"Abortive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... other rooms, a long succession of them, filled with melancholy evidences of incapacity and defeat in almost every department of human activity—plans of abortive military campaigns, prospectuses of moribund business enterprises, architectural and engineering drawings of structures never to be reared, charts, models, unfinished musical scores, finally a huge papier-mache globe on which were traced the routes of Mr. Colman Hoyt's four unsuccessful dashes ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... since 1864 had been minister of France to Mexico, endeavored to obtain an audience for "the chamberlain of Maximilian" as bearer of a letter from the Emperor of Mexico to the President.* But the mission proved a failure, and only added one more to the many abortive attempts made during those four years ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... the name Waterloo to history, paused now and then a moment to study Jackson at New Orleans. The Duke of Wellington, chosen by assembled Europe to meet the crisis, could find time even at Brussels to call for 'all available information on the abortive expedition against Louisiana.'"[3] ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... remember, that 'twas not the workman, but his instruments that fail'd: I was ready to engage, but wanted arms. Who rob'd me of them I know not; perhaps my eager mind outrun my body; or while with an unhappy haste I aim'd at all; I was cheated with abortive joys. I only know I don't know what I've done: You bid me fear a palsie, as if the diseast cou'd do greater that has already rob'd me of that, by which I shou'd have purchas'd you. All I have to say for my self, is this, ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... not dare, the silence of the ship seemed so sacred and awful; and till late afternoon I sat there, watching the black and massive hull. Above her water-line emerged all round a half-floating fringe of fresh-green sea-weed, proving old neglect; an abortive attempt had apparently been made to lower, or take in, the larch-wood pram, for there she hung by a jammed davit-rope, stern up, bow in the water; the only two arms of the windmill moved this way and that, through some three degrees, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... influenced by the actions of the Charlestonians than by their words. The original information was given on May 25th. The time passed, and the plot failed on June 16th. A plan for its revival on July 2d proved abortive. Yet a letter from Charleston in the "Hartford Courant" of August 6th, represented the panic as unabated: "Great preparations are making, and all the military are put in preparation to guard against any attempt ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... missiles, but a few useless shots were exchanged from the fusees of the chiefs, more in bravado than with any expectation of doing execution. As some time was suffered to elapse, in demonstrations and abortive efforts, we shall leave them, for that period, to return to such of our characters as remained in the ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... American life and tendencies, both Northern and Southern, are given with discrimination and truth. The dying scene, which closes the First Part, seems to us nobly wrought. The "death-bed hymn" of the slaves sounds a pathetic wail over an abortive life shivering on the brink of the Unknown. In the Second Part we find less of the color and music of a poem, and more of the rapid movement of a drama. The doom of Slavery upon the master now comes into full relief. The characters of Herbert and his father are favorable specimens ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... about the thorns is that they are suppressed or abortive branches. The ancestor of this tree must have been terribly abused sometime to have its branches turn ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... and "Bonnie Prince Charlie," was born in Rome in 1720. From his earliest years he was the hope of the Jacobites, as the political descendants of the partisans of James II were called. In 1743 Charles headed an abortive expedition for the invasion of England from France. In August, 1745, he landed with seven followers in the Hebrides, and on the 19th raised the standard of his father in Glenfinnan, Scotland. There at once the Highland clans rallied to his support and began what is known as the "Rising of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... pressed quickly on towards fort Edward, upon Hudson's river, about twenty miles above Albany. Here his progress was interrupted by the American army, being halted and reinforced a little below him. This circumstance, with the following events, have continued that interruption, and bid fair to render abortive, at least, the great advantages expected by our enemies from their first successes on ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... herself, strengthen and aggrandize one of the chiefs of the Importants, and weaken Mazarin by depriving of an important government a person upon whom he had entire reliance—Richelieu's niece, the Duchess d'Aiguillon. The Cardinal succeeded in rendering this manoeuvre abortive, without appearing to have any hand in it. And herein, as in many other matters, the art of Mazarin was to wear the semblance of merely confirming the Queen in the resolves with which ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... 1780 and 1814 were all of one pattern, and the one which Gourdon composed upon the Cup-and-Ball will give an idea of them. They required a certain knack or proficiency in the art. "The Chorister" is the Saturn of this abortive generation of jocular poems, all in four cantos or thereabouts, for it was generally admitted that six would wear the ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... whistled and rubbed, and washed and scrubbed, but as there seemed no end to the job, and he was a long washing this one garment as Bell would have been performing the same operation on fifty, I laughed to myself, and thought of my own abortive attempts in that way, and went fast asleep. In the morning John came to his breakfast, with his jacket ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... heard that the French Government were not too well pleased with Baudin's work.* (* Girard, writing in 1857, stated that rumours about Baudin's conduct, circulated before the arrival of Le Geographe, induced the public to believe that the expedition had been abortive, without useful results, and that it was to the interest of the Government to forget all about it. F. Peron, page 46. But Girard cites no authority for the statement, and as he was not born in 1804, he is not himself an authoritative witness. ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... observed that of those inventions a large proportion turned out to be entirely worthless, and a source of ruin and disappointment to their authors. And it is further stated that he discovered that, among these abortive inventions, many were but the embodiment of ideas which had suggested themselves to his own mind—which, probably, when they first presented themselves, he had welcomed as great discoveries, likely to contribute to his own fame and to the advantage ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... more destructive even than the foreign, which might have defeated the whole movement. Ancient and modern history is replete with examples proceeding from conflicts between distinct orders, of revolutions attempted which proved abortive, of republics which have terminated in despotism. It is owing to the simplicity of the elements of which our system is composed that the attraction of all the parts has been to a common center, that every change ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... the greater the thief the greater the power; and Gould, in spite of abortive lawsuits and denunciations, had the cardinal faculty of holding on to the full proceeds of his piracies. In 1873 there was no man more rancorously denounced by the mercantile classes than Gould. If one were to be swayed by their utterances, he would be led to believe that these classes, ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... The Royal Society was incorporated in 1663 as the Royal Society of London for promoting Natural Knowledge. In the same year there was an abortive insurrection in the North against the infamy of ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... usefulness as a spy in Sir John's camp must prove abortive, as I encountered Captain Walter Butler at the Dead Water, who knows me, and who is aware of my business in New York. Attempting to take him, I made a bad matter of it, he escaping by diving. Some men in green uniforms, whom I suppose were foresters from Sir John's corps, firing on us, I deemed it ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... regular geometrical solids? Or, again, are they, as others thought, the products of the germs of animals and of the seeds of plants which have lost their way, as it were, in the bowels of the earth, and have achieved only an imperfect and abortive development? It is easy to sneer at our ancestors for being disposed to reject the first in favour of one or other of the last two hypotheses; but it is much more profitable to try to discover why they, who were really not one whit less sensible persons than our ...
— The Rise and Progress of Palaeontology - Essay #2 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... and unreclaimed land of Lord Cumnor's, which was close to Squire Hamley's property; that very piece for which he had had the Government grant, but which now lay neglected, and only half-drained, with stacks of mossy tiles, and lines of up-turned furrows telling of abortive plans. It was not often that the squire rode in this direction now-a-days; but the cottage of a man who had been the squire's gamekeeper in those more prosperous days when the Hamleys could afford ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... at this psychological moment, in 1791 to 1794, when the planters of the lower Delta saw ruin staring them in the face, that there came to the rescue of the colony a man of color, one of the refugees from Santo Domingo, where the blacks had risen in 1791. From the failure of this abortive attempt to emulate the spirit of the white man, refugees flew in every direction, and Louisiana welcomed them, if not exactly with open arms, at least with more indifference than other colonies. And these black refugees were her saviors. For they ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... his eyes—those very eyes which he had already brought into an Accessit,[19] or inchoate state of humidity; this vexed him: and his mortification was the greater on thinking of his own pathetic exertions, and the abortive appetite for the prize which he had thus uttered in words as ineffectual as his own sermons; and at this moment he was ready to weep for spite—and 'to weep the more because he wept in vain.' As to Flacks, a protocol was ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... Three days after her abortive attempt to break away, Gyp, with much heart-searching, wrote to Daphne Wing, telling her of Fiorsen's illness, and mentioning a cottage near Mildenham, where—if she liked to go—she would be quite comfortable and safe from all curiosity, and finally begging to be allowed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of the field being cleared, Wallace ordered the tower to be forced. A strong guard was still within, and, as the assailants drew near, every means was used to render their assaults abortive. As the Scots pressed to the main entrance, stones and heavy metals were thrown upon their heads; but, not in the least intimidated, they stood beneath the iron shower, till Wallace ordered them to drive a large felled tree, which ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... clerk was a wretch, a forger of matchless skill. He instantly sent for a detective; and the next morning, when Justin Chevassat came as usual, he was arrested. It was then thought that his crime was confined to this abortive attempt. Not so. A minute and careful examination of all the papers soon revealed other misdeeds. Evidence was found, that, on the very next day after the day on which he had been appointed confidential clerk, he had stolen a thousand dollars, concealing his theft by a false entry. ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... approved of the match. More than one intrigue was set on foot within the chateau to separate the princes. Many were the attempts to sow the seeds of dissension between the dauphin and the comte d'Artois, as well as to embroil the dauphin with . The first attempt proved abortive, but the faction against succeeded so far as to excite a lasting jealousy and mistrust in the mind of Marie Antoinette. This princess was far from contemplating the marriage of the comte d'Artois with any feelings of pleasure, and when her new sister-in-law ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... After the abortive attempt to establish the colony of 'North Australia' at Port Curtis, at a cost of L.15,000, and the abandonment of Port Essington, it is not uninteresting to learn that Cape York presents many natural capabilities for a settlement. There ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... bargain. What do they do then? They wretchedly stay at their own miserable homes, destitute of their well-beloved daughters, the fathers cursing the days and the hours wherein they were married, and the mothers howling and crying that it was not their fortune to have brought forth abortive issues when they happened to be delivered of such unfortunate girls, and in this pitiful plight spend at best the remainder of their time with tears and weeping for those their children, of and from whom they expected, (and, with good reason, should ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... nomination as a tactical error on the part of the Populist leaders: "Mr. Weaver has belonged to the group of third-party 'come-outers' for so many years that his name is not one to conjure with in either of the old camps;... his name suggests too strongly the abortive third-party movements of the past to excite much hope or enthusiasm. He is not exactly the sort of a Moses who can frighten Pharaoh into fits or bring convincing plagues upon the monopolistic oppressors of Israel. The wicked politicians ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... little or no excitement; and when Burr saw himself met with universal scorn, he knew it was the eruption of an accumulated hatred toward himself, and that all his ambition for future preferment and power was at an end. Immediately he left for the West, and commenced an abortive effort to break up ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... a godly, painstaking, and most intelligent minister, whose history is very remarkable. In early life he had been, like Bunyan, a thoroughly depraved character; like him had entered the army, and had been promoted to the rank of a major in the royal forces. Having made an abortive attempt to raise a rebellion in his native county of Kent,[90] he and eleven others were made prisoners, tried by martial law, and condemned to the gallows. On the night previous to the day appointed for his execution, his sister found access to the prison. The guards were asleep, and his companions ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Rosalie, Juno and Marjorie were invited. Lily Pearl's and Helen's attentions to Peggy and Polly having proved abortive, they contrived ways and means of their own to reach the Land o' Heart's Desire. Helen's old bachelor uncle, a queer, dull old gentleman, whose mind was certainly not active, and whom Helen could, figuratively speaking, ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... "the abortive revolution of 1905." This novel is an emotional statement of those "nightmarish" days. Against this rather hazy, tempestuous background we have the sharply outlined portrait of an individual, a poet, ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... presume, that an Attempt to make a Law to restrain Irony, &c. would prove abortive, and that the Attempt would be deem'd the Effect of a very partial Consideration of things, and of present Anger at a poor Jest; which Men are not able to bear themselves, how much soever they abound in Jests, ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... state from the hands of the king and his ministers. The Black Prince was the chief agent in urging these reforms, but his death, in the midst of the Parliament's deliberations, for a time rendered almost abortive the good work he had begun. Edward died June 21, 1377. Both in his home and foreign relations he showed considerable prudence and sagacity, and he may be allowed the merit of having endeavored as much as possible to keep on good terms with his subjects. His expeditions ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... wretches in garrets and night-cellars, petty pilferers and marauders, who cut throats and pick pockets with their own hands? The thing is impossible. The laws of the country are, therefore, ineffectual and abortive, because they are made by the rich for the poor, by the wise for the ignorant, by the respectable and exalted in station for the very scum and refuse of the community. If Newgate would resolve itself into a committee of the whole Press-yard, with Jack Ketch at its ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... long time lay very still wiping the perspiration off his chin. The dinner-tins were put away quickly. On deck we discussed the incident in whispers. Some showed a chuckling exultation. Many looked grave. Wamibo, after long periods of staring dreaminess, attempted abortive smiles; and one of the young Scandinavians, much tormented by doubt, ventured in the second dog-watch to approach Singleton (the old man did not encourage us much to speak to him) and ask sheepishly:—"You ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... pathological lie have been added to those offered by Delbruck, Risch, Koppen, and Vogt. The pathological liar lies, not according to a plan, but the impulse seizes him suddenly. This propensity grows stronger. Under strict supervision it comes to only an abortive attack, similar to what happens in cases of dipsomania, or of tendency to rove in which the repressed outbreak expresses itself in tormenting psychical and physical unrest. While the normal liar and swindler is forced to be on his guard lest he divulge something of the actual ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... with scarlet fruit, and another species with rose-coloured fruit, of most exquisite taste—particularly when the seed was abortive, and the pericarp more developed—were abundant on the flats of the river; and Aemena?, with smaller fruit and thin acidulous rind, grew ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... scalped and murdered by the French and their Indian allies. French spies gained early intelligence of every movement contemplated by the British, and were thus, in many cases, the means of rendering those movements abortive. The grand British scheme of the year, however, was the reduction of Louisburg, in furtherance of which an armament such had never before been collected in the British Colonies, assembled at Halifax. This armament consisted ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... Alexandria, he set himself to oppose and make war against the Pythagorean doctrine, and that of natural philosophy; seeking by means of his logical ratiocination to propose definitions and notions, certain fifth entities and other abortive portions of fantastical cogitations, as principles and substance of things, more anxious about the esteem of the vulgar stupid crowd, which is influenced and governed by sophisms and appearances which ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... 'Shepherds-tell-me' air and tone. Lead me to one of your garden-seats: out of hearing to Dr. Middleton, I beg. He mesmerizes me, he makes me talk Latin. I was curiously susceptible last night. I know I shall everlastingly associate him with an abortive entertainment and solos on big instruments. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the whole creation of which must have depended upon one law or decree of the Almighty, though it did not all come forth at one time. After what we have seen, the idea of a separate exertion for each must appear totally inadmissible. The single fact of abortive or rudimentary organs condemns it; for these, on such a supposition, could be regarded in no other light than as blemishes or blunders—the thing of all others most irreconcilable with that idea ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... I write with the imbecile idea of rendering those preparations abortive. No, I am not so mad. My sole view is to explain the motive of my conduct in a particular instance, and to obviate the accusation of treachery which may ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... no describing the sudden look of rage with which he turned on her. His face grew a mottled red, his clenched fist made an abortive gesture as though he would have liked to ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... only one, namely, a proximate object. But the analysis of the perception of matter yields as its result, a remote as well as a proximate object. The proximate object is the perception—the remote object is the reality. And thus the analysis of the given fact necessarily renders abortive every endeavour to construct a doctrine of intuitive perception. The attempt must end in representationism. The only basis for a doctrine of intuitive perception which will never give way, is a resolute forbearance from all analysis of the fact. Do not tamper with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... station was not reached, practically no supplies were landed, the "Proteus" was nipped by the ice and sunk, and the remnant of the expedition came supinely home, reporting utter failure. It is impossible to acquit the commanders of the two ships engaged in this abortive relief expedition of a lack of determination, a paucity of courage, complete incompetence. They simply left Greely to his fate while time still remained for his rescue, or at least for the convenient deposit of the vast store of provisions they ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... revelations, in so far as they have professed to be infallible, are, from the Catholic standpoint, abortive Catholicisms 311 ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... Public interest in the abortive attempt to reinstate Dom Corria De Sylva as President was waning rapidly when it was fanned into fresh activity by news that reached this port to-day. It appears that on the 31st ulto. a daring effort was made to free De ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... of the father's speculations was soon seen. Deprived of Laird Lewis's personal and active superintendence, all his undertakings miscarried, and became either abortive or perilous. Without a single spark of energy to meet or repel these misfortunes, Godfrey put his faith in the activity of another. He kept neither hunters, nor hounds, nor any other southern preliminaries ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... He explained to her that as she was now resident in London, it would be simpler to recommence the business entirely. She sagaciously agreed. As she by no means wished to wound him again, she made no inquiry about those other formalities which, owing to red-tape, had so unexpectedly proved abortive! She knew she was going to be married, and that sufficed. The next day she carried out her filial idea ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... late Edward Huntington, a successful English merchant, who had resided many years in India and had realized a fortune, which he had proposed to return to his native land to enjoy with his wife and only child. But death had stepped in to put an abrupt end to his hopes, and to render abortive all his well-arranged plans, some twelve months previous to the period of which we have spoken. Mrs. Huntington, the widow, had remained in Calcutta to settle up her husband's affairs, and this done, she determined to embark at once with ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... the two World Wars, Lithuania was annexed by the USSR in 1940. On 11 March 1990, Lithuania became the first of the Soviet republics to declare its independence, but Moscow did not recognize this proclamation until September of 1991 (following the abortive coup in Moscow). The last Russian troops withdrew in 1993. Lithuania subsequently restructured its economy for integration into Western European institutions; it joined both NATO and the EU in the spring ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... things—she who has been kept in the castle cellar for twenty years restored to the delights of hair-pins and a mauve dress, the ingenue to the protecting arm, etc. The music-hall is a protest against Mrs Kendal's marital tendernesses and the abortive platitudes of Messrs Pettit and Sims; the music-hall is a protest against Sardou and the immense drawing-room sets, rich hangings, velvet sofas, etc., so different from the movement of the English comedy with its constant change ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... entry] June 6. Latitude 16 degrees 30 minutes, longitude (chron.) 134 degrees. Dry night and wind steady enough to require no change in sail; but this A.M. an attempt to lower it proved abortive. First the third mate tried and got up to the block, and fastened a temporary arrangement to reeve the halyards through, but had to come down, weak and almost fainting, before finishing; then Joe tried, and after twice ascending, fixed it and brought down the block; but it was very exhausting ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... minute account of Count D'Estaing's abortive expeditions to America; the barren results of the first two years' alliance between Congress and the King of France, by Dr. ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... their design had proved abortive, went directly to the place of rendezvous, and told the first of his troops whom he met that they had lost their labour, and must return to their cave. He himself set them the example, and they all returned as they ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... pirate—cruel, vicious, debased to the lowest degree of turpitude—established a moral code governing his actions and circumscribing his wanton license, and it was in the rigorous observance of these "trade laws" and customs of their realm that this abortive sense of ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann
... name, which every scribe usurps; that now, especially in dramatick, or (as they term it) stage poetry, nothing but ribaldry, profanation, blasphemies, all licence of offence toward God and man is practised. I dare not deny a great part of this (and I am sorry I dare not), because in some men's abortive features (and would God they had never seen the light!) it is over true; but that all are bound on his bold adventure for hell, is a most uncharitable thought, and uttered, a more malicious slander. For every particular I can (and from a most clear conscience) affirm that I have ever trembled to ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... not till 1620, after so many abortive efforts had been made both by Government and powerful bodies to form an establishment in North Virginia, that at length it received, under unexpected circumstances, an influx of settlers which soon rendered it by far the most prosperous of all colonies in North America. ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... my dear friend; I am at Besancon, while you thought I was traveling. I would not tell you anything till success should begin, and now it is dawning. Yes, my dear Leopold, after so many abortive undertakings, over which I have shed the best of my blood, have wasted so many efforts, spent so much courage, I have made up my mind to do as you have done—to start on a beaten path, on the highroad, as the longest but the safest. I can see ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... Hermaphrodite: Said of a flower having both stamens and pistils. Fertile: Said of a flower capable of bearing seed without pollen from another flower. Sterile: Said of a flower without or with abortive pistils. Perfect: Said of a flower having both stamens and pistils. Imperfect: Said of a flower wanting either stamens or pistils. Peduncle: The stalk of a flower-cluster. Pedicel: The ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... European, American and Indian pharmacopoeias is emmenagogue, antispasmodic, anthelmintic, excitant, diaphoretic, antiseptic and abortive. It contains an essential oil, and rutinic acid (C25H28O15, Borntrager), starch, gum, etc. The essential oil is greenish-yellow, thick, acrid and bitter; specific gravity 0.911. It boils at 228, is slightly soluble in water, and soluble in absolute alcohol. It is promptly oxidized by nitric ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... system on its theoretical side; that it goes far toward explaining both the physiological and the structural gradations and relations between the two kingdoms, and the arrangement of all their forms in groups subordinate to groups, all within a few great types; that it reads the riddle of abortive organs and of morphological conformity, of which no other theory has ever offered a scientific explanation, and supplies a ground for harmonizing the two fundamental ideas which naturalists and philosophers conceive to have ruled the organic ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... noticing that Batty Langley, the abortive restorer of Gothic, also recommended the natural style of landscape gardening as early as 1728 in his "New ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... the sexual instinct, to other ends than those which they seemed designed to serve. Art and poetry are fed on this fuel and the evolution of character and mental force is largely of the same origin. All the forms which this sublimation, or the abortive attempts at sublimation, may take in any given case, should come out in the course of a thorough psychoanalysis. It is not the sexual life alone, but every interest and every motive, that must be inquired into by the physician who is seeking to obtain all the data ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... built upon a ship of vast size; within the castles were 200 Turks, who were intended to distract the attention of the defendants by continually pouring in all sorts of artificial fireworks. This device was however abortive, as Jacome Leite went by night in two small vessels with twenty men, and though discovered he succeeded in setting the floating castle on fire, a great part of which blew up with all the Turks, and the remainder of the ship burnt with so great a flame that the enemy was seen ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... actions, and sometimes even determine them, by a process analogous to that of suggestion upon a hypnotized person, and this is so because of the tendency in every idea to resolve itself into action—an idea being simply an inchoate or abortive act. It was this notion that suggested to Fouillee his theory of idea-forces. But ordinarily ideas are forces which we accommodate to other forces, deeper and much ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... up from the hatches in such dense volumes, that all attempts to go below to extinguish the fire were abortive. Each man felt that his last hour was come,—there was not a shadow of hope that their lives could be saved; it was but a choice of death by fire or water: to quit the ship must be fatal; they had seen ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... about the cities and villages vainly looking for work; the absence of personal liberty; the numerous arrests, and the relative popularity withal of the Dictator. This popularity, it was explained, the press contributed to keep alive, especially since the abortive attempt made on his life, when the journals declared that he was indispensable for the ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... cough, aphonia, odynphagia, hemoptysis, wheezing, dyspnea, cyanosis, apnea, subjective sensation of foreign body. Croupiness in foreign body cases, as in diphtheria, usually means subglottic swelling. Obstructive foreign body may be quickly fatal by laryngeal impaction on aspiration, or on abortive bechic expulsion. Lodgement of a non-obstructive foreign body may be followed by a symptomless interval. Direct laryngoscopy for diagnosis is indicated in every child having laryngeal diphtheria without ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... Dunmore raids in 1775-1776 and an abortive plot in 1776 by Dr. John Connolly in the Fort Pitt region there were no loyalist military operations in Virginia. Several hundred loyalists joined the royal army, a small number in comparison to most ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... the great majority of legal practitioners obtained their preparation in a law office. Though the University of Pennsylvania attempted to establish a law school in 1791, and Columbia in 1797, both attempts were abortive, and it remained for Harvard to establish the first permanent law school in 1817. Even this was but a feeble affair until Justice Joseph Story became associated with it in 1830. Up to 1870 but three terms of study were required for a ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... her brows into the most abortive attempt at a frown. What right had he to suppose that she ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... Sophists; the antidote was the recollection of former virtue and past prosperity, which the Poet systematically revives in contrast with the turpitudes and trivialities of the present day. There is no turning back the course of history; but if Aristophanes' efforts have remained abortive, they are not therefore inglorious. Is the moralist to despair and throw away his pen, because in so many cases his voice finds ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... persisted it was necessary to find additional help, to escape in safety, and not bring both him and myself to destruction. At length we came to the following determination, which, however, after eight months' incessant labour, rendered my whole project abortive. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... thought of it, the less easy seemed the justification of her desire for obscurity. From regarding it as a high instinct she passed into a humour that gave that desire the appearance of a whim. But could she really set in train events, which, if not abortive, would take her to the altar ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... respect to the fair orphan having thus proved abortive, he lost no time in bewailing his miscarriage, but had immediate recourse to other means of improving his small fortune, which, at this period, amounted to near two hundred pounds. Whatever inclination ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... the criminal attempt of December 9, have the honor to address to the President of the Republic a last appeal in favor of the condemned."[10] It has long been the custom in France not to punish an abortive crime with the death penalty, and it was generally believed that Vaillant's sentence would be changed to life imprisonment. President Carnot, however, refused to extend any ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... trenches during the abortive gas attack on December 19th, but was not affected by the gas, which passed just behind it. ...
— Short History of the London Rifle Brigade • Unknown
... of Grenville, so inactive in its foreign policy, is memorable only for one redeeming measure of home-policy—the abolition of the slave trade. Before Fox's death, the attention of parliament had been divided mainly between Windham's abortive scheme for a vast standing army, to be raised on the basis of limited service, and the secret inquiry into the conduct of the Princess of Wales. This resulted in her being acquitted of the more scandalous charges against her, but on the advice of the cabinet, she was censured by the king for ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... walk over the surface of this fair Earth, an erring and a wayward being, at times dejected by the trials of a solitary and an almost abortive life, or sustained or elevated by its prosperous incidents; I sometimes think that no one other blessing of existence hath ever comforted my heart and restored my soul so much, as the pleasures and delights of COLOUR. It is my wealth, my joy, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... and showed to Morton the working of his harsh features, which seemed agitated by some strong internal cause of disturbance. He had not undressed. Both his arms were above the bed-cover, the right hand strongly clenched, and occasionally making that abortive attempt to strike which usually attends dreams of violence; the left was extended, and agitated, from time to time, by a movement as if repulsing some one. The perspiration stood on his brow, "like bubbles in a late disturbed stream," and these marks of emotion were accompanied ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... many abortive attempts are wrecked in the effort to achieve poise is a type of sentimentality peculiar ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... account of the ceremony to a farrago of cheap menus, comments on his own liver, and a belittling of an Englishman of such noble character and achievements that a rising nation has chosen him for their King, and one whom our own nation loves to honour. We shall not, of course, mention our abortive correspondent's name, unless compelled thereto by any future utterance ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... will perhaps stay but a little while among them. If you lay the state of your case before any of them, and your brother come to inquire of them, your uncle's intended mediation will be discovered, and rendered abortive —I shall appear in a light that I never appeared in, in my life—for these women may not think themselves ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... reiteration of the words that are said to him by Sophia, in the moment when the fond father knows that his idolised Olivia has fled with her lover; his collapse, when the harmless pistols are taken from his nerveless hands; his despairing cry, "If she had but died!"; his abortive effort to rebuke his darling child in the hour of her abandonment and misery, and the sudden tempest of passionate affection with which the great tender heart sweeps away that inadequate and paltry though eminently appropriate morality, and takes its idol to itself as ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... In Suffolk an abortive calf is buried under the path along which the cows go to the fields, to prevent them being accidentally injured. One description of herb given to a horse prevents the horse-shoer pricking the animal's feet; and another, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... machinery we were using. But I was not excited about being held up on the Caraquet road,—after I'd once been to Skunk's Misery. I was not red-hot about hurrying there, either; I wanted to give Hutton time to get back to his lair and feel easy about pursuit after his abortive raid. "I expect we'll worry along," I said idly. "Gimme that clean ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... "Septimius Felton" was written; but the manuscript, thrown aside, was mentioned in the Dedicatory Preface to "Our Old Home" as an "abortive project." As will be found explained in the Introductory Notes to "The Dolliver Romance" and "The Ancestral Footstep," that phase of the same general design which was developed in the "Dolliver" was intended to take the place of ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to adopt some different course of action. Shalmaneser had discovered during his abortive campaign that there were discords and jealousies among the various Phoenician cities; that none of them submitted without repugnance to the authority of Tyre, and that Sidon especially had an ancient ground of quarrel with her more powerful sister, and always cherished the hope of recovering ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... one spark of consolation. It came from the fact that Rodney Bayham, of Bayham, followed her always with his eyes. It had been three years since she had tried her abortive love-affair with him. Yet still, on the winter mornings he would ride up to her shafts and just say: "Good day," and look at her with eyes that were not imploring, but seemed to say: "You see, I am still, as the Germans say, A. ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... 1812 are of quite minor importance. No more than two are worthy of being mentioned between the greater events before and after them. Both were abortive attempts at invasion—one across the upper Niagara, the other across the ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... Europe, affairs were more disturbing. Several attempts were made on the life of the King of the French, while an abortive insurrection with a view of establishing a military empire was made by Louis Bonaparte at Strasburg. The Prince was allowed to leave the country and go to the United States, but his accomplices were detained for trial. In Algiers the French Government determined to prosecute operations ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... and nerve centers explains the pathogenesis of abortion and the birth of dead fetuses ("mortinatatite") Copper and lead did not cause abortion, but mercury did so in two out of six cases. Arsenic is a powerful abortive agent in the guinea-pig, probably on account of placental hemorrhages. An important deduction is that whilst the placenta is frequently and seriously affected in syphilis, it is also the special seat for the accumulation ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... French king. The negotiations were conducted through the Bishop of Tarbes,[116] and at the first conference the Bishop raised a question in the name of his government, on the validity of the papal dispensation granted by Julius the Second, to legalise the marriage from which she was sprung. The abortive marriage Scheme perished in its birth, but the doubt which had been raised could not perish with it. Doubt on such a subject once mooted might not be left unresolved, even if the raising it thus publicly had not itself destroyed the frail chance of an undisputed ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... all Jacques could invent! And to come to such an abortive story—was that the reason ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... indeed, to have made occasional efforts to secure for themselves the opportunity for glory in the same pungent and fascinating form. A notable example of this class of Revolutionary civilians with abortive military desires, is John Hancock. In June, 1775, when Congress had before it the task of selecting one who should be the military leader of the uprisen colonists, John Hancock, seated in the president's chair, gave unmistakable signs of thinking that the choice ought to fall upon himself. ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... I may be permitted for seeing in it clear proof of her bright wit and intelligence. She told me just exactly all that it was essential to know: of the pursuit, of the absence of pressing danger, of the abortive attempt to exchange babies, and where she was to be found. Suppose that I had not met Lady Henriette, I was fully prepared for ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... reply, and Mrs Jarley, after sticking a great many pins into various parts of her figure, and making several abortive attempts to obtain a full view of her own back, was at last satisfied with her appearance, and ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... the Emosaid family (800-1300); (3) in the far east, in Central and Further Asia, by the discoveries of Marco Polo and the Friar preachers following on the tracks of the earlier Moslem travellers. The first of these was a Northern secret, soon forgotten, or an abortive development, cut short by the Tartars; the second was an Arabic secret, jealously guarded as a commercial right; the third alone added much direct new knowledge to the main ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... done his utmost to justify the actions of Hudson Lowe, but no one can read his work without feeling that the historian was conscious all through of an abortive task. He reproduces in vain the instructions and correspondence between Lowe and his Government, and the letters and conversations with Napoleon and members of his household, and deduces from these that the Governor could not have acted otherwise than in the manner he did. It is easy ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... God create such men as I?— All pride and passion and divine desire, Raw, quivering nerve-stuff and devouring fire, Foredoomed to failure though they try and try; Abortive, blindly to destruction hurled; Unfound, unfit to grapple with the world. ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... of the Holy Alliance, and after the revolution of 1830. The hatred of Protestantism led the two kings to draw together, though Henry II. had had no mean part in that work which had enabled the Protestant Maurice of Saxony to render abortive all the plans of Charles V. for the full restoration of Catholicism in Germany. During the thirty years that followed the death of Henry II., the dissensions of France had rendered her unable to contend with the House of Austria, then principally represented ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... word, Robert Audley, you are a very agreeable companion," exclaimed Alicia at length, her rather limited stock of patience quite exhausted by two or three of these abortive attempts at conversation. "Perhaps the next time you come to the Court you will be good enough to bring your mind with you. By your present inanimate appearance, I should imagine that you had left your intellect, such as it is, somewhere in the ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... Since the revolution of 1830, these Templars have made public, but abortive efforts, to bring themselves into notice, by instituting some ceremonies, in which they ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... bequeathed the aggregate amount to the nearest of blood, bearing the name Ellison, who should be alive at the end of the hundred years. Many futile attempts had been made to set aside this singular bequest; their ex post facto character rendered them abortive; but the attention of a jealous government was aroused, and a decree finally obtained, forbidding all similar accumulations. This act did not prevent young Ellison, upon his twenty-first birth-day, from entering into possession, as the heir of his ancestor, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... dwarfish, abortive, counter bank set up at Noirbourg this year: but the gentlemen soon disagreed among themselves; and, let us hope, were cut off in detail by the great Lenoir. And there was a Frenchman at our inn who had won two Napoleons per day for the last six weeks, and who had ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... favour. The campaign of Seti had opposed merely a passing obstacle to its expansion, and had not succeeded in discouraging its ambitions, for its rulers still nursed the hope of being able one day to conquer Syria as far as the isthmus. The check received at Qodshu, the abortive attempts to foment rebellion in Galilee and the Shephelah, the obstinate persistence with which Ramses and his army returned year after year to the attack, the presence of the enemy at Tunipa, on the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the contest as hopeless on the part of a scattered population, without credit, or money, or military stores, or a settled army, or experienced generals, or a central power. Washington saw on every hand dissensions, jealousies, abortive attempts to raise men, a Congress without power and without prestige, State legislatures inefficient and timid, desertions without number and without redress, men returning to their farms either disgusted or feeling ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... early in the sixteenth century that tidings of the golden empire in the south reached the Spaniards, and more than one effort was made to discover it. But these proved abortive, and it was not until after the brilliant conquest of Mexico by Cortes that the enterprise destined for success was set on foot. Then, in 1524, Francisco Pizarro, Almagro, and Father Luque united their efforts to pursue the design of discovering and conquering this rich realm ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... quilt was embroidered by the hands of Mary-Queen of Scots, during her imprisonment at Fotheringay Castle; and having evidently been a work of years, she had doubtless shed many tears over it, and wrought many doleful thoughts and abortive schemes into its texture, along with the birds and flowers. As a counterpart to this most precious relic, our friend produced some of the handiwork of a former Queen of Otaheite, presented by her to Captain Cook: it was a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... assured, has raised up impassable barriers between the races. I understand by this expression, that the blacks are of a different species from ourselves, so that all attempts to generate offspring between us and them must prove as abortive, as between a man and a beast. It is a law of Nature that the lion shall not beget the lamb, or the leopard the bear. Now the planters at the south have clearly demonstrated, that an amalgamation with their slaves is not only possible, ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... antagonist through the body. But he had been drinking, and neither hand nor eye were steady; whilst Tom's clutch upon his coat collar, as he kept swinging him half off his feet, and laying his stout staff to his back, almost throttled him, and rendered his efforts abortive. ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... could be prosecuted and convicted. And by degrees the desire for vengeance slackened as the desire for gain resumed its sway. Many men have threatened to spend a property upon a lawsuit who have afterwards felt grateful that their threats were made abortive. And so it was with Mr. Mason. After remaining in town over a month he took the advice of the first of those new lawyers and allowed that gentleman to put himself in communication with Mr. Furnival. The result was that by the end ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... regularly visit the fellow in his lair. I feel certain of it. Of course they have been followed, but only in daylight, and then they are found to be on their ordinary business. But there is one of them who goes abroad at night; and all attempts at following him have proved abortive. He loses himself in the chapparal paths in spite of the spies. That is why I am certain ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... my archaeological mission being abortive, I was told by the Christian secretary of the pasha that the difficulty had been that I had not offered to give to His Excellency the coins that might be found in the excavations, and that if I did this I might hope for a firman. As it was not in my power to give what, by the agreement arrived at ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... heads—flying so close at times that they might almost have been caught by the hand. Neither was it surprising that innumerable shots were fired, by both sportsmen, without a single bird being a whit the worse for it, or themselves much the better; the energetic efforts made to hit being rendered abortive by the very eagerness which caused them to miss. And this was the less extraordinary, too, when it is remembered that Harry in his haste loaded several times without shot, and Charley rendered the right barrel of ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... the right. Feelings and resentments closed their ears to the counsels of moderation and wisdom, and the monarchy was not less systematically pushed towards its catastrophe by the hand of its friends than that of its enemies. The plan was abortive. ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... intolerable and disproportioned to the object. Nero, however, who longed to achieve things that exceeded credibility, exerted all his might to perforate the mountains adjoining to Avernus, and to this day there remain traces of his abortive project. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... air. To what use has it been put, so far? To practically none, save the destruction of life. About five years before the war some of us in England tried to initiate an international movement to ban the use of flying for military purposes. The effort was entirely abortive. The fact is, man never goes in front of events, always insists on disastrously buying his experience. And I am inclined to think we shall continue to advance backwards unless we intern our inventors ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... relative to the succession to the title. His emissaries had discovered that the wet-nurse had been brought home in O'Brien's frigate, and was kept so close that they could not communicate with her. He now felt that all his schemes would prove abortive. His legal adviser was with him, and they had been walking in the garden, talking over the contingencies, when they stopped close to the drawing-room windows of ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... Two abortive attempts characterised the sixties of last century in France. As regards the first of these, it was carried out by three men, Nadar, Ponton d'Amecourt, and De la Landelle, who conceived the idea of a full-sized ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... such a slough of muck, that it wants the pluck of a Hercules in the Augaean stable to commence operations, and a deus ex-machina—that is, the Public Prosecutor from the Treasury—to see that the proceedings are not abortive. Oh, where, and Oh, where is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... composer, or when the first tenor at the Argentina theatre has lost his voice on the way, or when the male prima donna[4.1] of the Valle theatre is laid up with a cold,—in brief, when the chief source of recreation which the Romans were hoping to find proves abortive, and then comes Holy Thursday and all at once cuts off all the hopes which might perhaps have been realized It was just after one of these unlucky Carnivals—almost before the strict fast-days were past, when a certain ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... said as an afterthought. The man regarded his back for a moment, was struck with an idea, began an abortive gesture, sighed, gave it up, and went on also with ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... are, and what His judgment will be, are the things here taught: not what He once did, nor what He once suffered, but what He is now doing—and what He requires us to do. That is the pure, joyful, beautiful lesson of Christianity; and the fall from that faith, and all the corruptions of its abortive practice, may be summed briefly as the habitual contemplation of Christ's death instead of His Life, and the substitution of His past suffering ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... All which, if it were to be first rased from his book (as just so much of nothing to the purpose) how little would remain to give the trouble of an answer! To which let me add, that the spirit or genius, which animates the whole, is plainly perceived to be nothing else but the abortive malice of an old neglected man,[8] who hath long lain under the extremes of obloquy, poverty and contempt; that have soured his temper, and made him fearless. But where is the merit of being bold, to a man that is secure of impunity to his person, and is past ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... to a juke box in Manfred's Tavern. He'd been there many times before, and he was sure several of the couples recognized him. But except for a few abortive glances in his direction, it was as if he were a stranger in a city halfway around ...
— The First One • Herbert D. Kastle
... enormous interest of the national debt, which ministers would have to supply, would, according to the present disbursements and receipts, amount to 11,578,000l. unless that expenditure were reduced, every such attempt as they were at present making would, he was convinced, prove abortive: it was a mere topical application while a mortal distemper was raging within. He had taken no notice in his estimate of the charges for sinecures or the bounties on exports and imports: and yet the returns upon which he went, exclusive of these ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... though hopeless rivalry of his manner— which account for the reception it at first met with, and seem to have excited in Denham's contemporaries expectations which were never fulfilled. This uprise, as well as that of the Irish (which took place the year before it), turned out, on the whole, abortive. And yet what fine lines and sentiments are the following, culled from "Sophy" almost ad ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... of this volume,—the "Pioneers of France in the New World,"—the author gives us historical narratives of stirring and even heroic enterprise in two localities at extreme points of our present territory: first, the story of the sadly abortive attempt made by the Huguenots to effect a settlement in Florida; and second, the adventures, undertakings, and discoveries of Champlain, his predecessors and associates, in and near Canada. The volume is touchingly dedicated to three near kinsmen of the author,—young men who in the glory ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... every minute is travailing in pain, as it were, and is delivered of some one birth or another, and no creature can open its womb sooner, or shut it longer, than the appointed and prefixed season. There is no miscarrying as to him whose decrees do properly conceive them though to us they seem often abortive. Now, join unto this, to make the allusion full, as long as they are carried in the womb of time, they are hid from all the world. The womb is a dark lodging and no understanding nor eye can pierce into it, to tell what ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... Edward in the rear. The earl's activity, promptitude, all-provident generalship, form a mournful contrast to the errors, the pusillanimity, and the treachery of others, which hitherto, as we have seen, made all his wisest schemes abortive. Despite Clarence's sullenness, Warwick had discovered no reason, as yet, to doubt his good faith. The oath he had taken—not only to Henry in London, but to Warwick at Amboise—had been the strongest which can bind man to man. If the duke had not gained all he had hoped, he had still ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... uttered it, he might have cast himself at the same moment on the body of Huish, might have picked him up, and flung him down, and wiped the cabin with him, in a frenzy of cruelty that seemed half moral. But the moment passed; and the abortive crisis left the man weaker. The stakes were so high—the pearls on the one hand—starvation and shame on the other. Ten years of pearls! The imagination of Davis translated them into a new, glorified existence ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... choice, or to my desire of living single; he would have been content to undergo a twelvemonth's probation, or more: but he was confident, that one month would either complete all their purposes, or render them abortive: and I best knew what hopes I had of my father's receding—he did not know ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... rendered the expedition abortive in its principal object, but most materially affected the condition of each particular ship, and none so fatally as the Wager, who being an old Indiaman, bought into the service upon this occasion, was now fitted out as a man of war: ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... the room. Since the night of the abortive raid upon The Cedars he had showed a marked aversion from the society of newspaper men. Regarding the facts of his donation to the fund he had vouchsafed no word to Zoe. Closely had the story of his doings at Richmond been hushed up; as closely as a bottomless purse can achieve ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... them two ropes, and had gathered into some sort of coherence. The procession marched to the Plaza where Jenkins was duly hanged. The lawless element gathered at the street corners, and at least one abortive attempt at rescue was started. But promptness of action combined with the uncertainty of the situation carried the Committee successfully through. The coroner's jury next day brought in a verdict that the deceased "came to his death on the part of an ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White |
