"Encumbered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no weapon to oppose to his gigantic pursuer. He had thrown away his bow—his axe too—to run the more nimbly. But neither would have been of any avail against such an antagonist. He carried nothing but his sheep-skin kaross. That had encumbered him in his flight; but he had held on to ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... his father sternly, at the same instant dealing his encumbered opponent a blow on the head-piece which tumbled him also from his horse, 'is the sacred hour of victory a time to sully with profane and foolish jests? I little thought to hear such words at my side—not to say from the mouth of ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... had deeply considered the question of how to govern India so as to unite the hearts of the princes and people under the protecting arm of a sovereign whom they should regard as national. The question was encumbered with difficulties. Four centuries of the rule of Muhammadan sovereigns who had made no attempt to cement into one bond of mutual interests the {92} various races who inhabited the peninsula, each ruling on the principle of temporary ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... fight, being encumbered with a train of baggage-wagons and bathorses, which with his troops made a line on the highroad twelve miles long. It being evident that the Americans intended to give battle, he encamped in a strong position near Monmouth Court-house, protected ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... volunteers, three or four stepped up at once. The others made a general milling, as though each were trying to get forward and each were prevented by the crowd in front. But in the background big Jack Landis was seriously trying to get to the firing line. He was encumbered with the clinging weight ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... increased to such an extent during the past year that additional legislation is imperative to relieve and prevent the delay of justice and possible oppression to suitors which is thus occasioned. The encumbered condition of these dockets is presented anew in the report of the Attorney-General, and the remedy suggested is earnestly urged for Congressional action. The creation of additional circuit judges, as proposed, would afford a complete remedy, and would involve an expense, at the present ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Rutherford B. Hayes • Rutherford B. Hayes
... cuss," he thought. But a man is no judge of his own looks. A disinterested observer might have given a different verdict. A young man less well favoured by nature would have gazed at Stonor's long-limbed ease with helpless envy. He had that rare type of figure that never becomes encumbered with fat. The grace of youth and the strength of maturity met there. He would make a pattern colonel if he lived. Under the simple lines of his uniform one apprehended the ripple and play of unclogged muscles. If all men were ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... others. Ah, my dear friend, that is what I have been trying to console myself with of late. I said, 'Well, if he goes away and does not see me again, will he not be freer? He has a great work to do; he may have to go away from England for many years; why should he be encumbered with ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... from the Place Ste.-Croix and runs so straight that the mob seething in front of the inn had only to turn their heads to see them. The danger incurred at this point was great; for a party as small as Tavannes' and encumbered with women would have had no chance if attacked ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... though by rights coequal in the house of the body, it had been rigidly kept down. Nevertheless it had persisted, like a bright cold little spark at dead of night: his restlessness, the spiritual malaise that encumbered him had been its mute form of protest. Did he go on turning a deaf ear to its warnings, he might do himself irreparable harm. For time was flying, the sum of his years mounting, shrinking that roomy future to which he had thus far always postponed what seemed too difficult ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... seats have plaited bottoms of linen cord or tanned and dyed leather thrown over them, and sometimes the skins of panthers served this purpose. For carpets they used mats of palm fibre, on which they often sat. On the whole, an Egyptian house was lightly furnished, and not encumbered with so many articles as are in use ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... and which few travellers dared to pass, even in broad daylight, without a strong escort. A road more lonely cannot well be conceived than that on which the hoofs of his steed, striking upon the fragments of rock that encumbered the neglected way, woke a dull and melancholy echo. Large tracts of waste land, varied by the rank and profuse foliage of the South, lay before him; occasionally a wild goat peeped down from some ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... my hammock that night, overhead I heard the slow weary draggings of the three ponderous strangers along the encumbered deck. Their stupidity or their resolution was so great, that they never went aside for any impediment. One ceased his movements altogether just before the mid-watch. At sunrise I found him butted like a battering-ram against the immovable foot of the foremast, and still striving, tooth ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... that the incursion would have better results if she left it to its originator, than if she encumbered it with her own presence. After all, the room could be no larger than the one she sat in, and might be smaller. Anyhow, they could get on very well without her for half an hour. And she wanted a chat with Dave's guardians; she did not really know ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... generally known that there are only three great inlets or estuaries to which the mariner steers when overtaken by easterly storms in the North Sea—namely, the Humber, and the firths of Forth and Moray. The mouth of the Thames is too much encumbered by sand-banks to be approached at night or during bad weather. The Humber is also considerably obstructed in this way, so that the Roads of Leith, in the Firth of Forth, and those of Cromarty, in the Moray Firth, are the chief places of resort in easterly gales. But both ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... to a memorable episode in his life. The many prizes taken by him in the Mediterranean, which, according to rule, had been sent to the Maltese Admiralty Court for condemnation, had been encumbered with such preposterous charges that, instead of realizing anything by his captures, he was made out to be largely in debt to the Court. The principal agent of this Court was a Mr. Jackson, who illegally held office as at the same time marshal and proctor. ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... his aunt Janet that her own sister and brother-in-law were the parents of such a wicked little boy. He therefore kept quiet and submitted to the shaking, making himself as limp as a rag. This, however, exasperated Aunt Janet, who found herself encumbered by a dead weight of a little boy to be shaken, and suddenly Johnny Trumbull, the fighting champion of the town, the cock of the walk of the school, found himself being ignominiously spanked. That was too much. Johnny's fighting blood was up. ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and the burden which encumbered him, he was the first to reach the derrick—although the crowd had been close behind him when he began to run. He had deftly thrown the end of the rope over the arm of the derrick, and was about to hoist Shuter into mid-air, when the crowd was upon him. The rope was wrenched from his ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... carried out by the river-currents. I went up the steps on the Galata side before one comes to where the barge-bridge was. When she had followed me on to the embankment, I walked up one of those rising streets, very encumbered now with stone-debris and ashes, but still marked by some standing black wall-fragments, it being now not far from night, but the air as clear and washed as the translucency of a great purple diamond with the rain and the afterglow of the sun, and ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... truthful, compassionate and charitable, so that at death he became one of the judges of hell. His city in time got overwhelmed with the encroaching ocean, but its walls were not overthrown, nor were the rooms encumbered with the weeds and alluvial of the sea. One day a dwarf, named Vamen, asked the mighty monarch to allow him to measure three of his own paces for a hut to dwell in. Baly smiled, and bade him measure out what he required. The first pace of the dwarf compassed ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... passed through the heavy archway which leads into the first court of the monastery. This we found encumbered by the equipages and servants of the serdar and the chief executioner. Here and there were strings of horses picketed by ropes and pegs, with their grooms established in different corners among their saddles and horse furniture; and a corner was taken ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... absurd riches encumbered 170 me! I dared not lay claim to above half my possessions. Let me but once unbosom myself, glorify Heaven, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... attached to the place, and had a great dislike to the presence of strangers in it, or to its going out of the old name. The estate, we hear, was much encumbered when he succeeded to it, but he cleared off all debts in a few years, and appears to have lived a somewhat eccentric and recluse life, in the society of his ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us' (Heb 12:1). It is but a vain thing to talk of going to heaven, if thou let thy heart be encumbered with those things that would hinder. Would you not say that such a man would be in danger of losing, though he run, if he fill his pockets with stones, hang heavy garments on his shoulders, and great lumpish ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... cavalry, which inundated the whole plain, had demoralised our soldiers, who seeing all regular retreat of the army cut off, strove each man to effect one for himself. At each instant the road became more encumbered. Infantry, cavalry, and artillery, were pressing along pell-mell: jammed together like a solid mass. Figure to yourself 40,000 men struggling and thrusting themselves along a single causeway. We could not take ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... at the age of thirty-one, perhaps the least encumbered peer in the United Kingdom. Thanks to an ancestor who had acquired land, and departed this life one hundred and thirty years before the town of Nettlefold was built on a small portion of it, and to a father who had died in his son's infancy, after judiciously selling the said town, he possessed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... between the contending jurisdictions. A way was also prepared for checking the exorbitances of superstition, and breaking those shackles by which all human reason, policy, and industry had so long been encumbered. The prince, it may be supposed, being head of the religion, as well as of the temporal jurisdiction of the kingdom, though he might sometimes employ the former as an engine of government, had no interest, like the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... fought furiously to regain the lost position, but the French elated by their success redoubled their efforts to destroy the enemy and the shell craters, and communication trenches were soon encumbered with German dead. The French losses in the fighting here were severe, but as they occupied safer positions the Germans' casualties were far greater. The fighting was so intense throughout the action that very few prisoners were taken by either side. A group ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... battle of Vittoria. The French were making for the Pyrenees, laden with the loot of a kingdom and encumbered with a motley crowd of non-combatants—the wives and families of French officers, fair senoritas flying with their lovers, and traitorous Spaniards, who, by taking sides with the invaders, had exposed themselves to the vengeance of the patriots. ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... influence me to try another plan. A happy plan it seems at the moment, a credit to my inventive genius, and spiced with the seductive condiment of novelty, the stream is sufficiently narrow at one place to be overcome with a running jump; but people cannot take running jumps encumbered with a bicycle. The bicycle, however, can quickly and easily be taken into several parts and thrown across, the jump made, and the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... to invent programmes to capture the groundlings. The conservative party, relinquishing its useful function of critic, revived the old policy of eleemosynary doles, and, in an unlucky moment for its future, has encumbered itself with an advocacy of the policy of protection. For strangely enough the democracy, the bestower of power, though developing symptoms of fiscal tyranny and a hatred of liberty in other directions clings tenaciously to freedom of ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... of grape-vines,—where the air is sweet with woodland odors, and vocal with the song of birds. Then the deep cypress-swamp, where dark trunks rise like the columns of some vast sepulchre. Above, the impervious canopy of leaves; beneath, a black and root-encumbered slough. Perpetual moisture trickles down the clammy bark, while trunk and limb, distorted with strange shapes of vegetable disease, wear in the gloom a semblance grotesque and startling. Lifeless forms lean propped in wild disorder against the living, and from every rugged stem ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... moment chanced To pass, and found the road encumbered; He noticed how the Churchman danced, ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... acted on his own bottom, without partner or correspondent, and never went to work but when he was cool and sober; that his courage and presence of mind never failed him; that his address was genteel, and his behaviour void of all cruelty and insolence; that he never encumbered himself with watches or trinkets, nor even with bank-notes, but always dealt for ready money, and that in the current coin of the kingdom; and that he could disguise himself and his horse in such a manner, that, after the action, it was impossible to recognize ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... gain the country beyond the line, where they find more abundant spoils and no resistance. But on their return, they are sure to encounter the Cossacks drawn up at the ford, or some other point convenient for disputing the passage to an enemy encumbered with booty. These Russian hirelings, however, the freemen of the mountains despise, and with superior horses ride them down. Only when the espionage which is maintained among all the tribes on the ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... land just at nightfall, he hoped to elude the vigilance of the British fleet off Ushant, whose usual cruising ground was not more than six or seven leagues to leeward. But through the delays inseparable from getting a large and encumbered fleet to sea, it was four o'clock before all the ships were under sail; and as night was fast closing in, and the wind becoming variable, the Admiral determined not to attempt the narrow and dangerous passage he had fixed on, ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... contains, and builds them out imaginatively in all directions, without distinguishing what is constant and efficacious in them. This primitive habit of thought survives in mythology, which is an observation of things encumbered with all they can suggest to a dramatic fancy. It is neither conscious poetry nor valid science, but the common root and raw material of both. Free poetry is a thing which early man is too poor to indulge in; his wide-open eyes are too intently ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... zephyrs? Alas! not so. "Man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward." At every "gate of life"—as the Orientalists have beautifully called the different ages—he is beset by peril. Temptations allure his youth, misfortunes darken the pathway of his manhood, and his old age is encumbered with infirmity and disease. But clothed in the armor of virtue he may resist the temptation; he may cast misfortunes aside, and rise triumphantly above them; but to the last, the direst, the most inexorable foe of his race, he must eventually ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... Lilies of France and the broad white banner of the Bourbons floated in company, we found ourselves swept into the whirlpool which surrounds an army. Crowds stood at all the cross-roads, wagons and sumpter-mules encumbered the bridges; each moment a horseman passed us at a gallop, or a troop of disorderly rogues, soldiers only in name, reeled, shouting and singing, along the road. Here and there, for a warning to the latter sort, a man, dangled on ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... came to the head of a long and furiously-running rapid. Rocks encumbered its channel; the stream boiled fiercely over sunken ledges, dropping several feet here and there in angry falls; and in one place, where the banks narrowed in, a white stretch of foaming waves ran straight down the middle. Here they unloaded and spent the day laboriously relaying ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... Beatrice came very early, encumbered with several bandboxes; for their long ride made it necessary for them to defer their evening ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... of the sanctuary was all paved with the lava; scattered blocks encumbered it in places; everywhere tall cocoa-palms jutted from the fissures and drew shadows on the floor; a loud continuous sound of the near sea burthened the ear. These rude monumental ruins, and the thought of that life and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... did not move from where he stood in the doorway. McTaggart, encumbered with the weight in his arms, and staring at Pierrot, did not move. But the Willow's eyes were opening. And at the same moment a convulsive quiver ran through the body of Baree, where he lay near the wall. There was not the sound of a breath. And then, in that silence, a great gasping ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... and Torres re-entered it, showed abundant traces of the rough visitors by whom it had recently been occupied. Doors broken down, windows smashed, the corridors and cloisters encumbered with broken furniture, and lighted here and there by the thick wax tapers used at the altar, some of which had fallen from the places where the guerillas had stuck them, and lay flaming on the ground, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... escape and that of his companions, if indeed they had escaped, had been simply miraculous, a huge branch having struck the waggon only about one foot behind the seat upon which they had been sitting. The ground was littered with splinters, and encumbered with the spreading branches of the fallen tree, and among these he proceeded to search for Tom ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... men had by sunrise done their work most successfully with torch and tomahawk. The blood of forty-nine murdered men, women and children reddened the snow. Twenty-nine men, twenty-four women, and fifty-eight children were made captive, and in a few hours the spoil-encumbered enemy were ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... labor-saving machinery, to the equipment of the farm. Since wheat growing, has become the leading crop, this expensive machinery must be included in the outfit of every successful farm. The burden of this expense, has proved too great for the capacity of the small farm. It has encumbered thousands of them with an indebtedness so hopeless, that its annual interest swallows up the income of the farm. From these causes, a crisis in the affairs of agriculture has arisen, which has demanded larger farms, more capital, more brain force and more systematic, ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... them, and which could not be less than fifteen miles in extent,—was a scarcely less forbidding alternative. But it must be adopted. So, gathering in their steel traps and iron utensils, they buried them all, except their lightest hatchet, under a log, that they should not be encumbered with more weight than was absolutely necessary; snugly packing up the few peltries they had taken since Gaut Gurley had been round, and putting the scanty remains of their food into their pockets, for a lunch on the way, they set ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... the city, especially among those who had come in from the country, and were living in stifling huts through the intense heat of a southern summer. Here the harvest of death fell thickest, and the corpses lay heaped together, while dying wretches crawled about the public streets, and encumbered the fountain-sides, to which they had dragged themselves in their longing for drink. All sense of public decency, all regard for laws, human or divine, was lost. The temples in which they had made their dwellings were ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... union of the two provinces was in contemplation, it became evident that the business of such an extended colony could not be carried on in the United Parliament, were it to be encumbered and distracted with the contending claims of so many localities. This consideration led to the establishment of the District (now County) Municipal Councils. These municipal councils were denounced by the conservative party ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... debts were surprisingly increased ever since the fatal cessation of arms. He gave the commons to understand that the branches of the revenue, formerly granted for the support of the civil government, were so far encumbered and alienated, that the produce of the funds which remained, and had been granted to him, would fall short of what was at first designed for maintaining the honour and dignity of the crown; that as it was his and their happiness to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Mrs. Eagles went into the room which she and her husband occupied. It was so encumbered with furniture that not more than eight or ten square feet of floor can have been available for movement. On the bed sat Mr. Eagles, a spare, large-headed, ugly, but very thoughtful-looking man; he and Sidney Kirkwood had been acquaintances ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... imagined that an offer from an English duke was not to be sneezed at by either Mrs. or Miss O'Byrne; but there were some grave obstacles to the match. The duke was a Protestant. But what of that?—he had never been encumbered with religion, nor even with a decent observance of its institutions, for it is said that, when in England, at his country seat, he had, to show how little he cared for respectability, made a point of having the hounds out on ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... and flaming torches of relief-boats, or occasionally the high terraced gleaming windows of the great steamboats, feeling their way along the lost channel. At times the opening of a furnace-door shot broad bars of light across the sluggish stream and into the branches of dripping and drift-encumbered trees; at times the looming smoke-stacks sent out a pent-up breath of sparks that illuminated the inky chaos for a moment, and then fell as black and dripping rain. Or perhaps a hoarse shout from some faintly outlined hulk on either side ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... tiger, Cornwallis destroys all his heavy baggage, and pushes hard after Morgan. The pursuit is urged with unimaginable fury: and Cornwallis gains so fast upon the Americans, encumbered with their prisoners, that on the evening of the ninth day he came up to the banks of the Catawba, just as Morgan's rear had crossed at a deep ford. Before the wished-for morning returned, the river was so swollen by a heavy rain, that Cornwallis could not pass. Adoring the hand ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... and then using our sails, we came to anchor in 10 fathoms water by sunset at a place called Yasuf, belonging to Mecca. On the 21st we proceeded 60 miles, and anchored in 40 fathoms, at a place called Khofadan, in the dominions, of Mecca. The 22d the navigation being much encumbered with sand banks, so thick together and intricate that it was hardly possible to sail in the day, the Pacha ordered six gallies to lead-the way, and we came to a shelf or shoal called Turakh. The 23d we coasted along, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... father through it all. I have said to myself—'The old man has worked very hard, and he certainly gave me a better bringing up than I had a right to expect; let him enjoy the fruits of his toil in peace, and in his own way.—I even gave up my mother's money to you. I began encumbered with debt, and bore all the burdens that you put upon me without a murmur. Well, harassed for debts that were not of my making, with no bread in the house, and my feet held to the flames, I have found out the secret. I have struggled on patiently till my strength ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... breathless horse, and bag of silver, to shift for himself; which he is supposed to have done very effectually. Some of the dragoons, attracted by the appearance of the horse and trappings, gave chase to the smith, who fled up the Yarrow; but finding himself as he said, encumbered with the treasure, and unwilling that it should be taken, he flung it into a well, or pond, near the Tinnies, above Hangingshaw. Many wells were afterwards searched in vain; but it is the general belief, that the smith, if he ever hid the money, knew too well how to anticipate ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... hills, and noble streams, and waving harvests; there Denham wrote, and Pope breathed the soft note of pastoral inspiration; and there too the immortal bard of Avon chose the scene in which to wind the snares of love around his fat-encumbered knight. Who can visit the spot without thinking of Datchet mead and the buck-basket of sweet Anne Page and Master Slender, and mine host of the Garter, and all the rest of that merry, intriguing crew? And now having reached ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... of a tract of ground through which a cyclone has whirled its way. Great numbers of the trees had been dragged up to form the rampart, but there were hundreds of others, as well as innumerable roots and stumps, lugs and heads, lying in confusion all around; and Rogers, pointing towards the encumbered tract just beneath and around the rampart, looked at ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... foot channel, as the boat channel near to Gallows Point is called, by which a long stretch would be saved, and we were cracking on cheerily, my mind full of my recent promotion, when, scur, scur, scur, we stuck fast on the bank. Our black boatmen, being little encumbered with clothes, jumped overboard in a covey like so many wild—ducks, shouting, as they dropped into the water, "We must all get out,—we must all get out;" whereupon Mr Callaloo, a sort of Dominie Sampson in his way, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... To live amid such horrors; who Italian wives didst not behold By ruffian troops embraced; Nor cities plundered, fields laid waste By hostile spear, and foreign rage; Nor works divine of genius borne away In sad captivity, beyond the Alps, The roads encumbered with the precious prey; Nor foreign rulers' insolence and pride; Nor didst insulting voices hear, Amidst the sound of chains and whips, The sacred name of Liberty deride. Who suffers not? Oh! at these wretches' hands, What have ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... equality and chimerical fraternity, questions relative to luxury, to salaries, to machines, to the pretended tyranny of capital, to distant territorial acquisitions, to outlets, to conquests, to population, to association, to emigration, to imposts, to loans, have encumbered the field of science with a host of parasitical sophisms, which demand the hoe and the sickle of the diligent economist. It is not because we do not recognize the fault of this plan, or rather of this absence of plan. To attack, one by one, so many ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... the intellectual heavens, disdaining to justify its right to exist on any other grounds than the mere fact of its existence; and, certainly, not more ridiculous than Saturn himself, as we look at him through a great equatorial telescope, swinging through space encumbered with his clumsy ring, and his wrangling family of satellites, but still, in spite of peculiarities on which M. Taine might exercise his wit until doomsday, one of the most beautiful and sublime objects which the astronomer can behold in the whole ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... district of Lauang (Lahuan), which is encumbered with more than four thousand five hundred inhabitants, is situated at an altitude of forty feet, on the south-west shore of the small island of the same name, which is separated from Samar by an arm of the Catubig. According ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... as might have been expected. "The theory is not without its attractions," he says; "it promises a solution of some difficulties; but hitherto it has not yielded any results which would justify its acceptance." [124:2] Indeed, he proceeds to say that it "is encumbered with the most serious difficulties." Dr. Lightfoot does not think that only [Greek: logoi] ("discourses" or "sayings") could be called [Greek: logia] ("oracles"), and says that usage does not warrant the restriction. [124:3] I had ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... the present site where Shelbyville now stands, became alarmed by the appearance of parties of Indians in its vicinity. The people, in consternation, unadvisedly resolved to remove to Beargrass. The men accordingly set out encumbered with women, children, and baggage. In this defenceless predicament, they were attacked by the Indians near Long Run. They experienced some loss, and a general dispersion from each other in the woods. Colonel Floyd, in great haste, raised ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... perhaps you think hardly of [in very good company, if you do, that is my sole consolation]; I have advised, that you may be permitted to pursue your own inclinations, (some people need no greater punishment than such a permission,) and not to have the house encumbered by one who must give them the more pain for the necessity she has laid them under of avoiding the sight ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... was driven away by Smain's detachment and the caravan would have died of starvation, were it not for a multitude of guinea-fowls which every little while started from under the horses' legs, and at evening encumbered the trees so thickly that it was sufficient to shoot in their direction to cause a few to fall to the ground. In addition they were not timid and permitted a close approach, and they rose so heavily and indolently ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... extreme rapidity of the current. After flowing on in one prodigious sheet of water, varying in depth from one hundred to thirty fathoms, the Mississippi, previous to its joining the Mexican Gulf, divides into four or five mouths, the most considerable of which is encumbered by a sandbank continually liable to shift. Over this bank no vessel drawing above seventeen feet water can pass; when once across, however, there is no longer a difficulty in being floated; but to anchor is hazardous, on account of the huge logs which are ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... Duffy returned to his even way of life. His room still bore witness of the orderliness of his mind. Some new pieces of music encumbered the music-stand in the lower room and on his shelves stood two volumes by Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra and The Gay Science. He wrote seldom in the sheaf of papers which lay in his desk. One of his sentences, written two months after his last interview ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... and care-encumbered world, scarred with its frequent traces of a primeval curse, are spots so quiet and beautiful as to make the fall of man seem incredible, and awaken in the breast of the weary traveler who comes suddenly upon them, ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... Arctic Ocean, in the N. of Russia, which is entered by a long channel and branches inward into three bays; it is of little service for navigation, being blocked with ice all the year except in June, July, and August, and even when open encumbered with floating ice, and often enveloped in mists at the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... pocket volume, in the year 1675. This has become very rare, but it is inserted in every edition of the author's collected works. Our copy is reprinted from the first edition published after the author's decease, in a small folio volume of his works, 1691. Although it is somewhat encumbered with subdivisions, it is plain, practical, and written in Bunyan's strong and energetic style; calculated to excite the deepest attention, and to fix the mind upon those solemn realities which alone ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... upon Baylen, but he was encumbered with an immense train of baggage, and by numerous sick, whom he would not abandon to the cruelties of the enemy; the movement was deferred till the next day, the 18th July. At the approach of night the army began its march. The heat was still suffocating. A great number ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... any way acquainted with Greek literature were indebted to the Latin translations of the Arabs; while the Jewish rabbinical learning, whose more useful lore was encumbered with much mystical nonsense, enjoyed considerable reputation at this period. The most distinguished of the rabbis taught in the schools in London, York, Lincoln, Oxford, and Cambridge; and Christendom has to confess its obligations for its first acquaintance with science to ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... then after investigation I found the only spare room encumbered with a platform of planks hanging from the beams, piled with dirty old quilts and bolsters. Servants' belongings, an excessively grimy mat, hubble-bubble pipes, tobacco, tinder, and two wooden chests littered ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... and speed alone, which now could save him, he flung aside his belt scabbard and as he ran, and with rapid steps flew along the streets, not knowing whither he went, and striving only to keep ahead of his pursuers. They, more encumbered by arms and armour, were unable to keep up with the flying footsteps of a lad clothed in the light attire of a page; but Cuthbert felt that the blood running from his wound was weakening him fast, and that unless he could gain some refuge his course must speedily come to an end. ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... very strong man, and though one of his arms was altogether encumbered by his antagonist, his other arm and his legs were free. With these he seemed to succeed in keeping his head above the water, weighted as he was with the body of his foe. But Trow's efforts were ...
— Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope
... the streets were often encumbered with the putrefying carcasses of criminals, who had been dragged through them by the heels, and precipitated from the Scalae Gemoniae, or Tarpeian rock, before they were thrown into the Tyber, which was the general receptacle of the cloaca maxima and ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... and an autumn had rolled on Since the catastrophe that orphaned Linda. Midwinter with its whirling snow had come, And, shivering through the snow-encumbered streets Of the great city, men and women went, Stooping their heads to thwart the spiteful wind. The sleigh-bells rang, boys hooted, and policemen Told each importunate beggar to move on. In a side street where Fashion ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... victim's grave. By the light of the lantern which streamed on the ground, he saw that, instead of the indignant crowd his apprehensions had imagined, only two men were on the spot, one of them old and diminutive, and the other encumbered with the exhumed body. In the glow of fanatic fury, he forgot all personal fears, and while his dastard creatures held on their terrified course, he sprang back alone to the burial-ground, and seizing the old man with one hand, he stretched forth ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... nearly all more or less wounded, occupied themselves first with reconstructing the intrenchment in case of any new attack; then, overwhelmed with fatigue, hunger, and thirst, after clearing the camp of the dead bodies which encumbered it, they lay down on the earth, still wet with blood, to seek ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... history of that period was the history of the human race—it was the gradual passage of men from a barbarous state to the dawn of civilization—and the national mythi only gather in wild and beautiful fictions round every landmark in their slow and encumbered progress. ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... good, as I soon found it was in my way and I never wore it; nor did Hillers wear his. As we handled the oars of our boat we concluded it would be safer to do it in the best manner possible, and not be encumbered by these sausages under our elbows, but we always placed them behind us at bad places, ready for use; all the others, however, wore theirs and seemed to find no objection to them in the way of interference. A cork ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... likelihood we—the hunters of the party—should stand in need of such privacy to readjust our disguises—disarranged in the chase. Under cover of the tents, we could renew our toilet without the danger of being intruded upon. Chiefly for this reason, then, had we encumbered ourselves with ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... which Benita lay, being so deep in the water, proved very hard to row against the tide, for the number of its passengers encumbered the oarsmen. After a while a light off land breeze sprang up, as here it often does towards morning; and the officer, Thompson, determined to risk hoisting the sail. Accordingly this was done—with some difficulty, for the ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... described them, to love falsehood rather than truth; and I no longer marvel that your spirits become high and exalted, and vent themselves in verse and in tunes, when you approach to the places encumbered by the haunting of evil spirits, which must excite in you that joyous feeling which others experience when approaching the ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... of his words at the moment. They reached the lateral glacier, descended it and crossed the Glacier d'Argentiere. They found their stone-encumbered pathway of the morning and at three o'clock stood once more upon the platform in front of the Pavillon de Lognan. Then she rested for a ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... Because he had the eye to see his opportunity, the heart to prompt to well-timed action, the nerve to consummate a perfect work. And no tyrant-passion dragged him back; no enthusiasms, no foibles encumbered his way. How well he looked at this very moment! When Paulina looked up as he reached her side, her glance mingled at once with an encountering glance, animated, yet modest; his colour, as he spoke to her, became half a blush, half a glow. He stood in her presence brave ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... propensities of these boys. 'They never get licked and they've always got money, at least I know they always get mine,' said he; 'but you and I and Heriot despise them.' Our position toward them was that of an encumbered aristocracy, and really they paid us great respect. The fact was that, when they had trusted us, they were compelled to continue obsequious, for Heriot had instilled the sentiment in the school, that gentlemen never failed to wipe ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... only fear were if we fled together, For that would make our ties beyond all doubt. The waters only lie in flood between This burgh and Frankfort: so far's in our favour The route on to Bohemia, though encumbered, Is not impassable; and when you gain A few hours' start, the difficulties will be The same to your pursuers. Once beyond 200 The frontier, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... his mace and was advancing on the helpless crowd where the brave were encumbered and hampered by the weaklings, when Nigel shook himself clear and bounded forward into the open, his sword in his hand and a smile of ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... were of no importance in her, but that was before he had gone forth into the world. If, she naively told herself, he should come back of that same opinion, she would never "let on" that she had learned things. She would toss overboard her acquirements as ruthlessly as useless ballast from an over-encumbered boat. But, if Samson came demanding these attainments, he must find her possessed of them. So far, her idea of "l'arnin'" embraced the three R's only. And, yet, the "fotched-on" teachers at the "college" thought ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... to obey this order, and he did so in the advance of his platoon; and when he ordered the charge upon the left of the enemy's column, he was on its right. Every man of the Confederates was encumbered with an extra horse, though as they confronted the Union cavalrymen he rid himself of his charge; and thus turned loose, the animals were soon wandering wherever they found an opening. Deck had very nearly his full complement of men, and so ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... it will be the loss of my present post; but in this case I am sure that Congress will indemnify me by a subsistence suitable for me and mine, seeing that I shall be able to continue useful to them as much and even more than in time past, because I shall not be encumbered with other duties, and all my faculties will be employed in the service of America. I have been much mortified in not being at liberty, as I have expressed to Mr Deane. I should have flown to Paris to assist him, at least ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... my coat, and left it in the yacht, so that, in case I had to swim, I should be the less encumbered. ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... after having scrupulously investigated facts and characters: we do not ask to be credited on our mere word only. Although we have not encumbered our work with notes, quotations, and documentary testimony, we have not made one assertion unauthorised by authentic memoirs, by unpublished manuscripts, by autograph letters, which the families of the most conspicuous persons have confided to our care, or by oral and well confirmed ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... candle guttering on the table at one end of the room lent a partial light by which I could discern the funereal bed and the other heavy and desolate-looking articles of furniture with which the room was encumbered. Honora's flowers, withering on the window seat, spoke of tender hopes not yet vanished from her tender dreams, but elsewhere all was hard, all was dreary, all was inexorably forbidding and cold. I shuddered as I looked, and ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... by her plan in Fig. 2, had to undergo important alterations for the cruise that she was to undertake. Her deck was almost completely freed from artillery, since this would have encumbered her too much. Immediately behind the bridge, in the center of the vessel, there were placed two windlasses, one, A, to the right, and the other, B, to the left (Fig. 2). These machines, whose mode of operation will be explained further along, were to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... round went the clay, the hands forming it all the while, cleaning and smoothing until it came out a true and perfect jampot, even to the little furrow round the top, which was given by a movement of the thumbs. He had been at work since seven in the morning, and the shelves round him were encumbered with the result of his labours. Everyone marvelled at his dexterity, until he was forgotten in the superior attractions of the succeeding room. This was the turning-house, and Lennox could not help laughing outright, so amusing did the scene appear to him. ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... all the author of the "Arcadia."[215] His influence as such was very great, if not always very beneficial; for his examples, as often happens, were more readily followed than his precepts. Until the practical Defoe worked his great reform in style, the language of the novel was encumbered with images and unexpected metaphors, or distorted by a pompous verbosity; romance writers mostly looked at life and realities through painted glass. For this, Sidney is ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... disciples to take nothing for their journey, he did not intend to impose needless hardships or even to suggest peculiar denial. He rather intimated the principle that his heralds must not be encumbered with worldly cares and burdens and that those who proclaim his gospel may expect to be supported by those to whom the ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... gallant," said Preciosa: "wherever I go I must be free and unfettered; my liberty must not be restrained or encumbered by jealousy. Be assured, however, that I will not use it to such excess, but that any one may see from a mile off that my honesty is equal to my freedom. The first charge, therefore, I have to impose upon you is, that you put implicit confidence in me; for lovers who ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... without injury even to his toes; or may remove the cheese night after night without even springing it. I knew an old trapper who, on finding himself outwitted in this manner, tied a bit of cheese to the pan, and next morning had poor Reynard by the jaw. The trap is not fastened, but only encumbered with a clog, and is all the more sure in its hold by yielding to every effort of the animal to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... attendant and the owner of the animal. Even with resolution incurable lameness results, and the animal is afterwards more or less a walking exhibition of the limitations of surgery, while the owner, unless the animal is valuable for the purpose of breeding, finds himself encumbered with a life that is practically useless. (See Treatment of ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... bedroom, where she, watching the doings of the farmer through the chinks of the partition which separated her room from the passage, concocted the story which convicted the prisoners. Pearce thinking himself pursued, too heavily encumbered for rapid flight, left the portmanteau as described, intending to call for it in the morning, if his fears proved groundless. He, however, had not courage to risk calling again, and made the best ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... could not speak to him, and, encumbered with baby, dish, spoon, and children, he could only stare at me with a sudden brightening of the altered face that made it full of welcome ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... attacked. "The European War is drawing to its close," said Ferdinand's proclamation. "The victorious armies of the Central Powers are in Serbia and are rapidly advancing." They advanced less rapidly than they had planned, thanks to the wonderful exploits of the Serbian army, which was heavily encumbered by the growing stream of fugitives. The Austro-Germans failed to encircle the Serbian troops—slowly and keeping in touch with those who were on the Bulgarian frontier, the Serbs retired to ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... cried the more a great deal' because they did try, and then how he won the distinction of being the man that stopped Christ. When Jesus stood still, and commanded him to be called, the crowd wheeled right round at once, and instead of hindering, encumbered him with help, and bade him to 'rise, and be of good cheer.' Then he flings away some poor rag that he had had to cover himself sitting there, and wearing his under-garment only, comes to Christ, and Jesus asks, 'What do you want?' A promise in the shape of a question. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... encumbered with the trappings of a futile erudition of the insignificant or clinging pathetically to the insecure relics of teleological doctrine, or, still less virile, seeking support in a return to the unscientific tales of supernatural ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... kissing her sister, softly went away. Not into the study, however, but out into the darkness, where the March wind moaned so drearily among the leafless elms, that she might weep out the tears which she had been struggling with so long. Up and down the snow-encumbered path she walked, scarce knowing that she shivered in the blast. Conscious only of one thought, that Menie must die, and that ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... again, that the young men came in more gorgeously dressed, wearing feathers, necklaces, armlets, ear-rings, bracelets, beside jackets of various-colored silks, and other vanities—than the older and wiser chiefs, who encumbered themselves with no more dress than what decency actually required, and were, moreover, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... to have been four or five hundred yards off. Keeping the dog behind us, we hurried round by the east shore to avoid climbing the higher ledges, which rose sixty or seventy feet along the middle of the islet. These bare, flinty ledges, when not encumbered by bowlders, are grand things to run on. One can get over them at an astonishing pace. Once, as we ran on, we heard the bellow repeated, and, on coming within twenty or thirty rods of where it had seemed to be, ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... lie in the field so far from any house, oppressed me like a nightmare; it seemed, indeed, a kind of awful braving of God's power; and this thought, which I daresay only writes me down a coward, was greatly exaggerated by my private knowledge of the errand we were come upon. I was besides encumbered by my duties to Sir William, whom it fell upon me to entertain; for my lord was quite sunk into a state bordering on pervigilium, watching the woods with a rapt eye, sleeping scarce at all, and speaking sometimes ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... purposely encumbered himself with this stranger to make it plain that, hover as he might, he waived all claim to her attention. What better could a man do? And now he forbore even to look her way. The abstention was as marked as any look could have been. ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... the end of the revolt of the Irish gentry. It was really the decisive moment of their failure; disorganised and futile, they went down by scores in the ruin of the Encumbered Estates Court, while their tenants were marking with their bones a road across the Atlantic. As for the landlords who were popular leaders, within a few months after that great assembly, Daniel O'Connell, who had proposed the first resolution, died in Rome, heart-broken. ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... furniture belonging to these country houses; and it is certainly no longer a matter of surprise to us, that rich proprietors take little interest in embellishing them. A house which will in all probability be converted once a year into a barrack, is decidedly better in a state of nature, than encumbered with elegant furniture. This house has been entirely destroyed in that way more than once, and the last time that it was occupied by troops, was left like an Augean stable. We have here the luxury of books. My room opens into a beautiful chapel, covered with paintings ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... dramatically not merely the special scene of the worldly old bishop's petulant struggle against his failing power, and his collapse, finally, beneath the will of his so-called nephews, it also illustrates a characteristic gross form of the Renaissance spirit encumbered with Pagan survivals, fleshly appetites, and selfish monopolizings which hampered its development.— "It is nearly all that I said of the Central Renaissance—its worldliness, inconsistency, pride, hypocrisy, ignorance of itself, ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... Denboro one left the Bayport road at "Beriah Holt's place," followed Beriah's cow path to the pasture, plunged into the oak and birch grove at the southern edge of that pasture, emerged on a grass-grown and bush-encumbered track which had once been the way to some early settler's home, and had been forsaken for years, and followed that track, in all its windings, until he saw the gleam of water between the upper fringe of brush and the lower limbs of the trees. Then he ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... battle on foot, in order the more effectually to stimulate the emulation of his men, so that when, in the end, his forces were defeated, and fled, he himself, being encumbered by his armor, could not save himself, but was overtaken by his ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... moment of change and consciousness?—representing in her, sharp recoil, an instant girding of the will—and in him a new despair, which was also a new docility, a readiness to content and tranquillise her at any cost. As they stood thus, for these few seconds, amid the shadows of the rich encumbered room, the picture of the weeks and months they had just passed through flashed through both minds—illuminated—thrown into true relation with surrounding and irrevocable fact. Both trembled—she under the admonition of her own higher life—he, ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... total impression of his personality was one of clear-headed decision and calm energy. He was a man of an absorbing presence, one whom you would have instinctively noticed even in a crowd. He bore himself with that unconscious grace which people are apt to call aristocratic, being apparently never encumbered by any superfluity of arms and legs. His features, whatever their ethnological value might be, were, at all events, decidedly handsome; but if they were typical of anything, they told unmistakably that their possessor was a man of ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the rear coach of the stalled passenger train, and, a moment later, Joe was climbing the snow-encumbered steps. It proved to be the baggage car, and, as Joe entered, he surprised a number of men who were smoking, and playing cards on ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... two such coarse, cruel fiends as Deering and Girty encumbered the earth. Even on the border, where the best men were bad, they were the worst. Deering was yet drunk, but Girty had recovered somewhat from the effects of the rum he had absorbed. The former rolled his big eyes and nodded his shaggy head. He was passing judgment, from his point of view, ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... might marry the girl,—postponing his marriage till after his uncle's death. For aught he knew as yet that might still be possible. But were he to do so, he would disgrace his family, and disgrace himself by breaking the solemn promise he had made. And in such case he would be encumbered, and possibly be put beyond the pale of that sort of life which should be his as Earl of Scroope, by having Captain O'Hara as his father-in-law. He was aware now that he would be held by all his natural friends to have ruined himself ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... or finery worse yet; crying children; scolding mothers; a population of boys and girls of all ages, who evidently knew no Sabbath, and to judge by appearances had no home; and streets and houses and doorways so squalid, so encumbered with garbage and filth, so morally distant from peace and purity, that Matilda felt as if she were walking with an angel through regions where angels never stay. Perhaps Mr. Wharncliffe noticed the tightening clasp of her fingers upon his. He paused at length; it was before a large, ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... this, when the baron came back from the wars, he found himself much poorer than when he went away,—he found his lands encumbered, his castle dilapidated, and his cattle sold. In short, he was, as we say of a proud merchant now and then, "embarrassed in his circumstances." He was obliged to economize. But the feudal family ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... Nature gave her youth and beauty; marriage gave her the remaining quality. Was she not Lady Bazelhurst? What odds if Lord Bazelhurst happened to be a middle-aged, addle-pated ass? So much the better. Bazelhurst castle and the Bazelhurst estates (heavily encumbered before her father came to the rescue) were among the oldest and most coveted in the English market. Her mother noted, with unctuous joy, that the present Lady Bazelhurst in babyhood had extreme ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... height. Both Coxhead's and Pickwoad's batteries were covered with missiles. Colonel C. M. H. Downing, commanding all the artillery, quickly assumed the offensive. Dissatisfied with his position, the left of which, lying to the east of Limit Hill, was so encumbered with rocks that of the 53rd battery only two guns could fire at all, and those of the other batteries of the 2nd brigade division only by indirect laying, he drew that part of his line clear, and moved Coxhead's three ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... fortification of bluffs, pointing inwards, and often tilted to quoins 300 feet high, with an extreme of 1,000. Trachyte and basalt, with dykes like Cyclopean walls, are cut to jagged needles by the furious north-easter. Around the foot, where it is not encumbered with debris like the base of an iceberg, a broad line of comminuted pumice produces vegetation like a wady-growth in Somali Land. The central bed allows no short cut across: it is a series of rubbish-heaps, parasitic cones, walls, and lumps of red-black lavas, trachytes, and phonolites reposing ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... Moses downwards, the policy of all Governments has been to give relief to the debtor. By the Encumbered Estate Act, which was passed just after the famine, special relief was ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... are resting after a long, rapid march, encumbered with their spoils and captives. Some have lain down to sleep, their nude bodies stretched along the sward, resembling bronze statues tumbled from their pedestals. Others squat around fires, roasting collops from cattle they have killed, or eating ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... and was familiar with its difficulties. I had heard and read so much concerning the desolation and elemental upheavals and violent waters of the upper valley of the Snake, that I dared not attempt to return in that direction. The route by the Madison Range, encumbered by the single obstruction of the mountain barrier, was much the shortest, and so, most unwisely as will hereafter ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... way of St. John's that he might inquire at Kirk Michael about the Deemster.. He found the great man's house a desolate place. The gate was padlocked, and he had to clamber over it; the acacias slashed above him going down the path, and the fallen leaves encumbered his feet At the door, which was shut, he rang, and before it was opened to him an old woman put her untidy head out of a ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... willingly and freely serve Me shall receive grace for grace. But he who desires to glory in things out of Me, or to take pleasure in some private good, shall not be grounded in true joy, nor be enlarged in his heart, but shall many ways be encumbered and straitened.... And if heavenly grace enter in and true charity, there will be no envy nor narrowness of heart, neither will self-love busy itself. For Divine charity overcometh all things and enlargeth all the powers of the ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... the roof. They had noticed it as they followed their landlady up the stairs. Willie led the way through it and the boys found themselves on the roof, which, like the roofs of most city houses, was flat. Like its neighbors, also, this roof was encumbered with a number of long, wire clothes-lines, but the boys found nothing that suggested an aerial to them. Puzzled, they ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... upstairs windows, and small cellars of shops on the ground floor. The street was paved with rough cobble stones, and sloped from each side toward the centre, through which ran a kennel or gutter encumbered with garbage and filth of every description, through which a foul stream of evil-smelling water wound its devious way. The street had apparently at one time been one of some pretensions, but had now fallen upon evil days and become the abode of ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... digging a rancher's ditches, while now we have another instance in the Somasco valley. It appears that long ago there was a family quarrel at Carnaby, England, and though we do not know what it was all about, the owner of what we understand is an encumbered estate turned out his son, who had the good sense to come out to this country, where he did pretty well. He died and left a son, Mr. Henry Alton, well known in the Somasco district, who appears to be a credit to the country which took his father in. The owner of ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... capital, some on foot, some on horseback, some riding asses or lowing oxen, all carrying their prayer-books and culinary utensils. In such multitudes do they come that the streets and squares of the city are encumbered with their swarms, and incarnadined with their red cloaks. The disorder and confusion are indescribable. Bands of the holy men traverse the streets chanting prayers, or uttering wild cries. They meet, they jostle, they quarrel, they fight; ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... brought Marchdale to the dungeon, and those happy accidents which had enabled Charles to change places with him, and breathe the free, cool, fresh air; while he left his enemy loaded with the same chains that had encumbered his limbs so cruelly, and lying on that same damp dungeon floor, which he thought ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... time when men ask for God," said Hoppart. "And you give them three!" cried Bent rather cheaply. "I confess I find the way encumbered by these Alexandrian elaborations," ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... hanging feebly between two grandfatherly old posts, which hypocritically tried to maintain an air of solidity, though perfectly aware that they were wellnigh rotted away at the base. The action of this gate was assisted—or more correctly encumbered—by the contrivance of a sliding ball and chain, creating a most dismal clatter and flap as often as it was opened. The white-washed picket fence, scaled and patched by the weather, kept the posts in excellent countenance; and inclosed a moderate grass-plot, adorned ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... the journey than he had anticipated. The moment he turned his face homeward, a desire to hurry, an anxiety, a dread fastened upon him. A presentiment of evil gathered. But, encumbered as he was with heavy traps, he could not travel swiftly. It was late afternoon when he topped the last ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... private carriage drawn by post-horses, and driven by postillions in the tightest possible deer-skin breeches, the smallest red coats, and the hugest jack-boots. The streets about the doors of the hotels resound with the cracking of whips and the stamping of horses, and are encumbered with carriages, heaps of baggage, porters, postillions, couriers, and travellers. Night at length arrives—the time of spectacles and funerals. The carriages rattle towards the opera-houses. Trains of people, sometimes in white robes and sometimes in black, carrying blazing torches and ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... 1420 Zarco began the plantation of Madeira, and being much impeded in his progress by the immense quantity of thick and tall trees, with which it was then everywhere encumbered, he set the wood on fire to facilitate the clearing of the surface for cultivation. The wood is reported to have continued burning for seven years[6], and so great was the devastation as to occasion great inconvenience to the colony for many years afterwards, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... the water slumbered, With a sickly crust encumbered, Leapeth now a roaring flood, Wild as ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... hated Slavery so decidedly and had such a clear common sense-like view of the evils and misery of the system, that he declared he had as a matter of principle refrained from marrying, in order that he might have no reason to grieve over having added to the woes of slaves. Nor did he wish to be encumbered, if the opportunity offered to escape. According to law he was entitled to his freedom at ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... Hammer of heretics that which the love of the people did for the Father of the poor. His legend has the two defects which so soon weary the readers of hagiographical writings, when the question is of the saints whose worship the Church has commanded.[1] It is encumbered with a spurious supernaturalism, and with incidents borrowed right and left from earlier legends. The Italian people, who hailed in Francis the angel of all their hopes, and who showed themselves so greedy for his relics, did not so much as dream of taking up the corpse of the founder ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... troublesome to you." "Indeed, uncle," answered Aladdin, "I cannot now; it is not troublesome to me: but I will as soon as I am up." The African magician was so obstinate, that he would have the lamp before he would help him up; and Aladdin, who had encumbered himself so much with his fruit that he could not well get at it, refused to give it to him till he was out of the cave. The African magician, provoked at this obstinate refusal, flew into a passion, threw a little ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... until it seemed impossible that he should not fall backwards, crushing to death or hideously maiming the man who, encumbered with the girl upon his arm, could do little to calm the frightened beast, And well for them was it that Hugh Carden Ali, with his love and understanding of horses, knew that only to the sagacity of the animal could the safe negotiation of the dangerous descent down the hillside be left. ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... Verdon Street, and gazed in at the uncurtained windows of the one-story houses, a new sense of their sordidness, as contrasted with that bright vision, was borne in upon him. Instead of large families in one ragged room, encumbered with steamy washing, he saw great farms and broad acres; and all that beauty of the face of earth, to which he had been half blind, began to appeal to him now that it was mixed up with religion. In this wise did Aaron become a politician and ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... a short way from Philadelphia. He found the soil a reddish, somewhat gravelly clay, and so worn out from years of cropping that it did not support two cows and a horse. City born and bred, he was encumbered with no knowledge of agriculture which had to be unlearned. He began a careful and systematic study of the agricultural literature, and ultimately developed a novel system of dairy farming to ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... and rough enough in all conscience; narrow, unfenced in many places, winding along the brow of precipices without rail or breast-work, encumbered with huge blocks of stone, and broken by the summer rains! An English stage coachman would have stared aghast at the steep zigzags up the hills, the awkward turns on the descents, the sudden pitches, with now an unsafe bridge, and now a stony ford at the bottom; but through all ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... pointed out to you by your cabman (if you happen to drive) as the romantic abode of a super- stitious king, and where a strong odor of pigsties and other unclean things so prostrates you for the moment that you have no energy to protest against the obvious fiction. You enter a yard encumbered with rubbish and a defiant dog, and an old woman emerges from a shabby lodge and assures you that you are indeed in an historic place. The red brick building, which looks like a small factory, rises on the ruins of the favorite residence of the dreadful ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... at him, but only at the lamb he carried in his arms. How came such a man to be carrying a lamb, and carrying it full gently and carefully too, supporting one leg with both hands, although he was encumbered with a staff? Then, when he had come yet nearer, I saw that it was not only a lamb—it was one of my master's lambs, my own lambs that I was set to watch; for there on its wool was the brand carried by our flocks and by none others on all those fells. One of my lambs, lying ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... admit into our scheme all the grand peculiarities of Christianity, and having admitted, to neglect and think no more of them! "Wherefore" (might the Socinian say) "Wherefore all this costly and complicated machinery? It is like the Tychonic astronomy, encumbered and self-convicted by its own complicated relations and useless perplexities. It is so little like the simplicity of nature, it is so unworthy of the divine hand, that it even offends against those rules of propriety which ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... business to propitiate George, who was distracted with fears for the safety of his light-of-love and half inclined to make Dick responsible for his own discomfort. When they arrived George took him under his wing, and together they entered the red-hot seaport, encumbered with the material and wastage of the Suakin-Berger line, from locomotives in disconsolate fragments to mounds ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling |
