"Pestered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... neighbours; indeed, by H.'s last advices, I have some apprehension of finding Newstead dismantled by Messrs. Brothers, &c., and he seems determined to force me into selling it, but he will be baffled. I don't suppose I shall be much pestered with visiters; but if I am, you must receive them, for I am determined to have nobody breaking in upon my retirement: you know that I never was fond of society, and I am less so than before. I have brought you a shawl, and a quantity of attar of roses, but these ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... of would-be-literary people—letters of inquiry, many of them with reference to matters we are supposed to understand—can readily see how it was that Mr. De Morgan, never too busy to be good-natured with the people who pestered—or amused-him with their queer fancies, received such a number of letters from persons who thought they had made great discoveries, from those who felt that they and their inventions and contrivances had been overlooked, and who sought in his large charity of ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... wished him at the bottom of the canal, when he commenced telling me some awful dream he had had. I was too much annoyed at being pestered with his company to listen to him, a circumstance I now rather regret, for had his dreams been equal to his poetry, they certainly must have possessed the rare merit of originality; and I could have gratified my readers with something entirely ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... the news, and as soon as she saw her husband the first thing she asked him was whether the donkey was well. To this greeting he replied that the donkey was better than he himself. And then she pestered him with questions as to what he had brought back with him for her and the children; to which he impatiently remarked that she would have to wait until he got his island or empire, when she would be called ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... mice are allowed to live, and receive a little packet of white linen. Then the people bow down before them, as before gods, and let them go. When the farms of the Sea Dyaks or Ibans of Sarawak are much pestered by birds and insects, they catch a specimen of each kind of vermin (one sparrow, one grasshopper, and so on), put them in a tiny boat of bark well-stocked with provisions, and then allow the little vessel with its obnoxious passengers to float down the river. If that does ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... received a very fine octavo volume, the printing of which must have been expensive, by Mr. James Smith, a respectable merchant of Liverpool. This gentleman maintained that the circumference of a circle was exactly 3 1/5 times its diameter. He had pestered the British Association with his theory, and come into collision with an eminent mathematician whose name he did not give, but who was very likely Professor DeMorgan. The latter undertook the desperate task of explaining ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... own praises. His lordship answered, "Cousin Ellison, you know you may command my interest; nay, I shall have a pleasure in serving one of Mr. Booth's character: for my part, I think merit in all capacities ought to be encouraged, but I know the ministry are greatly pestered with solicitations at this time. However, Mr. Booth may be assured I will take the first opportunity; and in the mean time, I shall be glad of seeing him any morning he pleases." For all these declarations Booth was not wanting in acknowledgments to the generous ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... Falls; thence by boat to Fort Edward; and thence, fourteen miles across country, to Fort William Henry at Lake George, where the army was to embark for Ticonderoga. Each of the points of transit below Fort Edward was guarded by a stockade and two or more companies of provincials. They were much pestered by Indians, who now and then scalped a straggler, and escaped with their usual nimbleness. From time to time strong bands of Canadians and Indians approached by way of South Bay or Wood Creek, and threatened more serious mischief. It is surprising that some of the trains were not cut off, for ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... of Ghosts and Hauntings, I never mention the Apparition by which I am pestered, the Phantom that shadows me about the streets, the image or spectre, so familiar, so like myself, and yet so abhorrent, which lurks in the plate-glass of shop-windows, or leaps out ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... Captain H. W. Higginson, arrived at Frederickstadt at this time, after having been considerably pestered by some Boers who had shelled him with a nine-pounder Krupp, and severely wounded one of our men. Luckily, the General had sent out a small force with two guns to meet this convoy, or it might have had a very much ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... and bishops thronged to the Hotel de Soissons; officers of the army and navy, ladies of title and fashion, and every one to whom hereditary rank or public employ gave a claim to precedence, were to be found waiting in his ante-chambers to beg for a portion of his India stock. Law was so pestered that he was unable to see one-tenth part of the applicants, and every manoeuvre that ingenuity could suggest was employed to gain access to him. Peers, whose dignity would have been outraged if the Regent had ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... time have incurred the resentment of the robbers; and between both, he would have no possible chance of escape. He therefore consults his own interest and his own case by leaving them to carry on their trade of robbery or murder unmolested; and his master, the magistrate, is well pleased not to be pestered with charges against men whom he has no chance of getting ultimately convicted. It was in this way that so many hundred families of assassins by profession were able for so many generations to reside in ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... general anxiety upon this occasion, for the Marquis's visit is an honour, and should be received as such; but I am worn out by these miserable minutiae of the buttery, and the larder, and the very hencoop—they drive me beyond my patience; I would rather endure the poverty of Wolf's Crag than be pestered with the wealth of ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... with advertising signs, from which the visitor realized suddenly that he had come to the home of many of the torments of his life. It was here that they made those products with the wonders of which they pestered him so—by placards that defaced the landscape when he traveled, and by staring advertisements in the newspapers and magazines—by silly little jingles that he could not get out of his mind, and gaudy pictures that ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... though I whipped him thirty years ago, he might come back now in a return match and reverse the verdict, so that my first chapter would serve better as my last one. Babe was older than I, and had pestered me from the time I was ten. Now I was eighteen and a man. I was a master puddler in the mill and a musician in the town band (I always went with men older than myself). Two stove molders from a neighboring factory were visiting me that day, ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... 'th' inscription on my monniment won't be by no drowndin',' says I; 'it'll be jest plain, "Pestered ter death,"' ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... all its heat and quiet, the afternoon was destined to be a stormy one. The swallows were flying low across the farm-yard; the colts, pestered by busy flies, were moving restlessly about the wire pen; the Maltese cat was trying her claws on a table leg in the kitchen; and, behind the wind-break, a collie had given over a beef-bone and was industriously ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... are a bore, I begin to find, like everything else. Always falling sick, or running away, or breaking one's peace of mind in some way or other. Besides, I have been pestered out of my life there in Cyrene, by commissions for dogs and horses and bows from that old ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... you." Billy Louise lost her nerve when she saw the light leap into his eyes. "To see whether you were dead or not," she revised hastily, "so mommie would stop worrying about you. Mommie has pestered the life out of me for the last month, thinking you might be sick or hurt or something. So—I was riding ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... vntaught Knaues, Vnmannerly, To bring a slouenly vnhandsome Coarse Betwixt the Winde, and his Nobility. With many Holiday and Lady tearme He question'd me: Among the rest, demanded My Prisoners, in your Maiesties behalfe. I then, all-smarting, with my wounds being cold, (To be so pestered with a Popingay) Out of my Greefe, and my Impatience, Answer'd (neglectingly) I know not what, He should, or should not: For he made me mad, To see him shine so briske, and smell so sweet, And talke so like a Waiting-Gentlewoman, Of Guns, & Drums, and Wounds: God saue the ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... beeing Munday the 11 of January the terme should have begun in the house, but because of the extreame cold and froast which had now continued full six weekes and better without any intermission, as also by reason the hall was still pestered with the stage and scaffolds which were suffered to stand still in expectation of the Comedy, therefore it was agreed by the President and the officers that the terme should bee prorogued for 7 dayes longer in which time it was agreed the Comedy should bee publickely acted on ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... my father say that he was pestered with a great many of those who, for any religion they had, might e'en have stayed where they were, but who flocked over hither in droves, for what they call in English a livelihood; hearing with what ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... pestered to read the 'Rights of Women,' but am invincibly resolved not to do it. Of all jargon, I hate metaphysical jargon; beside, there is something fantastic and absurd in the very title. How many ways there are of being ridiculous! I am sure I have as much ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... little girl, both of them fashionably dressed, who were standing beneath the awning of a toy-shop near the bridge. Doubtless they had been caught in the shower, and had taken refuge there. The child would fain have carried away the whole shop, and had pestered her mother to buy her a hoop. Both were now leaving, however, and the child was running along full of glee, driving the hoop before her. At this Jeanne's melancholy returned with intensified force; ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... pulled through except Filly's colt. He keeled over one morning, poor fellow! and was dragged out and buried under the oaks in the high pasture. But for some reason, I didn't pick up as quick as the others. The cough held on, and I was pestered for breath, and I didn't get back my strength; and what I ate didn't seem to fatten me up much, for Master Fred says one day, laughing, 'Well, Old Star, we've saved your skin and bones, and that's about all!' However, I got round again, only my legs had a bad habit of giving ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... more wooded. In the evening, a halt was made at a town called Quarra, where Clapperton waited upon the governor, who was an aged Fellata. Here Clapperton was unluckily taken for a fighi, or teacher, and was pestered at all hours of the clay to write out prayers by the people. His servants hit upon a scheme to get rid of their importunities, by acquainting them, that, if he did such things, they must be paid the perquisites usually given to ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... a number of sea rovers from the West Indies had made their appearance, and the factory at Fort St. George reported that the sea trade was 'pestered with pirates.' The first comers had contented themselves with plundering native ships. Now their operations were extended to European vessels not of their own nationality. In time this restriction ceased to be observed; they hoisted the red ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... cadit quaestio," replied the Rector, "Smirke's visits at Fairoaks will cease of themselves, and there will be no need to bother the widow. She has trouble enough on her hands, with the affairs of that silly young scapegrace, without being pestered by the tittle-tattle of this place. It is all an invention ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the pugilism to be imparted to women for their physical-protection in extremity, and the distinction of it from the blow conveying the moral lesson to them; his wife having objected to the former, because it annoyed her and he pestered her; and she was never, she said, ready to stand up to him for practice, as he called it, except when she had taken more than he thought wholesome for her: he had no sense. There was a squabble between them, because he chose to scour away ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... were other men, like William Brown, who were a shade too honest and too stiff-chinned to buckle under to the social conditions of England in those days, and who were consequently not exactly pestered with offers of employment. And a man who could see the difference between doffing his ragged cap to a dissolute squire or parson, and saluting his better on parade, could also see the selfishness of leaving an honest girl to languish for him. Brown could not get a living in England. ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... are private book clubs and societies that have won places of enviable distinction both here and abroad, and naturally among the foremost of these are the ones which have been pestered by "imitators." The following significant remarks are taken from the president's annual address to the members of an ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... to go to Texas. Fine hound, swallow marked, and when he opened on a scent you could always tell what it was that he was running. I never allowed him to run with packs, but generally used him in treeing coon, which pestered the cornfields during roasting-ear season and in the fall. Well, after I had been out in Texas about five years, I concluded to go back on a little visit to the old folks. There were no railroads within twenty miles of my home, and I had to hoof it that distance, so ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... dining room, where Himes was. He had promised to do some night work, setting up new machines at the Victory, and he was in that uncertain humour which the prospect of work always produced. Gideon Himes was an old man, pestered, as he himself would have put it, by the mysterious illness of his young wife, fretted by the presence of the children, no doubt in a measure because he felt himself to be doing an ill part by them. His grumpy silence of other days, his sardonic humour, gave place to hypochondriac complainings ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... I was going to say that Mr. Champfort, who saw the fracas between my lord and me, about the key and the door, the night of my lady's accident, has whispered it about at Lady Singleton's and every where—Mrs. Luttridge's maid, ma'am, who is my cousin, has pestered me with so many questions and offers, from Mrs. Luttridge and Mrs. Freke, of any money, if I would only tell who was in the boudoir—and I have always answered, nobody—and I defy them to get any thing out of me. Betray my lady! I'd sooner cut my ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... Blankth Blank Regt., Blankth Fighting Force, c/o G.P.O." What will happen is that we shall go suddenly and without time to explain, and, when our friends are told, their faces will cloud over, not with sorrow at our departure but with annoyance at being pestered with the news of it again. It is a ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... mused; "he hasn't the look of a knave who might fear a trailing of constables at his heels; and yet—and yet his wits have him pestered about something that ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... to intercept him on the other road. It might have saved him an unpleasant campaign. We have no favourable events, but that Russia, who had neither men, money, nor magazines, is much softened, and halts her troops. The Duke of Grafton(782) still languishes: the Duke of Newcastle has so pestered him with political visits, that the physicians ordered him to be excluded: yet he forced himself into the house. The Duke's Gentlemen would not admit him into the bedchamber, saying his grace was asleep. Newcastle protested he would go in on tiptoe and only look at him-he rushed ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... eyes the next morning she could not at first realize where she was. When she did she rose from the bed fully dressed; for she had taken off none of her clothing the night before. She drew a long breath as she realized that she would not be pestered by Lem during the trip to Ithaca. Peering through the small cabin window, she could see that they were slowly passing the farms on the banks of the river as the barge was towed slowly through the water. The peace of spring overspread each field, covering the land as far ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... scant sympathy and support in the faces of her listeners, some of whom had long since wearied of her strident voice and oracular ways. It was well remembered that so far from being of aid or value in caring for the injured men, she had pestered people with undesired advice and interference, had made much noise and no bandages, and later, when an official of the company boarded the train, had constituted herself spokeswoman for the passengers, not at all to their advantage ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... minutes," he said, "I cannot speak of. Then there came, by some hateful chance, a cloud over my happiness. I remembered the warnings with which I had been pestered; the fool in me spoke whilst the man was silent. I demanded a pledge from her. I asked her when she would marry me. She bade me be patient, hinted at an obstacle—some day I should know everything. The ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... days half a score of private detectives were at work on the mystery, with the slender clews at hand. They scanned hotel registers, quizzed paper-box manufacturers, pestered stamp clerks, bedeviled postal officials, and the sum total of their knowledge was negative, save in the fact that they established beyond question that only these five men had ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... here," he said at last, "safer than anywhere else, I think, for your father cannot come back until the King goes to supper. For myself, I have an hour, but I have been so surrounded and pestered by visitors in my apartments that I have not found time to put on a court dress—and without vanity, I presume that I am a necessary figure at court this evening. Your father is with Perez, who seems to be acting as master of ceremonies ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... Motorola guys pestered their Xerox field-support rep, to no avail. Finally they decided to take direct action, to demonstrate to Xerox management just how easily the system could be cracked and just how thoroughly the ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... broadened into a highway. One day Crisenius pestered Franke with one of his whining complaints. ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... rapidly, and exhibits a great deal of commercial activity. The streets are wider and shops larger than one generally finds them in China. When 'foreign' parties landed yesterday, they were a good deal pestered by officious mandarin followers, who, by way of keeping order, kept bambooing all the unhappy natives who evinced a desire to see the foreigners. In order to defeat this plan, which was manifestly adopted with the view of preventing us from coming in contact with the people, I landed near Han-yang, ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... insanity in which there is a tendency to exaggerate the various sensations of the body and their importance, their exaggeration being at times so great as to amount to actual delusion. All sorts of symptoms are dwelt upon, and the doctor is pestered to the extreme by the morbid fears ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... the young gentleman did not stand quite so high in estimation as with his aunt, who thought nothing was good or high enough for her handsome nephew, with his good blood and his fine possibilities. The village folk, however, knew that he was confoundedly dipped; that he was sometimes alarmingly pestered by duns, and had got so accustomed to hear that his uncle, the earl, was in his last sickness, and his cousin, the next heir, dead, when another week disclosed that neither one nor the other was a bit ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... used the fift part of the same, which the more doth aggravate the fault and foolish slouth in many of our nation, chusing rather to live indirectly, and very miserably to live and die within this realme pestered with inhabitants, then to adventure as becommeth men, to obtaine an habitation in those remote lands, in which Nature very prodigally doth minister unto mens endeavours, and for art ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... bien," we hold the witticism to have been cruel because unjustifiable. A man should be privileged to say his mother was beautiful, without inviting such a very obvious sarcasm. But when Madame de Stael pestered Talleyrand to say what he would do if he saw her and Madame Recamier drowning, the immortal answer, "Madame de Stael sait tant de choses, que sans doute elle peut nager," seems as kind as the circumstances warranted. "Corinne's" vanity was of the hungry type, which, crying perpetually ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... Simeons, and of many thousand unnamed saints who finished their course in the fervent faith of Evangelicalism. But on what a thread it has always hung! An ill-considered Act of Parliament, an amendment hastily accepted by a pestered layman at midnight, a decision in a court of law, a Jerusalem Bishoprick, a passage in an early Father, an ancient heresy restudied, and off to Rome goes a Newman or a Manning, whilst a Baptist Noel ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... she would not have suffered me to muse and listen undisturbed. The presence just gone from us would have been her theme; and how she would have rung the changes on one topic! how she would have pursued and pestered me with questions and surmises—worried and oppressed me with comments and confidences I did not want, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Don't come; your father will be all that must be here of the family. I shall shut up the house and come straight to you. I know that I am needed; but you mustn't say a word about pay—I can't stand it, I have had too much affliction to be pestered about wages." ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... becomes of vast moment to a Pharaoh, whose ears are dinned with the buzz of myriad winged plagues, mingled with angry cries from malcontent and fly-pestered subjects; or to the summer traveller in northern lands, where they oppose a stronger barrier to his explorations than the loftiest mountains or the broadest streams; or to the African pioneer, whose cattle, his main dependence, are stung to death by the Tsetze fly; or the fariner ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... to show wear. I have had it for three years. The last time we played over at Kermoor, a hook came loose on the shoulder where my waist fastens. It was a trifle but it almost caused me to lose that game. It pestered me until I could scarcely think of anything else. I made up my mind then that I'd never be placed in such a position again. While I have it in mind, I am going over those hooks and eyes and sew them so tight ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... directed against individuals or the state is probably the commonest form assumed by the human mind when it loses its balance and its sense of proportion. I venture to hazard the opinion that of all the cranks who have pestered Mr. Ford since he has attained a conspicuous position, those who imagined themselves to be the victims of conspiracies have outnumbered all the others. These protocols are either preposterous forgeries deliberately ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo
... the youthful Crichton sententiously, "do not disturb yourself with those problems, which are already disposed of. In twenty years the sultan will become a monk, to get rid of the chief sultana, who has pestered his life out with her notions of woman's rights, and who wore the Bloomer costume before the Crimean war. As for the question about China, it is better to let sleeping dogs lie: it has been a great mistake to arouse China, for it is a dog that drags after it three hundred millions of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... was hottest, and on another side a Gardner was brought to bear on a bit of cover where the Arabs clustered thickly. Ere the sun was quite above the horizon the loud sharp report of the former cheered the hearts of those who had been so hemmed in and pestered, and a second or so after there was a second bang as the avenging shell burst right among the bushes a thousand yards off. At the same time the ger-r-er of the machine-gun told that its handle was turning, and its deadly missiles ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... which, no doubt, he had heard from Erasmus himself: how Erasmus on his arrival at Venice had gone straight to the printing-office and was kept waiting there for a long time. Aldus was correcting proofs and thought his visitor was one of those inquisitive people by whom he used to be pestered. When he turned out to be Erasmus, he welcomed him cordially and procured him board and lodging in the house of his father-in-law, Andrea Asolani. Fully eight months did Erasmus live there, in the environment which, in future, was to be his true element: the printing-office. He was in a fever ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... India, hanging in hundreds in the upper branches of a tall peepul tree at noon, feeling too hot to sleep, and all fanning themselves in unison with one wing—a comic spectacle. And at each flap of the elephant's ears I would observe that a cloud of flies (for the elephant is not too great to be pestered by the despicable hordes of beggars for blood) were dislodged from their feeding grounds about his head and neck, and, trying to settle about his rear parts, were driven back again by the swinging of his tail. Then I should say ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... good-natured he gets much pestered—a discovery which I daresay you have made, or anyhow will soon make; for I do want very much to know whether you have sown seed of any moss-roses, and whether the seedlings were moss-roses. (196/2. Moss-roses can be raised ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... leave NOW, with that poor boy blind, an' his father so wrought up he don't have even his extraordinary common sense about his flannels an' socks an' what to eat, an' no money to pay the bills with, either? An' him bein' pestered the life out of him with them intermittent, dunnin' grocers an' milkmen? Well, I guess not! You couldn't hire ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... XXI. Penelop[^e] is pestered by suitors. To excuse herself, Penelop[^e] tells her suitors he only shall be her husband who can bend Odysseus's bow. None can do so but the stranger, who bends it with ease. Concealment is no ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... outside the diplomatic service—has a feeling that he ought to be master of them. In every recent generation a few men have learned Italian because of the Divina Commedia; and a very few others have tried Spanish, with a view to Cervantes; and German has pestered not always vainly the consciences of young men gravitating to philosophy or to science. But not for social, not for any oral purposes were these languages essayed. If an Italian or a Spanish or a German came among us he was expected to converse in ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... horses, but they were only fit for harness. I was so bothered every time I put my nose out of doors by applications from persons anxious to part with their property in horse-flesh, that I wished I had kept my intentions locked in my own breast. I was pestered for days about this business. There was an old Jew who came regularly to the house three times a-day to tell me of some other paragon that he had found. When he saw that it was really of no use, he then complained loudly that I had wasted his ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... said; "now we can talk unmolested, Shorely. I should think you would be pestered to death by all manner of idiots who ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... through a northern forest in summer is desperately hard work. The moss is ankle deep, the underbrush thick; fallen logs lie across each other in hopeless confusion, through and under and over which one must make his laborious way, stung and pestered by hordes of black flies and mosquitoes. So that, unless you have a strong instinct of direction, it is almost impossible to hold your course without a compass, or a ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... of their miseries, being now under their enemies' raging stripes. I think there is no man will judge their fare good, or their bodies unloaden of stripes, and not pestered with too much heat, and also with too much cold; but I will go to my purpose, which is to show the end of those being in mere misery, which continually do call on God with a steadfast hope that He will deliver them, and with a sure faith that He ...
— Voyager's Tales • Richard Hakluyt
... and others were placed); somewhat better was the Marshalsea; still better the Fleet; and easiest of all the Counter, where untried prisoners were commonly kept to await their trial. Alexander, the keeper of Newgate, was wont to go to Bishop Bonner, crying, "Ease my prison! I am too much pestered with these heretics." And then an easement of the prison was made, by the burning of ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... time that this speech was written, the Town was much pestered with street-robbers; who, in a barbarous manner would seize on gentlemen, and take them into remote corners, and after they had robbed them, would leave them bound and gagged. It is remarkable, that this speech had so good an effect, that there have been very few robberies of that ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... him up to me—so naturally I thought he was a dear friend of his, but it seems he only sat next to him at table d'hote, and JACK says he pestered him so for an introduction, he had to do it—to get rid of him. So like a brother, wasn't it?... Oh, AMY, he's coming—what shall I do? I know he can't dance a little ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 12, 1892 • Various
... whom are Catholics, muster about 2500 strong; many live in grottoes and semi-subterranean domiciles, cutting out garlands and other devices in mother-of pearl, etc. The number of houses does not exceed a hundred at the most, and the poverty here seems excessive, for nowhere have I been so much pestered with beggar children as in this town. Hardly has the stranger reached the convent-gates before these urchins are seen rapidly approaching from all quarters. One rushes forward to hold the horse, while a second grasps the stirrup; a third and a fourth ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... cut round the seals—"and the other missives away in my writing-case until I am alone—" Here Uncle Paul unfolded a letter upon the top of which was stamped the Royal Arms, and smoothed it out upon the tablecloth—"and read it in peace, without being pestered by an impertinent boy. Bless my heart! Why, Pickle, my boy! Hark here! It's a letter from the Government. Jump up and shout, you young dog! Hang Bony and all his works! It's all ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... avowal she had been hoping for these three years past. However secretive an old maid may be, there is one sentiment which will always avail to make her break her fast from words, and that is her vanity. For the last three years, Hortense, having become very inquisitive on such matters, had pestered her cousin with questions, which, however, bore the stamp of perfect innocence. She wanted to know why her cousin had never married. Hortense, who knew of the five offers that she had refused, had constructed her little romance; she supposed ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... file and shoved it toward Fenwick. "This boy has a gadget he wants us to look at. Doesn't really need any money, he says. That's the kind we really have to be on guard against. If we looked at his wonder gadget, we'd be pestered for a million-dollar handout for years ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... Arabella was prepared to give up her son, if only his love could remain constant for one year. Neither did Lady Arabella consent to any such arrangement, nor did the squire. It was settled rather in this wise: that Frank should be subjected to no torturing process, pestered to give no promises, should in no way be bullied about Mary—that is, not at present—if he would go away for a year. Then, at the end of the year, the matter should again be discussed. Agreeing to this, Frank took his departure, and was ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... returned to the main island, and right enough where he was, if he kept by the lagoon, yet he had a mind to make things righter if he could. So he told the high chief he had once been in an isle that was pestered the same way, and the folk had found a means to ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... from my game. Ben noticed as quickly as I did that the line presently slacked, and called Heaven to witness that the darned fish was off, and that he had been predicting such a result all along; the fact was the 'lunge was racing in towards us. I am one of those anglers who hate being pestered by advice when playing a fish, and never pretend to choose my words to ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... my country, in these days of war, I do what I can. Until finally flattened out by the War Office, I pestered them for such employment as a cripple might undertake. As an instance of what a paralytic was capable I quoted Couthon, member of the National Convention and the Committee of Public Safety. You can see his chair, not very unlike mine, in ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... take their ease and have a comfortable life, only the King! The beasts of the field have leave to lay themselves down in the meadow and to stretch their limbs on the green grass in the heat of the day, without being pestered and plagued and tormented and called to and wakened and worried, till a man is no ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... drove onward, a young officer on horseback looked earnestly into the carriage, and recognized some faces that he had seen before; so he rode along by our side, and we pestered him with queries and observations, to which he responded more civilly than they deserved. He was on General McClellan's staff, and a gallant cavalier, high-booted, with a revolver in his belt, and mounted on a noble horse, which trotted hard and high without disturbing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... lodger pestered my sisters and myself with his absolute inattentions is difficult to explain. Anyone might have thought that he did not know we were there. While the Proposal Competitions were on, not one of us thought it worth while to waste time on the man. We could get a better return for the ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... I have already said, I was blamed for, very early in my career but by learned trees, with grave and dignified complaisance. These saplings, on the contrary, pestered me with silly nicknames. For example, they took a malicious delight in calling me Skabba, which means an untimely or ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... "He pestered the life out of me," explained Joe ruefully, "and I finally told him I'd ask you fellows. But I suppose we can't take two more. Nine would—um—be rather overdoing ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... hot and humming into noon, and noon dropped languidly into afternoon. The blazing sun centered his rays upon her; insects found and pestered her; discomfort cramped her limbs, and weariness weighted down her eyelids. Twice she dozed, and wakened with a start of fear lest she had slept her chance away. But each time she was reassured by a ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... shore, but were forced to keepe the deepe, [Sidenote: The Romans put to their shifts.] so that the Romane soldiers were put to verie hard shift; to wit, both to leape forth of their ships, and being pestered with their heauie armour and weapons, to fight in the water with their enimies, who knowing the flats and shelues, stood either vpon the drie ground, or else but a little waie in the shallow places of the water; and being not ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (3 of 8) • Raphael Holinshed
... forever pestered as to Dunwich? This is the third time of late that I have heard of Dunwich from wandering folk. Begone thither and gather tidings for yourselves, which I hope will please you as ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... "Nora's been pestered by the cops, and she wants me to have them called off," said Bat. "And she's asked me to go out to Stanwick and see what they ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... should think so; but I don't know what the captain means to do. We have had no time to talk, this morning. I daresay you will meet him, on shore; he has gone to the post office, to get his papers signed. We have been quite pestered, this morning, by men coming on board to buy wine out of the polacre; but the captain wouldn't have the hatches taken off. The Spaniards may turn up, at any moment; and it is of the greatest importance our getting off, while the coast is clear. It is most ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... is run off I know not where, but as he makes his bed, must he lie on't; and if he run away for his pleasure, may stay away for mine. I have been pestered with this lot too long, and only bore with him for poor sister Martha's sake; but 'tis after his father that the graceless lad ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... took a parting farewell of my wife and two little boys, mounted my horse and set sail to join my company. Expecting only to be gone a short time, I took no more clothing with me than I supposed would be necessary; so that if I got into an Indian battle, I might not be pestered with any unnecessary plunder to prevent my having a fair chance with them. We all met and went ahead till we passed Huntsville and camped at a large spring called Beaty's Spring. Here we stayed several days, in which time the troops began to collect from all quarters. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... sometimes do to be but for a moment single and separate. Except my morning's walk to the office, which is like treading on sands of gold for that reason, I am never so. I cannot walk home from office but some officious friend offers his damn'd unwelcome courtesies to accompany me. All the morning I am pestered. I could sit and gravely cast up sums in great Books, or compare sum with sum, and write PAID against this and UNP'D against t'other, and yet reserve in some "corner of my mind" some darling thoughts all my own—faint memory of some passage in a Book—or the tone of an ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... for ten days an' dey'd go wid her back to town; an' dat if she'd stay dey'd take her 'cross de ribber to see de city. I seed she wanted ter git home to her husban', an' she tol' 'em so. Den dey tried to make her believe he was comin' for her, an' dey pestered her so an' got her so mixed up wid deir lies dat I was feared she was gwine to give in, arter all. She warn't nothin' but a po' weak thing noways. Den I riz up an' tol' 'em dat I'd call a pleeceman an' take dat ticket from her an' de money I gin her beside, if ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... longer pestered by Grand Models, became another rustic paradise. Their suns were warm, their forests vast, their people delighting in a sort of wild civilization. When James II. went down, the Carolinians needed no care-taker, and declined to avail themselves ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... there were two women correspondents, poor souls, who were indeed sad and lonely. They were very ambitious and wanted to go to Cuba with the army, but the War Department wisely forbade any such a move and then my trouble began. At all hours of the day or night I was pestered by these same women. One of them represented a Canadian paper and was most anxious to go. She tried every expedient and tackled every man or woman of influence that came along. Even dear old Clara Barton did not escape her importunities. She wanted to go as a Red Cross nurse, but didn't know anything ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... any that opposed it. Things began to move. In 1883 Prince Nikola married his daughter to Petar Karageorgevitch, and that same year a revolt in favour of Petar broke out at the garrison town of Zaitshar. Oddly enough it was at Zaitshar in 1902 that I was most pestered by the officers to declare whom I thought should ascend the Serbian throne should Alexander die childless. By that time I was wary and put them off by saying "The Prince ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... realized that she was the Effect and baby doll in question. She flushed, and her ears tingled. She thought of the Arabian Nights tale, where the searcher after the Golden Water was pestered by voices of those who had been turned to black ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... if fame deceive us not, in a village of fourteen houses in the north are found so many of this damned brood. Heretofore, only barbarous deserts had them; but now the civilized and religious parts are frequently pestered with them. Heretofore, some silly, ignorant old woman, &c.; but now we have known those of both sexes who professed much knowledge, holiness, and devotion, drawn ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... always maintained the reputation of an incorruptible and impartial statesman. It is related that one Rhoesakes, a Persian, who had revolted from the king, came to Athens with a large sum of money, and being much pestered by the mercenary politicians there, took refuge in the house of Kimon, where he placed two bowls beside the door-posts, one of which he filled with gold, and the other with silver darics.[311] Kimon smiled at this, and inquired whether he wished ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... of not going to that dinner. Had I been invited, as you were, I should have pestered Prue about the buttons on my white waistcoat, instead of leaving her placidly piecing adolescent trowsers. She would have been flustered, fearful of being too late, of tumbling the garment, of soiling it, fearful of offending me in some way, (admirable woman!) I, in my natural ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... dyspepsia, which "gnawed like a rat" at its life-long tenement, his stomach, and by sleeplessness, due in part to internal causes, but also to the "Bedlam" noises of men, machines, and animals, which pestered him in town and country from first to last. He kept hesitating about his career, tried law, mathematical teaching, contributions to magazines and dictionaries, everything but journalism, to which he had a rooted repugnance, and the Church, which he had definitely ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... ecstasy, so her gossips declared, and so she almost persuaded herself, even after she had certain drawbacks to her pleasure, and certain cares intruding upon her exultation; after she was again harassed and pestered with the inconvenient resuscitation of that incorrigible little plain, vain portrait painter, Sam Winnington. He was plain—he had not the county member's Roman nose; and he was vain—Clary had already mimicked ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... Raja who was very prosperous; but his wife found their life of wealth and ease monotonous, and she continually urged him to travel into other countries and to see whether other modes of life were pleasant or distressful; she pestered her husband so much that at last he gave way. He put his kingdom in charge of his father's sister and her husband and set off with his wife and his two sons ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... sheltered us, would slip the scribblings into my hand at odd moments, but preferably before her husband's eyes. She demanded an account of every minute I spent apart from her, and never believed a syllable of my explanations; and in a sentence, she pestered me to the verge ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... twenty-two miles in the afternoon, and, being all down wind, were pestered with mosquitoes and most ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... wretched quibbles with which mediocrity, envy and routine has pestered genius for two centuries past! By such means the flight of our greatest poets has been cut short. Their wings have been clipped with the scissors of the unities. And what has been given us in exchange for the eagle feathers stolen from Corneille and ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... watching the curious scene, and replying rather curtly to the eager salesmen, who pestered him perpetually to buy anything and everything—food, saddlery, pocket-knives, horse-shoes, fire-arms, and swords—he became conscious of a stir and flutter among the crowd. It presently became strangely silent, and parted obsequiously, to give passage to some ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... borne," remarked Charles Holland, with more impatience than he usually displayed, "that a whole family are to be put to the necessity of leaving their home for no other reason than the being pestered by such a neighbour as Sir Francis Varney. It makes one impatient and angry to reflect upon such ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... care. They'll stay right where they are, Rebecca," she answered, with irritation. "You know we settled it last night that I wasn't to be pestered about goin' back ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... to be excellent meat. We took in also a monstrous quantity of ducks, and cocks and hens, the same kind as we have in England, which we kept for change of provisions; and if I remember right, we had no less than two thousand of them; so that at first we were pestered with them very much, but we soon lessened them by boiling, roasting, stewing, &c., for we never wanted while ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... Gilroy, "but to the most wonderful mountains on earth, though the public has not realized that fact, because they are not yet the fashion. They are fast reaching that recognition, however. At present one can go there without being pestered by souvenir peddlers." ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... the way, Eddie, this must not go any farther. It's strictly entre nous. I don't want to have the dear girl pestered to death by fortune hunters. On his wedding day the man who marries Martha is to have the equivalent of her weight in double eagles. Isn't that ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the right wing with bullet-holes in them, justly feeling that they had been outraged. The truth is, the Poteets, and the Pringles, and the Hightowers of Hog Mountain had their own notions of what constituted Union men. They desired to stay in the United States on their own terms. If nobody pestered ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... Sir," replied M'Foy; "and sorely I've been pestered. Had I minded all they whispered in my lug as I came along, I had need been made of money—sax-pence here, sax-pence there, sax-pence every where. Sich extortion ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 563, August 25, 1832 • Various
... view the land within, and stayed from our boats but six hours, we were driven to wade to the eyes at our return; and if we attempted the same the day following, it was impossible either to ford it, or to swim it, both by reason of the swiftness, and also for that the borders were so pestered with fast woods, as neither boat nor man could find place either to land or to embark; for in June, July, August, and September it is impossible to navigate any of those rivers; for such is the fury of the ...
— The Discovery of Guiana • Sir Walter Raleigh
... pulpit in the air. I stood in that pulpit for five years, spouting literary transcendentalism. Nobody listened. When I condescended to come down and talk about what people could understand then everybody listened. It wouldn't have done Rickman any good if I'd pestered people with him. But when the time comes ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... told them how the Rangers had been so pestered by the fleas and other insects that Stacy had captured in the 'possum bag that the men were forced to get up and walk all the rest of the night, until a messenger had come from their commander, ordering them to go on a hurry scout some forty miles ...
— The Pony Rider Boys with the Texas Rangers • Frank Gee Patchin
... and Stern, I suppose, on business. I always tell them not to send me people, but to cable. Why didn't they cable? They know I don't like Americans coming here. I'm pestered to death with them—that is, I used to be—and I should be still, if I ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... exasperating name to yourself! For ten years it has pestered my eye—and tortured my ear; till at last my very footfalls time themselves to the brain-racking rhythm of Simon Lathers!—Simon Lathers! —Simon Lathers! And now, to make its presence in my soul eternal, immortal, imperishable, you have resolved ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sleep, have asked me what fate there was for those single private soldiers, each real, each existent, while the Army which they made up and of whose "destruction" men spoke, was but a number, a notion, a name. He would have pestered me, if my mind had still been active, as to what their secret destinies were who lay, each man alone, twisted round the guns after the failure to hold the Bridge of the Beresina. He might have gone deeper, but I was too tired to listen to him ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... The best part of two centuries have passed away since Antoine Galland first turned some of the tales into French, and got stigmatised as a forger for his pains. Never was there such a sensation as when he printed his translations. For weeks he had been pestered by troops of roysterers rousing him out of bed, and refusing to go until the shivering Professor recited one of the Arab stories to the crowd under his window. Nor has the interest in them in any way abated. Thousands ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... do you want to do that for, Cephas? You 'bout pestered the life out o' me gittin' me to build the ell in the first place, when we didn't need it no more'n a toad does a pocketbook. Then nothin' would do but you must paint it, though I shan't be able to have the main house painted for another year, so the old wine an' the new bottle ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... began again to wear them. After he had got the better of his melancholy, he sometimes amused himself with carving his name on the trees, together with the date of his being left there, and the time of his solitary residence. At first he was much pestered with cats and rats, which had bred there in great numbers from some of each species which had got on shore from ships that had wooded and watered at the island. The rats gnawed his feet and clothes when he was asleep, which obliged him to cherish the cats, by ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... here has its drawbacks," she began. "I am a lone widow; I am known to have an excellent business, and to have saved money. The result is that I am pestered to death by a set of needy vagabonds who want to marry me. In this position, I am exposed to slanders and insults. Even if I didn't know that the men were after my money, there is not one of them whom I would venture to marry. He might turn out a tyrant and beat ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... or more. The other man a year's rent for a cottage and garden, and two years' rent for the gardens of two cottages unoccupied. I am just returned from Norwich where I have been to speak to F. I have been again pestered by Pilgrim's successor about the insurance of the property. He pretends to have insured again. A more impudent thing was probably never heard of. He is no agent of mine, and I will have no communication with him. I have insured myself in the Union Office, ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... singular sight to Loron Usark, a big childish lout that lived on Spruce Street. We would pass the end of the alley back of his house and he was out there every day to watch us go by. Now this Loron was too weak, mentally, for school. Ordered around by everybody and pestered and teased by many, the moronic-minded will seek a victim that he can abuse and bend to his own will, and this Loron party was on the lookout. One day he caught me tagging along behind the others. He grabbed me and would have beaten me, but my companions rescued me. After that, I had to be ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... his letter from his uncle much more philosophically than did Alda, but when it tarried still, he became so eager that he made two journeys to London to meet the mail, and pestered every one with calculations as ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you think Bimeby you git into a tight corner, 'Lection day er Valley Fair, like's not, daown-taown, when you're all het an' lathery, an' pestered with flies, an' thirsty, an' sick o' bein' worked in an aout 'tween buggies. Then somethin' whispers inside o' your winkers, bringin' up all that talk abaout servitood an' inalienable truck an' sech like, an' jest then a Militia gun goes off; er your wheels hit, an'—waal, ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... moment they went to windward of their camp fires they were maddened by swarms of mosquitoes, and everywhere were pestered by ants. ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... house an' let me be. I know what I'm a-doin'. You've pestered me about this sign jest about enough." He dabbed his brush to and fro as he spoke. His gaunt figure towered above her in shadow. His slapping brush ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland |
