"Cumber" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... answered, "but she is a married woman, and I will have no Umpondwana brats among my people. Let her go, and take a girl if you will." For Van Vooren did not wish that the few men who remained with him should cumber themselves just then with women and children, since they were needed to look after ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... may be bought new for a few shillings, has swamped English makers of cheap instruments, of which there are by this time five times as many in the market as there is any occasion for. Hence it is that Fiddles meet us everywhere; they cumber the toy-shop; they house with the furniture dealer; they swarm by thousands in the pawnbrokers' stores, and block out the light from his windows; they hang on the tobacconists' walls; they are raffled at public-houses; and they form an item ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... captain's error; abashed, also, by the surprise and fear with which the Indian regarded me at first, and the obsequious civilities with which he soon began to cumber me. I know now that he must have overheard and comprehended the peculiar nature of my prayers. It is certain, of course, that he at once disclosed the matter to his patron; and looking back with greater knowledge, I can now understand what so much puzzled me at the moment, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I have told it you, because by the affection which we see you have formed for this man's daughter you are blindly moving toward what must utterly destroy your mother's happiness, if not your own. I don't wish to speak of myself, because at my age there's no use supposing I shall cumber the ground much longer, besides, what I should suffer would be mainly on her account, and on yours. But what I want you to realise is that feelings of horror and aversion such as those can never be buried or forgotten. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of ripening, and are beginning to go into a worthless condition,—green. The cucumbers cumber the ground,—great yellow, over-ripe objects, no more to be compared to the crisp beauty of their youth than is the fat swine of the sty to the clean little pig. The nutmeg-melons, having covered themselves with delicate lace-work, are now ready to leave the vine. I know they ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... dead speak too. From their crowded graves come voices of thrilling and persistent pathos, whispering, "Finish the work that has fallen from our nerveless hands. Let no weight of tyranny, nor taint of oppression, nor stain of wrong, cumber the soil nor darken the land we ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... Ole Nick," was the way Martha described him, when she had a moment alone with Teddy. "It sho duz beat all, how de good Lo'd lets people like him cumber de earf." ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... the central bed of the river is cumbered with large boulders, and that the jostling, tossing, and wild leaping of the waters there are due to its impact against these obstacles. A very different explanation occurred to me upon the spot. Boulders derived from the adjacent cliffs visibly cumber the sides of the river. Against these the water rises and sinks rhythmically but violently, large waves being thus produced. On the generation of each wave there is an immediate compounding of the wave-motion with the river-motion. ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... grows stronger, He'd wish to sleep a little longer. And could he be indeed so old As by the newspapers we're told? Threescore, I think, is pretty high; 'Twas time in conscience he should die! This world he cumber'd long enough; He burnt his candle to the snuff; And that's the reason, some folks think, He left behind so great a stink. Behold his funeral appears, Nor widows' sighs, nor orphans' tears, Wont at such times each heart to pierce, Attend the progress of his hearse. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... kisses That cumber them too— (O! how, without you, Love! Could angels be blest?) Those kisses of true love That lull'd ye to rest! Up! shake from your wing Each hindering thing: The dew of the night— It would weigh down your flight; And true love caresses— O! leave them apart! They are light ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... aren't you? I'm an idiot to think of cutting down the pine grove. I'm a milksop compared with a red-headed Indian you never saw before. Now I'm a blunderbuss for answering a simple question asked me by my sister. What do you think I am, anyhow? Fit to cumber ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... to block up the roads, she could neither stay where she was, nor pursue her journey. Her infant, too,—she was sure, if she tried to force her way through the hills, it would perish in the snow. The master, though unwilling to cumber us with a passenger in such weather, was induced, out of pity for the poor destitute creature, to take her aboard. And she was now with her child, all alone, below in the cabin I was stationed a-head on the out-look beside the foresail horse: the night had grown pitch dark; and the lamp in the ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... of the entire stream dwindles to about six fathoms for the next fourteen miles, the channel at the same time narrowing down to a width varying from about two miles to less than half-a-mile in some parts, notably at the spot where it begins to thread its devious way among the islands that cumber the stream for a length of fully thirty miles, at a distance of about twenty-eight ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... tree planted in his vineyard; and he came seeking fruit thereon, and found none. And he said unto the vinedresser, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why doth it also cumber the ground? And he answering saith unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it: and if it bear fruit thenceforth, well; but if not, thou shalt ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... innocence, Nor envy's snaky eye, finds any harbour here. Nor flatterer's venomous insinuations. Nor coming humourist's puddled opinions, Nor courteous ruin of proffer'd usury, Nor time prattled away, cradle of ignorance, Nor causeless duty, nor cumber of arrogance, Nor trifling titles of vanity dazzleth us, Nor golden manacles stand for a paradise. Here wrong's name is unheard; slander a monster is, Keep thy sprite from abuse, here no abuse doth haunt, What man grafts in a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... have you done to my elderly heart? Of all the ladies of paper and ink I count you the paragon, call you the pink. The word of your brother depicts you in part: 'You raving maniac!' Adela Chart; But in all the asylums that cumber the ground, So delightful a maniac ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on either side to object when the Lord Musgrave of Peelholm decided on departing early on the morrow. Their host was evidently not sorry to speed them on their way, and his reluctant hospitality made them anxious to cumber him no longer than needful; and his mind was relieved when it was decided that the heir of the De Vescis and Cliffords should be known as ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lived in the tide of times. Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood! Over thy wounds now do I prophesy— Which like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue; A curse shall light upon the limbs of men; Domestic fury and fierce civil strife Shall cumber all the parts of Italy; Blood and destruction shall be so in use, And dreadful objects so familiar, That mothers shall but smile when they behold Their infants quartered with the hands of war; All pity choked with custom of fell deeds; And ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... long convalescence to lie, And from the low window, gaze out at the sky, And float, as the zephyrs so tranquilly do, Aloft in the depths of ineffable blue:— In painless, delicious half consciousness brood,— No duties to cumber, no claims to intrude,— Receptive as childhood, from trouble as free, And feel it is bliss enough simply, ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston
... is a-spray; Blithesome the bee and the hive full alway; Better work than the bow hath the sickle to-day; Fuller the stack than the House of the Play; The Churl who cares neither to work nor to pray Now why should he cumber the earth with his clay? Justly St. Breda, the sapient, would say "As many to evil as good take ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... crushing, damnable chain of all, the symbol of cowardice, of greed and vanity, the enemy of truth and knowledge, the hot-bed on which we breed the miserable half-men who cumber ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... herself around, without rising, and looked awhile toward the house. She had as much trouble to get matters adjusted to her mind as if she had a houseful of furniture to place, with carpets to lay, curtains to hang, and the thousand and one "things" with which we bigger housekeepers cumber ourselves and make life a burden. This spasmodic visitation went on for days, and finally it was plain that sitting had begun. Still the birds of the vicinity were interested callers, and I began to think that one kingbird would not even protect his nest, far less justify his reputation by ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... hook, I say, not exceed three or four hairs at the most; though you may fish a little stronger above, in the upper part of your line: but if you can attain to angle with one hair, you shall have more rises, and catch more fish. Now you must be sure not to cumber yourself with too long a line, as most do. And before you begin to angle, cast to have the wind on your back; and the sun, if it shines, to be before you; and to fish down the stream; and carry the point or top of your ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... voice. "Though old folks oughtn't ter expec' too much o' young ones, ez be all tuk up naterally with tharse'fs," he added, bravely. He would not let his past lonely griefs mar the bright present. "Old folks air mos'ly cumber-ers—mos'ly cumberers o' ...
— His "Day In Court" - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... roamed, In later days the grass shall grow—the reed"? I choose those rocky hills that, on our left, Drag down the skiey waters to the woods: Such loved I from my youth: to me they said, "Bandits this hour usurp our heights, and beasts Cumber our caves: expel the seed accurst, And yield us back to God!"' The King gave ear; And Cedd within those mountains passed his Lent, Driving with prayer and fast the spirits accurst With ignominy forth. Foundations next He laid with sacred pomp. Fair rose the walls: All day the March sea ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... These are luxuriant with vegetation, of which I should preserve a portion for shade and coolth. A fine arched cistern now affords a shelter to bats; and a building which appears to be the chapel remains on the northern side. Old iron guns still cumber the embrasures and ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... from time to time the hungry hordes, whose iron sinews swept the nerveless children of the gardens of the earth from the face of their idle paradises: and, but for this stream of keener life and nobler energy, it would be difficult to imagine a more complete race of lotus-eaters than would now cumber the ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... More cruel than the clumsy torturing weapons of old, it distorts, and scars, and hacks, and maims, and destroys its victim inch by inch, feature by feature, member by member, joint by joint, sense by sense, leaving him to cumber the earth and tell the horrid tale of a living death, till there is nothing left of him. Eyes, voice, nose, toes, fingers, feet, hands, one after the other are slowly deformed and rot away, until at the end of ten, fifteen, twenty years, it may be, the wretched leper, afflicted in every sense ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... just, and excellent. Why then intrude such unrequired counsel? Read the next five pages, and take your answer. Zealously inflamed for the cause of truth, if not also charitably wroth against sundry lukewarm cumber-earth incumbents, and certainly more in love with the Church-of-England prayer-book than with her no-ways-extenuated evils of omission or commission, I wrote, not long since, [and truly, not long since, for few things in ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Poland, this vulgar trifle, and even our common Broom is so rare, that they have desired the seeds of them out of England, and preserve them with extraordinary care in their best gardens; this I learn out of our Johnson's Herbal; by which we may consider, that what is reputed a curse, and a cumber in some places, is esteem'd the ornament and blessing of another: But we shall not need go so far for this, since both beech and birch are almost as great strangers in many parts of this nation, particularly Northampton and Oxfordshire. Mr. Cook is much in praise of juniper ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... Autumn . . . . . Ye are bound for the mountains— Ah, with you let me go . . . . . Hark! fast by the window The rushing winds go, To the ice-cumber'd gorges, The vast seas of snow. There the torrents drive upward Their rock-strangled hum, There the avalanche thunders The hoarse torrent dumb. —I come, O ye ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... tossing, and wild leaping of the water there, are due to its impact against these obstacles. I doubt this explanation. At all events, there is another sufficient reason to be taken into account. Boulders derived from the adjacent cliffs visibly cumber the sides of the river. Against these the water rises and sinks rhythmically but violently, large waves being thus produced. On the generation of each wave, there is an immediate compounding of the wave-motion with he river-motion. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... lost thread before he died, but his tangled life was past unravelling in this world, and we wrapped his ragged hesp around him for a winding-sheet, and left him with Christ, who so graciously took the cumber of Rutherford's ill-ravelled life also. Young men whose hesp still runs even, and whose web is not yet torn, as Rutherford says to Earlston, 'Make conscience of your thoughts and study in everything to mortify your lusts. Wash your hands in innocency, and God, who knoweth what you have ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... known: A brisker face he wears at wake or fair, Nor views with longing eyes the pedlar's ware, But buys at will or ribands, gloves, or beads, And willing maidens to the ale-house leads: And, Oh! secure from toils which cumber life, He makes the maid he loves an easy wife. Ah, Nelly! can'st thou with contented mind, Become the help-mate of a lab'ring hind, And share his lot, whate'er the chances be, Who hath no dow'r, but love, to fix on thee? Yes, gayest maid may meekest matron prove, And things of ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... land from the Indian races. A superintendent, an old officer in the British army, is stationed with the Five Nations purposely to protect them; yet it is impossible for any one to be aware or to guard against the ruffianly practices of those who think that the Red Man has no longer a right to cumber the earth. ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... hasty gossip about the old pranks of the boys—White, who died in California, or Porter, who was now in the Senate—and then a shake of the hand and good-bye, Neckart usually wondering to himself, as they parted, how soon that fellow Laidley would cease to cumber the earth and the captain would have his own and wear a decent coat again and the bits of gaudy jewelry in which he used ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... that midnight dread, Or venturous less that daring, when La Seine Dismay'd, dismasted, cumber'd with her dead, Struck to the ship ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... to me lately more possible than I knew, to carry a friendship greatly, on one side, without due correspondence on the other. Why should I cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet. Let your greatness educate ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Lybian sands; Princes in gorgeous cathedrals Decked with the spoil of the lands Kinglier, princelier sleeps he Couched 'mid the prairies serene, Only the turf and the willow Him and God's heaven between! Temple nor column to cumber Verdure and bloom of the sod— So, in the vale by Beth-peor, ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... occurred in the Filipinas ships, and the sailors have been permitted to take two or three very large boxes, under pretext that these contain wearing apparel, and thus cumber the ships. We order that no irregularity be permitted in this, and that the utmost circumspection be exercised; and that the sailors be not allowed to carry more boxes or clothing on the said ships than that indispensably needed for the voyage. [Felipe III—San ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... we resided has long since been swept away, with its barns, its piggery, and its shippon. Never more will its cornricks gladden the eye—never more will busy agricultural life be carried on in its precincts. Streets and courts full of houses cumber the ground. No more will the lark be heard over the cornfield—the brook seen running its silvery course—or the apple in the orchard reddening on the bending bough. The lark is represented by a canary in a gilded ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... depended on their vigilance, with their own lives. These assurances had, beyond a doubt, a soothing influence on the apprehensions of Ruth and her handmaidens; but they somewhat failed of their effect, with those unwelcome visiters who still continued to cumber Wish-Ton-Wish with their presence. Though they had evidently abandoned all ideas connected with the original object of their visit, they spoke not of departure. On the contrary as night approached, their chief entered into council with old ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... as a grudging master, As a penurious niggard of his wealth, And live like Natures bastards, not her sons, Who would be quite surcharged with her own weight, And strangl'd with her waste fertility; Th'earth cumber'd, and the wing'd air dark't with plumes. 730 The herds would over-multitude their Lords, The Sea o'refraught would swell, and th'unsought diamonds Would so emblaze the forhead of the Deep, And so bested with Stars, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... we met below, They, too, have long roam'd to and fro; They ramble, leaving, where they pass, Their fragments on the cumber'd grass. And often to some kindly place Chance guides the migratory race, Where, though long wanderings intervene, They recognise a former scene. The dingy tents are pitch'd; the fires Give to the wind their wavering spires; In dark knots crouch round ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... allowed us as many as four wives, and as many women slaves or concubines as a man can properly and with decency provide for, the children of the latter, if recognised by the father, sharing equally with the offspring of the former. Though why a man who has found his love should wish to cumber his house with other women, seething with jealousy and peevish from want of occupation, is beyond ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... when a passing fancy had been gratified, and after a thing was passe they would rather toss it aside than wear it out. In consequence shopkeepers, who studied the market as if it were a thermometer, refused to cumber their counters with expensive goods which must only be shelved after their color or design was out of date. Such conditions had created an American market for cheap silks such as was unknown in Europe where quality was a far greater factor in the sale of silk materials. In the ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett
... a second Robinson Crusoe than sober history. For that reason I have put the corroborative evidence in footnotes, rather than cumber the movement of the main theme. I am sorry to have loaded the opening parts with so many notes; but Radisson's voyages change the relative positions of the other explorers so radically that proofs must be given. The footnotes are for the student and may ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... laughed. "I hain't ergoin' ter 'cumber yore projeck's none ternight," he declared, good-humouredly, then added fairly enough, "but termorrer night I aims ter go sparkin' thar myself—an' I looks ter ye to do as much fer me an' give ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... banks; every aspect of the smoky towns; every caprice of the river; every-tree, every stump; probably every bud and bird in the sky. They talked only of the river; they cared for nothing else. The Cuban cumber and the Philippine folly were equally far from them; the German prince was not only as if he had never been here, but as if he never had been; no public question concerned them but that of abandoning the canals which the Ohio legislature ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the dark thee cumber; What though the moon does slumber? The stars of the night Will lend thee their light, Like ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... under this seven years' weight of misery," replied Hester, fervently resolved to buoy him up with her own energy. "But thou shalt leave it all behind thee! It shall not cumber thy steps, as thou treadest along the forest-path: neither shalt thou freight the ship with it, if thou prefer to cross the sea. Leave this wreck and ruin here where it hath happened. Meddle no more with it! Begin all anew! Hast thou exhausted possibility in the failure of ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... "know what oysters is." Especially on Saturday afternoons does the basket brigade come out in force, and many a homely little idyl may be conjured out of the family groups or the purveying parents who throng and cumber the boat at such times. The capacities of the market-basket, as then and there revealed, are prodigious, rivalling those of the trunk of travel; and yet out of the cover will still protrude the legs of unadjustable "broilers" and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... cannot be uttered, he bring manifold blessings on the parish and ministry which he leaves; while your rich man, if wicked, if of the too common stamp, continues in it, for no better purpose than to distress the faithful pastor, corrupt the people, bring down a curse, and cumber the ground! The great man bears the load of the stipend no more than the poorest cottager. He purchased his estate with this burden upon it, and on that account had its price proportionally abated. Suppose it were otherwise, might not a poor widow's ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... but from the well, Whereof the woman of Samaria crav'd, Excited: haste along the cumber'd path, After my guide, impell'd; and pity mov'd My bosom for the 'vengeful deed, though just. When lo! even as Luke relates, that Christ Appear'd unto the two upon their way, New-risen from his vaulted grave; to us A shade appear'd, and after us approach'd, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... the forces of St. Luc. You would be there, Dagaeoga, to help in the fighting. Go, I am useless. It is not a time to cumber yourself with me." ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... on the correi, Sage counsel in cumber, Red hand in the foray, How sound is thy slumber! Like dew on the mountain, 390 Like the foam on the river, Like the bubble on the fountain ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... both small and large, and he makes them fall as he wishes them to fall. He trims off all branches, and leaves no "slash" to cumber the ground. He buries green branches, in great quantity, in the mud at the bottom of his pond, so that in winter he can get at them under a foot of solid ice. He digs canals, of any length he pleases, to float logs and billets of ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... thee cumber: What though the moon does slumber? The stars of the night Will lend thee their light Like ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... sunken feature of the mummied Past, But oftener only the embroidered folds And soiled magnificence of her rent robe Whose tattered skirts are ruined dynasties That sweep the dust of aeons in our eyes And with their trailing pride cumber the globe.— For lo! the high, imperial Past is dead: The air is full of its dissolved bones; Invincible armies long since vanquished, Kings that remember not their awful thrones, Powerless potentates and foolish sages, Impede the slow ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... continent sundering oceans. Sometimes action is denied, and then it strikes in and makes poets—perhaps the most daring adventurers of all. It must be difficult for the beaters of iron and the barterers in swine to understand why such useless timber is allowed to cumber the great workhouse; but then we don't know exactly what the trilobites were good for, and the utilitarians may find comfort in the reflection that at the present rate the obnoxious family is likely to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... occupied with the strife of Kirk and King, whence arose "all the cumber of Scotland" till 1689. The preachers, led by the learned and turbulent Andrew Melville, had an ever-present terror of a restoration of Catholicism, the creed of a number of the nobles and of an unknown proportion of the people. ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... may's well go arter him—the sooner the better—for I'm no good to nobody now. One old coat 'ull do to patch another, but it's good for nought else. Thee'dst like to ha' a wife to mend thy clothes an' get thy victual, better nor thy old mother. An' I shall be nought but cumber, a-sittin' i' th' chimney-corner. (Adam winced and moved uneasily; he dreaded, of all things, to hear his mother speak of Hetty.) But if thy feyther had lived, he'd ne'er ha' wanted me to go to make room for another, for he could no more ha' done wi'out me nor ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... for prosperity. I fancy there are a good many people unconsciously repeating the mistake of the Canadian farmer—chopping down all the native growths of life, clearing the ground of all the useless pretty things that seem to cumber it, sacrificing everything to utility and success. We fell the last green tree for the sake of raising an extra hill of potatoes; and never stop to think what an ugly, barren place we may have to sit in ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... lowest and with a feeling of consternation and pity, as she thought of the orphan boy, she accepted his greeting with duteous welcome as he said, "Kinswoman, I am come to cumber you, whilst I inquire into this matter. I give your son thanks for the honesty and faithfulness he hath shown in the matter, as befitted his father's son. I should wish myself ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and no place for a relation of personal subserviency. So far as concerns the economic efficiency of the community, the sentiment of personal fealty, and the general habit of mind of which that sentiment is an expression, are survivals which cumber the ground and hinder an adequate adjustment of human institutions to the existing situation. The habit of mind which best lends itself to the purposes of a peaceable, industrial community, is that matter-of-fact temper which ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... awful people, these Finns and ... Greeks," he thought. "Useless, good-for-nothing, disgusting people. They only cumber the earth. What is ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... might ransack every hole and corner of your dim brain, and pick over all the spiders' webs and old iron that cumber your head, without ever lighting on a picklock to open this word and extract the meaning. But for me, my poor friend, you would get yourself hanged and your body burned for a word of one syllable which neither you nor your judges know the sense of, so that none could ever have discovered which ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... take a more decided tack later on: he never said a word about Raymond's going to college, and Raymond, as a fact, never went. He fed his own intellectual furnace, and fed it in his own way. He learned an immense number of useless and unrelated things. In time they came to cumber him. Perhaps college would have been ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... white-apron, and bare arms, came down the little walk, and—eyeing the peer with an awful curiosity—presented the shears to the charming Atropos, who clipped off the withered blossoms that had bloomed their hour, and were to cumber the ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... that come unwelcomed into birth, I'm sorry for the unloved old who cumber up the earth. I'm sorry for the suffering poor in life's great maelstrom hurled, In truth I'm sorry for them all ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... fortify thee, and secure itself in thee, so that vehement blasts shall but contribute to its more fixed abode, and more fruitful actings in thee. Live up then to the gospel, and so be sure of it, and be safe in it. I mean, let Christ live in thee as thy all, and cast all thy care and cumber on him; lay all thy difficulties before him; lean all thy weight upon him; draw all thy necessities out of him: and undertake all thy duties in him; be strong in him, and in the power of his might; let him be thy counsellor, conductor, leader, teacher, captain, commander, light, life, strength, ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... exclaimed, "there is enough clothing in those two cases to last us for the rest of our lives; to say nothing of that third case which you say is full of unmade silks and linen. Surely it was scarcely necessary to cumber yourself ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... not all. It would also follow that the names of substances would not only have, as in truth they have, but would also be supposed to have different significations, as used by different men, which would very much cumber the use of language. For if every distinct quality that were discovered in any matter by any one were supposed to make a necessary part of the complex idea signified by the common name given to it, it must follow, that men must suppose the same word to signify different things in different men: ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... investigation and the most incontrovertible proof before it could be accepted without suspicion or reserve. The various collections of her plays and novels which appeared in the first half of the eighteenth century give us nothing; nay, they rather cumber our path with the trash of discredited Memoirs. Pearson's reprint (1871) is entirely valueless: there is no attempt, however meagre, at editing, no effort to elucidate a single allusion; moreover, several of the Novels— and the Poems in their entirety— are lacking. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... of that: the worthless ones are too often left to cumber the earth; it is the precious ones who are taken," he said, thinking of her as he looked into her tired face, and remembered all she ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... the Review for telling a raw-head and bloody bones story about him. I have given the right version of the tale willingly, but this does not satisfy. I almost wish they would turn out a clansman to be free of the cumber. The vexation of having to do with ladies, who on such a point must be unreasonable, is very great. With a man it would be soon ended or mended. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... tedious things, difficult things, enduring things. It has only a hundred years to do them in, and two of these years are gone already. We must be up and bestir ourselves. If we are called to help in this work, there is no time for an idle minute. Idle men and idle women no doubt will cumber our way, for there are many who have never heard of the work to do, many who will never know that there has been a new century. These the century will pass by with the gentle tolerance she shows to clams and squirrels, but on ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
... of honesty," Rodney commented. "Well, I'm glad, because I don't see what you want to cumber yourself with all those cushions and rugs for. You're quite comfortable enough ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... were theirs. Yet, where are the literature, village libraries, social organizations, or other agencies of enlightenment promoted by them? Has not the country rotted and the emigrant ship been glutted? Away with them! Why cumber they ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... He seemed to vanish from my sight; The moonbeam drooped, and deepest night Sunk down upon the heath. 'Twere long to tell what cause I have To know his face, that met me there, Called by his hatred from the grave, To cumber upper air; Dead or alive, good cause had he To be my ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... the upper classes of all countries, the people who travel, and have to stand the nuisance and loss of changing their money at every frontier, the bankers and international merchants who have to cumber their accounts with the fluctuating item of exchange between commercial centres will insist upon it. All the European nations, with the exception of Russia and Turkey, are ready for the change, and when these reach the stage of real constitutionalism in their ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... We need little doctrine to live at our ease; and Socrates teaches us that this is in us, and the way how to find it, and the manner how to use it: All our sufficiency which exceeds the natural is well-nigh superfluous and vain: 'tis much if it does not rather burden and cumber us ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Instrument] balance, scale, scales, steelyard, beam, weighbridge[obs3]; spring balance, piezoelectric balance, analytical balance, two-pan balance, one-pan balance; postal scale, baby scale. [Science of gravity] statics. V. be heavy &c. adj.; gravitate, weigh, press, cumber, load. [Measure the weight of] weigh, poise. Adj. weighty; weighing &c. v.; heavy as lead; ponderous, ponderable; lumpish[obs3], lumpy, cumbersome, burdensome; cumbrous, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... weight. Like many other difficulties in this world, the solidification of the Chat Moss was said to be impossible, but the great engineer scarce admitted the propriety of allowing the word "impossible" to cumber our dictionaries. He began the work at once by forming an embankment twenty feet high, which he carried some distance across the treacherous soil, when the whole affair sank down one day and disappeared! ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... distinction between tavern-keepers and princesses. As they talked with Elizabeth and her friend the countess, discoursing upon heavenly themes, they were interrupted by the rattling of a coach, and callers were announced. The countess "fetched a deep sigh, crying out, 'O the cumber and entanglements of this vain world! They hinder all good.' Upon which," says William, "I replied, looking her steadfastly in the face, 'O come thou out of them, then.'" This journey was of great importance as affecting afterwards the population of Pennsylvania. Here it ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... everything they do is on the largest scale. Size, speed, and prominence are the three gods of their idolatry. They are not content until they—the citizens—are all prominent, and their buildings are all the largest that cumber the earth. It is a great comfort to those who gamble away their substance in the Board of Trade to reflect that the weathercock that surmounts its tower is the biggest ever seen by human eye. There is not one of them that will not tell you, with a satisfied smile, that the slowest ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... that have grown to be part of ourselves as well as of our stock-in-trade; and when this movement has gone far we are "jaded," are unfit to estimate the value of new ideas; we are still competent to apply the old theories to plays and acting based on them, but of course cumber the ground and retard progress. In youth, having few theories of our own or that have cost us enough labour in acquirement to seem very precious, we tend to be over-hospitable to new ideas and accept ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... your own principles, that say, shepherds use few ceremonies, for that they acquaint themselves with few subtleties: to frame myself, therefore, to your country fashion with much faith and little flattery, know, beautiful shepherdess, that whilst I lived in the court I knew not love's cumber, but I held affection as a toy, not as a malady; using fancy as the Hyperborei do their flowers, which they wear in their bosom all day, and cast them in the fire for fuel at night. I liked all, because I loved none, and who was most fair, on her I fed mine eye, ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... Volsungs, and the gathered heart of these, And their still unquenched desire for garnering fame's increase? E'en so do I hearken thy words: for I wot how they deem it long Till a man from their seed be arisen to deal with the cumber and wrong. Bid me therefore to sit by thy side, for behold I wend on my way, And the gates swing-to behind me, and each day of mine is a day With deeds in the eve and the morning, nor deeds shall the noontide lack; To ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... life, just as if the business of this mighty world could be carried on by innocent people fond of ease or quiet, or that Providence would permit innocent quiet drones to occupy any portion of the earth and to cumber it. God had at any rate decreed that this man should not cumber it as a drone. He brings a certain affliction upon him, the agony of which produces that terrible whirling of the brain which, unless it is stopped in time, produces madness; he suffers indescribable misery for a period, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... sacred bones, or we will shake out our frills and tumble them in the dust. Domestic cats may mioul in the garden at night to a certain extent, but a line must be drawn; after that they must be chased up trees and barked at, if necessary, all night. Opossums and native cats are unfit to cumber the earth, and must be hunted into holes, wherever possible. Cows and other horned animals must not come into the yard, or even look over the garden fence, under penalties. Black fellows must be barked at, and their dogs chased to the uttermost ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... objects in the open plain, hill, and pasture. Great numbers of them have become standards; we see them following the lines of old stone walls that skirt the bounds and avenues of the farm, in company with the Ash and the Maple. In these situations, where they would not "cumber the ground," they have been allowed to grow, without exciting the jealousy of the proprietor of the land. Accident, under these circumstances, has reared many a beautiful tree, which would in any other ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... something of reason. Let him hear from Miss Lucy's own lips that she hath dutifully acceded to the will of her parents, and repenteth her of her covenant with him; and when he is assured of this he will depart in peace unto his own dwelling, and cumber us no more. Alas! the workings of the ancient Adam are strong even in the regenerate; surely we should have long-suffering with those who, being yet in the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity, are ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... was gone, his limbs could not rise, and his breath was taken from him; the hole that he had made was filled up behind him; fresh volumes from the shaken height came pouring down upon him; his flanks and his back were wedged fast in the cumber, and he stood still ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... bondsmen when alone, That further rules you will not break, And marriage liberties partake? Some really do, as I suppose, Upon design keep on some clothes, And yet in truth I'm not afraid For to describe a bundling maid; She'll sometimes say when she lies down, She can't be cumber'd with a gown, And that the weather is so warm, To take it off can be no harm: The girl it seems had been at strift; For widest bosom to her shift, She gownless, when the bed they're in, The spark, nought feels but naked skin. But she is modest, also chaste, While only bare from neck ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... corrected and enlarged. We have a memorable instance of this policy in the Athenian envoys, who, upon receiving a most ominous doom, but obscurely expressed, from the Delphic Oracle, which politely concluded by saying, "And so get out, you vagabonds, from my temple—don't cumber my decks any longer;" were advised to answer sturdily—"No!—we shall not get out—we mean to sit here forever, until you think proper to give us a more reasonable reply." Upon which spirited rejoinder, the Pythia saw the policy of revising her ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... is now disgusted with this cumber of magnificence; yet I cannot refuse myself the four ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... Holly," she said, "this people founded the city, of which the ruins yet cumber the plain yonder, four thousand years before this cave was finished. Yet, when first mine eyes beheld it two thousand years ago, was it even as it is now. Judge, therefore, how old must that city have been! And now, follow thou me, and I will show ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... rapture of popular air, And caught to the place that was best? You think he could barter and cheat As vulgar diplomates use, With the people's heart in his breast? Prate a lie into shape Lest truth should cumber the road; Play at the fast and loose Till the world is strangled with tape; Maim the soul's complete To fit the hole of a toad; And filch the dogman's meat To feed the offspring ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... of human beings, it is naught unless it is valued; but, being valued, it is a treasure beyond price. Cold, glittering, and dumb, it stands among the tasteless splendors with which the wealthy ignorant cumber their dreary abodes,—a thing of ostentation merely,—as uninteresting as the women who surround it, gorgeously apparelled, but without conversation, conscious of defective parts of speech. "There is much music, excellent voice, in that little organ," but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... Lord Cameron, eagerly; "and if they prove to be what I want, you shall have the price Mac Cumber is going to charge me for these—it ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... wound should be ever fresh than that the image of the dear past should fade. It would be a loss to our best life if it would fade. There is no sting in such a faith. Such remembrance as this, which keeps the heart green, will not cumber the life. True sentiment does not weaken, but becomes an inspiration to make our life worthy of our love. It can save even a squalid lot from sordidness; for however poor we may be in the world's goods, ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... beams, bell ropes and things be fearfully dusty and cumber the housekeeper with too much serving? I supposed you would vote for smooth, flat, hard wood and painted walls, they are so much ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... life, I should be glad to be the sacrifice. And then when I thought of myself as the cause of all this suffering, it seemed as if it ought not to be a matter of wonder or complaint if the verdict should be, that such a wretch should cumber the earth no longer. And yet, Agnes, in the eye of Him who looketh only on the heart, I believe I was as much a murderer when I struck down my school-mate in the play-ground as now. For in the height of my passion then, ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... rises without a hope, night by night she lies down vacant or apathetic; and the utmost use she can make of the day is to totter three or four times across the floor by the assistance of her staff. Yet, though we wonder that she is still permitted to cumber the ground, joyless and weary, "the tomb of her dead self," we look at this dry leaf, and think how green it once was, and how the birds sung to it in its ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... They envied her rejection of a serious suitor such as John. It was rumored the latter was taking to liquor, and she was blamed for it. Women often like to have others say yes to the first man who comes, and not leave old love affairs to cumber the ground. And girls, however loving to their friends, have but a cold sympathy for their sex ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... me. You are like the others. When the fire has touched their eyes and indeed they see the things that are, they fall on their knees and they tear away at the weeds and rubbish that cumber the earth, and they never lift their eyes, and soon their frame grows weary and their heart cold. Be wise, man. The mark is upon you. Those live best and work best in this world who have a soul for its beauties. Women, for instance," he went on, smoking furiously. "What help do you make of ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the tapestry, and turned with a premonitory cough. "Thus ends the comedy," said he, shrugging, "with much fine, harmless talking about 'always,' while the world triumphs. Invariably the world triumphs, my children. Eheu, we are as God made us, we men and women that cumber His stately earth!" He drew his arm through Raoul's. "Farewell, niece," said Sieur Raymond, smiling; "I rejoice that you are cured of your malady. Now in respect to gerfalcons—" said he. ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... seemed to me lately more possible than I knew, to carry a friendship greatly, on one side, without due correspondence on the other. Why should I cumber myself with the poor fact that the receiver is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet.... It is thought a disgrace to love unrequited. But the great will see that ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... every one wounded became a serviceable clod; rapidly as the dump and cumber of humanity filled the moat the ladders extended their upward reach; while drum-beat, battle-cry, trumpet's blare, and the roar of cannon answering cannon blent into one ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... Maxwell's absent, incurious eyes, the bride had seemed a lively, pretty little person enough. No doubt it was the nervous strain of his political life that made such fancies possible to him. Let him not cumber her ears with them! ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... covered with what at a distance resembled loose boards, but which were actually the long marble seats of the stadium. Urging our horses over piles of loose blocks, we reached the base of the theatre, climbed the fragments that cumber the main entrance, and looked on the spacious arena and galleries within. Although greatly ruined, the materials of the whole structure remain, and might be put together again. It is a grand wreck; the colossal fragments ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... it; and why not? What use are these manikins in creation? Only to cumber the earth. Well, mozo, you ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... the French differ from us and from the Spaniards, is that they do not embarrass or cumber themselves with too much Plot. They only represent so much of a Story as will constitute One whole and great Action sufficient for a Play. We, who undertake more, do but multiply Adventures [pp. 541, 552]; ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... beyond the reach of chronic ribaldry, and into the region of argument, where it must be estimated by its legal merits. I have applied to it the rules of law. I have pushed away the dead exfoliations that cumber the path; and have gone to the foundations, to the ever fresh and preserving spirit of the rules of the common law, and have sought to ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... start, the sudden quickening of his glance told her how shrewdly she had struck home. Fearlessly, then, sure of herself, she continued. "To that end they use you. When you shall have served it you will but cumber them. When they shall have used you to procure their security from me, then they will deal with you as they have ever sought to deal with you—so that you trouble them no more. Ali, at ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... their own doings the only darling of their soul, while others cast it to the dogs. And why should a man cumber himself with what is his, when the good of all that is in Christ is laid, and to be laid out for him? Not that a believer casts off to do good, for he knows that what good thing is done in faith and love, is acceptable to God, and profitable to his neighbour. But this ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... men, and go in, and take all the loot you can find. The jewels we will divide among the men when at Meerut. Tell off another party to loot the rest of the rooms, but only take what is really valuable and portable. We cannot cumber ourselves with baggage. It would serve the rajah right if I were to burn his castle down; he may think himself lucky to get ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... the Scout. What if he met Jim Wigson on the way? What if Aunt Hannah, still unreconciled, turned him from the door? No matter! Rancour and grief have no hold on mortals walking in such an April world—in such an exquisite and sunlit beauty. On! let thought and nature be enough! Why complicate and cumber life with relations that do but give a foothold to pain, and offer ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... enough, wi' only one daughter to leave it to, an' I says to myself, says I, it's time to leave off moitherin' myself wi' this world so much, an' give more time to thinkin' of another. But there's a many hours atween getting up an' lyin' down, an' thoughts are no cumber; you can move about wi' a good many on 'em in your head. ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... which I have the bequeathing. She has something from Willebald, and her dull husband makes a livelihood. 'Twill suffice for the female brats, of whom she has brought three into the world to cumber it.... By the Gospels, she will lie on the bed she has made. I did not scheme and toil to make gold for ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... it. I am such a vagabond still, even at my present time of life, that I couldn't hold to the gallery a month together if it was a regular pursuit or if I didn't camp there, gipsy fashion. Come! I disgrace nobody and cumber nobody; that's something. I have not done that for ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... homewards," and in April 1576, he landed at Dover in an exceedingly sulky mood. He refused to see his wife, and told Burghley he might take his daughter into his own house again, for he was resolved "to be rid of the cumber."[139] He accused his father-in-law of holding back money due to him, although Burghley states that Oxford had in one year L5700.[140] Considering that Robert Sidney, afterwards Earl of Leicester, ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... sense than pridethey cannot oblige me to transmit my goods chattels, and heritages, any way but as I please. No string of substitute heirs of entail, as empty and unsubstantial as the morsels of paper strung to the train of a boy's kite, to cumber my flights of inclination, and my humours of predilection. Well,I see you won't be tempted at presentbut Caledonia ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... not allowed to cumber the crease this season," said Horace, bowling his cigarette-end into the darkness with a distinct swerve in the air. "To have him called our 'pocket edition,' on the cricket-field of all places, is a ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... interior Indians will never bear the strain of development. Lazy and ambitionless, they are incapable of uniting their tribal forces. Alas for them! They merely cumber ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... is the bustle and cumber of the world, that will call a man off from looking after the salvation of his soul. This is intimated by the parable of the thorny ground. (Luke 8:14) Worldly cumber is a devilish thing; it will hurry ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... God disturbs the heavy silence. And the silence, and the emptiness, and the greyness under the long arcades, all seem to make a tremulous proclamation; all seem to whisper, "I am very old, I am useless, I cumber the earth." Even the mosque of Amru, which stands also on ground that looks gone to waste, near dingy and squat houses built with grey bricks, seems less old than this mosque of Ibn-Tulun. For its long facade is striped with white and apricot, and there are ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... Author's increasing desire to gather his past and present writings into a consistent body, illustrated by one series of plates, purchasable in separate parts, and numbered consecutively. Of other prefatory matter, once intended,—apologetic mostly,—the reader shall be spared the cumber: and a clear prospectus issued by the publisher of the new series of plates, as soon as they are ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... of those early glories to realise that if he would regain happiness, he must "become, as it were, a little child again," get free of "the burden and cumber of devised wants," and recapture the value and the glory of the common ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... and how thick the trees stood on it I could hardly believe it possible we could clear the land of them, yet we have been here scarce three months and there is a great slash. Taking the trees one by one and perseverance has done it. Burning the felled trees that cumber the ground is the next undertaking. This cutting out a home from the bush is work that exhausts body and mind, but the reward is what makes life sweet to ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... however, not to let Robert know of the substitution of Boston for the fiddle, because he knew Robert could not tell a lie. Therefore, when he murmured over the volume some of its own words which he had read the preceding Sunday, it was in a quite inaudible whisper: 'Now is it good for nothing but to cumber the ground, and furnish ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... problems of the fundamental law, and a rearrangement and different allocation of the functions of government, this challenges the closest thought of the publicist. That the problem is here crying aloud for solution is apparent. The publications which cumber the counters of our book-stores, those for which the greatest popular call to-day exists—treatises relating to trade interests, to collectivism, to socialism, even to anarchism—tell the tale in part; in part it is elsewhere and otherwise ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams
... certainly freshen up the place, would take something from its character. For a second-hand bookseller who respects himself must present an exterior which has something of faded splendor, of worn paint and shabbiness. Within the shop, books line the walls and cumber the floor. There are an outer and an inner shop; in the former a small table stands among the books, at which Mr. James, the assistant, is always at work cataloguing, when he is not tying up parcels; sometimes even with gum and paste repairing ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... was gone; there was left only its cold bitterness and a vague sense that it ought no longer to cumber the ground, but would better go away as soon as possible and spare the wood folk any more suffering. The litter of a score of storms covered its soiled rough surface; every shred of bark had left its dark stain where the decaying sap had melted and spread in the ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... canon, "this is your sort, is it? I'll have nought to do with it! Preaching, preaching! Every idle child's head is agog on preaching nowadays! A plague on it! Why can't Master Dean leave it to the black friars, whose vocation 'tis, and not cumber us with his sermons for ever, and set every lazy lad thinking he must needs run after them? No, no, my good boy, take my advice. Thou shalt have two good bellyfuls a day, all my cast gowns, and a pair of shoes by the year, with a groat a month if thou wilt keep ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... thought from him. In the first place, he was by no means sure that escape was what he wanted—not yet, at any rate; in the second place, if Gabriel Druse passed the word along the subterranean wires of the Romany world that Jethro Fawe should vanish, he would not long cumber the ground. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... shameful life as Moses has written of. Such sin breaks out only where there is an assurance that they have enough to eat and drink and to spare, and idleness is joined therewith; just as we still see, the richer cities are the more shamefully do men live in them; but where there is hunger and cumber there the sins are so much the fewer. Therefore God permits, in regard to those that are His, that their education should be severe, that they may ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... have taken her bow from her back, but he laughed aloud, and said: Nay, nay, I will not have that; for there be those who gird them to a sword and know not how to use it, but few will cumber their shoulders with bow and quiver who cannot shoot therewith; I deem it like that thou art a fell bowman. Keep thy bow therefore, and if thou wilt go without any other gift, even ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... are now withered and torn, and their red blood oozes slowly from their bodies in thin and trickling streams. You think of Ossian's heroes, of Thor and his hammer, of the Anakim or of the steeple-high Brobdignagian cavalry, and almost expect to hear groans issuing from the colossal trunks that cumber ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... writer in Edinburgh, John Binning's greatest enemy, being very active to obtain the gift of his forefaulture, with a designe of his ruine, and the prejudice of his numerous and just creditors, the deceased Mr. James Gordon, minister at Cumber in Ireland, John Binning's father in law and former Curator, to whom he was oweing a considerable soume of money, came over to Scotland, at John Binning's desire, who was then in Ireland, to obtaine the said gift, to disappoint Matthew Colvill thereof, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... corrie, Sage counsel in cumber, Red hand in the foray, How sound is thy slumber! Like the dew on the mountain, Like the foam on the river, Like the bubble on the fountain, Thou art gone, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... connected by a high-road. Having disclosed my intentions to La Trape, I left this road and struck into a woodland path which promised to conduct us in the right direction. But the luxuriance of the undergrowth, and the huge chaos of grey rocks which cumber that part of the forest, made it difficult to keep for any time in a straight line. After being an hour in the saddle we concluded that we had lost our way, and were confirmed in this, on reaching a clearing. In place of the chateau we saw before us ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... been at Thornleigh a little more than a week, when Mr. Darrell one morning proposed a drive to a place called Cumber Priory, which was one of the show-houses of the neighbourhood. It was a very old place, he said, and had been one of the earliest monastic settlements in that part of the country. Milly and her father and her cousin had been there a great many times, and the ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... "are a race which will not be said nay. But, father prior, I am myself, it may be, an intruder of this kind; for my sojourning hath been long among you, and my retinue, though far fewer than the Douglas's, are nevertheless enough to cumber you for their daily maintenance; and though our order is to send out purveyors to lessen your charge as much as may be, yet if there be inconvenience, it were fitting we should remove ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... Daedalus, they say, both in this and in other, hath three wings to bear itself up into the air of due commendation; that is art, imitation, and exercise. But these, neither artificial rules, nor imitative patterns, we much cumber ourselves withal. Exercise, indeed, we do, but that very forebackwardly; for where we should exercise to know, we exercise as having known; and so is our brain delivered of much matter which never was ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... ramparts of heaven; I cannot divine what holds thee here in a net. I, too, have a counsel for thee; O mark it and keep it. Since I received the same from the Master above: Seek not for faith or for truth in a world of light-minded girls; A thousand suitors reckons this dangerous bride. Cumber thee not for the world, and this my precept forget not, 'Tis but a toy that a vagabond sweetheart has left us. Accept whatever befalls; uncover thy brow from thy locks; Never to me nor to thee was option imparted; ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... There need be no delay. I have no wife nor children to cumber me. My trunks are already packed; my resolve made; my last business transacted I have some lands in Alabama which I mean to sell. This done, I am off for the great field of performance, south and ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... sincere ones too) who have not attained to that fruitfullness, altho they aime at perfection: And again there are others that have nothing to commend them but only a gay profession, and these are but leavie Christians, which are in as much danger of being cut down as the dry stock, for both cumber ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... accompanying Dick, and five minutes later the pair, with their sable guide leading the way and carrying the medicine chest, were en route for the village, Dick carrying his case of surgical instruments under his arm. Their rifles they left with the wagon, deeming it unnecessary to cumber themselves with superfluous weapons in face of the fact that the villagers were obviously quite friendly disposed to white men, indeed they were still too close to ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... Indians would not live either on the village side of The Stone or in the valley beyond. They had a legend that, some day, one, whom they called The Man Who Sleeps, would rise from his hidden couch in the mountains, and, being angry that any dared to cumber his playground, would hurl The Stone upon them that dwelt at Purple Hill. But white men pay little heed to Indian legends. At one time or another every person who had come to the village visited The Stone. Colossal as it was, the real base ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... rude leveller! Of late, thy dungeon-harpings were Of discontent and wrong; And we, the Privileged, were banned For cumber-grounds of ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... to do, and has even that little done for him by his chief clerk, Zolotucha. The Inspector of the Medical Department is also a man of leisure, and likely to be at home—if he has not gone out to a card party. Others also there are—all men who cumber ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... cumber Egypt no longer," the murket muttered after a little; "and the quarrel between them shall be at an end. The hour approacheth when every Hebrew shall leave Egypt—shall be driven forth if he leave it ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... n'ai pas la pretention de m'affubler d'un titre que la mauvaise fortune de mon roi ne me permet pas de porter comma il sied. Je m'appelle, pour vous servir, Blair de Balmile tout court.' [My lord, I have not the effrontery to cumber myself with a title which the ill fortunes of my king will not suffer me to bear the way it should be. I call myself, at your service, plain Blair ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... two pieces; the line should not exceed (especially for three or four links towards the hook) I say, not exceed three or four haires; but if you can attain to Angle with one haire; you will have more rises, and catch more fish. Now you must bee sure not to cumber yourselfe with too long a Line, as most do: and before you begin to angle, cast to have the wind on your back, and the Sun (if it shines) to be before you, and to fish down the streame, and carry the point or tip of the Rod downeward; by which meanes the shadow of yourselfe, ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... slumber, The hours I number, And sad cares cumber My weary mind, This thought shall cheer me: That thou art near me, Whose ear to hear me Is ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... child, but sometimes a little glimpse. But you should see the pictures of our holy Father Angelico, to whom the angels appeared constantly; for so blessed was the life he lived, that it was more in heaven than on earth. He would never cumber his mind with the things of this world, and would not paint for money, nor for prince's favor; nor would he take places of power and trust in the Church, or else, so great was his piety, they had made a bishop of him; but he kept ever aloof and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... and had a good bed in which to sleep. Where she was sinned against was in this: that her family looked upon her white hair and her wrinkles and arrived at the erroneous conclusion that her interest in life was gone—in short, that she was content to cumber the earth and to wait for the long sleep. To them she was simply one who tarries and is content. Scattergood looked into her sharp, old eyes, eyes that were capable of sudden gleams of humor or flashes of anger, and he knew. He knew ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... earth its horrible And old idolatries;—from the proud fanes Each to his grave their priests go out, till none Is left to teach their worship; then the fires Of sacrifice are chilled, and the green moss O'ercreeps their altars; the fallen images Cumber the weedy courts, and for loud hymns, Chanted by kneeling multitudes, the wind Shrieks in the solitary aisles. When he Who gives his life to guilt, and laughs at all The laws that God or man has made, and round Hedges his seat with power, and shines in wealth,— Lifts up his atheist ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant |
