"Pother" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and the insurgent and free poets didn't trouble Mary Virginia very much. Although she sensed that something was wrong with somebody somewhere—hence these lyrical lamentations—she could not, to save her, tell what all the pother was about, for as yet she saw the world couleur de rose. Some one or two of the French and Germans pleased her; she fell into long reveries over the Gael, who has the sound of the sea in his voice ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... despised himself acutely. Of course, he had hours and moods when he felt that he must lift up his voice and shout aloud to all men—What? That he did not know exactly what he did believe? For, in reality, that was all the whole pother was amounting to. What was the use in starting the alarm, when the whole great crisis might be merely a matter of imagination, of indigestion, even, as Doctor Keltridge had diagnosed it? In that case, the best, the only remedy ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... Aberdeen's vacillating policy on the Eastern Question. The nation accepted Lord Palmerston's resignation in a matter-of-fact manner, which probably surprised no one more than himself. The Derbyites, oddly enough, made the most pother about the affair; but a man on the verge of seventy, and especially one like Lord Palmerston with few illusions, is apt to regard the task of forming a new party as a game which is not worth the candle. The truth is, Palmerston, like other clever men before and ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... cleared the puzzle. The office of the company is on the Strand above the Savoy. Mrs. Farmingham went to the manager and showed him a lot of papers she had in an official-looking envelope. After a good bit of official pother the porters carried out a big portmanteau, a sort of heavy leather traveling case, and put it into the carriage. Mrs. Farmingham came to Hargrave where he ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... thing here to the child: That thing, I mean, among the kale; And here's to buy a pot of ale. The clerk said to her in a heat, What! sell my master's country seat, Where he comes every week from town! He would not sell it for a crown. Poh! fellow, keep not such a pother; In half an hour thou'lt make another. Says Nancy,[6] I can make for miss A finer house ten times than this; The dean will give me willow sticks, And Joe my apron-full ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... hardly courteous, but, stripped of its verbiage, that is the accusation as it is made. Now, as there are usually at least some smouldering embers of fire where there is smoke, there is just one small item of truth behind all this pother. No Catholic, scientific man or otherwise, who really honours his Faith would desire wilfully to advance theories apparently hostile to its teaching. Further, even if he were convinced of the truth of facts ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... up on the beach and seemed to try to embrace the earth, possess it. But it fell away baffled. Over its subsiding pother sprang a new wave with the same bosomful of desire and the same frantic clutching here and there—the same rebuff, the same destruction under the surge of the next and the next. The descending night gave a strange pathos ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... about the place, dried-up Garulies running around, dandy-looking Pickaninnies hopping about, and Joblilies swimming in the lake. We asked what it all meant, and were told that "she was going to marry the barber;" and then they all tittered, and we could not for the life of us tell what this pother meant. When we told a Garuly that we wanted to see the Great Panjandrum himself, and to find out whether there was a bag of gold at the end of the rainbow, he took our one-eyed beetle, and gave the four-leaved clover to a Pickaninny. Together they took them into the house, and a Joblily came ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... coward fool. Did I not tell thee that there are no Gods? lo! you now! for what should they have roused this trumpery pother, if not to strike me? Tush, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... have her way," whispered Lucy, "she is but a child, and it will be better not to make a pother." ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... but in Dunstable they crawled upon their bellies. I thought the landlady would have kissed me; such a flutter of cordiality, such smiles, such affectionate attentions were called forth, and the good lady bustled on my service in such a pother of ringlets and with such a jingling of keys. 'You're probably expected, sir, at the Place? I do trust you may 'ave better accounts of his lordship's 'elth, sir. We understood that his lordship, Mosha de Carwell, was main bad. Ha, sir, we shall all feel his loss, poor, dear, ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... father sent I was not told; but two days later, a little before sundown, I saw a plain, honest-looking man ride slowly up the road in a great pother of dust. He was clad in homespun, with a broad straw hat; wore a patriarchal beard; and had an air of a simple rustic farmer, that was, in my eyes, very reassuring. He was, indeed, a very honest man and pious Mormon; ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... All this petty pother arose since Niecks' comprehensive biography appeared. So sure was he of his facts that he disposed of the pseudo-date in one footnote. Perhaps the composer was to blame; artists, male as well as female, have been known to make themselves younger in years by conveniently forgetting their birthdate, ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... difference! In Adolphe a coal from the altar of true passion has touched lips in themselves polluted enough, and the result is what it always is in such, alas! rare cases, whether the lips were polluted or not. In Delphine there is a desperate pother to strike some sort of light and get some sort of heat; but the steel is naught, the flint is clay, the tinder is mouldy, and the wood is damp and rotten. No glow of brand or charcoal follows, and the lips, untouched by it, utter nothing but rhetoric and fustian and, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... brows and shrugged impatient shoulders. Here was a deal of pother about a trifling affair. "His lordship saw you as he entered, sir, and inquired of ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... in God's name, is all this pother about? For what cause do they embitter their own and other people's lives? That a man should publish three or thirty articles a year, that he should finish or not finish his great allegorical picture, are questions of little interest to the world. The ranks of ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said Dickon admiringly, "what a wonder tha' art! Tha' always sees a way out o' things. They was quite in a pother yesterday. They didn't see how they was to manage without orderin' up more ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... shall this bubbl'd nation disabuse, While they their own felicities refuse? Who at the wars have made such mighty pother, And now are falling out with one another: With needless fears the jealous nations fill, And always have been sav'd against their will: Who fifty millions sterling have disburs'd To be with peace, and too much ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... places when a bridge has to be made, there is an infinite pother and worry about building the piers, coffer-dams, and heaven knows what else. Some swing their bridges to avoid this trouble, and some try to throw an arch of one span from side to side. There are a thousand different tricks. ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... Dr. Sarkantyus, and a very great pother he made, insisting that the whole company should instantly hasten back to town, as if they remained there the pale death would speedily overtake them, and it would therefore boot them little to have escaped from the red ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... rum ones, who make up this pother; Who gape and stare, just like stuck pigs at each other, As mirrors, wherein, at full length do appear, Your follies reflected so apish and ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... stupified and indignant, yet he could hardly help smiling at the pother. "What," said he, "have I to do with all this? I have paid for everything; I am surely entitled to go away if I like. Remember, that if I lose my passage to Boston, ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... is what ails me; I am growing shiftless. When I came on board I decided to marry Arthur, and have done with the pother. Now I am at the same place as when I left home. I don't want to marry anybody. Have ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... after, the wind sallied forth, And, in anger or merriment, out of the north, Coming on with a terrible pother, 15 From the peak of the crag blew the giant away. And what did these school-boys?—The very next day They went ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... "But why all this pother? Why not let me send a knave or two and knock the fellow some dark night in the head? It will save us ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... That keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads, Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch, That hast within thee undivulged crimes Unwhipp'd of justice: hide thee, thou bloody hand; Thou perjur'd, and thou simular man of virtue That art incestuous: caitiff, to pieces shake That under covert and convenient seeming ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... I begin first to make myself believe that I am in love—but I carry on my affairs quite in the French way, sentimentally—l'amour (say they) n'est rien sans sentiment. Now, notwithstanding they make such a pother about the word, they have no precise idea annexed to it. And so much for that same subject called love."—STERNE'S Letters, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... tempest had somewhat spent itself, she retreated to her brothers, to whom she poured out a full and animated account of the night's happenings. They all agreed that Mademoiselle must have rats in the upper story to make such a pother over the adventure, though Maxwell, who held himself to be approaching years of discretion, gave it as his opinion that the whole thing was a piece of bad luck and an experiment ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... Ridiculous! I thought, by your pother, that she had been your friend's wife, or ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... laid until a shower fall of blows—a shower of blows, kicks and cudgel-thwacks, to smother the angry conflagration. God knows how it all came about?" He smiles again, reflectively, over the recollection of the lovely quiet evening it was, the terrific discordant pother that arose,—the lovely and hushed night that presently resumed her reign. The incident looks fantastic now. "An imp must have had a hand in it!" is the poet's fanciful induction; "A glow-worm could not find his ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... truth-speaking man by habit," he began after a long gaze upwards at the rooks now settling to roost and making a mighty pother of it. "But I'm afraid there's no getting round the fact that this afternoon I acted a lie. And yet, on the whole, ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... approach rapidly from behind. But you must drop flat when the crows perceive you; for the owl is sure to take a look around for the cause of their sudden alarm. If he sees nothing suspicious he will return to his shelter to eat his crow, or just to rest his sensitive ears after all the pother. A quarter-mile away the crows sit ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... he had laid them all away in their proper places, so that he might know where to find them; though, for that matter, he was half his time worrying about the house in search of some book or writing which he had carefully put out of the way. I shall never forget what a pother he once made, because my wife cleaned out his room when his back was turned, and put everything to rights; for he swore he would never be able to get his papers in order again in a twelve-month. Upon this my wife ventured to ask him, what he did with so many books and papers? and he told ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... pother, after all, the unwise of this world are wont to make about one stranded gambling-house, in a remote corner of Liguria! If they were in earnest or sincere, how small a matter they would think it! Of course, when ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... was, at that moment, that a sharp little, gray little, dark-spotted, clean-cut, close-cropped, intelligent head, on a snaky, long neck, peeped out of the shadows, and peered about, as if to see what in whiskers all the pother was about. The head might have been there by chance, but it wasn't. Its owner had been running her trail for hours, and looking for it for days, and didn't mean to let her go, now that he had finally come up with her, polecats or no polecats, smells or not. But he was not a fool. He knew the game, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... her hands airily. "What a pother!" she cried. "What does it matter whether poor little Alice Adams goes to a ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... in my young memory, and would have done so even had I not had that tangible memento of them. Who were they, those two of whom that one strange glimpse had befallen me? What, I wondered, was the previous history of each? What, in particular, had all that tragic pother been about? Mlle. Ange'lique I guessed to be thirty years old, her friend perhaps fifty-five. Each of their faces was as clear to me as in the moment of actual vision—the man's fat shiny bewildered face; the taut white face of the ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... to provide our meat and bread! Where the eager crowd is moiling, struggling on with weary tread! Battling with stockjobbing ladies, meeting all their wiles and tricks, or embarking in the Hades of the city's politics! But forgotten is the pother, all the work day cares are gone, when she comes home to dear father with his nice clean apron on! There's your chair, he says; "sit in it; supper will be cooked eftsoons: I will dish it in a minute—scrambled eggs and shredded prunes." It is good to watch him moving round the stove with eager ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... after the Wind sallied forth, And, in anger or merriment, out of the North Coming on with a terrible pother, From the peak of the crag blew the Giant away. And what did these School-boys?—The very next day They went and ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... to their feet of three camels by voice persuasion alone is no mean performance, but no voice, not even the vocal chords of the Archangel Gabriel, would have moved the cause of all this pother, for at the word of command, in a tone which should have put fear of death into her black heart, she slightly shifted her hind-quarters ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... my chair and gazed steadily at Chord; but his eyes would not bring themselves to meet mine, and so he made some pother about filling up his cup again, with the neck of the bottle trembling on the edge, as ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... he made a most masterly job of the repairs. And all the while wise, gray old Finn sat erect on his haunches beside the writing-table, looking on approvingly, and reflecting, no doubt, upon the prowess of the youngster who had caused all this pother. ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... his way to the end of the table and drew out the chair opposite Miss Carmichael with a degree of assurance that precipitated the rest of the table into a pretty pother. ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... a pucker o' bewilderment, as he listened t' the sad strains o' Toby Farr's music, jus' as though he knowed he wasn't able t' rede the riddles of his life, jus' yet awhile, but would be able t' rede them, by an' by, when he growed up, an' expected t' find hisself in a pother o' trouble when he mastered the answers. I didn't know his name, then, t' be sure; had I knowed it, as know it I did, afore the night was over, I might have put down my flute, in amazement, an' stared an' said, "Well, well, well!" jus' as everybody did, no doubt, when they clapped ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... wet hands, and cried, 'A ship! I have been down the beach. O pitiful! A Spanish ship ashore between the rocks, And none to guide our people. Wake.' Then I Raised on mine elbow looked; it was high day; In the windy pother seas came in like smoke That blew among the trees as fine small rain, And then the broken water sun-besprent Glitter'd, fell back and showed her high and fast A caravel, a pinnace that methought To some ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... increase Orde's bewilderment and anxiety. At this moment Bobby himself appeared from the direction of the kitchen. Orde, frantic with alarm, fell upon his son. Bobby, much bewildered by all this pother, could only mumble something about "smallpox," and "took mamma ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... in to dinner that night and she found him poor company. He tried indeed by fits and starts to entertain her, but his thoughts were elsewhere. He was in a great pother and trouble about Stella Ballantyne, who sat over against him on the other side of the table. She wore no traces of the consternation which his words had caused her a couple of hours before. She had ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... a plough; and makes us pull the plough to and fro, up and down, till we are tired to death. If we won't go, he sticks a prod into us, which hurts us very much. I can't think what is the use of all this pother; we get no good of it. And when we are old, and can work no more, he kills us, and eats our flesh, and the skin he makes into shoes for his own feet. Keep clear of Men, if you value your life." Then the Ox turned his head away, and ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... stating their business, but as they both spoke at once and shrilly, the unfortunate Commissary learnt little of the matter at issue between them. Not until the united efforts of all the men present had silenced feminine vociferation was it possible to understand what in the world the pother was about. The old gentleman, to whom in courtesy priority of speech was accorded, made the ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West
... friend or mother Tell the woes of wilful waste; Scorn their counsel, scorn their pother,— You can ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... the throng. The wheel had stopped. The entire congregation was staring agog, and in two seconds everybody divined, or had been nudged to the effect, that Jane and Audrey were the authoresses of the pother. ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... subscriptions. De Haan also kept up proprietorial rights of interference. In private life Raphael suffered much from pillars of the Montagu Samuels type, who accused him of flippancy, and no communal crisis invented by little Sampson ever equalled the pother and commotion that arose when Raphael incautiously allowed him to burlesque the notorious Mordecai Josephs by comically exaggerating its exaggerations. The community took it seriously, as an attack upon the race. Mr. and Mrs. Henry Goldsmith ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... What an immense pother, by parliamenting and palavering in all corners of your empire, to decide such a question as that! I say, if that is the function, almost any human creature can learn to discharge it: fling out your orange-skin again; and save an incalculable labor, and ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... third day, which was Thursday, my Lord was bidden to call his witnesses and make his defence; and I must confess that he did not do this very well; for, first he made a great pother about this and that statute, of the 13 Charles II. and 25 Edward—nothing of which served him at all; and next his witnesses did him harm rather than good; and Dugdale, whom he examined was so clever and quiet and positive in his statements that it was mere oath against oath. Third, ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... and disappear. He tore along the bank as he had never run before, until he got to the water's edge below the Slugs, and climbed and fought his way to the scene of the disaster. Before he reached it, however, we should have had no hero had not the sapling, the cause of all this pother, made amends by barring the way down the narrow channel. Tommy was clinging to it, and the boy to him, and, at some risk, Corp got them both ashore, where they lay gasping like fish in ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... Pother (Doctor), an apothecary, "city register, and walking story-book." He had a story ['a] propos of every remark made and of every incident; but as he mixed two or three together, his stories were pointless ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... we know they don't like us, And they're sure to scold and cuss The tired three, and raise a fuss And a pother About Hopeful here. Heigho! But he's ready, dears, to go. Ah! they little little know ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... forests only, however. I would not for the world convey to you the idea that Judith is indiscreet. She has stripped from the trappings of her horse every sign of our name and station—or so the stable boys have reported to me. And not ten days since one of the maids ran to me in a great pother and told me that Mistress Judith was stamping about her chamber, behind locked doors, conversing at the top of her voice with herself or with the empty air. When I took her to task on the subject she explained that she was merely rehearsing ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... take a dishonest stiver from a cheating Albany Dutchman! Where was the harm in it? Better lie to him than tell the truth to La Pompadour about that girl! Egad! Madame Fish would serve you as the Iroquois served my fat clerk at Chouagen—make roast meat of you—if she knew it! Such a pother about a girl! Damn the women, always, I say, Bigot! A man is never out of hot water when he has to do ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... which at first he mistook for the cawing of rooks— there had been many rooks in the trees beyond the wall of Holy Innocents, between it and the Brewery. But, gazing aloft, he saw that these were sea-gulls, wheeling and mewing and making a mighty pother. And then—O wonder!—as he rubbed his eyes he looked up at a tall cliff, a wall of rock rising sheer, and a good hundred feet from its base where the white water was breaking. The boat had drifted ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "Sure, the pother o' life. It's an' up an' down, so fast it makes a body dizzy in their wits. That boy, Fayetty, one day as good as a fine fish o' Friday; the next—eatin' me heart out with the worry. Never a doubt I doubt 'twas himself belabored the old man on his road home. There's bad blood 'twixt 'em. ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... guardian friend, or mother Tell the woes of wilful waste; Scorn their counsel, scorn their pother, You can hang or ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... enough for me to cut him loose from the cord. By way of encouraging his tormentors to come down after him, I threw my mining leather, my shoes, and even my miner's coat, on to the fire, and they sent up such a pother of smoke that the Swedes gave it up as a bad job, for that time at all events. I am only a poor miner, but I never repented giving up my mining leather, my shoes, and my coat, to ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... the gold," said Dean. "Yes, we do. We should like to get some of it as curiosities. But oh, I say, doesn't it seem like all pother about what the doctor said? There's none of the cool air from the veldt coming in here under the waggon ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... this time, while they were talking together, some black clouds gathered about the giant's middle, and burst into a tremendous storm of thunder and lightning, causing such a pother that Hercules found it impossible to distinguish a word. Only the giant's immeasurable legs were to be seen, standing up into the obscurity of the tempest; and, now and then, a momentary glimpse of his whole figure, mantled in a volume of mist. He seemed to be speaking, ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... "What a pother for a bed of flowers!" I hear you say, "draining, subsoiling, sulphuring, sanding, covering, humouring, and then sunstroke or consumption at the end!" So be it, but when success does come, it is something worth ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright |
