"Irregular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... instances. The profane boy. Case described. Confession of the boys. Success. The untidy desk. Measures in consequence. Interesting the scholars in the good order of the school. Securing a majority. Example. Reports about the desks. The new College building. Modes of interesting the boys. The irregular class. Two ways of remedying the evil. Boys' love of system and regularity. Object of securing a majority, and particular means of doing it. Making school pleasant. Discipline should generally be private. In all cases that are brought before the school, public ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... yearly percentage of dead must be added, to complete the number taken from the coast of Africa. The estimate was five per cent, to cover the unavoidable losses incurred in a rapid and healthy passage; but such passages were a small proportion of the whole number annually made, and the mortality was irregular. It was sometimes frightful; a long calm was one long agony: asphyxia, bloody flux, delirium and suicide, and epidemics swept between the narrow decks, as fatally, but more mercifully than the kidnappers who tore these people from their native fields. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... Daniel has been fully described by Layard—see Early Adventures, vol. II, p. 295. It is of comparatively recent date, not unlike the shrines of Mussulman saints, and is surmounted by a high conical dome of irregular brickwork, somewhat resembling in shape a pine cone. The reader is referred to the beautiful pictorial illustrations of Daniel's reputed tomb, of the ruins of Susa, and of Schuster and its bridges in Mme. Dieulafoy's La Perse, la Chaldee et ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... Almighty they were now adoring. Here the moss lay in a flat carpet, tinted deeper green. Water willow rolled its ragged reddish-tan hoops, with swelling bloom and leaf buds. Overflowing pitcher plants grew in irregular beds, on slender stems, lifting high their flat buds. But scattered in groups here and there, sometimes with massed similar colours, sometimes in clumps and variegated patches, stood the rare, early fringed orchis, some almost white, others pale lavender ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... deep and from 100 to 150 yds. wide. I walked along shore today and killed an Antelope. whever we get a view of the lofty summits of the mountains the snow presents itself, altho we are almost suffocated in this confined vally with heat. the pine cedar and balsum fir grow on the mountains in irregular assemleages or spots mostly high up on their sides and summits. this evening we entered much the most remarkable clifts that we have yet seen. these clifts rise from the waters edge on either side perpendicularly to ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... that passed by, and lived with a good reputation in the army near twenty years. During this space, with whatever cover of honesty he appeared abroad, yet he failed not to make up whatever deficiencies the irregular course of life might occasion, by robbing upon the highway, though he had the good luck never to be apprehended, or indeed suspected till the fact which ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... I may pursue, you must forgive me, my friends, if you find it desultory and irregular: and, as a proof of the sincerity of your criticism, I earnestly beg that, like the chivalrous judge, of whom mention was made last night, you will cry out "Ho!" when you wish me to cease. But where shall we begin? From what period shall we take up the history of BOOKISM (or, if you please, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... were the riots, attended by destruction of property and personal outrage, which, though common in England, were violative of that reverence for law that was thoroughly ingrained in the American character; and they were, besides, rather in the spirit of hasty and irregular insurrection than of the slow and majestic development of revolution. "We are not able in this way," wrote Jonathan Mayhew, "to contend ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... nearly touching the ground) following me as quietly as a dog, I was rejoiced by the sight of curling smoke, and, on turning a corner, I came suddenly upon a little village green, around which some half dozen cottages were scattered at irregular distances. I directed my steps towards one of these, before which a 45crazy sign, rendered by age and exposure to the weather as delightfully vague and unintelligible as though it had come fresh from the brush of Turner himself, hung picturesquely ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... powerful situations and overwhelming sorrows, must be ascribed either to the feeling of the dignity of human nature, excited in us by such grand instances of it as are therein displayed, or to the trace of a higher order of things, impressed on the apparently irregular course of events, and mysteriously revealed in them; or perhaps to both ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... had had many love affairs. Gossips had it that between him and Madame de Vibray there had existed a tender intimacy; and, for once, gossip was right. But they had been tactful, had respected the conventions whilst their irregular union had lasted. Though now a thing of the past, for Thomery had sought other loves, his passion for the Baroness had changed to a calm, strong, semi-brotherly affection; whilst Madame de Vibray retained a more lively, a more tender feeling for the man whom she ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... the convent by a road following the shore of the lake is an intermittent fountain, very irregular in its action. To reach it continue the road till arriving at a clump of chestnut and horse-chestnut trees, some having stone seats round the trunks. The fountain is in the corner under the fourth tree. Near Hautecombe are the village and castle of Bordeaux, founded ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... 154-155, where a few like figure 162 were found. Most of the degenerate forms occur among the nearly ripe spermatozoa or in the sperm-ducts. Such are shown in figures 163 to 168. The chromatin is strangely broken up into irregular clumps, and probably no two of these degenerate sperm-heads can be found which are alike. The tails are always imperfect. The distribution and varying numbers of these degenerate spermatozoa make it impossible to interpret their ...
— Studies in Spermatogenesis (Part 1 of 2) • Nettie Maria Stevens
... great open fireplace in the dining-room and the little leaded glass panes. He also painted the silent streets of his native town and the long rows of even houses, built in the same style, against which his home, with its irregular buttresses and terraces, made a pleasant contrast. And his listeners believed that he had come from one of those old burgher houses with carved gables and with overhanging second stories, which give such a strong impression of wealth ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... open the door and look down at the black water, I went and listened, and as I did so it seemed that there was something going on there. Every now and then, came a splash, and then a hurrying as of something being drawn over wet bars of wood. Then there were a series of soft thuds at irregular intervals, and as I listened all this was magnified by imagination, and I was ready to go and call for Uncle Bob to descend when a faint squeaking noise brought me to my ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... hours and a half, an elevated plain, from whence we had an extensive view towards the east. The plain, which in this part is called El Ahma (Arabic), is a fertile tract, interspersed with low hills; these are for the greater part crowned with ruins, but they are of irregular forms, unlike the Tels or artificial heights of the Haouran, and of northern Syria. Just by the road, at the end of three hours, are the ruins called El Kholda (Arabic). To the left are the ruins of Kherbet Karakagheish (Arabic); and to the right, at half an hour's distance, ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... to creep to the middle of the river. A Polled-Angus bullock with an irregular white streak running across his nose led the drove, following close at the horse's tail. That steer was Destiny. No criminal ever watched the face of his judge with more desperate interest than I ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... December under the title of Mixed Commissions, the police substituted itself for justice, drew up judgments, pronounced sentences, violated every law judicially without the regular magistracy interposing the slightest obstacle to this irregular magistracy: Justice allowed the police to do what it liked with the satisfied look of a team of horses which had ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... handiwork it is hard to speak. It was the ugliest sofa cushion you can imagine, worked in browns so that it should not show the dirt, and with such irregular stitches that either Madam Washington must have been losing her sight when she worked it, or else she was ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1. No. 23, April 15, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... attempted, instead of a sixpenny diurnal admission to every person presenting himself at the bar, to make it a close subscription-room of ten guineas per annum for each member, and thereby to shut out all petty or irregular traffickers, to increase the revenues of this their monopolised market. A violent democracy revolted at this imposition and invasion of the rights, privileges, and immunities of a public market for the public stock. They proposed to raise 263 shares of L50 each, creating a fund of L13,150 ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... appears to have been some discontent manifested, or suspected in the provinces. Many of the salaries of officers, both civil and military, remained unpaid; yet there were exactions, the more grievous, because they were irregular, in every department; the administration of justice was notoriously corrupt; the clergy had fallen into disorder and disrepute; and though much that was useful had been done, yet that was forgotten, especially in the distant provinces, and such a portion of discontent existed, ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... whole head seems thrust up into a cloud of charcoal dust. The partly nude body has not a mark of femininity. The body is very long and the legs very short, and the knees, as they protrude from under the drapery, look like two irregular blocks of wood. ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... realized that his companion must be standing where he had supported Mrs. Fenton in his arms; and so touching was the expression of Ashe's face that he felt his throat contract. He turned away and looked out of the dim window over the chimney-pots and the irregular roofs. ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... witches, hags, and cross batteries! Potz Element! air, earth, fire and water! Europe, Asia, Africa, and America! Jesuits, Augustines, Benedictines, Capucins, Minorites, Franciscans, Dominicans, Carthusians, and Knights of the Cross! privateers, canons regular and irregular, sluggards, rascals, scoundrels, imps, and villains all! donkeys, buffaloes, oxen, fools, blockheads, numskulls, and foxes! What means this? Four soldiers and three shoulder-belts! Such a ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... and even the bailiffs. They tried to fasten a quarrel on me. In our ruthless profession, as you know, madame, if you wish to ruin a man, it is soon done. I was concerned for both parties in a case, and they found it out. It was a trifle irregular; but it is sometimes done in Paris, attorneys in certain cases hand the rhubarb and take the senna. They do things differently at Mantes. I had done M. Bouyonnet this little service before; but, egged on by his colleagues and the attorney ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... alive. The same great assembly elected the village magistrates and decided upon all important matters both of peace and war. At the full of the moon it was usually convoked. The nobles and the popular delegates arrived at irregular intervals, for it was an inconvenience arising from their liberty, that two or three days were often lost in waiting for the delinquents. All state affairs were in the hands of this fierce democracy. The elected chieftains had rather authority to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of your government, and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite, not only that you steadily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the constitution, alterations which will impair the ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... Gordon riots in London two years before. Their Parliament wore the crown and spoke the regal language of a patriot Assembly. For five years they themselves had glorified justifiably in the perfect discipline and sobriety with which they had used their irregular power. Their most trusted leaders suggested that they would yet achieve their ends without violence, while the large majority of the Volunteers themselves were still as loyal to the Crown as the Catholics, and were inclined, therefore, to shrink ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... conical hill rose sharply to the left, momentarily shutting out the valley; and beyond, at the foot of a steep declivity, stood the Makimmon dwelling. Originally a four-square, log house, the logs had been covered by boards, and to its present, irregular length, one room in width, had been added an uneven roofed porch broadside on a narrow lip of sod by a wide, shallow stream. An indifferent stand of corn held precariously to the sharp slope from the public road; an unkempt cow ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... overhanging the river Don, which at that point ever rushed darkly and stormily along; the mount, though not steep, was full two miles in circumference, from base to brow occupied by the castle, which was erected in that massive yet irregular form peculiar to the architecture of the middle ages. A deep, broad moat or fosse, constantly supplied by the river, defended the castle wall, which ran round the mound, irregularly indeed, for there were indentations and sharp angles, occasioned by the uneven ground, each of which was guarded by ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... picturesque in their forms, and the grassy meadows between them, entirely clear of snow, were wonderfully green for the season. During the first stage we passed some inlets of the Baltic, highly picturesque with their irregular wooded shores. They had all been frozen over during the night. We were surprised to see, on a southern hill-side, four peasants at work ploughing. How they got their shares through the frozen sod, unless the soil was remarkably dry and sandy, was ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... poet, an adventuress, who could have made the success of her age had she not been hindered, as well as aided, by her self-love. She had the shrewdness which prognosticates as well as discerns, and saw the inevitableness of the ultimatum of all irregularities in a world which, however irregular it is in practice, still holds regularity as its model of conduct and progression. Ida Edgham would, in the desperate state of the earth before the flood, have made herself famous. As it was, her irregular talents had a limited ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of the community has written that the brothers "looked like young Greek gods. Burrill, the elder, with a typical Greek face and long hair falling to his shoulders in irregular curls," she says, "I remember as most unconscious of himself, interested in all about him, talking of the Greek philosophers as if he had just come from one of Socrates' walks, carrying the high philosophy into his ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... some are latent, the blame, if trouble exists, is not unnaturally laid on the visible facts. It is evident to the physician that the girl has attended school. It is not so evident that, since her earliest childhood, she has been fed on improper food, at irregular hours, and that the processes by which the poisonous dead matter is removed from the system, have been irregularly carried on. His questions put on these topics are put in a general way, and answered in ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... long stride, Van Brunt following at his heels through the village. In irregular fashion, wherever the ground favored, the lodges of moose hide were pitched. Van Brunt ran his practised eye over them ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... been written in undue haste or not." He is quoted as saying that "genius is always prolific." However the saying may be interpreted, there does not seem to have been about him anything of what has been called the irregular dishabille of composers, "the natural result of the habit of genius of watching for an inspiration, and encouraging it to take possession of the whole being ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... might now do with Basterga as he pleased without thought or drawback; but for their benefit—never! He paused at his door, and cast a haggard glance up and down; at the irregular line of gables which he had known from childhood, the steep, red roofs, the cobble pavement, the bakers' signs that hung here and there and with the wide eaves darkened the way; and he cursed all he saw in the frenzy of his rage. Let Basterga, Savoy, d'Albigny do their ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... enough, there was a thin seam of yellow, lying in the angle of sides and bottom! And breaking it, was a small irregular particle, of blackish hue tinted with the yellow in spots. Charley's eyes bulged. Gold! Was this the ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... from the clattering hubbub of Chatham Square and you are in Chinatown, slipping, within ten feet, through an invisible wall, from the glitter of the gin palace and the pawn-shop to the sinister shadows of irregular streets and blind alleys, where yellow men pad swiftly along greasy asphalt beneath windows glinting with ivory, bronze and lacquer; through which float the scents of aloes and of incense and all the subtle suggestion of ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... the tangled streets, I was struck with the universal sound of wailing which filled the city. All the tailors, shoemakers, and basket-makers, at work in the open air, were singing, rarely in measured strains, but with wild, irregular, lamentable cries, exactly in the manner of the Arabs. Sometimes the song was antiphonal, flung back and forth from the farthest visible corners of a street; and then it became a contest of lungs, kept up for an hour ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... top-shaped below and tapering into a thick root, 5 to 12 cm. in diameter: tubercles (upper portion) appressed-imbricate, 12 to 18 mm. long and about as wide at base, the upper surface convex and variously fissured (presenting an irregular warty appearance) even to the edges: flowers apparently central, about 2.5 cm. long and broad, shading from whitish to rose: fruit oval, pale green, about 10 mm. long: seeds 1.6 mm. long. (Ill. Bot. Mex. Bound. t. 16) Type unknown; but specimens of Wright, Bigelow, and Parry in Herb. ...
— The North American Species of Cactus, Anhalonium, and Lophophora • John M. Coulter
... eighty-five degrees Fahrenheit while the varnishing process is going on. Varnishing performed under these circumstances will be more thorough in result, have a brighter appearance and better polish, than if the drying is slow and under irregular temperature. For drying work, the best kind of heat is that from ...
— French Polishing and Enamelling - A Practical Work of Instruction • Richard Bitmead
... the Cincinnati Southern railway, with Ludlow; and by one (Chesapeake & Ohio; see vol. v., p. 109) with West Covington. On the terraces the streets generally intersect at right angles, but on the hills their directions are irregular. To the "bottoms" (which have suffered much from floods[2]) between Third Street and the river the manufacturing and wholesale districts are for the most part confined, although many of these interests are now on the higher levels or in the suburbs; the principal retail houses are ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... came streaming down the hill, he got his guns into action. After a few shells had been fired, the enemy advanced in full force. Four thousand men were extended in the shape of a crescent, advancing in fairly good order; while behind was an irregular mob, of ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... character; though necessarily reduced in the height of its vallum by the operation of time, and probably also diminished in its size by the gradual encroachments of the ocean. Upon its shape, which is an irregular triangle, it may be well to make a preliminary observation, that this was necessarily prescribed by the scite; and that, however the Romans might commonly prefer a square outline for their temporary encampments, we have abundant proofs that they only ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... spoken. On the 21st of July, 1719, the Duchess of Berry, eldest daughter of the Regent, had died at the Palais-Royal, at barely twenty-four years of age; her health, her beauty, and her wit were not proof against the irregular life she had led. Ere long a more terrible cry arose from one of the chief cities of the kingdom. "The plague," they said, "is at Marseilles, brought, none knows how, on board a ship from the East." The ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... as they lay encamped along the hills, they seemed about 30,000. (Xerez, Conq. del Peru, ap. Barcia, tom. III. p. 196.) However gratifying to the imagination to repose on some precise number, it is very rare that one can do so with safety, in estimating the irregular and tumultuous levies ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... south, then to the west, and back again to the north. If the movement had been quite regular, the apex would have described a circle, or rather, as the stem is always growing upwards, a circular spiral. But it generally describes irregular elliptical or oval figures; for the apex, after pointing in any one direction, commonly moves back to the opposite side, not, however, returning along the same line. Afterwards other irregular ellipses or ovals are successively described, with their longer [page ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... Stones and roofing-material were brought from Veii, and one city was dismantled that another might be restored. Stones and timber were supplied to any man from the public lands. The city rapidly rose again. But it was an irregular city; the streets ran anywhere; no effort was made at rule or system in the making of ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... infancy of freedom, and like children are wayward. On many of the estates they have repaid the kindness and forbearance of their masters; on others they have continued to take advantage of (what? the kindness and forbearance of their masters? No.) their new condition, are idle or irregular in their work. The good sense of the mass gives me reason to hope that idleness will be the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of the town was indistinguishable from a chess-board. Or, instead of squares, oblong house-blocks formed a pattern not strictly that of a chess-board but geometrical and rectangular. Often the outline of the town was irregular and merely convenient, but the streets still kept, so far as they could, to a rectangular plan. Sometimes, lastly, the rectangular planning was limited to a few broad thoroughfares, while the smaller side-streets, were ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield
... presents two faces: one, which the economists call value in USE, or intrinsic value; another, value in EXCHANGE, or of opinion. The effects which are produced by value under this double aspect, and which are very irregular so long as it is not established,—or, to use a more philosophical expression, so long as it is not constituted,—are changed totally by ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... in dancing was irregular, as that greasy Italian did not wheel his piano round every week. However I acquired sufficient proficiency to attract attention, and that is the great thing in life. The Italian offered me twopence a day to go on his round with him and dance while he turned the ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... governors; and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people, is to give them full information of their affairs through the channel of the public papers, and to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... streamed upon the great granite column to which they now approached, they discovered a form, apparently human, but of a size much less than ordinary, which moved slowly among the large grey stones, not like a person intending to journey onward, but with the slow, irregular, flitting movement of a being who hovers around some spot of melancholy recollection, uttering also, from time to time, a sort of indistinct muttering sound. This so much resembled his idea of the motions of an apparition, that Hobbie Elliot, ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... picturesque village, a mile or so from the sea, nestling at the foot of the Snowdon range. Meadows and woods embower Llanystumdwy. Rushing through the village a rock-strewn stream pours down from the mountains to the sea, with the trees on its banks locking their branches overhead in an irregular green archway. Look westward to the coast from Llanystumdwy and you have in Carnavon Bay one of the finest seascapes in Britain. Turn to the east, and the rising mountains culminate in the white summit of Snowdon and other giant peaks stretching upward through the clouds. Could ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... this her third siege in a fever of anxiety. Vaudreuil had disposed a thousand men, under De Ramezay, at the new stone fort at Chambly to check the invasion by land, and strengthened the city with all available forces, regular and irregular. The habitants of the long Cote de Beaupre had hidden away their goods, and flocked within the walls of the city with all the provisions they could transport. Prayers for deliverance rose unceasingly from the altars of the churches and convents, ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... garden door, unfastened it, and stepped out into the road. Above him on his left rose up the chancel of the parish church, the roofs crowded behind; and immediately in front was the high-raised churchyard, with the tall irregular wall and the trees above ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... Tewkesbury. We were carried to several very beautiful points of view, all terminating with the noble hills of Malvern; and we visited the cathedral. . . . The pews seem the most unsafe, strange, and irregular that were ever constructed; they are mounted up, story after story, without any order, now large, now small, now projecting out wide, now almost indented in back, nearly to the very roof of the building. They look as if, ready-made, they had been thrown up, and stuck ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... armed with spears, and the field on which they stood was fallow ground, broken with ridges which lay across their front, and disordered the movements of the English cavalry. From all these accidents, the shock of this body of horse was feeble and irregular; and as they were received on the points of the Scottish spears, which were longer than the lances of the English horsemen, they were in a moment pierced, over-thrown, and discomfited. Grey himself was dangerously wounded: ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... larger portion of the South, no one could be found who would risk his life by attending as a delegate. Nevertheless, there were delegates present from the five slave States which bordered on the free States, besides a partial and irregular representation from Texas. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... child in his arms brought him back to the knowledge of where he was. He ached in every joint and limb, and his eyes smarted with the dry heat, but the baby concerned him most, for she was breathing with hard, long, irregular gasps, her mouth was open and her absurdly small fists were clenched, and around her closed eyes were deep blue rings. Rags felt a cold rush of fear and uncertainty come over him as he stared about him helplessly for aid. He had seen babies look like this before, in the tenements; they ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... an ordinary loaf when it is about half baked, and with the fingers, while the bread is yet hot, dexterously pull the half-set dough into pieces of irregular shape, about the size of an egg. Don't attempt to smooth or flatten them—the rougher their shapes the better. Set upon tins, place in a very slow oven, and bake to a rich brown. This forms a deliciously crisp crust for cheese. If you do not bake at home, your baker will prepare it for you, ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... of his bold wing carried the kite upward, above the tops of the tallest trees; but he was observed to fly heavily. As he rose higher, the flapping of his wings became more hurried and irregular. It was evident that something was impeding his flight. The snake was no longer hanging from his talons. The reptile had twined itself around his body; and its glistening folds, like red bands, could be seen half-buried in the white plumage of ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... horrid years when terror reigned, the workers at the Gobelins continued under a constant threat of a cessation of work. Not only was their pay irregular, but it was often given in paper that had sadly depreciated in value. Then the decision was made to sell certain valuable tapestries and pay expenses from this source of revenue. But, alas, in those troublous times, who had heart or purse to acquire works of art. ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... followed were to Pasha one long, ugly dream. Not that he minded the hard riding by day and night. In time he became used to all that. He could even endure the irregular feeding, the sleeping in the open during all kinds of weather, and the lack of proper grooming. But the vicious jerks on the torture-provoking cavalry bit, the flat sabre blows on the flank which he not infrequently got from ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... latter's bloody check before Murfreesborough. Yet, despite these back-sets, the general course of events showed that Providence remained on the side of the heaviest battalions; and the spring of 1863 saw our armies extended from the pivot midway between the rival capitals in a more or less irregular line, and interrupted by the Alleghany Mountains, to Vicksburg and the ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... pillars from one to the other to keep them as they are. In a few days, in warm weather, they will have made passages by biting away combs where they are in contact, throughout every part of the mass; little columns of wax below, supporting the combs above,—irregular, to be sure, but as well as circumstances admit. Not a single piece can be removed without breaking it from the others, and the whole will be firmly cemented together. A piece of comb filled with honey, and sealed up, may be put in a glass box with the ends of these ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... second cousin of the Earl of Northumberland, then captain of the Gentleman Pensioners, was admitted by him into that body in—it is said—an irregular manner, his relationship to the earl passing in lieu of the usual oath of fidelity. The position gave him some authority and license near the court, and enabled him to hire a house, or part of a house, adjoining the House of Lords. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... when Henley arrived at the store, Cahews, who with a face drawn long was standing at the front, pointed mutely at the lion's cage. Henley looked and groaned. It bore a pasteboard placard, and the words, in big, irregular capitals: ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... a pound of granulated sugar and a tablespoonful of vinegar. Boil without stirring, and if any scum rises to the top remove it. Test the candy in cold water, when brittle remove from the fire and pour into a buttered pan. Mark into squares before it is cold, or break into irregular pieces. ...
— The Golden Age Cook Book • Henrietta Latham Dwight
... been said of the gradual and irregular growth of feudalism to make it clear that complete uniformity in feudal customs could hardly exist within the bounds of even a small kingdom, much less throughout the countries of western Europe. Yet there was a remarkable resemblance between the institutions ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... the rifles and shotguns in an irregular volley. And then, as the report died away, the huge beast gave a leap into the air, and coming down, sprang directly toward ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... colour as before directed. Take a brush full of it, and strike it on the paper in any irregular shape; as the brush gets dry sweep the surface of the paper with it as if you were dusting the paper very lightly; every such sweep of the brush will leave a number of more or less minute interstices in ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... prevent this in their usual fashion. Irregular troops were sent into Christian Bulgaria with orders to kill all they met. It was an order to the Mohammedan taste. The defenseless villages of Bulgaria were entered and their inhabitants slaughtered in cold blood, till thousands of men, women, and ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... very prettily situated; for although it stands on a perfectly flat plain, towards the sea there are the Port Hills, and the town itself is picturesque, owing to the quantities of trees and the irregular form of the wooden houses; and as a background we have the most magnificent chain of mountains—the back-bone of the island—running from north to south, the highest peaks nearly always covered with snow, even after such a hot summer as this has been. The climate is now delicious, answering in time ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... platform, which gradually sinks from east to west, and on the side next the sea, which is about a mile distant, are seen the remains of no fewer than six temples. They stood in a general line, but at irregular intervals, and must have formed one of the most magnificent spectacles that the art of man has ever presented to the eye. The remains of three other temples exist, but they lie at a distance from ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... one worthy bureau chief who was continually refusing applications of mine as irregular. In each case I would appeal to Secretary Alger—who helped me in every way—and get an order from him countenancing the irregularity. For instance, I found out that as we were nearer the July date than the January date for the issuance of clothing, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... hands," said the Commissaire. To Ricardo the proceedings seemed singularly irregular. But if the Commissaire was content, it was not for ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... An irregular fusillade, harmless as if from pop-guns, was being directed against the invading Eagle of the Sky. A faint, far outcry of passionate voices drifted upward in the heat and shimmer of that Arabian ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... seen, some totally dismasted and others with only one mast standing, endeavouring to make off under their sprit-sails. Seven of these were taken possession of; one, Le Vengeur, sank before the whole of her crew could be taken out, not more than 280 being saved. A distant and irregular firing was continued at intervals between the fugitive and British ships till about four in the afternoon, when the French admiral, having collected most of his remaining ships, steered off to the eastward. The Queen Charlotte ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... Pacific Railroad was finished (1869), and how they are carried now. In 1867, to the perils of the snow and wind and of mountain travel, were added dangers from desperadoes, white as well as red, so that mail deliveries were few and far between, and very irregular, while too often both the carriers and their packs were lost. Slow as the old way was, however, the snow sometimes makes the new way even slower. In spite of miles and miles of snow-sheds and snow-fences, and ever so many steam snow-plows, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... by this name we may call the narrow and irregular lanes that run between the houses—are kept pretty clean; whether with or without municipal intervention I cannot say. Except in front of the Pasha's residence, there is no open space worthy of the ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... the bishop's worst apprehensions. He was a lean, lank, dark young man with long black hair and irregular, rather prolonged features; his chin was right over to the left; he looked constantly at the bishop's face with a distinctly sceptical grey eye; he could not have looked harder if he had been a photographer or a portrait ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... spot in the frozen port city was the American expeditionary post-office. Here at irregular intervals, at first via ice-breaker, which battled its way up to the edge of the ice crusted coast north of Economia, came our mail bags from home. Later those bags came in hundreds of miles over ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... of the fire fell into irregular, rectangular shapes like the stone buildings on the Marne, where I was born. My father had beggared us, but those buildings were left. I scorned my father's memory, but I had strange pride in the name and place that had ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... held that office according to an ancient custom of the Scargate race, whence also his surname (if such it were) arose. For of old time and in outlandish parts a finer humanity prevailed, and a richer practical wisdom upon certain questions. Irregular offsets of the stock, instead of being cast upon the world as waifs and strays, were allowed a place in the kitchen-garden or stable-yard, and flourished there without disgrace, while useful and obedient. Thus for generations here the legitimate son was Yordas, and took ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... a perfectly normal little boy, and I defy anyone to have discovered in him at this stage in his progress, those strange morbidities and irregular instincts that were to be found in such unhappy human beings as Dostoieffsky's young hero in "Podrostok," or the unpleasant son and heir of Jude and Sue. Nevertheless, eight years old is not too early for stranger impulses and wilder dreams than most parents ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... cut square, the ceilings are always sensibly horizontal, and the walls always vertical. But where a natural hollow has been artificially deepened, there the opening is usually irregular. Moreover, in such case, the gaping mouth of the cave was in part walled up. The traces of the tool employed are everywhere observable, they indicate that the rock was cut by a pick having a triangular point. Small square holes in the sides, and long horizontal ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... historian takes a view of the British stage as represented by the irregular drama, the regular having (ere the date of the events to which this narrative is restricted) disappeared from ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... were very irregular. Upon one occasion I wrote an Alexander, which must be in the prize exercise book, and which I would reprint if I had it by me. But purely rhetorical compositions were very distasteful to me; I could never make a decent speech. Upon one prize-day we got up a representation of the Council of ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... of all qualifications for command: and Wolseley had other and more important qualifications. Though himself regularly bred to war, he seems to have had a peculiar aptitude for the management of irregular troops. He had scarcely taken on himself the chief command when he received notice that Mountcashel had laid siege to the Castle of Crum. Crum was the frontier garrison of the Protestants of Fermanagh. The ruins of the old fortifications are now among the attractions ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... grasses crushed underfoot, was of one who had moved rapidly. Gradually, with the upward incline, obstacles had increased, and the footprints drew nearer together. Still higher, from a straight line the trail had become tortuous and irregular. Here the climber had passed around a thicket of trees; there a great boulder had stood in the path; but, ever indomitable, the way had been steadily upward toward some point the climber had in view. Steeper and steeper the way had grown. The ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... freestone and limestone quarries, which latter have supplied many fossils to visitors of geological tastes. Halfway between Fourstones and Hexham, the two streams of North and South Tyne unite, and flow together down to the old town of Hexham, with its quaintly irregular buildings clustering in picturesque confusion round its ancient Abbey, which dominates the landscape ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... are nominally under field cornets, commanders, and the General. But they openly boast that on the field the authority and direction of officers do not count for much, and they go pretty much as they please. The camp, though not in the least disorderly, was confused and irregular—stores, firewood, horses, cattle, and tents strewn about the enormous veldt, almost haphazard, though the districts were kept fairly well separate. Provisions were plenty, but the cooking was bad. It took three days to get bread made, and some detachments had to eat their ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... hands convulsively; wild pulsations, that beat in strong double strokes at irregular intervals, coursed through his body. So violent was his agitation that the poor wretch stuttered forth words that the ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... mistresses than sculpture and Clotilde, one of the celebrities of the Opera. Even that intrigue was of brief duration. Sarrasine was decidedly ugly, always badly dressed, and naturally so independent, so irregular in his private life, that the illustrious nymph, dreading some catastrophe, soon remitted the sculptor to love of the arts. Sophie Arnould made some witty remark on the subject. She was surprised, I think, that her colleague was able to ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... two kinds—active and passive. Active verbs express action; passive verbs express passion. All feminine verbs are irregular and imperative. ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... Guanahani, as it was known to the aborigines, is situated in latitude 24 deg. 6' N., and longitude 74 deg 26' W., and is an irregularly shaped white sandstone islet in about the middle of the great Bahama Bank. The space occupied by the whole group is shaped like an irregular triangle extending from the Navidad Bank in the Caribbean Sea at the south-east corner, to Bahama Island in Florida Strait on the north, about 200 miles. The south side trends west by north for 600 miles, and the north side north-west by north 720 miles. Most ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... in as fresh as if he had not had a sleepless vigil. His rest of late had been more or less irregular, but it seemed to have not the slightest effect either on ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... stern; but I fear 'twas a feeble pretence. 'We are two girls, alone in a house,' I answered. 'Lady Georgina, as a matron of experience, ought to have protected us. Merely to give you lunch is almost irregular. (Good diplomatic word, irregular.) Still, in these days, I suppose you may stay, if you leave early in the afternoon. That's the utmost I can do ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... as we entered the beautiful bay, everything struck us as strange and picturesque. The soldiers of the garrison, the prison built by General Tacon, the irregular houses with their fronts painted red or pale blue, and with the cool but uninhabited look produced by the absence of glass windows; the merchant ships and large men-of-war; vessels from every port in the commercial world, the little boats gliding ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... jewel-studded tube at the feet of the goddess. For, when the black butterfly of his melancholy now danced before his eyes, Ivan reverted remorselessly to that opium which he had for years abstained from. These days were irregular, however, and the act voluntary, being not as yet compelled by physical craving. And, in the intervals, he pursued his ordinary occupations of reading and composing, to which he had now added the transcribing of his own memoirs ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... with the trial, which arose on a very plain case at law: A owed B three thousand ducats, due and not paid on an ascertained day. Whereupon B moves the court for the penalty, and demands judgment. If the defendant had no answer at law, there is an end to the case; and it was very irregular, impertinent, and contrary to well-settled practice for the defendant's counsel to endeavor to lead off the mind of the court from the true issue of the case. Portia, in what she says of mercy being 'twice blessed' and 'dropping like the gentle rain from heaven,' &c., &c., was, I fear, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a minute motionless on the door-step, gazing, bemused, down the long, straight, improbable village street, with its poplars, its bridge, its ancient stone cross, its irregular pink and yellow houses—as improbable as a street in opera-bouffe. A thin cloud of dust floated after the carriage, a thin screen of white dust, which, in the sun, looked like ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... swell by the side of a catch worth at least L800. During the conflict I had not noticed what now claimed attention—several great masses of white, semi-transparent-looking substance floating about, of huge size and irregular shape. But one of these curious lumps came floating by as we lay, tugged at by several fish, and I immediately asked the mate if he could tell me what it was and where it came from. He told me that, when dying, the cachalot always ejected the contents of his stomach, ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... in search of her. There, stretched out on the floor with a pair of scissors and a piece of one of her old linen aprons, she had fashioned herself a mask, in accordance with the directions on the box. The holes cut for the eyes and nose were a trifle irregular, one eye being nearly half an inch higher than the other, and the mouth was decidedly askew. But tapes sewed on at the four corners made it ready for instant use, and when she had put it on and crawled out from under the bed, she regarded herself ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... friends upon whose fidelity they could rely. Certain of the claqueurs accepted outpost duty, as it were, and acted in isolated positions; others, and these the majority, took close order, and fought, so to speak, in column. In addition to his regular forces, Auguste engaged supernumerary and irregular troops, known to him as sous-claqueurs, upon whose discipline and docility he could not wholly rely, though he could make them useful by enclosing them in the ranks of his seasoned soldiers. The sous-claqueurs were usually well-clothed frequenters and ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... home in the city, had become accustomed to irregular hours, so that it was now the most natural thing in the world for him to fall asleep and not open his eyes until he shivered with cold and it was ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... to eleventh day, shutting and opening of eyes (22). Irregular movements (23). Lid closed at touch of lashes from sixth day on (26). Twenty-fifth day, eyes opened and shut when child is spoken to or ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... because examinations in all subjects cannot to best advantage be given during the same period. There are stages in the development of our thinking, or in the acquiring of skill, or in our understanding and appreciation which occur at irregular intervals and which call for a summing up of what has gone before, in order that we may be sure of success in the work which is to follow. It is, of course, undesirable to devote a whole week to examinations on account of the strain and excitement under which children labor. It is ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... and in open court. Another abstract point of law was also proposed from the bar, on the same trial, concerning the legal sentence in high treason; and in the same manner the Judges on reference delivered their opinion in open court; and no objection, was taken to it as anything new or irregular.[19] ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... lodged of their own free will—for it appears that there was no necessity for it—so near as to answer every need of social domesticity, and yet in a manner so free and apart as to allow undisturbed and undisturbing reveries beneath the stars, and such other irregular manifestations of genius as are ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... beginning of their known history the country occupied by the Chinese was the comparatively small region above mentioned. It was then a tract of an irregular oblong shape, lying between latitude 34 deg. and 40 deg. N. and longitude 107 deg. and 114 deg. E. This territory round the elbow of the Yellow River had an area of about 50,000 square miles, and was gradually extended to the sea-coast on the north-east as far as longitude 119 deg., when its area ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... niches, the crosses on the pinnacles, and the gilt image of Saint Gregory de Northbury, still holding its place over the porch. Another band are stationed near the mouth of the vaulted passage, under the chapter-house and vestry, whose grey, irregular walls, pierced by numberless richly ornamented windows, and surmounted by small turrets, form a beautiful boundary on the right; while a third party are planted on the left, in the open space, beneath the dormitory, the torchlight flashing ruddily ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... students in the lower grades to visit the upper classes when they were at work; but Charmian contrived stolen glimpses of the still-life rooms and the rooms where they were working from the draped models. For the first time Cornelia saw the irregular hemicycle of students silently intent upon the silent forms and faces of those strange creatures who sat tranced in a lifeless immobility, as if the long practice of their trade had resolved them into something as impersonal as the innumerable pictures studied from them. ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... the mould must be effected easily, and not depend upon a play of pistons or springs, which soon become foul, and the operation of which is very irregular. ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... birds, being noted for the pureness and mellowness of its plumage. Baird notes that the habits of this beautiful and interesting warbler were formerly little known, its geographical distribution being somewhat irregular and over a narrow range. It is found in the West Indies and Central America as a migrant, and in the southern region of the United States. Further west the range widens, and it appears as far north as Kansas, Central Illinois, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [May, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... of everything except a beer-barrel. This was run into the corner, and Tom o' Dint and fiddle were seated on top of it. Dancing was interrupted only by drinking, until Tom's music began to be irregular, whereupon Gubblum remonstrated; and then Tom, with the indignation of an artist, broke the bridge of his fiddle on Gubblum's head, and Gubblum broke the bridge of Tom's nose with his fist, and both rolled on to the floor and lay there, until Gubblum extricated himself with difficulty, shook ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... discussion of them, including their names, characteristics, and, in some cases, their use and the method of making, is here given. In addition, there are shown in colors, in Fig. 4, a large number of cheeses, together with a print of butter o, which serves to illustrate the irregular surface that is exposed when good butter ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 2 - Volume 2: Milk, Butter and Cheese; Eggs; Vegetables • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... known are much to be relied upon. But the universe to the eye of the human understanding is framed like a labyrinth; presenting as it does on every side so many ambiguities of way, such deceitful resemblances of objects and signs, natures so irregular in their lines, and so knotted and entangled. And then the way is still to be made by the uncertain light of the sense, sometimes shining out, sometimes clouded over, through the woods of experience and particulars; while ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... of laws of property and taxation which favor owners and speculators instead of tenants, and of private property in rapid transit which puts a tax on exit to the suburbs. It cannot be said of this and other selective factors, such as the profit-making saloon, long hours of work, low pay, irregular employment, that they permit natural selection to operate. They suppress personality, which preeminently is the natural fact in the human being. Social selection is therefore tending to become less and less arbitrary, but is making room ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... the top of the kopje was an irregular mound of piled rocks and earth. Towards this the Waffs charged, their officers momentarily expecting the rattle of musketry ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... studied your military books, and knew that only by an irregular warfare could we hope to prolong our existence. It was no longer an insurrection; we were simply fugitives trying to sell our lives dearly. If Suetonius had offered us terms we would gladly have laid down our arms, but as he simply strove to destroy us we had, like animals brought to bay, ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... nearest the sun is densest—even six or eight times denser than some of the exterior planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—the order of succession in the case of Venus, the Earth, and Mars, is very irregular. The absolute magnitudes do, generally, as Kepler has already observed, increase with the distances; but this does not hold good when the planets are considered individually. Mars is smaller than the Earth; ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... of the herb, is Tobias Venner's tract with the long-winded title: "A Brief and Accurate Treatise concerning The taking of the Fume of Tobacco, Which very many, in these dayes doe too licenciously use. In which the immoderate, irregular, and unseasonable use thereof is reprehended, and the true nature and best manner of using it, perspicuously demonstrated." Venner described himself as a doctor of physic in Bath, and his tract was published in London in 1637. Venner says that tobacco is of "ineffable force" for the rapid healing ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... the regiment stood to horse; hour after hour the battle roared west and south of them. An irregular cloud, slender at the base, spreading on top, towered to mid zenith above the forest. Otherwise, save for the fleecy explosion of shells in the quivering blue vault above, nothing troubled the sunshine that lay over hill and valley, wood and river ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... the mother of the young son in question was the wife obtained from Ts'in by the king for marriage to his eldest son (who had since joined the king's enemies), which young lady the king had subsequently decided to marry himself. Even under this irregular and complicated family tangle, the proposed succession was disapproved by the counsellors, on the ground that irregular successions invariably produced trouble in the state. In the year 450 B.C. the ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... the men of the towns and villages that the wood-cutter had called to his aid mustered together under the elms, there forming a dark irregular mass, grouped without regard to any of the rules of strategy, simply placed there like a rock, as it were, to bar the way or die. The men of Plassans stood in the middle of this heroic battalion. Amid the grey hues of the blouses and jackets, and the bluish glitter ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... strikes the coast of Maine near West Quoddy Head at a distance of rather more than 110 miles. From West Quoddy head to Cape Elizabeth (in a direct line about 160 miles) the coast, in general rough, rocky, and with many lofty headlands is extremely irregular and deeply indented and follows a general course of WSW. Thence, the coast, lower and becoming more and more sandy, begins to trend more decidedly south-west until it reaches Boston, when it turns to the southeast, and to the east toward ...
— Fishing Grounds of the Gulf of Maine • Walter H. Rich
... in the middle of it, and sky-blue water showing through the grass blades in the depressions; a brown mud wall straggling along the other side of the green—more or less parallel to your breastwork, with white sandbags crowning it like an irregular coping; the inevitable stumpy stakes and masses of rusted barbed wire in front. You might watch it for an hour and the only sign of life you would see would be a blue whiff of smoke from some black tin chimney ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... black clouds, like factory smoke, were racing, so low that the tin chimneys seemed to penetrate them and crenelate them with little spots of clarity. "I am not enthusiastic about trying to climb a flight of broken, irregular stairs. And anyway, what do you think you can see up there? It's misty and getting ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... followed him quickly, and as they gathered, all noticed that there was a fairly wide ledge on all four sides of the place, forming a pathway fairly level, and chipped out of the solid cliff; while, making quite a breastwork at the edge, but irregular in the extreme, stones of all shapes and sizes were piled-up, quite regularly along the side farthest from the rough steps, and of all heights in other parts, the stones nearest to the steps ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... possible, in remodelling an old farming district, where boundaries and roads are irregular, to apportion the division of land among the population with especial reference to its distance from the village; so, for example, that the small farmers, who have little team-force, shall not have so ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... Malevsky. He was handsome, clever, and adroit, but something equivocal, something false in him was apparent even to me, a boy of sixteen, and I marvelled that Zinaida did not notice it. But possibly she did notice this element of falsity really and was not repelled by it. Her irregular education, strange acquaintances and habits, the constant presence of her mother, the poverty and disorder in their house, everything, from the very liberty the young girl enjoyed, with the consciousness of her superiority to the people around her, had ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... happiness and tranquillity, a man may have found opium his curse, that therefore, as a creature of energies and great purposes, he must have been the wreck which he seems to suppose. Opium gives and takes away. It defeats the steady habit of exertion, but it creates spasms of irregular exertion; it ruins the natural power of life, but it develops preternatural paroxysms of intermitting power. Let us ask of any man who holds that not Coleridge himself but the world, as interested in Coleridge's usefulness, has suffered by his addiction to opium; whether he is aware of the way ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... objection is that the war against witchcraft and magic is due simply to the jealousy and resentment which regular practitioners of any art, e.g., medicine, have ever displayed and do still display towards irregular, unprofessional practitioners. This reply, however, is now generally admitted to be one which it is impossible to accept in the case of religion for the simple reason that it does not account for ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... constituted beings. I had got out of conceit of all that I had written, and considered it very questionable stuff; and now that it is so extravagantly be praised, I begin to feel afraid that I shall not do as well again. However, we shall see as we get on. As yet I am extremely irregular and precarious in my fits of composition. The least thing puts me out of the vein, and even applause flurries me and prevents my writing, though of course it will ultimately be a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... opportunity to publish the researches of the Harvard Laboratory more fully and in one place. Only contributions from members of the Harvard Psychological Laboratory will be printed in these volumes, which will appear at irregular intervals, and the contributions will represent only our experimental work; non-experimental papers will form an exception, as with the present volume, wherein only the last one of the sixteen papers belongs to ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... to speak. I counted the irregular pulse-beats, then listened to the action of his heart, with my ear to his breast. There lay his physical trouble. I poured out a dose of digitalis, and, handing it to him, asked him to sit down. As he sat and drank the medicine, I rapidly studied him. The chin was firm, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... for heroes and heroines to fall suddenly and irretrievably in love. If they fell in love with the right person so much the better; if not, it could not be helped, and the novel ended unhappily. And, above all, it was held quite irregular for the most reasonable people to make any use whatever of their reason on the most important occasion of their lives. Miss Edgeworth has presumed to treat this mighty power with far less reverence. She has analysed it and found it does ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... been a captain in the service of Austria, but had been cashiered for irregular conduct, and for disrespect to Prince Louis of Baden, commander-in-chief. To check him in his wild career, and bring him to sober reflection, his brother the prince caused him to be arrested and sent to the old castle of Van Wert, in the domains of Horn. This was the same castle in which, ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... nature, and affects us with pleasurable sensation; but is termed surprise, if it suddenly dissevers our accustomed habits of motion, and is then more generally attended with disagreeable sensation. To this circumstance attending objects of taste is to be referred what is termed wild and irregular in landscapes, in contradistinction to the repetition of parts or uniformity spoken of below. We may add, that novelty of notes and tones in music, or of their combinations or successions, are equally agreeable ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... deep curve of the mountains lay a breadth of green land, curtained by gentle tree-shadowed slopes leaning towards the rocky heights. Up these slopes might be seen here and there, gleaming between the tree-tops, a pathway leading to a little irregular mass of building that seemed to have clambered in a hasty way up the mountain-side, and taken a difficult stand there for the sake of showing the tall belfry as a sight of beauty to the scattered and clustered houses of the village below. The rays of the newly-risen sun fell obliquely ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... brought out tents for, as every building was already occupied, it was necessary that they should be put under canvas. The general found that everything was arranged in order, and the encampment certainly presented a pleasing contrast to the irregular, and often crowded quarters of the troops who had passed the wet season there. The colonel and three of his officers dined with the general, that evening; the party being made up of the military ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... two more stories above consisted, on the first floor, of a row of large rooms, airy, high, and dignified, and in the attics of a series of low-pitched chambers, whitewashed, oak-floored, and dormer-windowed, where one or two of the servants slept in splendid isolation. A little flight of irregular steps leading out of the big room on to the first floor, where the housekeeper lived in state, gave access to the further rooms near ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... the appearance of a great platform, and the late tides had been so favourable that it became apparent that the first course, consisting of a few irregular and detached stones for making up certain inequalities in the interior parts of the site of the building, might be laid in the course of the present spring-tides. Having been enabled to-day to get the dimensions of the foundation, or first stone, accurately ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the car steps, Ned turned and pointed to the north. Far away the dusky gray of the plains deepened into darker and darker shadows that ended in a low black mass. But here and there from the black wall rose irregular spires, their tops pink-tipped by ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... her earliest times, and of whose divine gift of prophecy the firmest conviction was currently entertained. Aeschylus, Plutarch, Apuleius, and other Greek authors, bear ample testimony of this persuasion, and tell us that by uncommon and irregular motions of the body intoxicating vapours, or certain holy ejaculations, men might be thrown into an enchanted trance; in which, being in a state between sleeping and waking, they were unsusceptible of external impressions and obtaining a glimpse ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... A long irregular cavalcade crept out across the country toward Razor Ridge. And as it went it was constantly augmented at the cross-roads by farmers from We-all and Big Wheat and Pewee, until waggons and surreys and buckboards and buggies and horseback riders stretched out endlessly, the balloons ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young |
