"Refractory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nightfall, I am no true man. Here, Fangs! Fangs!" he ejaculated at the top of his voice to a ragged wolfish-looking dog, a sort of lurcher, half mastiff, half greyhound, which ran limping about as if with the purpose of seconding his master in collecting the refractory grunters; but which, in fact, from misapprehension of the swine-herd's signals, ignorance of his own duty, or malice prepense, only drove them hither and thither, and increased the evil which he seemed to design to remedy. "A devil ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... expression and say that Chip "fought his way back to health" would be simply stating a fact and stating it mildly. He went about it much as he would go about gentling a refractory broncho, and with ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... signal the switchboard operator and tell him to come and open up the booth, when an, "Are you there, Mr. Edestone?" came to him from across the wire, and caused him for the moment to forget the refractory door. ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... mutinous disposition of his crew, maintained a serene and steady countenance, using gentle words with some, stimulating the pride and avarice of others, and threatening the refractory. ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... correctives—voluntary idleness, and the destruction of property. The example was set by the silk-weavers of Spitalfields and Bethnal-Green, who refused to work except at an increased rate of wages, and made their way by night into the shops of workmen possessed of materials belonging to the refractory masters, and destroyed them. Overawed by the combination, the masters agreed finally to pay the same wages that had been paid in 1824, although its continuation would prove ruinous to them. Similar scenes were exhibited, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... qualities by which he lives. Athelred,[20] on the other hand, presents you with the spectacle of a sincere and somewhat slow nature thinking aloud. He is the most unready man I ever knew to shine in conversation. You may see him sometimes wrestle with a refractory jest for a minute or two together, and perhaps fail to throw it in the end. And there is something singularly engaging, often instructive, in the simplicity with which he thus exposes the process as well as the result, the works as well as the dial of the clock. ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... copper; the woman who has sunk down beside one of the vats; the king on his throne; the soldiers who some swarming out of the narrow streets; the high gables, and the scattered groups of insolent guards and refractory people. ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... came into the library unexpectedly. He had been out in the kitchen helping Morton to open a box that was refractory. He found the room entirely dark, and thought he heard a soft sound like sobbing in one ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... after enlistment, or a penitentiary prisoner; while the exquisite has his head shaved with the sharpest razor, giving a bluish cast or frame for his yellow face. Occasionally the size or thickness of the tail appears to be unsatisfactory, and a larger surface is spared from the knife. The refractory hairs growing out in this supplementary patch surround the genuine cue with a halo an inch or two in height. Lots of these apostolical-looking Chinese are to be met with in every street, and, as they rarely ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... much more. He was not only a wealthy planter, but he was an engineer, a traveller, to an extent a manufacturer, a politician, and a soldier, and he saw that, as a conservative, he must be "Progressive" and raise the law to a power high enough to constrain all these thirteen refractory units. For Washington understood that peace does not consist in talking platitudes at conferences, but in organizing a sovereignty strong enough to ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... syllables, like the Italian, and, as I apprehend, the French of his time. For this purpose, it is necessary to presume that many terminations, now mute, were syllabically pronounced; and where verses prove refractory after all our endeavours, Tyrwhitt has no scruple in declaring them corrupt. It may be added, that Gray, before the appearance of Tyrwhitt's essay on the versification of Chaucer, had adopted without ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... is called in bottle-makers' talk the "batch" or "dope." This batch is put into a specially constructed furnace—a brick box about thirty feet long by fifteen wide, and seven feet high at the crown of the arched roof. This furnace is made of the best refractory blocks to withstand the fierce heat necessary to bring the batch to a molten state. The heat is supplied by various fuels—producer-gas is the most common, tho oil is sometimes used. The gas is forced into the furnace and mixed with air at its inception; when the mixture is ignited the flame rolls ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... express purpose of letting people in, and never letting them out again. Then the fetters over the debtors' door, which we used to think were a bona fide set of irons, just hung up there, for convenience' sake, ready to be taken down at a moment's notice, and riveted on the limbs of some refractory felon! We were never tired of wondering how the hackney-coachmen on the opposite stand could cut jokes in the presence of such horrors, and drink pots of half-and-half ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... days' time Macpherson had taken the French lad to his heart, and was never so happy as when working away with him over a refractory engine and chatting along in a seemingly never-ending stream of engine small-talk. All of which was meat and drink to Louis, and was rapidly acquainting him with much that it would otherwise have taken him years of experience ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... 'You see it is so,' said he; 'those are not the men whom I have loaded with honours and riches. What do these people owe me? I found them—I left them—poor. The instinct of necessity enlightens them; the voice of the country speaks by their months; and if I choose, if I permit it, in an hour the refractory Chambers will have ceased to exist. But the life of a man is not worth purchasing at such a price: I did not return from the Isle of Elba that Paris should be inundated with blood: He did not like the idea of flight.' 'Why should I not stay here?' he repeated. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the secret of the Writingcase and the Royal Women's operations there, began at last, as Wilhelmina says, to hint, That in his Majesty's service there were means of bringing out the truth in spite of refractory humors; that there was a thing called the rack, not yet abolished in his Prussian Majesty's dominions! Friedrich owned afterwards, his blood ran cold. However, he put on a high look: "A Hangman, such as you, naturally ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... seafaring power, and seafaring men, from their constant wrestle with dangers ill understood, are prone to seek and find supernatural forces. Nor was this all. Later, when she had become rich, powerful, luxurious, licentious, and refractory to the priesthood, her most powerful citizens felt a need of atoning for their many sins by splendid religious foundations. So her people came to live in an atmosphere of religious observance, and the bloom and fruitage of their religious ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... one of the old "beggars of the sea," a leader in the wild band who had taken possession of the Brill, in the teeth of Alva, and so laid the foundation of the republic. An impetuous noble, of wealthy family, high connections, and refractory temper—a daring sailor, ever ready for any rash adventure, but possessed of a very moderate share of prudence or administrative ability, he fell into loose and lawless courses on the death of Orange, whose firm hand was needed to control ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... process for the treatment of silver ores, the invention of Herr Francke, a German gentleman long resident in Bolivia, whose acquaintance the writer had also the pleasure of making. After many years of tedious working devoted to experiments bearing on the metallurgical treatment of rich but refractory silver ores, the inventor has successfully introduced the process of which it is proposed in this paper to give a description, and which has, by its satisfactory working, entirely eclipsed all other plans hitherto tried in Bolivia, Peru, and Chili. The Francke "tina" process is based on ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... During the day it would be the function of the matron to think up a number of odd jobs to be performed in the course of the evening. Pictures would be hung, clocks wound, a number of tin cans would be waiting to be opened with refractory can openers, and there would always be several window blinds that had gone wrong. A really resourceful matron could devise any number of ways of making the club seem just like home. One night she would discern a smell of gas, the next there might be a hole in the fly-screens, or a little ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... to me; I've so concerted Matters, That I defy ev'n Fate to disappoint me. Exert thyself, and to Monelia go, Before th' assembled Chiefs in Council meet; Urge it to her, and to her Brother Torax, That should their Father prove refractory, Withdraw himself, and order his Domestics To hasten home at News of our Design; Urge it, I say, to them; Torax loves War; To linger here in Hopes of his Return, Which tell them I'll effect ere twice the Sun Has run the Circuit of his daily Race. Here they may loiter careless, range the Woods, As ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... retirement; or the natural love of peace, and the weariness and satiety of life, which commended this seclusion to those who were too gentle to mingle in, or who were exhausted with, the unprofitable turmoil of the world; nor was it always the anxiety to mortify the rebellious and refractory body with more advantage. The one absorbing idea of the Majesty of the Godhead almost seemed to swallow up all other considerations. The transcendent nature of the Triune Deity, the relation of the different persons of the Godhead to ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... induction, that Porthos was taking his revenge for the defeat of Chantilly, when the procurator's wife had proved so refractory with respect ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... see, Mr. Reade, it's either a tunneling or a boring claim. We must either sink a shaft or drive a tunnel—-whichever operation can be done at the least cost. Either way will be expensive, and we must find out for a certainty which will be the cheaper. There's a lot of refractory rock in the slope yonder. In the morning our party will get all the ore we can from the surface croppings, then start for Dugout, going from there to Carson City. At Carson we hope to find an honest engineer ...
— The Young Engineers in Nevada • H. Irving Hancock
... most extraordinary looking little gentleman he had ever seen in his life. He had a very large nose, slightly brass-coloured; his cheeks were very round, and very red, and might have warranted a supposition that he had been blowing a refractory fire for the last eight and forty hours; his eyes twinkled merrily through long silky eyelashes, his moustaches curled twice round like a corkscrew on each side of his mouth, and his hair, of a curious mixed pepper-and-salt colour, descended far over his ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... few strokes of the oars, seconded by the swift though silent current, brought us to a wooden pier surmounted by two glaring lanterns. Captain B—— handed us out. My child, startled from a deep sleep, was refractory, and would not trust himself out of my fond keeping. When finally I had struggled with him in my arms to the landing, I saw in the shadow a form coiled on a piece of striped matting. Was it a bear? No, a prince! ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... noon; and, as they did not obey, the officers, in terms of the warrant, proceeded to unroof the cottages, and pull down the wretched doors and windows, —a summary and effectual mode of ejection still practised in some remote parts of Scotland, when a tenant proves refractory. The gipsies, for a time, beheld the work of destruction in sullen silence and inactivity; then set about saddling and loading their asses, and making preparations for their departure. These were soon accomplished, where all had the habits of wandering Tartars; and they set forth on their journey ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... reading of the bill was carried by a hundred and thirty-six; how on October 8th the Lords rejected it by forty-one, and what violent commotions that deed provoked; how a third bill was brought in (December 12th, 1831) and passed through the Commons (March 23rd, 1832); how the Lords were still refractory; what a lacerating ministerial crisis ensued; and how at last, in June, the bill, which was to work the miracle of a millennium, actually became the law of the land. Not even the pressure of preparation for the coming ordeal of the examination schools could restrain ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... it took from dawn to dusk to cross a stream by ferrying our packages, and emptied wagons, on such rafts as could be extemporised. Before the end of a fortnight, both wagons were shattered, wheels smashed, and axles irreparable. The men, who were as refractory as the other animals, helped themselves to provisions, tobacco and whisky, at their own sweet will, and treated our remonstrances ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... analogy to that Union of Britain and Ireland which had paralyzed Irish aspirations. Durham himself had actually quoted both the Irish and Scotch Unions as successful expedients for "compelling the obedience of a refractory population," and thus arrived at the outstanding and solitary defect of his otherwise noble scheme. And O'Connell, in a debate upon the Report on June 3, 1839, opposed the Canadian Union for Irish reasons, and in language which after-experience proved to be perfectly ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... insist that payment be made. And yet should the delinquent still prove contumacious and refuse to pay, the matter rests there—there is no punishment for his offence. The well-behaved will talk to the refractory one and say, "ma-muk-poo-now" (no good), but that is all. Should he be hungry or his family unprovided for, the others will all assist him just the same as if he did well and obeyed their laws and customs. He can come into their igloos and chat ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... If my speech is unduly refractory You will find it a course satisfactory At an early Board meeting to show it up. Though if proper excuse you can trump any, You may wind up a Limited Company, You cannot ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... Dr. Davys an interesting anecdote of his former pupil. "The Queen always had from my first knowing her a most striking regard to truth. I remember when I had been teaching her one day, she was very impatient for the lesson to be over—once or twice rather refractory. The Duchess of Kent came in, and asked how she had behaved. Lehzen said, 'Oh, once she was rather troublesome.' The Princess touched her and said, 'No, Lehzen, twice, don't you remember?' The Duchess of Kent, too, was a woman ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... expressional impulse is not satisfied by the resonance which an occasional public, however sympathetic, is able to afford. Its natural aim is to bring more and more sentient beings under the influence of the same emotional state. It seeks to vanquish the refractory and arouse the indifferent. An echo, a true and powerful echo—that is what it desires with all the energy of an unsatisfied longing. As a result of this craving the expressional activities lead to artistic ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... enemy from the "sacred" soil of France. For this purpose he summoned, with the authority of a minister of war, all persons capable of bearing arms up to forty years of age to take active service, and despatched them into the field; he imposed war-taxes, and terrified the tardy and refractory with threats of punishment. Every force was put in motion; all France was transformed ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... him, further, that the feather bed on which he slept was also a part of "Catherine's setting out," and was made from feathers she picked herself, showing him as proof a mark upon her arm, left there by the gray goose, which had proved a little refractory when she tried to draw a stocking ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... which event we could depend upon it that they would get more efficient trusties to take our places. But we did not call upon them often, except in a quiet sort of way, when we wanted a cell unlocked in order to get at a refractory prisoner inside. In such cases all the guard did was to unlock the door and walk away so as not to be a witness of what happened when half a dozen hall-men went inside and did a ...
— The Road • Jack London
... gun from the citadel is immediately fired, and is followed by others until the flag is hoisted, and continues to be fired until the flag is seen at its proper place; and, when the commotion is at an end, an artillery officer, or his deputy, boards the refractory vessel and demands payment, (every gun, fired, at so much) for the powder expended in bringing the crew to their senses. Many droll scenes occur between the Castle and the Dutch merchant-vessels going up the Baltic; for the Dutchmen, either from their unwieldiness, or from the confused cargo they ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... respect. The weight of the negotiations fell on Hyndford; it is between him and French Valori that the matter lies, Montijos and the others being mere satellites on their respective sides. Much battered upon, this Hyndford, by refractory Hanoverians pitting George as Elector against the same George as King, and egging these two identities to woful battle with each other,—"Lay me at his Majesty's feet" full length, and let his Majesty say which is which, then! ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... hand alarmed me. I slipped my letter under the glove on the writing-table and fled out precipitately. Only in time, as it proved, for Terence Murphy came round the house chasing a refractory hen, which, as luck would have it, flew through the door I ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... just—not Brian. He was an irritable convalescent in a plaster cast, too nervous to be patient. His pain had been intense, the shock disastrous to his self-control. The haggard mark of it upon his face Don read with scalding heart and brooded. When after a refractory week of undisciplined nerves and temper that strained the doctor's endurance to the breaking point, Brian went out of his head for forty-eight hours and babbled like a madman about a face in the mist, Kenny in terror wired for Frank Barrington. Brian, he thought, ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... by a refractory footlight, watched with anxiety Mr. Gunning's abrupt departure from ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... the Punjaub necessarily attracted the anxious attention of our Indian government. The horizon grew blacker every hour, as the total inability of the authorities at Lahore to subdue or restrain the refractory and warlike spirit of the Sikh army, was made more and more manifest in unmistakable characters of blood and violence. Upon the 22d of last November, the Governor-General of India, while moving from Delhi to join the Commander-in-Chief in his camp at Umballah, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... persons of different kampongs they are adjusted at a meeting of the respective rajas. When a party is sent down to the Bay to purchase salt or on other business it is accompanied by an officer who takes cognizance of their behaviour, and sometimes punishes on the spot such as are criminal or refractory. This is productive of much ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... pleasure of seeing us put on our motor-masks and take our places. When all was ready Mr. Barrymore seized the starting handle, and gave it the one vigorous twist which wakes the engine when it is napping. But almost for the first time the motor was refractory. The handle recoiled so violently and unexpectedly that the Chauffeulier staggered back and trod on the toes of the fat man of the crowd, while at the same time there burst from the inner being of the car a ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... work, however menial, is beneath them. I have myself seen one scrubbing the stairs, and in turns they sleep on a hard straw bed on the floor, ready to rise in the night as often as a bell summons them to the aid of a suffering invalid or a refractory lunatic." ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... about the middle of April Ishmael sat at his school desk mending pens, setting copies, and keeping an eye on a refractory boy who had been detained after school hours to learn a lesson he had failed to know ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... directly and relieved his companion of one of the refractory beasts, when by means of a good deal of coaxing and patting they were finally got along for some yards and out onto the sandy side, where they whinnied out their satisfaction and recovered their confidence sufficiently to step towards ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... to tie this grapevine into place when you surprised me, but I could not hold on with one hand and tie with the other. See what I mean?" And placing one slender foot upon a slat of the trellis she lifted herself up until she could barely reach the refractory branch. "Now," she said, smiling down upon me, "please just hold me here for a moment until I ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... morning we departed from Dooggi, and, being joined by a number of Foulahs and other people, made a formidable appearance, and were under no apprehension of being plundered in the woods. About eleven o'clock, one of the asses proving very refractory, the negroes took a curious method to make him tractable. They cut a forked stick, and putting the forked part into the ass's mouth, like the bit of a bridle, tied the two smaller parts together above his head, leaving the lower part of the stick of sufficient length to ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... next morning and after getting her father off to work as usual, she took the children into hand. First she scrubbed them assiduously, burnishing their brown faces until they shone again. Then she tussled with their refractory locks, and after that she dressed them out in all the bravery of their ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... said that it was the father's education that made me refractory, just as the father had thought to oppose the maternal influence: as though they continued the old feud about ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... most gigantic abuses. It is often complained of by the Levant correspondents of newspapers, under the character of the various spiritual tribunals of Eastern Christians inflicting fines, torture, and imprisonment on refractory or heretic members of those churches. The Jewish synods of Africa and the East exercise the same arbitrary powers, under the sanction of the supreme Mahometan authorities. Lately, however, the European ambassadors ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... to Cambridge in person in February 1643-4, with his two chaplains, Messrs. Ashe and Good, had been engaged in the work through the months of March and April, summoning refractory Heads of Colleges and Fellows before him, examining complaints against them, and putting them in most cases to the test of the Covenant. The result, when complete (which it was not till 1645), was the ejection, on one ground or another, of about one ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... had already lost some forty men, and the business with such crowds of them was getting hot; when, all at once a loud squeaking of pigs was heard in the village,"—apprehensive swineherd hastily penning his pigs belike, and some pig refractory;—"at sound of which, the Pandour multitude suddenly pauses, quits fighting, and, struck by a new enthusiasm, rushes wholly into the village; leaving Truchsess, in a tragi-comic humor, victorious, but half ashamed of himself. [ OEuvres de Frederic, iii. 73.] In ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the prince spoke to his German servant, Frantz, who was sitting beside the coachman, and bade him administer due correction to this refractory fellow. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... disconsolate-looking cattle are roaming; the vaqueros, (herdsmen) are cantering about after them on their lean horses, with their lazos hanging in coils on their left arms, and now and then calling to order some refractory beast who tries to get away from the herd, by sending the loop over his horns or letting it fall before him as he runs, and hitching it up with a jerk round his hind legs as he steps within it. But the poor creatures are too thirsty and dispirited just now to give any sport, and ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... doorway. There was no need for the brothers to express in words all the compassion and anger which stirred their hearts. At long intervals policemen, walking slowly two by two, shook the poor wretches and compelled them to rise and walk on and on. Occasionally, if they found them suspicious or refractory, they marched them off to the police-station. And then rancour and the contagion of imprisonment often transformed a mere vagabond into ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... now mounted his camel, and ordering us to follow, moved on to the southward—to look out for a spot suitable for encamping, as we supposed. We marched on as directed; but Antonio, who showed an evident inclination to be refractory, was handed over to the keeping of some of Sheikh Hamed's followers. In a short time we reached a spot not far from the shore, which appeared to satisfy the requirements of the chief; and sticking his spear into the ground, he called a halt, ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... to take care of themselves; and, drunk and refractory though they were, they did not neglect to obey the mandate. After which Clifton, leaving the helm, jumped into the water, the servants having gone before, and we all found ourselves safe, after some of us had concluded we were ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... taxation made us ever to murmur? Survey our charges where we have laboured, if they be not found to be of the faithfulest subjects that be in the Lord, we deserve no favour. Nay, there is wherein we stretch our consciences to the utmost to conform and to obey in divers matters. Are we refractory in other things, as Balaam's ass said to his master? Have I used to serve thee so at other times?" And as touching scandal, he showeth first, that by our not conforming, we do not scandalise superiors, but edify them, although it may be we displease them, ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... Nurse?" On the mend, it seems, being more refractory than ever; always a good sign with patients. But we must be kept in bed, till midday at any rate, for some days yet. Or weeks or months or years according to the degree of our intractability. The Earl accepts this as common form, and goes to the bedside ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... year 1877 the Standard Oil Company had worked hand in hand with the railroads. It had obtained all its privileges by asking for them and by holding out inducements to railroad managers to grant them. It now commenced to dictate terms to refractory ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... another, with the same result; a third, to fail again. There were no more. The most convenient thing remaining was a queer, heavy-headed, sharp-edged hatchet. This I took, brought the sharp edge down with all my force upon the refractory flap. The hatchet went through,—before I had done with it, it was open with ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... furnace was constructed of the form shown by illustration, about 4 ft. 6 in. high and 2 ft. 3 in. wide at the base, and gradually swelling to 2 ft. 9 in. at the top, built entirely of fireclay bricks. Two refractory tubes, 2 in. square internally, and the height of the furnace, were used for the double purpose of producing the gas and reducing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... in—almost always in the skirts of the hope that God would never require such a sacrifice of him. But he never again found he could not pray. Recalling the strife and the great peace, he made haste to his master, compelling the refractory slave in his heart to be free, and cry, "Do thy will, not mine." Then would the enemy withdraw, and again he breathed the air of ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... little ado, and having called in two men that were passing to help us to take them prisoners, in case of their being refractory, we carried them by the lug and the horn before a justice ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... many minds, agitation in consciences, division in the temples. The great majority of parishes had two ministers,—the one a constitutional priest, salaried and protected by the government, the other refractory, refusing the oath, deprived of his income, driven from the church, and raising altar opposing altar in some clandestine chapel, or in the open field. These two ministers of the same worship excommunicated each other, the one in the name of ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... his usual pace for this familiar walk—a steady stride that you could fit the unmanageable parts of a Latin verb to the rhythm of, or the refractory words of a song; but it was not a usual day. It was the first warm day of that April, warmer already, with the goading urge of spring in the softening air that frets and troubles with new desires and a sense of unfitness for ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... side by side Lossing dismounted, stood a moment beside his refractory steed, and then, with a gentle pat and a low word as if of reproof, he turned and, after patting the other animal a moment, sprang to its back and sent it galloping around the place; then bringing him back to place, ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... the hand he raised to hers, and, though she was forced to put down her candle first, persisted in confining the refractory tress; then seated herself at the table, and taking from her pocket the manuscript which Hugh had been criticising in the morning, unfolded it, and showed him all the passages he had objected to, neatly corrected ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... differing widely each from the others, and yet with a signal trait in common—the power to command. In the give-and-take of daily discussion, in the art of controlling and consolidating reluctant and refractory followers, in the skill to overcome all forms of opposition, and to meet with competency and courage the varying phases of unlooked-for assault or unsuspected defection, it would be difficult to rank with these a fourth name in ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... matter. No one cares for Miss Manners's whims now,' was the careless reply, as Madame ushered me into the deserted schoolroom, and then quickly vanished. She evidently dreaded a meeting with her refractory teacher. Well she might, for there sat Christal—but I will tell you all minutely. You see how I try to note down every trifle, ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... from time to time to train them. It really consisted of a huge box without windows, but with one or two small ventilating shafts in the door. On rare occasions, when thoroughly enraged, the manager had been known to lock a refractory member of the troupe up there; but such a punishment had never been given to ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... peak, as indicated by the dotted line in Fig. 72. This is nearly true to the local fact; but being inconsistent with the general look of crests, and contrary to Turner's instincts, he strikes off the refractory summit, and, leaving his pencil outline still in the sky, touches with color only the contour shown by the continuous line in the figure, thus treating it just as we saw Titian did the great Alp of the Tyrol. ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... colossal and magnanimous both as man and writer. Carlyle says of him: 'His intellect is keen, impetuous, far-grasping, fit to rend in pieces the stubbornest materials, and extort from them their most hidden and refractory truth. In his Humor he sports with the highest and lowest; he can play at bowls with the Sun and Moon. His Imagination opens for us the Land of Dreams; we sail with him through the boundless Abyss; and the secrets of Space, and Time, and Life, and Annihilation ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... a moment. Marjorie was not the Miss Wilton Susy was asking for, and she feared exciting the poor refractory little girl by not carrying out her wishes exactly. But as Susy's tired feverish voice was distinctly heard in the upper room, and as Miss Nelson said, "I think you can fully trust Marjorie; she is a most tender little nurse," Mrs. ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... but little calculated to satisfy the affections of a love-sick girl, yet, where the substance is not to be had, even that is consoling. The aunt declared she would never sleep in that chamber again; the niece, for once, was refractory, and declared as strongly that she would sleep in no other in the castle: the consequence was, that she had to sleep in it alone: but she drew a promise from her aunt not to relate the story of the specter, lest she should be denied the ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... seemed a delightful and natural thing for him to be running along to meet him. From a trot he soon subsided into a walk. It was a hot day, the road was dusty, and few vehicles passed him. At length he paused to rest, and it was at this juncture that some drovers, taking some refractory cattle to market, came along ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... generally disobeyed these orders. In this they were justified by the established constitution: the Prince, however, treated their conduct as rebellious; and, in concert with the States General, marched in person, at the head of his troops, against the refractory cities. Wherever he came, he disarmed and disbanded the new levies; deposed the Arminian magistrates, and expelled the ministers of ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... gets into straits by attempting manly employments. He has done us great good though, and may be allowed his little feeling of superiority. The parting salute he bestowed on our steed, in the shape of an astounding crack of his huge whip, has put that refractory animal on his mettle. On we go! past the glazier's pretty house, with its porch and its filbert walk; along the narrow lane bordered with elms, whose fallen leaves have made the road one yellow; past that little farmhouse with the horse-chestnut ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... is the name of a night spectre, said to have been Adam's first wife, but who, for her refractory conduct, was transformed into a demon endowed with power to injure and even destroy infants unprotected by the necessary amulet ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... with panic. Dr. Melchior Hubner, who had been a miller's man, wished for a hundred musketeers to mow them down; but the Town Clerk proposed that all the Council should creep quietly down the back stairs, lock the doors on the refractory womankind, and make their escape. This was effected as silently and quickly as possible, for the whole Council 'could confess to a state of frightful terror.' Presently the women peeped out, and saw the stairs bestrewn with hats, ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the boatswain, for there was a tradition on board that he had, on one occasion, laid hands upon a refractory boy, and he was evidently in the steerage for a purpose. He skulked back to ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... due time falls into their appointed Wedlock for Shelter. I have a long Letter bearing Date the fourth Instant, which gives me a large Account of the Policies of this Court; and find there is now before them a very refractory Person who has escaped all their Machinations for two Years last past: But they have prevented two successive Matches which were of his own Inclination, the one, by a Report that his Mistress was to be married, and ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... mutinied during all the ten years of the Gallic war, but were sometimes refractory in the course of the civil war. However, they always returned quickly to their duty, and that not through the indulgence, but in submission to the authority, of their general; for he never yielded ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... have been done, but cases occurred in the Pretoria Gaol which are surely difficult to justify. Du Plessis stated to the Reform prisoners that he had with the sanction of the Landdrost inflicted upon one prisoner named Thompson, who was undoubtedly refractory and disobedient, upwards of eighty lashes within three weeks. He added that this was as good as a death-sentence, because neither white nor black could stand two inflictions of twenty-five lashes, as they were given in Pretoria Gaol, without permanent injury to the constitution. ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... footwear), food and beverages, metals and metal manufactures, chemicals, shipbuilding, automobiles, machine tools, tourism, clay and refractory ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Without intellectual expression imperialism would not have extended to all the classes of society. The passion of economic conquest did not prevail throughout the whole of Germany. The bourgeois in the Liberal provinces, the corps of officers, the corps of teachers, the clergy were refractory to it. This direct form of imperialism does not seduce them. Not everybody can see his country and the universe through the eyes of an oligarch of high finance. A doctrine works with power when it appeals to instincts, when it awakens collective emotions, diverse enough ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... people! God assigns the charge: Kings open but the book of destiny And read their names, all that remains for them The mystic hand from time to time reveals. Worst of idolaters! idolater Of that refractory and craving beast Whose den is in the city, at thy hand I claim our ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... see Philip here to-night," Mary was saying, while Eve fastened for her the clasp of a refractory bracelet. "We were afraid he was becoming quite a recluse, and that must be so ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... in a painful position as her brother's agent. The tenants were forced by the priests to vote against their landlord, and in his absence my son-in-law, Captain Fox, who had been much interested for the defeated candidate, wished to punish the refractory tenants by forcing them to pay up what is called the hanging gale of rent. Maria was grieved at any proceeding which would interrupt the long-continued friendship between these tenants and their landlord, and she was also anxious ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... conversation afterward, I realized how delicate his task really had been, and how well he had performed it. It had been to settle this matter and to rearrange our copper plans that he had summoned me to New York, and if I had proved refractory I can see he would have been badly snagged in his negotiations with the Lewisohns. If there had been a trace of dissension in our camp, that firm would never have surrendered their great business on such terms as Rogers proposed ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... called them "refractory"—must be thoroughly broken up before composting, otherwise the fermentation would not be vigorous, rapid, and uniform throughout the process. This mechanical softening up was cleverly accomplished without power equipment by spreading tough crop wastes like cereal straw or pigeon pea and cotton ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... without feeling grateful to Heaven for having given me such a son as I am blessed with. He is, indeed, quite invaluable to me in managing these refractory people, and were it not for his aid and vigor, I could not have been able to send your lordship the last remittance. He is truly zealous in your cause, but I regret to say, that I am not likely to be able to avail myself long of ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... one who beateth the air. This often lasts for two hours or more; it might be said that the cream remains in chrysalis, and refuses to butterfly! Indeed, there is no reason why a small bowl of cream shouldn't be as refractory as a wooden churnful. But when it "won't come," my distress is not at all proportioned to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... road as though to halt him. Barney pretended to be fussing with some refractory piece of controlling mechanism beneath the cowl—apparently he did not see the officer. He was just opposite him when the latter shouted to him. Barney straightened up quickly and saluted, but did ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... 1800 was mentally and morally a colony of Great Britain still. A few hundred thousand white families scattered over about as many square miles of territory, much of it refractory wilderness with more refractory inhabitants; with no cities of any size, and no communication save by wretched roads or by sailing vessels; no rich old universities for centres of culture, and no ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... decision was acted upon in 1805 and 1807, when the free settlers were compelled to leave the island, which remained unoccupied for about twenty years, and at the end of this time it was made a penal settlement for the punishment of refractory convicts, which it still continues to be,—one of the finest spots upon earth degraded into the abode of the vilest of human beings,—the scum of the outcast population of a great and civilized nation. And, to heighten the horror of the contrast between things natural and things spiritual ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... people vast quantities of gunpowder and of admirable cartridges of local manufacture. There were many reasons why the Cabul division of Shere Ali's army should be quartered apart from his turbulent and refractory capital, and why its cantonment should take the form of a permanent fortified camp, in which his soldiers might be isolated from Cabul intrigues, while its proximity to the capital should constitute a standing menace to the conspirators of the city. His original design apparently was to enclose the ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... October, General Sale started in the direction of Gundamuk, Captain Macgregor having half-frightened, half-cajoled the refractory Giljye chiefs into what proved to have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... Tommy was coming, for it reminded him that, as the king bully of the neighborhood, one of his subjects was unconquered and rebellious. But Johnny had discretion—and bullies generally have it. He did not like that cool, independent way of the refractory vassal; it warned him ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... attempt of the defiantly refractory part to tear itself loose from the whole and to exist for itself, an attempt that succeeds just so long as the strength endures which was robbed from the whole by ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... day's ride across the Tete-Noire. Our party consisted of five, and we had two guides. Our baggage, which was for the most part light, was strapped on the backs of the mules behind the riders. One article, however, a square box of considerable proportions, proved refractory, and, veering from side to side, refused to maintain the even balance which, owing to the rough nature of the bridle-path, was essential to the safety of both mule and rider. We were obliged to halt again and again, that the box might be restrapped, always ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... and go in the dive. They register all "inmates" upon arrival and give formal, though, of course, unlawful sanction to the business. If a girl becomes refractory and the divekeeper threatens her with the vengeance of the police, she has every reason to believe that the threat is well founded, ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... afford to bestow a fragmentary glance at any time on the refractory, for, almost at one and the same moment he had to check the impetuous, hold up a warning hand to the unruly, rescue a runaway child from innumerable horse-legs, pilot a stout but timid lady from what we may call refuge-island, ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... superiors, they persisted in their rebellion and their refusal. They set up to keep rules before all things, and observe the duties of their religion, lying thus to their Abbess and their conscience. It was all mere spite. Of this there can be no doubt, for one of these refractory creatures, as it transpired, was a cousin of the Marquis de Lauzun, my so-called victim; while the other two were near relatives of Mademoiselle de Mauldon, an intimate friend of M. ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... for that, otherwise, it became his own duty frankly to declare that the college would not look upon his accession to their society as any advantage. This language arose out of some recent experience of refractory and turbulent conduct upon the part of various young men of rank; but it is very possible that the noble earl, in his surprise at a salutation so uncourtly, might regard it, in a tory mouth, as having some lurking reference to his own whig politics. If so, he must have been ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... that on one occasion, in playing with her dolls, she was thus heard to speak to a supposed refractory one: "Now, be good and quiet, because if you don't I will turn you into a Queen, and then you will not have anyone to play with at all." That is sufficiently pathetic to speak volumes of what it is to be born in the purple, as ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... allowing it to sink low for want of fuel; always studying the pot when it was on to simmer, and at the same time attending to the movements of the others about her, ready at a moment's notice to give assistance or to dart out on a stray chicken or refractory child. ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... as he reflected upon it, had certain elements of terror. Here again, under another disguise, was the force that he had feared in London—the force that had sent Dom Adrian noiselessly out of life, that proposed to deal with refractory instincts in human nature—such as manifested themselves in Socialism—as a householder might deal with a plague of mice, drastically and irresistibly; the force that moved the wheels and drove the soundless engines of ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... mumbling these refractory and unsavoury bits, I was banqueting on the rosy and delicious products of that Eden which love, when not scared away by evil omens, is always sure (the poet says) to plant around us. I have tasted nectarines of her raising, and I find her, let me ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... made an enormous difference to the Mistertons. Jim fetched a hired girl from town, and Angela was relieved, during a scorching summer, of a housewife's most intolerable duties. Also, when Jim was hard at work clearing his brush-hills, wrestling with refractory roots of chaparral and manzanita, his greatest pal was kind enough to undertake the entertainment of Angela. The pair rode about together, and Jim told us that it did his heart good to see how the little woman had brightened up. Thorpe, for his part, admitted with becoming modesty that he was ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... loyalty: and these occasions the fanatics lay hold on, to revile the doctrine and discipline of the Church, and even insult and oppress the clergy wherever their numbers or favourers will bear them out; insomuch, that one wilful refractory fanatic hath been able to disturb a whole parish for many years together. But the most moderate and favoured divines dare not own, that the word moderation, with respect to the dissenters, can be at all applied to their religion, but is purely personal or prudential. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... we spent a restless time. Berry, usually somnolent at this hour, sat upon the club kerb and toyed with The Times. Jonah fidgeted with a refractory pipe. Daphne glanced from the clock to her novel and the novel to the clock at intervals of fifteen seconds, and I wrote four letters to the War Office about my gratuity, and very properly destroyed them as incoherent ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... opposite, adverse, counter, opposed; repugnant, incompatible, contradictory, retroactive, antagonistic, conflicting, abhorrent, inconsistent; perverse, wayward, refractory, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... frequently represented one entitled Las profecias des Daniel (prophecies of Daniel). No subject can be better adapted than this, for combining a splendid variety of pageantry in one oratorio, or sacred opera. The jubilee of adoration to the golden colossus of Bel, the flaming auto-de-fe for the refractory holy children; the voluptuous dance exhibited during the meal of Belshazzar; the sacrilegious use of the chalices of Jerusalem; the sudden wrath of Heaven; the gloom of the thunder; the shadowy hand ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... The burden, imposed on the parish collectively, was distributed among the peasants by their syndics, political officers, often partial, who were sometimes accompanied in their work of selection by files of soldiers, equally rough and impatient with the refractory peasants and the wretched official. Turgot, who was keenly alive to the hardships of the corvee, abolished it during his short term of power, substituting a tax, but it was restored by his successor immediately ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... lamp-post, and tendering to a remarkably select company little, blue, delft cups of bohea, filled from time to time from a prodigious kettle, that simmers unceasingly on its charcoal tripod, though the refractory cad often protests that the fuel fails before the boiling stage is consummated by an ebullition. Hither approaches perhaps an interesting youth from Magherastaphena, who, ere night-fall, is destined to figure in some police-office ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... before he departs. The girl is coached in the art of getting the money from the men, and in some of the worst dives they are told that if they get hold of a man who has money, and who does not seem inclined to give it all up, to give the bar-tender a wink when the refractory customer calls for his drinks, and the bar-tender will "slip him something" that will make ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... example, Eucalyptus globulus and possibly some oaks—shrinkage begins almost at once, thus introducing a factor at the very start of the seasoning process which makes these woods very refractory. ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... sentence of going half an hour earlier to bed was pronounced upon them. Nettie's haste and peremptoriness were mixed, if it must be told, with a little resentment against the world in general. She had ceased being sad—she was roused and indignant. By the time she had subdued the refractory children, and disposed of them for the night, those vast Australian boxes, which they had brought with them across the seas, were placed in the little hall, under the pale light of the lamp, ready for the process ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... itself: by a proper regulation of the blast, an oxygenating or a deoxygenating flame might be procured; and from the intensity of the flame, combined with its chemical agency, we might expect the most refractory ore to be smelted, and that ultimately the metals at present almost infusible, such as platinum, titanium, and others, might be brought into common use, and thus effect a revolution in ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... never will, Skinner. Paste that in your hat, boy. That big Swede, Peterson, can handle a ship as well as he can handle a refractory mate—and that's going some, Skinner—going some! I'm not surprised at his fast passage. Not at all, Skinner. Come to think of it, I'm going to fire that Scotchman in the Fortuna and give All Hands And Feet his berth. ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... seen in comet spectra, which Copeland said were due to iron. That the comets do not show a greater number of elements is not in the least surprising: they are not condensed bodies, and we think that their average temperature is low, too low generally to develop the luminous vapors of the more refractory elements. If their temperatures, approximated those which exist in the stars, their spectra would probably reveal the presence of many of the elements which exist in the meteorites. Of course the ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... policy began gradually to unfold itself. One obstreperous North-Wester was sent to the Columbia; another to the Montreal department, where "their able services could not be dispensed with;" and thus in the course of a few years he got rid of all those refractory spirits who dared to ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... out the other, which nevertheless kept its place in the procession—I wondered to myself whether the reverend gentleman who carried the extinguished candle, felt disgusted, humiliated, mortified—perfectly conscious that the eyes of many thousands of people were bent upon that bit of refractory wax. We all of us looked at it ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... where nature would attend to putting on the rouge—eh, mother?" and Jarvis thought of his friend Max with a strong desire to take that refractory young man by the collar and argue with him with his fists. If it had not been for Max's stubbornness, Sally would not now be suffering the ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... refractory when Sir H. Davy attempted to decompose it than the other two undecompounded acids. It is singular that potassium will burn in muriatic acid, and be converted into potash, without decomposing the ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... the early hours of the morning, greatly increased his labors and severely tested his patience. Almost all the transportation animals were mules, and as very few of them were trained for the work, they were hard to load and even harder to handle after their burdens were adjusted. One refractory animal would often stampede all the rest, scattering provisions and ammunition in their tracks, driving the teamsters to the point of frenzy and generally hurling confusion through the camp. Even Grant, ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... of that impulse had decked her out with every attractiveness as though they had taken thought to confound all masculine resistance; to sweep into their service those refractory units that withheld themselves from the common purpose. She was lovely, as the aged Major Carrington had uttered it—great violet eyes in a delicate skin sown with gold flecks, a skin so delicate that one felt that ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... it, said sternly, 'Let him have his own.' Usually, when he had emptied the second bottle, a desire of converting the Mohammedans came over him: and they showed themselves much less obstinate and refractory than they are generally thought. He selected those for edification who swore the oftenest and the loudest by the Prophet; and he boasted in his heart of having overcome, by precept and example, the stiffest tenet of their abominable creed. Certainly they drank wine, and ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... lifted up, higher and higher, borne by strong hands. A man bit him in the hand. The fact was he had scratched his hand on a refractory horsehair, which had become tired of acting as ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... return. Leaving the inn, therefore, as I was yet but weak, I resolved to return home by easy journies of ten miles a day. My health and usual tranquillity were almost restored, and I now condemned that pride which had made me refractory to the hand of correction. Man little knows what calamities are beyond his patience to bear till he tries them; as in ascending the heights of ambition, which look bright from below, every step we rise shews us some new and gloomy prospect of hidden disappointment; ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... was perpetrated by Southern masters; but my experience of slavery was, that separation by sale was a part of the system. Not only was it resorted to by severe masters, but, as in my own case, by those generally regarded as mild. No punishment was so much dreaded by the refractory slave as selling. The atrocities known to be committed on plantations in the Far South, tidings of which reached the slave's ears in various ways, his utter helplessness upon the best farms and under the most humane masters and overseers, in Maryland ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... in a muddle we cannot make out, Nor does evolution diminish the doubt; The facts that we get prove very refractory, And I cannot find anything ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... them abolished, and a law passed forbidding the sale of negroes save as part and parcel of the estate upon which they worked, an exception only being made in the case of gross misconduct. Many of the slave-owners, indeed, forbade all flogging upon their estates, and punished refractory slaves, in the first place, by the cutting off of the privileges they enjoyed in the way of holidays, and if this did not answer, threatened to sell them—a threat which was, in the vast majority of cases, quite sufficient to ensure good behavior; for ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... letter to his wife in 1847 tells of a visit to the Brights at Rochdale; how 'John and I discorded in our views not a little', and how 'I shook peaceable Brightdom as with a passing earthquake'. From books he could learn: to human teachers he proved refractory. Had he been more willing to listen to others, his judgements on contemporary events might have been more valuable. All his life he was, as George Meredith says, 'Titanic rather than Olympian, a heaver of rocks, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... Faith," said Mr. Stoutenburgh, "I have my doubts as to the correctness of that first statement; but I'll tell you what I shall do, my refractory young lady. If you set about anything outside the limits, I'll do my best ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... ever; and the change was speedily visible in the imperious tone he adopted towards the Protestant states. The decrees of the Confederation of Leipzig were annulled by a proclamation, the Convention itself suppressed by an imperial decree, and all the refractory states threatened with the fate of Magdeburg. As the executor of this imperial mandate, Tilly immediately ordered troops to march against the Bishop of Bremen, who was a member of the Confederacy, and had himself enlisted ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... led them to the mail-room. Despite the refractory nature of the metal, the door had been opened by melting or burning out the lock. And an opening had been burned into the safe itself! Opened ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell |
