"Unprepared" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unprepared and off guard, but with swift reaction his wits were at work. He at once sought the purser and scrutinized every name on the passenger list. It was unlikely that a steerage passenger could reach the saloon ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... had only seen the fishermen hanging about their doors in lazy idleness, was quite unprepared for the excitement and vigour that they displayed when this first prey of the year ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... ready to receive them, and they all got safe on board, not a man of them having received the least hurt, except two, one of whom strained his foot, and the other burnt his hand a little; for they met with no resistance, the poor Indians being unprepared, amazed, and confounded. ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... appeared before Zeyla in the kingdom of Adel, on the north-east coast of Africa, a little way out from the mouth of the Red Sea. This place was called Emporium Avalite by Ptolemy, who describes it as a great mart in ancient times. On the present occasion Zeyla was taken with little opposition, being unprepared for defence, and was reduced to ashes. From Zeyla, Soarez went to Aden on the coast of Arabia, but soon found he had been to blame for not taking possession when formerly offered it; as Miramirzan had ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... evenings every week. The plans for the weekly paper, however, still hung fire. Comrade Dr. Service had lost his two brothers-in-law, one in the battle of Mons, and the other in the first frightful gas-attack at Ypres, where whole regiments of men were caught unprepared and died in awful torments. Also two of his wife's cousins had paid the price—one was blind, and the other a prisoner at Ruhleben, the worst fate of all. So Dr. Service made one last indignant speech in the local, and took his five hundred dollars to start a chapter of the ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... he was rushing to meet in combat three men, armed and desperate, worried him less than his anguished concern in behalf of the girl who was unprepared for his advent by hint ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... his state of mind. He shouted Christine's name, brandished his pistol, knocked his forehead against the glass in his endeavors to run down the glades of the illusive forest. In short, the torture was beginning to work its spell upon a brain unprepared ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... effort with which he at last bowed to her. That this unexpected double meeting with the daughter of the man he had wronged, and the man who had espoused the quarrel, should be confounding to him appeared only natural. But he was unprepared to understand the feverish alacrity with which he accepted Dona Maria's invitation to chocolate, or the equally animated way in which Clementina threw herself into her hostess's Spanish levity. He knew it was an awkward situation, that must be surmounted ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... equally justified in the Anglo-French attempt to get round through Gallipoli. The forces of the India Office have pushed their way through unprepared country towards Bagdad, and are now entrenching in Mesopotamia, but from the point of view of the main war that is too remote to be considered either getting through or getting round; and so too the losses of the German colonies and the East African ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... McKinley issued his call to arms for the Spanish war, the men of California responded with a rush. A large number of those who had enlisted were hurried to San Francisco, where the military authorities were quite unprepared to furnish supplies. For a day or two there was real suffering; then the Society of the Red Cross came to the rescue, and thousands of dollars' worth of food and blankets were sent to the camp. As soon as the always generous people of San Francisco comprehended the state of affairs, ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... Most of the English authors give very fair accounts of the battle, except that they hardly allude to the peculiar disadvantages under which the Chesapeake suffered when she entered into it. Thus, James thinks the Java was unprepared because she had only been to sea six weeks; but does not lay any weight on the fact that the Chesapeake had been out only as ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... about Sary, so he was unprepared to offer any advice, but he thought best to agree in everything with Jeb, concerning this particular one, and ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... force. In bush fighting especially this is a decided advantage, since the closeness of the ground prevents the troops attacked knowing the number or disposition of their opponents, while the moral effect of a sudden rush of well-armed and disciplined men upon enemies practically unprepared for ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... his time of trial had come: he was quite unprepared for the story old Betty told him. Mr. Evans had wished it might for the present be kept from him. He fell down like one struck with death when ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... bravura of despair, which may be appealed to as an example of vocal display, till then unparagoned, when turned to the account of frenzy, not frivolity—perhaps as such commissioned by the superb creative artist.—By that time, tired, unprepared, in ruin as she was, she had rallied a little. When—on Ann Boleyn's hearing the coronation music of her rival, the heroine searches for her own crown on her brow—Madame Pasta turned in the direction of the festive sounds, the old irresistible charm broke out;—nay, even in the final song, ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... dead and shouting a preconcerted signal—"Call all! Call all!" "The armed men jumped from amongst the hay, and a strong party of Scots, who by arrangement were in ambush outside, rushed in and attacked the astonished garrison, who were unprepared for the onslaught—the load of hay being so placed that the gate could not be closed nor the bridge raised—and so the Scots made themselves ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... country-fellow, unknown to Wilding. It was Godfrey, the spy, who was to act as their guide across Sedgemoor that night; for the matter that was engaging them just then was the completion of their plans for the attack that was to be made that very night upon Feversham's unprepared camp—a matter which had been resolved during the last few hours as an alternative preferable to the retreat towards Gloucester that had at first ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... courtesy, which should grant what it would demand, and an unavoidable faith in the purity of the author's intentions, entirely prevent our treating it as the work of an empiric. It is evident that the author believes what he writes, that the facts in mesmerism are facts to him; to those unprepared by previous experience for the fallacies which the enthusiastic temperament is led into, the book would be irresistible; to those, however, accustomed to physical or phsycological investigation, the last half of the work does much to unravel the web which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... produced—and Scott, signifying that his hour for dinner approached, added, that as he supposed they meant to walk to Melrose, he could not trespass further on their time. The two lion-hunters seemed quite unprepared for this abrupt escape. But there was about Scott, in perfection, when he chose to exert it, the power of civil repulsion; he bowed the overwhelmed originals to his door, and on reentering the parlor, found Mrs. Scott complaining very indignantly that they had gone so ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... to myself he was standing over me, counting my pulse. "I have startled you," he said. "A difficulty unforeseen—the impossibility of obtaining a certain drug in its full purity—has forced me to resort to London unprepared. I regret that I should have shown myself once more without those poor attractions which are much, perhaps, to you, but to me are no more considerable than rain that falls into the sea. Youth is but a state, as passing as that syncope from which ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I was emotionally unprepared. First off, Cleary and Fred had been building me up all through the three months, and I had actually gotten to the point where I thought I knew what I was doing. These space-jockeys spent most of their time ...
— The Trouble with Telstar • John Berryman
... speak a different language. What is a dazzling light for those just emerging from darkness, is darkness for those in a yet stronger light. A statement may be so much less false than another, as to be relatively true; so much less true than a third, as to be relatively false. For a mind wholly unprepared, the full truth is often a light that blinds and darkness; whereas the tempered half-truth prepares the way for a fuller disclosure in due time, even as the law and the prophets prepared the way for the Gospel and Christ, ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... are cereals not easily contaminated? (b) What care in storage should be given to both prepared and unprepared cereals? ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... ample," Francis said, "as they will be unarmed and unprepared. We can issue out singly until the alarm is given, and then those that remain must rush out in a body. Simply knock them down with the hilts of your swords. There is no occasion to shed blood, unless in the case of armed resistance; but remember they will have their knives ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... He was not unprepared, therefore, when he saw the tall form of the maroon appearing in the doorway through the smoke. No one else noticed the silent Carib's entry, and he stood motionless until Hornigold's eye fastened upon him. Then by an imperceptible move of his head he indicated a desire ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... however, concerned our own direct interests, and was a purely departmental matter concerning the War Office, and the Minister who had the most to do with it was the one who was now talking to him and who was not wanting in friendly feeling toward Germany. We could not run the risk of being caught unprepared. ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... around there were numerous excursion parties, which helped to swell the number present. Had these people foreseen the terrible scene not down on the bills, they would have remained at home and locked the doors of their houses. But danger is seldom anticipated and peril generally finds us unprepared. ...
— The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus • Horatio Alger Jr.
... dangers. No thoughtful man can fail to see that the necessity for definite action may come at any time, if we are in fact, and not in word merely, to defend our elementary rights as a neutral nation. It would be most imprudent to be unprepared. ...
— Why We are at War • Woodrow Wilson
... in spite of the orders and entreaties of the prince, nothing whatever was done, and the Spaniards when they returned before the city on the 26th of May, after two months' absence, found the town as unprepared for resistance as it had been at their first coming, and that the citizens had not even taken the trouble to destroy the forts that they had ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... behaviour of Friday night before you, I think I should sooner choose to go to my last audit, unprepared for it as I am, than to appear in your presence, unless you give me some hope, that I shall be received as your elected husband, rather than, (however deserved,) as a ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... to the small band of persons who had concerted that bold stroke, who had brought the queen's brother into his native country, was, that his visit should remain unknown till the proper time came, when his presence should surprise friends and enemies alike; and the latter should be found so unprepared and disunited, that they should not find time to attack him. We feared more from his friends than from his enemies. The lies, and tittle-tattle sent over to St. Germains by the Jacobite agents about London, had done an incalculable mischief ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... both of you!" the man with the black coat and the white bands commanded. "While you argue about vanities, thousands are being converted to the godlessness of The Guide, and other thousands of his dupes are dying, unprepared to face their Maker!" ...
— Hunter Patrol • Henry Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... the pernicious influence of Harry's "item." For many days he followed the most highly impossible clews, some of them intractable, to supply a rather unusual word of description. In other words, they reacted with a vigour that often found him unprepared but serene. Consequences bothered Anderson but little in those ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... brought face to face with some need that admitted of no deliberation,—as is wont to happen in the contradictions of warfare and the turns of fortune—not even then did he miss the proper course. Through accustoming himself to regard no happening as unreasonable he was not unprepared for the assault of sudden events, but through his incessant activity was able to meet the unexpected as if he had forseen it long before. As a result he showed himself daring in matters where he felt he was right, and ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... moral suggested by this record? Is it not that we should look with charity and tolerance upon the schemes and speculations of the political and social theorists of our day; that, if unprepared to venture upon new experiments and radical changes, we should at least consider that what was folly to our ancestors is our wisdom, and that another generation may successfully put in practice the very theories ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... noise, knocking against chairs and tables, but taking, however, good care not to hurt himself seriously, but screaming loudly in the hope of alarming me. All this had no effect, but I perceived that though he was prepared for scolding or anger, he was quite unprepared for indifference. ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... his head. He had not been unprepared for something like this, but the pain he might have felt at another time was made easier by a subtle anodyne. He hardly seemed to feel the smart as a week before he might have done. In some strange way Winsome was helping him to bear it—or ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... is, the result is given in one word—Disappointment.' My silence admitted his inference to the fullest extent. His countenance certainly did look rather blank for a few seconds; in truth, he had been wholly unprepared for the event; for it is a singular fact, that before the public, or rather the booksellers, had given their decision, he no more knew whether he had written well or ill, than whether a die thrown out of a box ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... large reclining chair, similar to a bed, wheeled to the hall door. A man servant behind him held his guns, loaded them and handed them to his master. Another valet, hidden in the bushes, let fly a pigeon from time to time at irregular intervals, so that the baron should be unprepared and ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... shore amid the plaudits of the rejoicing people, as related in the ballad of Lord Macaulay. Then it was, too, that the people determined to erect a bridge which could be more readily removed in case of necessity. Baffled in this attempt to enter Rome, the enemy laid siege to the city, and as it was unprepared, it soon suffered the distress of famine. Then another brave man arose, Caius Mucius by name, and offered to go to the camp of the invaders and kill the hated king. He was able to speak the Etruscan language, and felt that a little audacity was all that he needed to carry his mission ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... had less than seven or eight thousand Indians employed[2]. As Guatimotzin, the reigning monarch of Mexico, frequently sent out large bodies of troops in canoes on the lake, apparently with the hope of attacking us unprepared, Cortes used every military precaution to guard against any sudden attack, by assigning proper posts to our several captains, with orders to be always on the alert. The people in Huexotla, a town and district only a few miles from Tezcuco, who had been guilty ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... on that day. Nothing could induce them to the contrary; not that we wished to persuade them to work, but merely endeavoured so to do to ascertain the strength of their politeness. Not a bit of work would they do upon a Sunday, although it was a critical time with them; for all the chiefs were unprepared with their war canoes for the approaching expedition. At length we discovered that their cunning was as conspicuous as their politeness. They had observed we generally lay longer in bed on a Sunday morning ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... is unprepared, when it enters the fight through fraud and force, without a clear understanding of what it is doing, the wisest attempts will fail, and better that they do fail, since why commit the wife to the husband if he does not sufficiently love ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... blotting-book towards him with this object, and opened it, and dipped his pen in the ink, and wrote "My dear Aunt;" but he did not get much further. He raised his head, thinking how to introduce his narrative, for which she would in all likelihood be wholly unprepared, and in so doing looked round upon his book-cases, on one shelf of which the reflection of a ray of afternoon sunshine caught in the old Louis Treize mirror over the mantelpiece was throwing a shaft of light. He got up to make ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... an ex-Senator, who said he had come wholly unprepared to speak, but, being unexpectedly called upon, had made some brief jottings on a visiting-card, to which he would now refer. He then spoke for one hour and three-quarters. At the close there was an intermission ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... Roman Catholics—one individual only excepted, the Rector of Londesborough. This gentleman made his speech on the occasion, enlarging on the inexpediency of refusing the Roman Catholics their claims.... The meeting, though by no means unprepared to hear extraordinary things from the Rector of Londesborough, as they had reason to anticipate from the proceedings of a meeting in another Archdeaconry about two years ago, were yet perfectly astonished to hear him assert that the Roman ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... sack the place, "not the least corner escaping his diligence." He added that the scheme had been held secret, so that "it would not fail to succeed well." Besides, he thought it likely that a city of such strength would be unprepared for any sudden attack. The captains were staggered by this resolution, for they thought themselves too weak "to assault so strong and great a city." To this the plucky Welshman answered: "If our number is small, our hearts are great. And the fewer persons ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... clutching, I knew, that long, cruel-looking dagger. Had she seen any disappointment in my face she would, I felt, have known that the moment had come, and would have sprung on me like a tigress, certain of taking me unprepared. ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... I am your master at the swords, and you know it. Now turn out those papers." I had been quietly drawing my blade during this speech, as the dazed man tried to collect his senses, so I was ready while he still stood unprepared. ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... resisting with striving those that would—though unqualified—enter. The porters of the temple were, for this very thing, to wear arms, if need were, and to be men of courage and strength, lest the unsanctified or unprepared should by some means enter in. We read, in the book of Revelations, of the holy city, and that it had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels; but what did they do there? Why, amongst the rest of their service, this was one thing, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the Marquess, rather unprepared for such a catechism, and looking around him until the outstretched neck and the eager attention of Caroline Harris caught his eye, when he added with an air of great simplicity—"about the ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... had entered, and the need of Divine assistance in its performance. She seemed also to realize what sacrifice might be demanded of one engaged in a work like this, and the summons, although sudden, did not find her unprepared to meet it. She has done a noble ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... as they perceived the approach of the lion, which they had not at first, they all seized their guns; but being wholly unprepared for such a sudden attack, there was a great deal of confusion; the Major crying out, "Let no one fire till I tell him," only produced more alarm among the Hottentots, all of whom, except Bremen, ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... and when they saw her those two great lords fell on their knees and kissed her hand. She was only eighteen then, and she had before her such a wonderful life. It is said that she had known for a little time before this that if anything happened to her uncle she would be Queen. So she was not quite unprepared, and when she had been warned of this, her first exclamation was; 'Oh, I will be good!' Which showed she was good, for I think most people would have been rather proud about it, and would not have thought just at that moment ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... fought, but there was no resisting the solid array of the English housecarls, or Thingmen as they were also called. Taken altogether unprepared, and for the most part without their defensive armour, the Norsemen could offer no successful resistance to the English host. Great numbers were killed; others were driven headlong across the bridge or were drowned in the stream, which is said to have been literally ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... were no longer safe, to the Tyrol; he himself awaited the insurgents in his capital. A handful of soldiers was all he could oppose to the enraged multitude; these few were without pay or provisions, and therefore little to be depended on. Vienna was unprepared for a long siege. The party of the Protestants, ready at any moment to join the Bohemians, had the preponderance in the city; those in the country had already begun to levy troops against him. Already, in imagination, the Protestant populace saw the Emperor shut up in a monastery, his territories ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... replace Rickett's. This company did not number forty men. In the night of January 9th, about five hundred New Orleans militia, under command of a Colonel Wheat, went up from New Orleans by boat, landed, surrounded the arsenal, and demanded its surrender. Haskins was of course unprepared for such a step, yet he at first resolved to defend the post as he best could with his small force. But Bragg, who was an old army acquaintance of his, had a parley with him, exhibited to him the vastly superior ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... so sudden and so simultaneous that the servants were unprepared; and though they ran to the doors, and fired away, still they did but little good, for the doors were soon forced open by the enraged rioters, who proceeded in a much more systematic operation, using long heavy pieces of timber which were carried on the shoulders ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... the tidings with more firmness, and proceeded to dress herself to go to the chapel, exhorting Beatrice to resignation; but she, raving, wrung her, hands and struck her head against the wall, shrieking, "To die! to die! Am I to die unprepared, on a scaffold! on a gibbet! My God! my God!" This fit led to a terrible paroxysm, after which the exhaustion of her body enabled her mind to recover its balance, and from that moment she became an angel of humility and ...
— The Cenci - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... would come in and give evidence. These facts occur in a copious unpublished correspondence of the day between Glenure's brothers and kinsmen; Mr. Stevenson had never heard of these letters.[9] Thus, up to the day of the murder, Allan may not have contemplated it; he may have been induced, unprepared, to act as accessory ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... idle, but it was done that I might know how to act best for Margaret if any thing untoward occurred. The time for such action had come. Gavin's death had struck me hard, but it did not crush me. I was not unprepared. I ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... the London Borough Councils found English Socialism unprepared. They were bodies doomed by their nature to incapacity and waste. They represented neither natural communities nor any practicable administrative unit of area. Their creation was the result of quite silly political considerations. The slowness with which Socialists ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... inn after this last unprepared-for impediment, three or four minutes too late ! What was the fermentation of my mind at this news! A whole week I must wait for the next diligence, and even then lose the aid and countenance of ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... founded, democracy would be a thing to be dreaded and resisted by every means in our power. As ground for his belief in a better day, Bright speaks—and his language is prophetic—of the people "sublime in their resolution." It is that resolution which, in spite of our unprepared condition and of all the mistakes that have been made, as well as of disasters that could not have been foreseen, and of a power in the enemy far greater and a wickedness more diabolical than anyone dreamed of, ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... sight of Antelope, who had followed the bed of the creek as far as it lay in his direction and then came out of it at full speed. It would be safer for him to remain in concealment until dark; but in the meantime the Ute warriors would reach the camp, and his people were unprepared! It was necessary to expose himself to the enemy. He knew that it would be chiefly a contest of speed and he had an excellent start; but on the other hand, the Utes ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... friends had just been arrested, and we were waiting here in this room strictly guarded, until it was decided what should be done with us." Then I remembered that it was the 2d of December, the anniversary of Louis Napoleon's coup d'etat. He said they were quite unprepared for it, in spite of warnings. He was sent out of the country for a little while, but I don't think his exile was a very ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... thoroughly angry. He was at best but imperfectly acquainted with his son, of whom in his busy life he had seen but little, and was therefore unprepared for such extraordinary conduct. He was by no means a religious person. For the spiritual, or even the ecclesiastical, aspects of the matter, he cared nothing. But he had, as Clarendon perceived, a strong desire ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... made into the character and fitness of the applicant before his admission, and that many were openly rejected, that instant death was inflicted on all who intruded unprepared within the sacred circuits, and that death was the penalty of divulging what happened during the celebrations, all are inconsistent with the notion of Lobeck, and prove that the Mysteries were hedged about with dread. Aschylus narrowly escaped being torn ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... of power. Ever varying, prismatic and fleeting, the days go by and the secret of change eludes us here. I bend the bow of thought at a mark and it is already gone. I lay the shaft aside and while unprepared the quarry again fleets by. We have to seek elsewhere for the source of that power which momentarily overflows into our world and transforms ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... unprepared for what subsequently transpired as a result of that casual encounter with the managing partner of the firm. By the time she went to work on Monday morning she had almost forgotten the meeting in Granville Park. And she was only ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... had not half copied the task assigned to her. This bad beginning went on to a worse end. Pauline declined to learn any lessons in preparation hour, and accordingly next morning she was absolutely unprepared for her tasks. ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... economy, we may argue in favor of a degree of preparation for war; for that calamity may best be averted by taking from foreign powers the temptation to interfere with us: all history showing that the justice and friendship of military states are but slender guaranties for the peace of a nation unprepared for attack. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... which disguise the color of the spores. The best way to determine the color of the spores in mass is to catch them as they fall from the fruiting surface on paper. For the ordinary purpose of study and reference in the herbarium the spores caught on unprepared paper, which later may be placed in the packet with the specimen, will answer. This method has the advantage of saving time, and also the danger of injury to the spores from some of the fixatives on prepared paper is avoided. If for purposes ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... places, in the Turkish fashion, men who were unprepared by their studies for them. One of his cooks became a colonel. Another colonel had been a merry-andrew. Having once received a good medical advice from his butler, he told him that nature intended him for a doctor, and sent him to study ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... to his ear or his fancy; and that, in the second, he imagined Alice Staverton for the instant on the point of asking him, with a divination, if he ever so prowled. There were divinations he was unprepared for, and he had at all events averted enquiry by the time Mrs. Muldoon had left them, passing on to ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... tender, enchanted and enchanting?... But what did she know of all these things?... And, all at once, she felt something almost in the nature of repentance that she had set out upon her adventure so utterly unprepared, that, until the previous day, she had been so chaste and good, that she had not had other lovers before Emil.... Then she remembered, too, that he had evaded her shy questions and requests on the subject of his violin playing, as if he had not wanted to ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... extreme figure of speech she had used, were repellent to Mr. Withers over and above his amazement at her words. As he had not been observing her, he was totally unprepared for such an outburst. ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... the disputant who had stirred up the monster, his situation was as unenviable as it was comic to the bystanders. He had never before dropped a stone into the great geyser. He was therefore unprepared for the result. One likened him to an unprotected traveler in a heavy rain-storm. For the Bibliotaph's unpremeditated speech was a very cloud-burst of eloquence. The unhappy gentleman looked despairingly in every direction as if beseeching us for the loan of a word-proof umbrella. There ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... observed" for all generations, marching by the line of the ancient canal from Rameses, not far from Heliopolis, toward the southern frontier of Palestine. But Moses, instructed not to conduct his people at once to a conflict with the warlike inhabitants of Canaan, for which they were unprepared, having just issued from slavery, brought them round by a sudden turn to the south and east, upon an arm or gulf of the Red Sea. To the eyes of the Egyptians, who repented that they had suffered them to depart, and who now pursued them with a great army, they were caught in a trap. ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... trees were so small and so scantily covered with leaves that they gave no shelter from the heat of the sun, which was reflected by the soil with intense force, so that it was really painful to touch, or even to stand upon, the bare sandstone. Excessive thirst soon began to be felt, and the party, unprepared for this, had only two pints of water with them, a portion of which they were forced to give to their dogs; all three of these, however, died of exhaustion. After a vain search of some hours, at length the welcome cry of "Water!" was heard from one of the party; but, alas! upon scrambling ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... extent of the lines of military operations, and the prodigious advantages possessed by the rebels at the beginning—partly advantages such as always attend the first outbreak of a revolutionary conspiracy long matured in secret against an unsuspecting and unprepared Government, and partly the extraordinary and peculiar advantages that accrued to them from the traitorous complicity of Buchanan's Administration, through which the conspirators were enabled to rob the national treasury, strip ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... for warfare, either on land or sea. During the first months of the war the helplessness of the United States had been laid bare by General Leonard Wood, who declared that we had never fought a really first-class nation and "were pitifully unprepared, should such a calamity be thrust upon us." The regular army "available to face such a crisis" would be "just about equal to the police forces of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia." The "preparedness movement" thus inaugurated was crystallized ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... state of mind, it may well be believed that the perusal of the new book "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection" left an uncomfortable impression, in spite of its plausible and winning ways. We were not wholly unprepared for it, as many of our contemporaries seem to have been. The scientific reading in which we indulge as a relaxation from severer studies had raised dim forebodings. Investigations about the succession of ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... well-disciplined faculties enable him easily to master its successive propositions, and to appreciate their value; and he has the occasional gratification of finding some of his own methods proved to be true. Thus he enjoys what is to the unprepared a dreary task. It only remains to add, that his mind will presently arrive at a fit condition for that most valuable of all exercises for the reflective faculties—the making of original demonstrations. Such theorems as those appended to the successive books of the Messrs. Chambers's Euclid, will ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... but admit, quite unprepared to find Mr. Howard Snelling, his future chief, possessed of so attractive a personality. Mr. Galbraith, when alluding to the expert craftsman, had never mentioned his age, and Bob had gleaned the impression that the ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... an hundred and thirteen persons. Thus were we all, both at sea and on shore, reduced to the utmost despair by this catastrophe, those on shore conceiving they had no means left them ever to leave the island, and we on board utterly unprepared to struggle with the fury of the seas and winds we were now exposed to, and expecting each moment, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... is abstractedly true and beautiful. At first, as will be remembered, the revolutionists did not aim at establishing a republic, but that form of government necessarily grew out of their hallucinations. Without pausing to consider that a nation of emancipated serfs were unprepared to take on themselves the duties of an enlightened population, the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... the child towards her; it was only natural that she should doubt, being so unprepared, but a second glance ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... and expected her to yield to his will. He was totally unprepared, well as he knew her ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... four centuries, coming seemingly out of nowhere, has become inseparably woven into the problems of civilization, and is part and parcel of the concerns of every human being. The helpless fear caused by the violence of the disease in its earlier days, when the suddenness of its attack on an unprepared people paralyzed comprehension, has given place to knowledge such as we can scarcely duplicate for any of the other scourges of humanity. The disease has in its turn become more subtle and deceiving, its ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... in thy power to prove me—prove me!" cried the maiden; "for indeed he is the only stay of aged parents, and he is young and unprepared for death. Moreover his life is dearer to me than ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... under my eye again and again. The consequence is obvious, the wife has recourse to cunning to undermine the habitual affection, which she is afraid openly to oppose; and neither tears nor caresses are spared till the spy is worked out of her home, and thrown on the world, unprepared for its difficulties; or sent, as a great effort of generosity, or from some regard to propriety, with a small stipend, and an uncultivated ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... winter came upon us in earnest; snow fell to such a depth that we were fairly shut out from the whole world, and so suddenly as to find us unprepared. It was difficult and almost impossible, on account of the deep snow, to procure wood sufficient to keep up the constant fires necessary on account of the intense cold. We had no mail, no telegraph, no news from our supplies. Yet we hoped and made the best of our situation. Our children, ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... in an instant, though, unknown to himself, it had been growing for years, cherished by many a kind act to her father and by a simple gratitude on her part. He had spoken without feeling the absurdity of the proposal. He had never married, and he was unprepared to make any statement on such a theme; but now, having made it somehow, he would stand by it, in spite of any and all criticism. He had known Rosalie since her birth, her education was as good as a convent could secure, she was the granddaughter of a notable ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... which was open, and took down a piece of music—it was Kucken's "Maid of Judah." Now, hitherto, George Brand had only heard her murmur a low, harmonious second to one or other of the airs she had been playing; and he was quite unprepared for the passion and fervor which her rich, deep, resonant, contralto voice threw into this wail of indignation and despair. This was the voice of a woman, not of a girl; and it was with the proud passion ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... great measure himself the cause of it. He was so bit by Liberal opinions, and so delighted with the effects he saw in other countries flowing from the diffusion of intelligence and freedom, that he wished to engraft these dangerous exotics upon the rude and unprepared soil of his own slavish community. When he went to Oxford he was so captivated with the venerable grandeur of that University that he declared he would build one when he got home, and it is equally true that he said he 'would have an Opposition.' These follies were ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... the things of sense take vicious hold of us, and often drag us to the very verge of perdition before we are aware. They come to us unprepared, and seek entrance into our lives and thoughts, and allure us by deception. They tell us that the world is fair and beautiful and full of promise; that God, for the moment, is not concerned; that the soul is secure and safe, and the body and its needs the only ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... secure, although with lighter bonds, the fair Frankish Woman, meaning my dear Wife Lilias. All this was no sooner said than done. The Rough Soldiers burst into the House, and, to prevent any misunderstanding about me, a Cloth (for which I was quite unprepared) was thrown over my head from Behind; and while I was yet struggling to free myself from this blinding Incumbrance, the Gyves were passed over my Wrists and Ankles. And then they removed the Cloth, and, laden with heavy Chains, I had to behold in Despair their Invading the Sanctity of my ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... hear her coming down the back stairs; could hear that she halted mid-way. Then she passed through the dining-room, and he arose and went to meet her, holding out his hand, which she was not at once ready to accept, being flustered and unprepared for his manner in whichever ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... on places of little previous interest. In the Pacific Theater, for example, the Navy and Marines had to launch amphibious operations against many islands about which information was unconfirmed or nonexistent. Intelligence authorities resolved that the United States should never again be caught unprepared. ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... had known that some day this thing would happen, that some day this isolation would be broken, that some day great hordes of men would overrun this unknown land, bringing with them that which he feared to meet, that which had made him what he was. And now that the time had come, he was unprepared. ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... so great a breach of discipline was not to be passed over by Mr. Grimshaw. He had, as we suspected, witnessed the closing scene of the fight from the school-room window, and the next morning, after prayers, I was not wholly unprepared when Master Conway and myself were called up to the desk for examination. Conway, with a piece of court-plaster in the shape of a Maltese cross on his right cheek, and I with the silk patch over my left eye, caused a general titter through ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... travellers saw plainly their danger. Valancourt was silent, but laid his hand on one of St. Aubert's pistols; St. Aubert drew forth another, and Michael was ordered to proceed as fast as possible. They passed the place, however, without being attacked; the rovers being probably unprepared for the opportunity, and too busy about their supper to feel much interest, at the moment, in any ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... heard the door unbolt, I was sure of her. That motion made my heart bound to my throat. But when that was followed with the presence of my charmer, flashing upon me all at once in a flood of brightness, sweetly dressed, though all unprepared for a journey, I trod air, and hardly ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... National Guard did not make a bad appearance. They were a trifle awkward, perhaps, in their dark-blue hooded cloaks, with their tin-plate buttons, and armed with breech-loading rifles, and encumbered with canteens, basins, and pouches, all having an unprepared and too-new look. They all came from the best parts of the city, with accelerated steps and a loud beating of drums, and headed, if you please, by their major on horseback, a truss-maker, who had formerly been quartermaster of the third hussars. Certainly ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... the immediate passage of the bill were not unprepared for the most determined attacks of its opponents. Mr. Howard, of Michigan, requested of the Senators from Virginia, whether the Wheeling Legislature had taken any action on the "Joint Resolution passed by ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... the Hafsit dynasty, whom Kheyr-ed-Din had declared to the townspeople he had come to restore to the throne of his ancestors. Too late the town sprang to arms, under a chief named Abdahar, and in the first instance accomplished a considerable success. Barbarossa's men were unprepared, and a number of them were slain. Driven into a bastion of the walls, a party of the corsairs were desperately defending themselves, when one Baetio, a Spanish renegado, discovered that a cannon behind them pointing ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... reached for his own revolver, but once more the other was too quick for him. He came forward with a jump, and his right fist shot out. Chester ducked this blow, but he was unprepared for the left-handed ...
— The Boy Allies in Great Peril • Clair W. Hayes
... contained about a hundred volumes, and of these some were religious books. There was a ragged, greasy Shakespeare in eight volumes which I tried to read through, but found the task too much for me. However, I did have a glimpse of something for which I found myself unprepared; and such is the constitution of my mind, that I have seldom been able to grasp dramatic writing with complete enjoyment; I am apt to dwell too long on its beauty spots. For this reason I prefer the Greek drama, because of the simplicity ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... in September. Our honeymoon we spent fishing and "roughing it" in the Canadian wilds. I felt at home and blissful. I could cook and fish and make a bed in the open as well as any man. It was heaven; but it left me entirely unprepared for the world ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown
... and most gratefully, will I obey you: Though, if you expect a discourse, I am wholly unprepared for the occasion. I would not have it, replied he, pointed to any particular occasion; but if you have one upon the text—There is more joy in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth, than over ninety-nine just persons that need no repentance; and ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... them? "Does the fifth, or the tenth century belong to the earlier centuries?" it would be asked. In the same way I ask: Does the conception of extension belong to metaphysics? You answer, "Yes." Well, that of body too? "Yes." And that of a fluid body? You stop, you are unprepared to admit this; for if you do, everything will belong to metaphysics. From this it is evident that the mere degree of subordination—of the particular to the general—cannot determine the limits of a science; and that, in the present ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... came in he saw there a man who had not on a wedding garment. And the king said: "Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless." And why was he speechless? If he would have had any reasonable excuse to offer for the unprepared appearance which he made, would he have been speechless? Reason says at once. He would have urged his inability to procure a suitable dress for the occasion, as the cause for his appearing in the ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... brightened up, and was himself save that he was too bright. He was making an effort. I felt this, but was quite unprepared for ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... his final order; and, so fast and furious fell the shower of stones upon the surprised and unprepared hill boys, that their victorious columns halted, wavered, ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... The young physician had been in New Orleans but a few weeks, and had seen very little of slavery. In his own mountain home he had been taught that the slaves of the Southern states were Negroes, if not from the coast of Africa, the descendants of those who had been imported. He was unprepared to behold with composure a beautiful young white girl of fifteen in the degraded position of a chattel slave. The blood chilled in his young heart as he heard Crawford tell how, by bartering with the trader, he had bought her for two hundred dollars less than he first asked. His ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... would give me space I set the hopelessness of pursuit, all unprepared as we were, in plainest speech. The chase might well be a long one, and we were but scantily armed and without provisions. The hunter's rifle must be our sole dependence for food, and in the summer heat we would be forced to kill daily. ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... with this assumed title, he despatched to the Roman States Francesca Sforza and Nicholas Fortebraccio, two famous adventurers in his pay. The latter advanced upon Rome, and began to devastate its neighbourhood. The Pope, wholly unprepared for defence, warded off the danger by sowing dissension between the two generals, which he effected by giving up to Sforza, for his lifetime, the possession of Ancona, and of the provinces which he ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... "I am not wholly unprepared to believe the story myself," replied the chairman; "our young friend here may have his peculiarities; but I consider him a thousand times more honest and honorable, than some of those whose sly hints and treacherous conduct he has so ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... others, must begin with the young woman. She finds herself twelve, fourteen or sixteen years of age, and entering upon a life involving duties and responsibilities, to her before unthought of—and for which she finds herself most sadly unprepared. She believes in the necessity of self-effort. What conscience tells her ought to be done, she decides to do. She goes forward intelligently and what she begins, she resolves, if ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... the chief cities of the New World, they had heard little of the continued dissensions between the Colonies and the home Government, and they heard the story of the rebellion with amazement. But however unprepared they might have been for the news of the outbreak, their sympathies went warmly out to their struggling brethren, and they determined to place themselves shoulder to shoulder with the Massachusetts colonists in the fight against the oppression of the British. Their opportunity ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... and villains generally, maddened by hunger, or bent on plunder, who rejoiced in the euphonious appellation of Muggers! We had been warned against them by kindly disposed guards, and were not wholly unprepared. They attacked us with clubs, fists, and knives, but were repeatedly driven off, pitched headlong ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... the expectation very general that the present peace will be of short duration. There are circumstances in favor of this opinion, there are others against it. Certain it is that this country is in a state so unprepared as to excite astonishment. After the last war, she seems to have reposed on her laurels, in confidence that no power would ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... somewhat to his satisfaction, being unprepared for such particular examination; but in a couple of days he returned to the charge, determined his tale should not be discredited for lack of effrontery, On this occasion he said he had met the ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... move after the ceremony was to bring her immediately to New York and to this house. With perhaps a pardonable bitterness of spirit, I had refrained from any notification of my intentions, and it was as strangers might enter an unprepared dwelling, that we stepped across the threshold of this house and passed immediately to ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... until nearly the end of the week that Joe sought out Sally Heffer. Though every day he meditated stepping down that narrow red side street, each time he had felt unprepared, throbbingly incapable; but this evening as he finished his work and was on the way home it seemed that beyond his own volition he suddenly swerved at her corner, hurried down the lamp-lit pave, searched out the faded number in ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... an unsuspecting landlord to open the gates, so much the better for them. If not, a parley would have given the band time to act upon instructions already understood. But Cassim ben Halim, an old soldier, and Maieddine, whose soul was in this venture, were not the men to meet an emergency unprepared. They had calculated on a check, and ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... facts, and laying the crime upon another. I cannot trust myself to speak further upon this point, nor is it necessary that I should; it is not to answer for that, that you stand before me. Uncalled, unprepared, and by you unpitied, you hurried that unfortunate man into eternity, and you must now expiate the crime with your own life. The jury have recommended you to mercy, and the recommendation will be forwarded in due course to the proper quarter, but you must be aware how frequently ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... undo the work," he hisses. "Didst think to find me unprepared? Thou art a cunning knave, ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley |
