produced by every verbal description of a complicated process. Compare the time occupied in describing a movement in fencing with that required to execute it; compare the tedium of the grammar and dictionary with the rapidity of reading. Like every practical art, criticism consists in the habit of performing certain acts. In the period of apprenticeship, before the habit is acquired, we are obliged to think of ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... was, that the two friends would miss the constant intercourse with which they had flattered themselves—the only thing that made London endurable to poor Emma. She amused Violet with her lamentations over her gaieties, and her piteous accounts of the tedium of parties and balls; whereas Violet declared that ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was seldom that she indulged herself in such lamentations, but the tedium was more than her high flow of spirits could well bear. Mrs. Campbell made a point of arranging the household, which gave her occupation, and Mary from natural disposition did not feel the confinement as much as Emma did; whenever, therefore, she did ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... without religious faith or ceremonies—a belief which the conduct and demeanour of the Anglo-Indians in past times tended, in too many instances, to confirm. Off the southern extremity of Ceylon, the ship was again becalmed for several days; but the tedium of this interval was relieved, not only by the ordinary sea incidents of the capture of a shark and the appearance of a whale, (the zoological distinctions between which and the true fishes are stated by the khan with great correctness,) but by the occurrence ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... companions of Lionel worked a young Spanish sailor named Jean de Morales, and, glad of any relief from the toil and tedium of their sad life, he listened eagerly to the often-repeated story of the lovely and beautiful island. Of this unknown land he dreamed and thought continually, longing for freedom that he might discover and tread ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... to many accidents. The chief point was, that the paper should never thoroughly dry, but must be kept constantly moist. This was the duty of my sister and myself; and the idleness, which would have been otherwise so desirable, was excessively annoying on account of the tedium and impatience, and the watchfulness which allowed of no distraction. The end, however, was attained; and the bookbinder, who fixed each sheet upon thick paper, did his best to match and repair the margins, which had been here and there torn by our inadvertence. ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... and clairvoyance of nonspiritualistic mediums and particularly in psychometry we obtain communications between one subconsciousness and another and revelations of unknown, forgotten or future incidents which are equally striking, though stripped of the vapid gossip and tedium reminiscences with which we are overwhelmed by defunct persons who are all the more jealous to prove their identity inasmuch as they know that they ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... committing them to memory. On landing I found these few phrases extremely useful, and I mention the fact by way of encouragement, and in case any other traveller should be inclined similarly to beguile the tedium of the voyage. ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... should settle at York, to remain "for ever" in each other's company. They started in a post-chaise, the good Harriet reading aloud novels by the now forgotten Holcroft with untiring energy, to charm the tedium of the journey. At York more than one cloud obscured their triune felicity. In the first place they were unfortunate in their choice of lodgings. In the second Shelley found himself obliged to take ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... themselves, and Desmond found some alleviation of the monotony of his life in learning the lingua franca of India under the Babu's tuition. He was encouraged to persevere in the study by the fact that the Babu proved to be an excellent storyteller, often beguiling the tedium of wakeful hours in the shed by relating interminable narratives from the Hindu mythology, and in particular the exploits of the legendary hero Vikramaditya. So accomplished was he in this very oriental art that it was not uncommon for one or other ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... must remember, is only just becoming literate. As reading becomes more and more habitual and widespread, an ever-increasing number of people will discover that books will give them all the pleasures of social life and none of its intolerable tedium. At present people in search of pleasure naturally tend to congregate in large herds and to make a noise; in future their natural tendency will be to seek solitude and quiet. The proper study of mankind ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... to rub his hands wretchedly back and forth over his bony knees, as if in that way he somewhat alleviated the tedium caused by her racking voice. "Oh, my, my!" ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... lines a great deal of valuable professional information is conveyed, at the same time that the tedium of much study is relieved by the harmony. If poetry is yet to be found in our hospitals—a queer place certainly for her to dwell, unless in her present feeble state the frequenters of Parnassus have subscribed to give her an in-patient's ticket—we trust that some able hand ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... capital by pressing the need for uncommercial employment of capital at home: the only practicable alternative. It knows that war, on its romantic side, is "the sport of kings": and it concludes that we had better get rid of kings unless they can kill their tedium with more democratic amusements. It notes the fact that though the newspapers shout at us that these battles on fronts a hundred miles long, where the slain outnumber the total forces engaged in older campaigns, are the greatest battles known to history, such machine-carnages bore us so ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... grateful eyes of the crew. It was not their destination, but at least it was land; and although there were still dangers to be passed, in those days it was the broad stretch of the ocean which tried the seamen's nerves. They hailed with joy the first glimpse of the New World after the terrible tedium ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... every shape and size, Who make a tedium of delight, Good-bye, the last of my good-byes. Good night, to all ...
— New Collected Rhymes • Andrew Lang
... tedious? There was tedium, rather, in the possession of bodies as durable as metal, as renewable as wax, as insensitive as water. In the fiercest onset of the passions, prolonged to satiety, there was always an element of the unreal. What is pleasure, if the strain of it is followed by no fatigue; what the delicacy ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... there was absolutely nothing in common. Mary, though only the senior by two or three years, was not only clever, but very intelligent and well read, and she had plenty of conversation. But the subjects for which she cared, though they would have delighted Joan, were utter tedium to Mittie's empty ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... Rottingdean by my sincere friend, the master of the preparatory school there. It contains, just before the First Chapter of Genesis, a Chronological Map "with remarkable persons and events collaterally placed." I remember how I used to mitigate the tedium of divine service by reading to myself that the creation of the world occupied one of the weeks of the year 4004 B.C.; that Egypt was founded about 2190 B.C.; that Troy fell about 1180 B.C., seventy years or so before the birth of King David; and that Homer ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... discarded was the thought of marriage. He pitied himself too tenderly at the idea of losing the liberty of which he made such agreeable use; at the idea of taking on himself gratuitously the restraints, the tedium, the ridicule, and even the danger of a household. He shuddered at the bare thought of a community of goods and interest; and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of broken threads, is no activity which claims the operative's thinking powers, yet it is of a sort which prevents him from occupying his mind with other things. We have seen, too, that this work affords the muscles no opportunity for physical activity. Thus it is, properly speaking, not work, but tedium, the most deadening, wearing process conceivable. The operative is condemned to let his physical and mental powers decay in this utter monotony, it is his mission to be bored every day and all day long from ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... different affair. It was a matter of spring and kisses and a perfect spiritual companionship.... As I have said, he gets into a terrible muddle. Anyhow, between the two conflicting ideals, he does not fall to the ground of vulgar amours. At the risk of tedium I feel bound to insist on this aspect of his life. For in the errant cosmopolitan world in which he, irresponsible and now well salaried bachelor had his being, he was thrown into the free and easy comradeship of hundreds ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... only view the veranda but converse at times with its occupants, and even listen to the book which Miss Macy, seated without, read aloud to him. In the evening Bradley would linger by his couch until late, beguiling the tedium of his convalescence with characteristic stories and information which he thought might please the invalid. For Mainwaring, who had been early struck with Bradley's ready and cultivated intelligence, ended by shyly avoiding the discussion of more serious topics, partly because Bradley ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... two stanes. You can either get your "stanes" in England and travel out with them, or hire them in the locality. They make the most pleasant travelling companions and at times are the cause of many amusing incidents which beguile the tedium of the journey. Also they often lead to your picking up chance acquaintances. I have known one stone placed in a dimly lighted corridor of a train productive of much merriment and harmless banter. Being of considerable weight they do not readily respond to a playful ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... received a present of an armadillo, or ant-eater, who is certainly a wonderful animal, and well worth studying, in the tedium of a calm between the tropics. The body proper is but about nine inches, but, when stretched at length, he covers an extent of two and a half feet, from head to tail, and is wholly fortified with an impenetrable armor of bony scales. On any occasion of alarm, it is his custom to thrust his long ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... hands of his barber, a shrewd intelligent Greek, Mustapha by name. Barbers are privileged persons for many reasons: running from one employer to another to obtain their livelihood, they also obtain matter for conversation, which, impertinent as it may sometimes be, serves to beguile the tedium of an operation which precludes the use of any organ except the ear. Moreover, we are inclined to be on good terms with a man, who has it in his power to cut our throats whenever he pleases—to wind up; the personal liberties arising from ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... Major Smith proposes to add to the College a Manual Labor Department, in which the elder boys shall acquire the rudiments of the arts and trades to which they are destined. This will alleviate the tedium of the College routine, assist the physical development of the boys, and send them forth prepared to render more desirable help to their employers. The present Board of Directors ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... disagreeable to his English habits, and the tedium of the place was great. His mother thought it quite enough to account for his captiousness, and the doctor said it was recovery, but no one guessed how much was due to the good resolutions he had made on ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... picturesque by a gleaner's bundle or a woodman's faggot, there is no change, no variety, no beauty anywhere; and he who has dwelt upon the mountains or amidst the forests feels oppressed as by imprisonment with the tedium and the endlessness of that vast ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... taking one of those ways which in the neighborhood of Amsterdam are simply called "the ways." That is all they are. Whoever walks there for pleasure must take a good stock of impressions with him, in order to escape tedium. ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... and then I yawned heavily, and remembered that for several days I had had scarcely any sleep. I shut my eyes to relieve the tedium of waiting. When I reopened them, dazed, and startled into sudden activity by mysterious angry noises, it was quite dark. I tried to recall where I was, and to decide what the noises could be. I regained my faculties with an effort. The noises ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... either out of respect to the presence of Rita, or concern for the Count's misfortune, rode along, contrary to his custom, in profound silence, and without indulging in any of those snatches of muleteers' songs with which it was his wont to beguile the tedium ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... object of his negotiations. But Spain sent him an amusing and literary ambassador, who kept him in play, year after year, with merry tales and bon mots.[231] These negotiations had languished through all the tedium of diplomacy; the amusing promises of the courtly Gondomar were sure, on return of the courier, to bring sudden difficulties from the subtle Olivarez. Buckingham meditated by a single blow to strike at the true secret, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... that it wad the invention of an astronomer, who lived more than 5,000 years ago, and was possessed of supernatural knowledge and acuteness. Greek historians assert that the game was invented by Palamedes to beguile the tedium of the siege of Troy. The Arab legend is that it was devised for the instruction of a young despot, by his father, a learned Brahman, to teach the youth that a king, no matter how powerful, was dependent upon his subjects ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... present life threatened to be the tedium of nothing to do. She could not read, practise her songs, and learn poetry by heart all the hours of the day: less than three sufficed her often. If she had been bred in a country-house, she would have possessed numerous interests that she ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... dragged wearily on. Noon came. Nothing and nobody interested Zoe. She went to be measured for a gown and could not support the tedium ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... discover that the taxicab to which he must entrust himself for the long ride up to West Eighty-fifth Street was a most shabby-appearing vehicle, the driver of which, moreover, as Mr. Leary could divine even as he crossed the sidewalk, had wiled away the tedium of waiting by indulgence in draughts of something more potent than the chill air of latish November. Mr. Leary peered doubtfully into the illuminated countenance but dulled eyes of the driver and caught a whiff of a breath alcoholically fragrant, and he understood that the warning relayed to ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... anywhere. He was a well-meaning young fellow, happily dispositioned, and a great favorite with the tribe at Robinson's Post, whither he had gone in the service of the Department of Agriculture, to assist the local agent through the tedium of a long census-taking. ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... under that shadow lies every thought that points towards the troublous and labouring career of other men. But," he resumed after a pause, and in a deep, earnest, almost solemn voice,—"but after all, is this cowardice or wisdom? I find no monotony—no tedium in this quiet life. Is there not a certain morality—a certain religion in the spirit of a secluded and country existence? In it we do not know the evil passions which ambition and strife are said to arouse. I never feel jealous or envious of other men; I never know what it is to hate; ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... first catalogue—but what shall we say to the second? It consists of only 635 articles, and yet, as is well observed in the preface, it was never equalled for the like number. Happy is that noviciate in bibliography who can forget the tedium of a rainy day in sitting by the side of a log-wood fire, and in regaling his luxurious fancy, by perusing the account of "fine, magnificent, matchless, large paper," and "vellum" copies which are thickly studded from one end of this volume to the other. Happier ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... thereafter the long tedium of existence in the settlement began to be broken in earnest. Before they could digest the flavour of one event, something else happened. In the afternoon word came down to Stiffy and Mahooley that the bishop had arrived at the French Mission, bringing the ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... killing the time, and lightening the tedium of a sea passage to the refugees, we bethought us of getting up a play. This was managed by one of the lieutenants of marines, a fellow of great taste, and some one or two of the midshipmen, who pretended to skill in the Shakespearian art. What the piece was I do not ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... sand, walked men with ox-goads, who prodded the unwilling beasts along. On a curve I counted the wagons ahead and behind. I knew that there were forty of them, including our own; for often I had counted them before. And as I counted them now, as a child will to while away tedium, they were all there, forty of them, all canvas-topped, big and massive, crudely fashioned, pitching and lurching, grinding and jarring over sand ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... to Massot's. To alleviate the tedium of the sitting, a Mlle. Romilly played pleasantly on the harp, and the studio was a veritable temple of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... had so often harassed him now rushed through his brain. Life, so he said, had passed by him; after all, there was no such thing as an exceptional existence; even a hero's life is full of tedium, grievous at the outset, ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... not tiresome. To the philosophic mind, Dr. Frampton, there should be no such thing as tedium, boredom, ennui, and I trust that mine is philosophic. You were much in my thoughts, sir, between the attacks of sea-sickness. By frequent perusal I had committed your two epistles to memory, and while silently rehearsing their well-turned sentences, ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Thorn in the Flesh (STANLEY PAUL) betrays absolutely no evidence of staleness. If the outlook here is a thought less romantic than in certain novels that drew sighs from my adolescent breast, this is a change inherent in the theme. For the matter of the present work is a study in conjugal tedium. Parthenope (name of ill-omen) was one of those unhappy and devastating beings who go through life fated to bore their nearest and dearest to the verge of lunacy. So that her marriage to poor well-meaning Willy Steele had not endured for more than a matter of weeks before the wretched man ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... believe I could resume it to-morrow, very little the worse from long disuse. To this present year of my life, when I sit in this hall, or where not, hearing a dull speech, the phenomenon does occur—I sometimes beguile the tedium of the moment by mentally following the speaker in the old, old way; and sometimes, if you can believe me, I even find my hand going on the table-cloth, taking an imaginary note of it all. Accept these little truths as a confirmation of what I know; as a confirmation of my undying interest in this ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... in his early cup of tea that Easter Saturday afternoon, Louis had no project whatever in his head, and he was excessively, exasperatingly bored. A quarter of an hour earlier he had finished reading the novel which had been mitigating the worst tedium of his shamed convalescence, and the state of his mind was not improved by the fact that in his opinion the author of the novel had failed to fulfil clear promises—had, in fact, abused his trust. On the other ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... little work to do, but he didn't mind that; it would help immensely to beguile the tedium of the voyage; and all he required in order to do it well was the moral courage to shut himself up for a few hours each day and to avoid as far as ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... this one day. But the Happy Valley had a cloud over it. Hepzibah troubled her auditor, moreover, by innumerable sins of emphasis, which he seemed to detect, without any reference to the meaning; nor, in fact, did he appear to take much note of the sense of what she read, but evidently felt the tedium of the lecture, without harvesting its profit. His sister's voice, too, naturally harsh, had, in the course of her sorrowful lifetime, contracted a kind of croak, which, when it once gets into the human throat, is as ineradicable as sin. In both ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... such diverse occupations as interstellar steel construction and animal husbandry and llano-planet colonization. "If it were adventure, as the only girl on this ship I'd have to be in the landing party, lest the tedium of orbital waiting make the"—her smile widened to a grin—"the pent-up restlessness of ...
— Sand Doom • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... and wind about in every direction—sometimes standing on for several hours at a stretch to the southward and eastward. These perpetual embarrassments became at length very wearying, and in order to relieve the tedium of our progress I requested the Doctor to remove one of my teeth. This he did with the greatest ability—a wrench to starboard,—another to port, and up it flew ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... my first admirers was a gentleman of sixty, who called upon me with a large roll of manuscript. He had retired from business two years before, so he informed me, and, having always been a great lover of poetry, he determined to fill up the tedium of his life of ease by writing some for himself. Now everybody knows that I am not a poet,—the few patriotic verses which I wrote during the war having simply been the result of excitement,—and why should he apply to me? ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... of Australia, must quickly run off into a contrast. The primary object of the Pilgrim Fathers, was the enjoyment of opinions in peace. The early denizens of the southern world burned their first church to escape the tedium of attendance. The first pilgrims of New England attempted a community of goods on the plan of the apostles. The first Australians drew their stores from the commissariat, and adopted the traditions of Houndsditch and Wapping. The leaders of the first Americans were their clergy,—the ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... that Nero from tedium sought recreation in night attacks. Even Petronius took part in these amusements. Their main object was to seize women and toss each on a soldier's mantle till she fainted. Even Nero himself on occasions called these expeditions "pearl hunts," for it happened that ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... your absence particularly this evening, because we are navigating the North Sea, where you have been so often tossed to and fro, and we thought it quite possible you might have met with some amusing or instructive incidents in your travels along the coast, which would agreeably relieve the tedium of our voyage. Now I see no reason why you should not accompany your friend to Scotland, and charm us with a soul-stirring narrative of ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... the winter life up to date; no great excitements, nothing untoward, but a remarkable bonhomie obtaining in our little company despite the tedium of so many days of winter gloom. On June 27 Dr. Wilson with Bowers and Cherry-Garrard started on a remarkable journey to Cape Crozier, nearly seventy miles distant from Cape Evans, via Hut Point and the Barrier. The object of these intrepid souls was to observe the incubation ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... Signora Rovero spoke of Gaetano Brignoli, to whom she paid the greatest compliments. Aminta returned with an expression altogether changed. Her face was lit up with joy, as expressive and animated as the tedium and thoughtfulness which marked it had been profound. Maulear did not sympathize with her gayety, and she became every moment more moody and sombre. Under the pretext of a headache, he retired to his room. New thoughts assailed him. He looked out on the terrace where he had seen ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... soil, as a child torn from its mother, became a mutual object of attraction. It was thus that Louisa pointed it out to her parents as it lay on the deck in its glass case, exposed to the mid-day sun. She charmed the tedium of the voyage in hourly watching the progress which she believed visible in the feeble offset. She had felt interested in it from the moment Desclieux had shown her all the glory he was to gain by it for ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... incentive from without to any important activity and confronted by the sole prospect of having to drag out a humdrum existence, men began to reflect with a sort of sullen exultation upon the possibility of departing this life at will, and to find in this thought a scant amelioration of the ills and tedium of the times. This disposition was so general that "Werther" itself exerted a powerful influence, because it everywhere struck a responsive chord and publicly and tangibly exhibited the true inwardness ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... rushing about with luggage, throngs of people. It happened that the midnight train from Cornwall was overdue, and fluttered women waiting for friends were importuning bored officials about the delay. Sleepy children stared with wondering eyes at pictorial efforts to beguile the tedium of waiting for trains. There were geographical posters comparing Cornwall favourably to Italy; posters of girls in bathing costume beckoning to "the Cornish Riviera;" posters of frolicsome puppies in baskets ticketed "Lucky ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... had performed his duty by sitting on a fence and "righting up" his pockets, to beguile the tedium of his exile. Before his multitudinous possessions could be restored to their native sphere, Thorn was himself ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... together in a modern railway-carriage will often become better acquainted in three hours than they might as next-door neighbors in three years; and this was still more likely to happen in the old days of coach journeys, when the very tedium of the occasion served as an inducement to frank and friendly conversation. Pierce was the right man to bring Hawthorne out of his hard shell of Sebago seclusion. He had already been one year at Bowdoin, and at that time ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... that time the English have retained possession of this much disputed territory; the fort has been unarmed and unoccupied (by military force) since 1850, when the Rifle Brigade were stationed here; but the tedium of garrison life proving still more irksome here, and desertions being frequent, the fort was abandoned ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... to my carving and fashioning of this eye and with my initials below it, the which foolish business (fond and futile though it was) served in no small measure to abate my consuming impatience and the dreary tedium. ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... transom, smoking the skipper's spare pipe, and racking his mind for ways and means. After a time he was conscious that the captain was growling a bit of a song to relieve the tedium of his task. He sang the same words over and over—a tried and ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... proportion, and capacity for general interest in other important questions—social, literary, and intellectual. "It is this cultivation of mind which prevents you from being crushed under the difficulty and tedium and disappointment which must attend every effort to teach principles and promote ideal aims among the mass of ignorant, apathetic, uninterested, and helpless working women, who must themselves in the last ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson
... and watch you doing it. I know what girls in the chorus have to go through. Hanging about for hours in draughts, doing nothing, while the principals go through their scenes, and yelled at if they try to relieve the tedium of captivity with a little light ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... 'Greek is nearly killing me, but I have no time and I have no money to buy books or to take a master'. When Augustine Caminade wants his Homer back which he had lent to him, Erasmus complains: 'You deprive me of my sole consolation in my tedium. For I so burn with love for this author, though I cannot understand him, that I feast my eyes and re-create my mind by looking at him.' Was Erasmus aware that in saying this he almost literally reproduced ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... dwell on the picture which a crowd presents at a public execution;—much like a crowd, we may be sure, at any other public spectacle. Whatever the object which gathers together a mob of the lowest class, they will soon begin to relieve the tedium of expectation by coarse jests, drunkenness, and brawling. Yet these descriptive logicians are never weary of painting to us the grotesque and disgusting scenes which the mass of spectators exhibit on these occasions, as if this were quite decisive of the question. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... hammered-down old cove. By all the rules of the prize ring he's in Scraggsy's class." (Here Mr. McGuffey flashed a lightning wink to the commodore. It was an appeal for Mr. Gibney's moral support in the engineer's scheme to put up a job on Captain Scraggs, and thus relieve the tedium of the homeward trip. Mr. Gibney instantly telegraphed his approbation, and McGuffey continued.) "I notice also that if I was to hunt the universe over, I couldn't find a better match for Gib than Tabu-Tabu. And as we are all agreed that the ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... reluctant extensions to successive greater distances, defining the scope of the knowledge proper for a man of his condition? It is a bad thing, is it, that he has a multiplicity of ideas to relieve the tedium incident to the sameness of his course of life; that, with many things which had else been but mere insignificant facts, or plain dry notions and principles, he has a variety of interesting associations; like woodbines and roses wreathing round ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... and, like the lightning of night, only serve to darken the gloom through which they occasionally break. Happiness is not that state of repose, or that imaginary freedom from care, which at a distance is so frequent an object of desire, but with its approach brings a tedium, or a languor, more unsupportable than pain itself. If the preceding observations on this subject be just, it arises more from the pursuit, than from the attainment of any end whatever; and in every new ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... of fifty years standing, and had become fixed in the habit of illustrating great truths by grotesque and familiar similes. His jokes, the circulating medium of Congress, were as helpful to the cause, as Jay's conscience or Adams' fire; they restored good humor, and relieved the tedium of delay, but were out of place in formal, exact and authoritative papers."—Parton's Franklin, Vol. 2. ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... from the tedium of the breakfast table, sped down the long avenue on her bicycle. Across the handle bars was tied a bundle, her towel and scarlet bathing dress. From the back of the saddle, wobbling perilously, hung a much larger bundle, a new lug sail, the fruit ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... insects, if you cannot convince those good people, because you do not carry the weight of tedium, I, in my turn, will say to them: 'You rip up the animal and I study it alive; you turn it into an object of horror and pity, whereas I cause it to be loved; you labor in a torture chamber and dissecting room, I make my observations under the blue sky to the song of the cicadas, ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... Yu-lang, the tedium of beholding the hideousness of all the guests was curiously diminished by the pleasure of seeing Prudence's delectable ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... tedium is relieved by a very audible dispute outside between the Driver of the Baby's Caravan and the Wife of the Conjuror next door, who appears to have excited the Driver's displeasure by consenting to take the money in the absence ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... "I have not yet had enough of your second kindness. I was on the point of death from sheer tedium; then you came, just in time; and if you want to carry out your work of mercy you must tell me something about the battle where you were wounded, and who took care of you afterwards, and whether the women of Pannonia ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... day the girl came to feed him, and regularly as his reward each time he bunted the bottle out of her hand afterward. Also, between meals she spent much time in his society, and on these occasions relieved the tedium of his diet with loaf sugar, and, after a while, quartered apples. For these sweets he soon developed a passion, and he would watch her comings with a feverish anxiety that always brought a smile to her ready lips. And thus began, and thus went on, their friendship, a friendship ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... continual use has set on the side-walls of some of the staircases. In general appearance and design the nuraghi recall the modern truddhi, hundreds of which dot the surface of Apulia and help to beguile the tedium of the railway journey from Brindisi to Foggia. The truddhi, however, are built in steps or terraces ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... imagined that the talk would be wild and high, that some of them might drink more than they ought, and that I would drink discreetly. But it seemed these beer busts were a diversion of these high-spirited young fellows whereby they whiled away the tedium of existence by making fools of their betters. As I learned afterward, they had got their previous guest of honour, a brilliant young radical, unskilled in drinking, ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... massy walls of this venerable academy, I passed, yet not in tedium or disgust, the years of the third lustrum of my life. The teeming brain of childhood requires no external world of incident to occupy or amuse it; and the apparently dismal monotony of a school was replete with more ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... were coming from the theatre she told me all about the piece with charming grace and wonderful memory; she seemed to wish to give me some pleasure in return for the tedium to which she had condemned me. When we got home we had supper, and that evening, Heaven be thanked! I heard nothing more about the cabala. Before we parted, Esther and her father made me promise ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... will not. You have made up your mind, of course, to the tedium of the two railway journeys every weekday, and when you have made friends with your fellow-commuters, you will get to like it, for your morning trip in will take the place with you of your present afternoon call at your club. And you are pretty sure ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... sheltered I was from the breeze, gathered about my head in swarms. A winter wren at my elbow struck up to sing, going over and over with his exquisite tune; and a scarlet tanager, also, not far off, did what he could—which was somewhat less than the wren's—to relieve the tedium of my situation. Finally, when my patience was well-nigh exhausted,—for the afternoon was wearing away and I had some distance to walk,—a swift flew past me from behind, and, with none of that poising over the entrance such ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... pleasures.... Does the European, in spite of the apparent deference which he affects towards women, really treat them with more respect? While we refuse them a sensible education, while we feed their minds with tedium and trifles, while we allow them to busy themselves only with playthings and fashions and adornments, while we seek to inspire them only with the taste for frivolous accomplishments, do we not show our real contempt, while we ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... into the night; and early on the following morning the prisoners were brought forth, loaded up with the baggage belonging to the explorers and, surrounded by an armed guard of sixty men, they set out upon a forward march, accompanied by the entire populace of the village, who beguiled the tedium of the journey by continually singing what seemed to be songs of ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... favourite were as follows. He rose early, drove or rode for an hour, and after breakfast transacted business for a time. He then relieved the tedium of that time by witnessing exhibitions of skill and daring by his private matadors, after which he spent about three hours in the society of the Queen. He then devoted the same length of time to the conduct of public business with the King; and the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... powers—fruit of nature and of our interchange of thought—treasures whence should issue a unique satisfaction for passion and desire, hours of poetry to outweigh years, joys to make a man serve a lifetime for one gracious gesture,—all this is to be buried in the tedium of a tame, commonplace marriage, to vanish in the emptiness of an existence which you will come to loath! I hate your children before they are ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... watch through a night with something on your mind you are to be forced to speak of in the morning—a compulsion awaiting you as a lion awaiting the debut of a reluctant martyr in the arena of the Coliseum? Did you, so watching, feel—not the tedium—but the maddening speed of the hours, the cruelty of the striking clocks? Were you conscious of a grateful reliance on your bedroom door, still closed between you and your lion, as the gate that the eager eyes of Rome were fixed on was still ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... the Taj has always suffered mutilation. The Mahrattas looted it of everything movable and systematically wrenched precious stones from their places in the design ornamenting the fabric of the interior. After the Mutiny came the red-coated soldier, who relieved the tedium of garrison duty by appropriating any attractive piece of inlay overlooked by the Mahrattas—these pretty bits made interesting souvenirs of India for sending home ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... as well as the shape of his head-dress, and his own half-crazed, half-cunning expression of countenance, sufficiently pointed him out as belonging to the race of domestic clowns or jesters, maintained in the houses of the wealthy, to help away the tedium of those lingering hours which they were obliged to spend within doors. He bore, like his companion, a scrip, attached to his belt, but had neither horn nor knife, being probably considered as belonging ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... promised to consider it. He had no other reason to deny such favor, but the tedium of listening to what could profit neither ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... game that belongeth to all, The game, be it known, of the Cup and the Ball; Dear to little and great, to the fools and the wise; Charming game! where the cure of all tedium lies; When we toss up the ball on the point of a stick Palamedus himself might have envied the trick; O Muse of the Loves and the Laughs and the Games, Come down and assist me, for, true to your aims, I have ruled off this paper in ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... to-day?" I tried to dig out my genuine opinions. Really, it is not so easy to put one's finger on a high-class poet. I gave the names of Robert Bridges and W.B. Yeats. He wouldn't admit Mr. Yeats's tip-topness. "What about T.W.H. Crosland?" he inquired. At first, with the immeasurable and vulgar tedium of Mr. Crosland's popular books in my memory, I thought he was joking. But he was not. He was convinced than an early book by the slanger of suburbs contained as fine poetry as has been written in these ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... upon the absence of the Princesse de Conde; an absence which could not fail to be abridged by the necessity of residing in a city like Cologne, where the ardent spirit of the Prince could not but revolt at the tedium around him. The effect of her appeal was all that she had anticipated, strengthening as it did the preconceived measures of the confidential minister of Philip III, who hastened to represent to that monarch ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... us; she answered gravely, that in our turn we should be attended to; and in the end we were fortunate enough to procure a little cream, of which we took possession; and then, wearied out with the tedium of the proceeding, rose and made a retreat, leaving the rest of the taciturn company to wait for and contemplate their dessert. It was not so much the supineness of the attendants as the apathy of the guests that amazed us; having generally observed in France, that mauvaise honte by no means stood ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... and was at the same time, doubtless, greeted from balcony and window by multitudes of fair-haired Crefeld maidens, who looked with delightful anticipations on the gallant soldiers, who were to relieve the tedium of their evenings, riding by. "To-day," the Emperor told the assembled city fathers, "I have kept my word to the town of Crefeld, and when I make a promise I keep it too (stormy applause). I have brought the town its garrison and the young ladies their dancers." The "stormy applause" was again ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... seem from this long catalogue of humorists that frivolity was the prevailing note of the play. But I can give assurances that this was not so. The prevailing note was a high seriousness, culminating in the last Act, when tedium supervened. I attribute my final depression in part to the scene—a bird's-eye view of New York from the roof-garden of the Settlement House. It was impossible to share Quixano's spasm of exaltation in the matter of the Melting Pot ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various
... coco with his bell; a regiment of the line with its band; a chorus of peripatetic Orpheonistes—a swallow, a butterfly, a humblebee; a far-off balloon, oh, joy!—any sight or sound to relieve the tedium of those two mortal school-hours that dragged their weary lengths from half past one till half past three—every day but ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... evening, which were now closing round, did not deter him in the least. Andy was not very fresh for the journey to be sure, for he had ridden upwards of thirty miles that day, so the merry whistle, which is so constantly heard from the lively Irish pedestrian, did not while away the tedium of his walk. It was night when Andy was breasting up a low ridge of hills, which lay between him and the end of his journey; and when in silence and darkness he topped the ascent, he threw himself on some heather to rest and take breath. ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... diminish his services. You pointed me to the fact that you had observed that rule in the case of the Louisiana and Carolina troops, and you will not fail to perceive that others find in the fact a reason for the like disposal of them. In the hour of sickness, and the tedium of waiting for spring, men from the same region will best console and relieve each other. The maintenance of our cause rests on the sentiments of the people. Letters from the camp, complaining of inequality and harshness in ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... pleasure, like Marguerite de Valois and the Comtesse de Verrue, and even Madame de Pompadour. Probably books and arts were more to this lady's liking than the diversions by which she beguiled the tedium of Louis XV.; and many a time she would rather have been quiet with her plays and novels than engaged in conscientiously ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... crowd of people who would know them at the Cambridge station. As soon as they had got away from the door of Robert Bolton's house, the husband attempted to comfort his young wife. 'At any rate it is over,' he said, alluding of course to the tedium of their wedding festivities. ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... was to abolish the tedium due to the elaborate aiming of the guns, by fixing a time limit for every move. We made this an outside limit at first, ten minutes, but afterwards we discovered that it made the game much more warlike to cut the time down to a length that would barely ...
— Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books • H. G. Wells
... burned with shame. She felt humiliated. Evidently he had regarded her merely as some one with whom it might he agreeable to idle away the tedium of a journey—but that was all. It was obviously his intention that that should be the beginning and the ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... beyond his scope. He adheres to conventional maxims and material quantitative standards; his production is therefore, as far as he himself is concerned, an essential waste and his activity an essential tedium. If at least, like the sensualist, he enjoyed the process and expressed his fancy in his life, there would be something gained; and this sort of gain, though over-looked in the worldling's maxims, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... or impassioned, or profound. As they sat, listening to his speeches, in which considerations of stolid plainness succeeded one another with complete flatness, they felt, involved and supported by the colossal tedium, that their confidence was finally assured. They looked up, and took their fill of the sturdy, obvious presence. The inheritor of a splendid dukedom might almost have passed for a farm hand. Almost, but not quite. For an air that was ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... others! I promised to read every one of the papers, and I was soon rewarded for the unparalleled tedium of these studies. ...
— Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)
... she was to-day more than ever galled by the deadly circumstances of her existence. If they were to continue to obtain, she felt, life would grow simply unendurable, and she would to do something reckless to get a little relief from the tedium and the ugliness ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... her in a certain relationship (mowai), apparently her paternal aunts. She is blackened all over with charcoal and wears a long petticoat reaching below her knees. During her seclusion the married women of the village often assemble in the forest and dance, and the girl's aunts relieve the tedium of the proceedings by thrashing her from time to time as a useful preparation for matrimony. At the end of a month the whole party go into the sea, and the charcoal is washed off the girl. After that she is decorated, her body blackened ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... collection of tales to while away the tedium of travel; first published in 1555. 8: Stalt nach, 'wanted to secure.' 9: Bestelt, 'ordered,' 'arranged.' 10: Zehenden, 'tithes' (the dative in apposition to lon). 11: ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... have a real, old-fashioned Christmas. This, with the aid of Ephraim, Dinah and Chloe, they were fortunately able to do. As the preparations went forward, Aunt Betty's delight knew no bounds, and her soul was filled with rapturousness as joy after joy unfolded itself to relieve the tedium and monotony of ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... which was very hot, nor the tedium of the session, which had been very great, nor the anxiety of Ministers, which was very pressing, had any effect in impairing the energy of Mr. Turnbull. He was as instant, as oratorical, as hostile, as indignant about redistribution ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... leave of absence from the front, Paris represented what McGee had voiced to Larkin—a place where the war was over for the time limits of their passes. Forgotten, for a few brief hours, were all the memories of military tedium, the roar of guns, the mud of trenches, the flaming airplane plunging earthward out of control—all these things were banished by the stimulating thought that here was the world famous city with all its amusements, its arts, its countless beauties, ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... nature of a reflection on the action and seems to bear all the ear-marks of a heritage from the original function of the tragic chorus[138]. It devolved upon the actor by sprightly mimicry to relieve, in these scenes, the tedium that appeals to the reader. So in Cap. 909 ff. the canticum of the puer becomes more than a mere stopgap, if he acts out vividly the violence of Ergasilus; and in Bac. 1067 ff. the soliloquy would ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... it which it has fallen to my lot to describe is very different from those portions about which poets have sung with rapture. Here, none of the many wonders of the tropical latitudes beguile the tedium of the voyage; no glittering dolphins force the winged inhabitants of the deep to seek shelter on the vessel's deck; no ravenous sharks follow in our wake to eat us if we chance to fall overboard, or amuse us by swallowing our baited hook; ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... is!" and turn carelessly to a new lover; but that would be all. Gilbert had piqued her, perhaps, but he had done no more than that, though probably it was more than Henry could ever hope to do, and she had yawned a little with the tedium of waiting for him, and then had decided to ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... to school is a joy, management is less of a burden, and learning is easier. Sometimes, perhaps, plays, games, and constructive occupations are resorted to only for these reasons, with emphasis upon relief from the tedium and strain of "regular" school work. There is no reason, however, for using them merely as agreeable diversions. Study of mental life has made evident the fundamental worth of native tendencies to explore, to manipulate ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... walk, but she generally did so in the company of her sister Isabel. Isabel's light chatter, her gay, infectious laughter, her merry manner, soothed the tedium of the road. To-day Molly was alone; but by no means on this account did she feel a sense of weariness; her mind was very busy. She was greatly excited at the thought of seeing Maggie Howland again. Maggie ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... hint that the Minister of War acted, executing a rare piece of drollery that so enlivened the tedium of ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... to notice her. Mrs. Lasette entering the room with Mr. Luzerne whom she presented to the company, and noticing the loneliness and social isolation of Annette, gave him a seat beside her, and was greatly gratified that she had found the means to relieve the tedium of Annette's position. Mrs. Lasette had known him as a light hearted boy, full of generous impulses, with laughing eyes and a buoyant step, but he had been absent a number of years, and had developed into a handsome man with a magnificent physique, elegant in his attire, polished ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... it were time that I went away; and the wanderer's shadow and the longest tedium and the stillest hour—have all said unto me: "It is ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Astrorum Judiciis, the writing of which beguiled the tedium of his voyage down the Loire on his journey to Paris in 1552, is a book upon which he spent great care, and is certainly worthy of notice. Cardan's gratitude to Archbishop Hamilton for the liberal treatment and gracious reception he had recently encountered in Scotland, prompted him ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... for a quiet and secluded fortress, away from the world, in which he might pursue an undisturbed and ordered life of solemnity and delicate impressions of a sacred sort of beauty. His desire for community life was caused by his decided dislike of the world, of fuss and tedium and conventional occupations. He was never in the least degree a typical person. He had no wish to be distinguished, or to influence other minds or lives, or to gain honour or consideration. These things simply appeared to him ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... is rather a calm and reposeful absorption in a thought which can yield us all its beauty, and assure us of the existence of a principle in which we can rest and abide. As life goes on, we ought not to find relief from tedium only in a swift interchange and multiplication of sensations; we ought rather to attain a simple and sustained joyfulness which can find nurture in homely and ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... be regarded as vaunting over your comrades, who, I've no doubt, relax the tedium of war in temperate indulgence of some of these vices. 'Put up thy sword; states may be saved without it,' would sound out of keeping for a warrior whose States drew the sword when the olive-branch was offered them. You see, I can not select any text ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... management of his craft, the Pirate has under him an engineer and a Dutch lad. The former of these has, of course, his special duties; the latter is cook and steward, sailor, landing-agent, and general utility man. He goes by the name of "The Crew." To beguile the tedium and monotony of constant voyaging, "The Crew" is wont to exercise his mind by conversation with such passengers as there may be. He is of a very inquiring disposition, and asks leading questions of a very personal nature. Seeing that I am a new-chum, he begins to ask me my name, age, birthplace, ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... ignoble European practice of tight-lacing among women. And now it has been found needful to forbid the art. Their songs and dances were numerous (and the law has had to abolish them by the dozen). They now face empty-handed the tedium of their uneventful days; and who shall pity them? The least rigorous will say ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Graham the dark eyes which his daughter had inherited, and which seemed all the more brilliant in contrast with his frosty eyebrows, and said genially, "It is very kind of you to be willing to aid in beguiling an old man's tedium." Turning to his daughter he added a little querulously, "There must be a storm brewing, Grace," and he drew in his breath as if ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... The tedium of routine duty occupied our time without specially exciting incident until pleasanter weather towards the middle of April brought rumors of impending army movements again. About April 20 we heard the cavalry under Stoneman were on the move, and this was confirmed ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... the credit being mostly due to Mabelle and the Doctor, who took an immense deal of trouble to make everything go off properly, and were well rewarded by the universal appreciation of their exertions. I am sure that these amusements do good in relieving the unavoidable tedium and monotony of a ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... all eyes the question was expressed: "Why have you, a man from another world, halted here beside us? Who are you? Are you a self-satisfied rich man who wants to enjoy our wretchedness, to get rid of his tedium, and to torment us still more? or are you that thing which does not and can not exist,—a man who pities us?" This query was on every face. You glance about, encounter some one's eye, and turn away. I wished to talk with some one of ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... drowsy way through all the dismal swamps and unimpressive scenery that could be found between the great lakes and the sea- coast. Yet there is variety enough, both on the surface of the canal and along its banks, to amuse the traveller, if an overpowering tedium ...
— Sketches From Memory (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... good S—-'s sympathy. Dark days are few in happy Devon, and such as befall have never brought me a moment's tedium. The long, wild winter of the north would try my spirits; but here, the season that follows autumn is merely one of rest, Nature's annual slumber. And I share in the restful influence. Often enough I pass an hour in mere drowsing by the fireside; ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... of the 10th Hussars, the 6th Dragoon Guards, the Inniskillings, the New Zealanders, the N.S. W. Lancers, some Rimington Guides, and the composite Household Regiment; his artillery, the R and O batteries of R.H.A., the 4th R.F.A., and a section of the 37th Howitzer Battery. At the risk of tedium I have repeated the units of this force, because there are no operations during the war, with the exception perhaps of those of the Rhodesian Column, concerning which it is so difficult to get a clear impression. The fluctuating forces, the vast range of country covered, ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the long-leafed pine, where for miles not a house, or any other evidence of human occupation, is to be seen. Nothing could well be more dreary than a ride through such a region, and to while away the tedium of the journey I opened a conversation with the driver, who up to that time ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... forget for a while the hoary winter of age, when we can think of nothing but how to keep ourselves warm, and how to get rid of our heavy hours until the friendly hand of death shall rid us of all at once. Against this tedium vitae, however, I am fortunately mounted on a hobby, which, indeed, I should have better managed some thirty or forty years ago; but whose easy amble is still sufficient to give exercise and amusement to an octogenary rider. This is the establishment ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... supplied their place by the turf and the billiard-table. At present he was expiating some heavy debts by a forced residence with his parents, and unwilling attention to the office, a most distasteful position, which he never attempted to improve, and which permitted him both the tedium of idleness and complaints against all the employment to ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was followed by the importation of large numbers of French prisoners. Many of them were sent to Edinburgh Castle. They were permitted to relieve the tedium of their confinement by manufacturing and selling toys; workboxes, brooches, and carved work of different kinds. In the construction of these they exhibited great skill, taste, and judgment. They carved them out of bits of bone and wood. The patterns were most beautiful; ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... head, for it did not seem to him to be his destiny to relieve the tedium of a yachting ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... end. Guthrum was baptized, and the Treaty of Wedmore secured the clearance of Wessex. The modern reader will smile at the baptism, and turn with greater interest to the terms of the treaty. In this acute attitude the modern reader will be vitally and hopelessly wrong. He must support the tedium of frequent references to the religious element in this part of English history, for without it there would never have been any English history at all. And nothing could clinch this truth more than the case of the Danes. In all the facts ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... sported and saw around her, with people she did not know, and music she did not understand. As for Mr. Fairchild, the fatigue was intolerable; and he would have rebelled at once, if he had not paid for his places for the season, and so chose to have his money's worth, if it was only in tedium. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... of a cheerful disposition, though simple and easily cheated. When carrying palkis or litters at night they talk continually or sing monotonous songs to lighten the tedium of the way. In illustration of these qualities the following story is told: One day when Mahadeo and Parvati were travelling the goddess became very tired, so Mahadeo created four men from the dust, who bore her in a litter. On ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... fighting arm, but their constitutions will not be strong enough to stand the change of weather, if we protract the war into the summer. It has often happened that a force, which seemed irresistible at first, has dwindled to nothing through the tedium of forced inaction. ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... or easy journey he had thus rashly undertaken on the faith of a dream,—for dream he still believed it to be. Many weary days and nights were consumed in the comfortless tedium of travel, . . and though he constantly told himself what unheard-of folly it was to pursue an illusive chimera of his own imagination,—a mere phantasm which had somehow or other taken possession of his brain at a time when that brain must have been ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Hoghton Tower, orders were given by Sir Richard for the immediate service of the banquet; it being the hospitable baronet's desire that festivities should succeed each other so rapidly as to allow of no tedium. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the coffee was weaker in the morning, the pottage was weaker, the boiled beef less relieved by other diet, the dresses finer, the evening engagements constant. I did not find these visits pleasant. We might not knit, which would have relieved the tedium a little; but we sat in a circle, talking together, only interrupted occasionally by a gentleman, who, breaking out of the knot of men who stood near the door, talking eagerly together, stole across the room on tiptoe, his hat under ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... Queen slept on several of those nights of early February, for indeed she was more often at Kirk o' Field than at Holy-rood, and when she was not bearing Darnley company in his chamber, and beguiling the tedium of his illness, she was to be seen walking in the garden with Lady Reres, and from his bed he could hear her sometimes singing ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... jest and stealthy game, and all the noise and drawl of school; and in the midst of the din, sat the poor schoolmaster, vainly attempting to fix his mind upon the duties of the day, and to forget his little sick friend. But the tedium of his office reminded him more strongly of the willing scholar, and his thoughts were rambling from his ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... back, he had not even got gloves on; his long white hands were bare, he could not touch a toad. It was true that the beast had amused him, and that he had chatted to it; but after all, this was a piece of childish folly—an unmanly way, to say the least, of relieving the tedium of captivity. What was Monsieur Crapaud but a very ugly (and most people said a venomous) reptile? To what a folly he had been condescending! With these thoughts, Monsieur the Viscount steeled himself against the glances of his topaz-eyed friend, and when ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... the little light-green leaves of prickles and horn-beam; from there to the abominable party caucus, which has never yet made me any the wiser, so that one does not get home all day. If I do not attend the caucus meetings, they all rail at me, for each one grudges the others any escape from the tedium. * * * Good-by, my heart. May God's hand be over you, and the children, and protect you from sickness and worry, but particularly you, the apple of my eye, whom Roeder envies me daily in the promenade, when the sunset makes him sentimental, and he wishes he had such a "good, dear, devout wife." ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... exercise in his domestic circle, whose members, all adorned by refinement and literature, were many of them, like himself, distinguished by genius. Yet active life was the genuine soil for his virtues; and he sometimes suffered tedium from the monotonous succession of events in our retirement. Pride made him recoil from complaint; and gratitude and affection to Perdita, generally acted as an opiate to all desire, save that of meriting her love. We all observed the visitation ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... out. It is as old as "Robinson Crusoe"; as old as man. Our race has not been strained for all these ages through that sieve of dangers that we call Natural Selection, to sit down with patience in the tedium of safety; the voices of its fathers call it forth. Already in our society as it exists, the bourgeois is too much cottoned about for any zest in living; he sits in his parlour out of reach of any danger, often out of reach of any vicissitude but one of health; and there he yawns. If the people ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not like your look, Your brows are (see the poets) bent; You're biting hard on Tedium's hook, You're jaundiced, crumpled, footled, spent. What's worse, so mischievous your state You have no pluck to try and trick it. Here! Cram this cap upon your pate And come with ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... that Ephrinell can very well live without me. I have been quite right in not reckoning on his company to charm away the tedium of the journey. The Yankee has completely "left" me—that is the word—for this angular daughter ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... whole work is experimenting upon mind; and the mind which is before him to be the subject of his operation, is exactly in the state to be most easily and pleasantly operated upon. The reason now why some teachers find their work delightful, and some find it wearisomeness and tedium itself, is that some do, and some do not take this view of their work. One instructer is like the engine-boy, turning without cessation or change, his everlasting stop-cock, in the same ceaseless, mechanical, and monotonous routine. Another ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... the lens, he dutifully replaced the chest and palm clamps and settled down to the tedium ...
— A Fine Fix • R. C. Noll
... said Louis, and hustled off to fill Abe Potash's order, whereat Abe selected a dill pickle to beguile the tedium of waiting. He grasped it firmly between his thumb and finger, and neatly bisected it with his teeth. Simultaneously the pickle squirted, and about a quarter of a pint of the acid juice struck Morris ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... influences seem to have been attributed formerly, is reputed even to the present day to possess the virtue of keeping up the courage of those animals, of soothing their discontent, and of whiling away the tedium of their long task. It is not enough to have the art of driving them so as to cut the furrow in an absolutely straight line, to lighten their labor by raising the share or burying it deeper in the ground: a man is not a perfect ploughman if he cannot sing to his cattle, and that is a special science ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand |
