"Beset" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bring you, sweet, Some ancient rhyme of lovers sore beset, Whose joy is dead, whose sadness lingers yet, That you may read, and ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... "Four species of idols beset the human mind, to which (for distinction's sake) we have assigned names, calling the first Idols of the Tribe, the second Idols of the Den, the third Idols of the Market, the fourth Idols ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... would be often constrained to trust his life to his plucky horse, swimming when out of his depth, and dragging after him, as best he might, the vehicle, heavy with its iron fixtures, and reeking with the water and the tenacious red clay mire. And then, too, the mountain streams were beset with quick-sands—indeed, every detail of the night journey was environed with danger. He could scarcely be expected to win through safely, and Gladys felt a rush of indignation that he should have attempted the feat. Must ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... hearts from the transitory pleasures and honors of this world. They, moreover, create in our soul an unquenchable thirst for the vision and possession of God, while they infuse into us a new courage to battle manfully against all the obstacles which beset our path in ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... some two or three miles the road is a grass-grown track through a rough country. As one proceeds he can appreciate the difficulties that beset the retreating soldiers, laden with such stores from the village as they could carry with them on the retreat. Now and then an unkept farmhouse appears, but there is little life; it is possible to walk as far as Nelson's Mill, ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine
... Thus circumstanced, her genius, her sensibility, and her beauty combined to her destruction, while, by her exposed situation, her inexperience of life, her tender youth, with the magnitude of the temptations which beset her, she could scarcely fail of ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... aspects of it, to lose sight of the solemn truths which make it so grand, and to think of it as commonplace because it is common, as ordinary because it is familiar. And from these most real dangers, which beset us all, there is no refuge but the frequent, the habitual, gaze into the open heavens, which will show us again the realities of things, and bring to our spirits, dwarfed even by habits of goodness, the renewal of former motives by the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... visionary ideas of El Dorados, or starving amidst plenty, the poorer classes obtain no correct information. Beset generally with agents of companies, with agents of private enterprise, with reckless adventurers, with ignorant priests, or missionaries of the lowest stamp, with political agitators, and with miserable traitors to the land ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... life, all of them; how I envy them their buoyant spirits, their rollicking enjoyment of to-day, and their contempt for the morrow! But the morrow will come nevertheless, and with it Black Care will come often. Gib is a haunt of the Hebrews; they or their myrmidons beset the subaltern at genial hours, after luncheon or after mess, pester him with vamped-up knick-knacks for sale, appeal to him to patronize a poor man by buying articles he does not and never by any means can want—"pay me when you likes, Cap'n, one yearsh, ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... enemies, in order to save the state, conquests that you cannot retain without injustice. For a long time past God has had His arm raised over you; but He is slow to smite you because He has pity upon a prince who has all his life been beset by flatterers." Noble and strong language, the cruel truth of which the king did not as yet comprehend, misled as he was by his pride, by the splendor of his successes, and by the concert of praises which his people as well as his ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... concealed the chiefs of the army. The Trojans drew this horse into the city; during the night the chiefs came forth and opened the city to the Greeks. Troy was burnt, the men slaughtered, the women led away as slaves. But the chiefs of the Greeks on their return were beset by tempest. Some perished in the sea, others were cast on foreign shores. Odysseus, the most crafty of the chiefs, was for ten years buffeted from one land to another, losing successively all his ships, himself the sole ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... vigorous remonstrance, and wait uncomplainingly for their pay until the middle of next year. About five o'clock I arrive at Hadji Agha, a large village forty miles from Tabreez; here, as soon as it is ascertained that I intend remaining over night, I am actually beset by rival khan-jees, who commence jabbering and gesticulating about the merits of their respective establishments, like hotel-runners in the United States; of course they are several degrees less ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... having withdrawn to the desert they now harassed the towns with their marauding inroads, and a considerable time elapsed before they were wholly put down by Avidius Cassius at the head of the legions. But Cassius himself was unable to resist the temptations which always beset a successful general, and after this victory he allowed himself to be declared emperor by the legions of Egypt; and this seems to have been the cause of no coins being struck in Alexandria in the fourteenth year of the reign. Cassius left his son Moecianus ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... exercise: But when she list lay down her armour bright, And back resume her peaceful maiden's guise; The fairest maid she was, that ever yet Prison'd her locks within a golden net, Or let them waving hang, with roses fair beset. ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... to sum up the essential characteristics of the ideal supervisor, I could not neglect this point. After all, the two great dangers that beset him are, first, the danger of sloth—the old Adam of laziness—which will tempt him to avoid the details, to shirk the drudgery, to escape the close and wearisome scrutiny of little things; and, secondly, ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... can not credit your ears. But you have heard correctly. And now—as you might put it—it is up to you. I have been in your country." He smiled pitifully. "I think I know you Americans. You are not the sort to refuse a man when he is sore beset—as I am." ...
— The Agony Column • Earl Derr Biggers
... not deny that trepidation beset me. What meant the presence of this menacing pair here in the heart of the forest? What meant their stealthy advance, their weapons, their wild looks, their uncouth appearance? Assuredly these boded ill. Perhaps they were robbers, ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... provisions, and some with golden ornaments, which they offered in barter. Without making any stay, however, the admiral urged his way forward; but rough and adverse winds again obliged him to take shelter in a small port, with a narrow entrance, not above twenty paces wide, beset on each side with reefs of rocks, the sharp points of which rose above the surface. Within, there was not room for more than five or six ships; yet the port was so deep, that they had no good anchorage, unless they approached near enough to the land ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... those old associations, how they gild the most ordinary objects! The trail you may be traveling may wander here and there, beset by tangles of briers or marshy ground or loses itself in a wilderness of barberry bushes, yet how much more wonderful to travel it, for its soil has been pressed by pilgrim feet. Some path may chance to lead you where a few old lilac bushes, a mound or perhaps a gray and ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... spoke Glaud Burge, a sturdy grizzled man, rising to speak for the first squad, "we have been talking of this matter together, and we think Edelwald is right. The fort is hard beset, and it is true there are fewer of us than at first, but we may hold out somehow and keep the walls around us. We have no stomach to strike ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... has won so long as the authors are discussing the right way to form a constitution which may satisfy the wants and appease the prejudices then actually existing. In spite of such miscalculations as beset all forecasts of the future, they show admirable good sense and clear appreciation. But when they think it necessary to appeal to Montesquieu, to tag their arguments from common sense with little ornamental ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... herself entitled to an explanation. Moody's habitual reserve—strengthened, on this occasion, by his dread of ridicule, if his efforts to serve Isabel ended in failure—disinclined him to take Lady Lydiard into his confidence, while his inquiries were still beset with obstacles and doubts. He respectfully entreated her Ladyship to grant him a delay of a few weeks before he entered on his explanation. Lady Lydiard's quick temper resented his request. She told Moody plainly that he was guilty of an act of presumption in making his own conditions with ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... would seem as though the undertaking were beset by certain difficulties, the outcome of narrow and ...
— Pillars of Society • Henrik Ibsen
... the empire prosperous, this fixity of impost would have been the greatest of all blessings. It is the precise boon so frequently and earnestly implored by our ryots in India, and indeed by the cultivators all over the East. But when the empire was beset on all sides with enemies—only the more rapacious and pressing, that the might of the legions had so long confined them within the comparatively narrow limits of their own sterile territories—and disasters, frequent and serious, were laying waste the frontier provinces, it became ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... of Mart's humble suing, her half-forgotten scruples were revived. Her uneasiness began again. A decision was finally and definitely thrust upon her. Instantly she was beset by all her doubts and desires, and the sky darkened with ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... the unallayed trouble of her mind. Day by day, Gilbert's new figure became more familiar, and she was conscious that her own manner towards him must change with it The subject of his birth, however, and the new difficulties with which it beset her, would not be thrust aside. For years she had almost ceased to think of the possible release, of which she had spoken; now it returned and filled her with a ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... rich in spoils, where a chieftain with a band of hardy followers might sack a city and dower himself and his men with sudden wealth. Such conditions, such a contact of new and old, of settled splendour beset by unbridled adventure, go to the making of a heroic age, its virtues and its vices, its obvious beauty and its hidden ugliness. In settled, social conditions, as has been well remarked, "most of the heroes would sooner or later have ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... the bend, the banks rose sharply on both sides of the stream, forming a tiny canon for the channel. The steep slope on the east side, where the girl now ascended, was closely overgrown with laurel and little thickets of ground pine, through which she was hard beset to force her way—the more since she must move with what noiselessness she might. But her strength and skill compassed the affair with surprising quickness. Presently, she came to the brim of the little cliff, and lying outstretched, ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... be Thou lets this fleshly thorn Beset Thy servant e'en and morn Lest he owre high and proud should turn, [too] That he's sae gifted; If sae, Thy hand maun e'en be borne, Until thou ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... was remarkable, but her father, knowing too well the temptations that beset a public singer, refused to cultivate her talent for music, saying, "If I were to do this, it might induce her some day to go on the stage, and I would prefer to buy her a sieve of black cockles from Ring's End to cry about the streets of Dublin to seeing her the first ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... Nestor of Gerenia answered him: "Atreides, I verily, even I too, would wish to be as on the day when I slew noble Ereuthalion. But the gods in no wise grant men all things at once. As I was then a youth, so doth old age now beset me. Yet even so will I abide among the horsemen and urge them by counsel and words; for that is the right of elders. But the young men shall wield the spear, they that are more youthful than I and have confidence ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... said Alice, "and she'll have lots of money and a very sweet disposition. Trials and troubles beset your path, but do but be brave and fearless and you will overcome all your enemies. Beware of a dark ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... not very apt to love the English people, as a whole, on whatever length of acquaintance. I fancy that they would value our regard, and even reciprocate it in their ungracious way, if we could give it to them in spite of all rebuffs; but they are beset by a curious and inevitable infelicity, which compels them, as it were, to keep up what they seem to consider a wholesome bitterness of feeling between themselves and all other nationalities, especially that of America. They will never ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... perfectly relieved from pain, a gentle perspiration ensued, his fever abated and in the morning he was quite recovered. One of the men caught several dozen fish of two species: the first is about nine inches long, of a white colour, round in shape; the mouth is beset both above and below with a rim of fine sharp teeth, the eye moderately large, the pupil dark, and the iris narrow, and of a yellowish brown colour: in form and size it resembles the white chub of the Potomac, ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... Perverseness of Humour suitable to their Distortion of Body. The eldest, whose Belly sunk in monstrously, was a great Coward; and tho' his splenetick contracted Temper made him take fire immediately, he made Objects that beset him appear greater than they were. The second, whose Breast swelled into a bold Relievo, on the contrary, took great pleasure in lessening every thing, and was perfectly the Reverse of his Brother. These Oddnesses pleased ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the inn stood. It was plainly hard upon the sea, yet out of all view of it, and beset on every side with scabbit hills of sand. There was, indeed, only one thing in the nature of a prospect, where there stood out over a brae the two sails of a windmill, like an ass's ears, but with the ass quite hidden. It was strange (after the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... about the time when he shall attain the age of twenty-one, which period, the constellations intimate, will be the crisis of his fate. In what shape, or with what peculiar urgency, this temptation may beset him, my ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... both an honourable and a useful man, with a fair measure of good sense and moderation, and with some disposition towards public duties. A crowd of out-of-door amusements and interests do much to dispel his peccant humours and to save him from the stagnation and the sensuality that have beset many foreign aristocracies. County business stimulates his activity, mitigates his class prejudices, and forms his judgment: and his standard of honour will keep him substantially right amid ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... conduct seem noble even to himself. And when those he dreaded are safely in their graves, he is not one whit more confident of spirit, but still more on his guard than heretofore. That is the kind of war with which the tyrant is beset from day to day continually, as I ...
— Hiero • Xenophon
... desires beset her. Poor woman, lay aside the mournful letter That breaks thy heart; the one ...
— Poems • Alice Meynell
... that beset the pursuit of amusements. How fatiguing are they very often! How hard to distribute the time and the strength between them and our work or our duties! It needs some art to steer one's way in the midst ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... and conquered in the making of his epic masterpiece had their origin, for the most part, in the intractable and barren nature of his chosen theme. The dangers that beset him, and sometimes tripped his feet, arose, on the other hand, from his own declared intention in ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... whatever thou mayest see, and whatever thou mayest hear, concerning me," said he, "do thou not turn back. And unless I speak unto thee, say not thou one word either." And they set forward. And he did not choose the pleasantest and most frequented road, but that which was the wildest and most beset by thieves, and robbers, and venomous animals. And they came to a high road, which they followed till they saw a vast forest, and they went towards it, and they saw four armed horsemen come forth from the forest. When they had beheld them, one of them said to the ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... absorbed his capital, he threw himself into his work with the first earnest enthusiasm, which is frittered away so soon over the difficulties or in the by-paths of every life in Paris. The most luxurious and the very poorest lives are equally beset with temptations which nothing but the fierce energy of genius or the morose ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... was beset with terrors. When he was caught in the branches of the oak-tree, he was about to sever his hair with a sword stroke, but suddenly he saw hell yawning beneath him, and he preferred to hang in the tree to throwing himself ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... 'What excellence I had of face or form departed from me when my lord Odysseus went from this hall to the wars of Troy. And since he went a host of ills has beset me. Ah, would that he were here to watch over my life! The lords of all the islands around—Dulichium and Same and Zacynthus; and the lords of the land of Ithaka, have come here and are wooing me against my will. They devour the substance of this house ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... Poverty beset their path, And threatened to divide them, They coaxed away the beldame's wrath, Ere she had breath to chide them, By vowing all her rags were silk, And all her bitters, honey, And showing taste for bread and milk, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... without doubt, as grandiose a scene as Western Europe can show. In certain elements of grandeur none other can compete with it. But until a balloon service is organized between Luz and the famous Cirque it is impossible to make the journey with an unruffled temper. The traveller's way is beset by juvenile vagrants, bare-faced and importunate as Neapolitans or Arabs. Lovers of aerial navigation have otherwise not much left to wish for. Nothing can be more like a ride in cloudland than the drive from Pierrefitte to Luz and from Luz to Gavarnie. The splendid rock-hewn road is just broad ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... The stranger was beset with such thoughts as these, which passed in fragments through his mind, like tattered flags fluttering above the combat. If he set aside for a moment the burdens of consciousness and of memory, to watch the flower heads gently swayed by the breeze among the green thickets, a revulsion came over ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... half of the modern county: but the eastern portion still remained in the hands of the Welsh. For awhile the great Roman fortress of Anderida (now Pevensey) held out against the invaders; until in 491 "AElle and Cissa beset Anderida, and offslew all that were therein; nor was there after even one Briton left alive." All Sussex became a single Saxon kingdom, ringed round by the great forest of the Weald. Here again the obviously unhistorical character of the main facts throws the utmost doubt upon the nature of ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... blow, long since deserved. Then will I doom thee, when no man is found so lost, so wicked, nay, so like thyself, but shall confess that it was justly dealt. While there is one man that dares defend thee, live! But thou shalt live so beset, so surrounded, so scrutinized, by the vigilant guards that I have placed around thee, that thou shalt not stir a foot against the Republic without my knowledge. There shall be eyes to detect thy slightest movement, and ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... Whigs here have joined the Know-nothings, and keep very shy of me, as I have spoken not softly of the miserable wretches who expect to govern a great country like this with imbecility, if they can only cover it with secrecy. I have been greatly beset not to go to Europe this summer, as the political campaign is likely to be hot. I shall go, and the rather that I may avoid such an event, and take that leisure and repose with my family in foreign countries which I seem to be totally incapable ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... Phillip Herald, June 1840, from which I extract the following: "The party was now in a most deplorable condition. Messrs. MacArthur and Riley and their attendants had become so exhausted as to be unable to cope with the difficulties which beset their progress. The Count, being more inured to the fatigues and privations attendant upon a pedestrian journey through the wilds of our inhospitable interior, alone retained possession of his strength, and although burdened with a load of instruments ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... have been in the proper sense a select corps, consequently never an object of jealousy to the troops of the line. While Caesar even as general practically dropped the bodyguard, he still, less as king tolerated a guard round his person. Although constantly beset by lurking assassins and well aware of it, he yet rejected the proposal of the senate to institute a select guard; dismissed, as soon as things grew in some measure quiet, the Spanish escort which he had made use of at first in the capital; and contented himself with the retinue of lictors ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... more active than elsewhere, and it is from those very parts that it is most desirable to exclude him. They are, as a rule, relatively near to the territory of the state whose navy has to keep the lines open, that is to say, prevent their being persistently beset by an enemy. The necessary convergence of lines towards that state's ports shows that some portion of them would have to be traversed, or their traversing be attempted, by expeditions meant to carry out either invasion or raids. ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... throughout the vicinity of Jaffna abound in a low shrub called the Buffalo-thorn[1], the black twigs of which are beset at every joint by a pair of thorns, set opposite each other like the horns of an ox, as sharp as a needle, from two to three inches in length, and thicker at the base than the stem they ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... execution of the most important part of the scheme—the arrest of the prince and the admiral. Fourteen companies of gens-d'armes and as many ensigns of infantry stood under his orders, and Noyers was closely beset on all sides.[576] It was at this moment, when secrecy was all important to the success of the plot, that the tidings of the threatening storm reached its destined victims. It has long been believed and ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... me. I'll get him," he said, getting up dramatically. "I'll get him, and when I do—" He turned a livid face to the wall, and Aileen saw clearly that Cowperwood, in addition to any other troubles which might beset him, had her father to deal with. Was this why Frank had looked so sternly at ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... and fellow-delegate, the Rev. Antoinette L. Brown, was standing calm, yet firm, amidst those rude scoffers, the words of the Psalmist kept sounding in my ear: "Strong bulls of Bashan have beset me roundabout, gaping upon me with their mouths." I marked the biggest of the herd with the purpose, at the first suitable season, of laying on one blow of the lash with such a will that it should cut through any hide, however callous. That season came when, as a delegate, I was called upon to ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... The struggling soul, beset with evil thoughts, will find in prayer a salvation which all his force of will, and dieting, and exercising, will not, alone, insure him. Yet prayer alone will not avail. Faith and works must always be associated. ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... capture. Farther south, every watering-place on the African coast was infested by the English and French pirates who had their headquarters in the West Indies. From the Cape of Good Hope to the head of the Persian Gulf, from Cape Comorin to Sumatra, every coast was beset by English, French, Dutch, Danish, Portuguese, Arab, Malay or other local pirates. In the Bay of Bengal alone, piracy on a ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... Randall Clayton gazed at the distant hotels; there was shelter and safety. But now a new fear beset him. His well-known identity, Irma's marked beauty, the strange attendant duenna, there would be certain discovery and scandal. And he would be ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... tell of the marvels of this island, of fruit and bird and beast, of the great butterflies that wheeled and hovered resplendent, and of the many and divers wonders that beset us at every turn; but lest my narrative grow to immoderate length (of the which I do already begin to entertain some doubt) I will pass these with this mere mention and hurry on to say that we tramped ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... office, earlier that day, he had resolved upon revenge; but his natural caution had served as a leash, and he had pondered on no definite plans that might prove dangerous. Now only one fear beset him—the fear that he would not be able to think up and put through ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... preparation and explanation, and he couldn't have left them in New York while he went and prepared and explained. Great, reflected Mr. Twist, the verb dropping into his mind with the aplomb of an inspiration, are the difficulties that beset a man directly he begins to twinkle. Already he had earnestly wished to knock the reception clerk in the hotel office down because of, first, his obvious suspicion of the party before he had heard Mr. Twist's name, and because of, second, his politeness, his confidential ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... fishers, from overhanging masses falling upon them,—from the approximation of large sheets of ice to each other, which are apt to crush or upset the boats,—from their boats being stove or sunk by large masses of ice, agitated by a swell,—and from the boats being enclosed and beset in a pack of ice, and their crews thus prevented from joining ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... to make it's appearance in the bottom lands and is becoming extreemly troublesome; it is a shrub which rises to the hight of from two to four feet, much branched, the bark of the trunk somewhat rough hard and of light grey colour; the wood is firm and stif, the branches beset with a great number of long, shap, strong, wooddy looking thorns; the leaf is about 3/4 or an inch long, and one 1/8 of an inch wide, it is obtuse, absolutely entire, veinless fleshy and gibbose; has no perceptable taste or smell, and no anamal appears to eat it. by way of designating when I ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... Worms were retaken. The republican troops, everywhere victorious, occupied Belgium, that part of Holland situated on the left of the Meuse, and all the towns on the Rhine, except Mayence and Mannheim, which were closely beset. ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... a true heroine, and, I think, shames us all. And she is a woman too! Thou'lt say, the beset things corrupted become the worst. But this is certain, that whatever the sex set their hearts upon, they make thorough work of it. And hence it is, that a mischief which would end in simple robbery among men rogues, becomes murder, if ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... as always beset the first favorite in a race. The old alliance between Seward, Weed and Greeley, had been broken, with anger and resentment on Greeley's part, and he was now on the floor of the convention actively opposing his old ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... as fine a theme as a novelist can have. But it is a part of English hypocrisy—or, let it be more politely said, English reserve—that, whilst we are fluent enough in grumbling about small inconveniences, we insist on making light of any great difficulties or griefs that may beset us. And just there, I suppose, is the reason why our great novelists have shunned great books as subject-matter. It is fortunate for us (jarring though it is to our patriotic sense) that Mr. Henry James was not born an Englishman, that he was born of a race of specialists—men ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... do not realize that the questions which he is discussing could have had any value or importance. We suppose them to be like the speculations of some of the Schoolmen, which end in nothing. But in truth he is trying to get rid of the stumbling-blocks of thought which beset his contemporaries. Seeing that the Megarians and Cynics were making knowledge impossible, he takes their 'catch-words' and analyzes them from every conceivable point of view. He is criticizing the simplest and most general of our ideas, in which, as they are the most comprehensive, ...
— Parmenides • Plato
... worldly interests. This dogma has its false as well as its true side, more especially when in this, as in every other field of human activity, the number of competitors is rapidly increasing; great watchfulness is requisite to resist temptations which beset the aspirant to success on this arena, more perhaps than in any other. The difficulty which the most honest find to avoid treading in the footsteps of others—the different aspect in which the same phenomena present themselves to different minds—the unwillingness ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... woke into a grey, despondent world again. The old angry, purposeless tears beset her and she felt that terrible dumbness settling over her. She had long ceased to fight it, now; she only wondered what Mrs. Meeker would do with her. But she never knew what Mrs. Meeker would have done, for when the tired, drudging little woman brought her breakfast tray she held it in dingily gloved ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... Justice comprising a number of Benches. I would ask the reader kindly to take these very lightly outlined schemes for what they are worth. Whatever may be their defects they indicate a way out of some of the great difficulties which beset the realisation of the universal demand for International Councils of Conciliation and an ...
— The League of Nations and its Problems - Three Lectures • Lassa Oppenheim
... in spirit, disillusioned, she went back into her old world. But now the legend of her past beset her. Again men came, passionately besieging her, offering her wealth in return for a little love. They talked of killing themselves if she resisted, as if it were her duty to surrender, as if refusal on her part were treachery. ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... 'Not so neither,' replied Tomaso, 'nor should you wonder you have received no news of him, in a long time, since forty thousand crowns being offered for his head, or to any thing that could discover him, it would have exposed him to have written to any body, he being beset on all sides with spies from the King; so that it was impossible to venture a letter, without very great hazard of his life. Besides all these hindrances, Cesario, who, you know, was ever a great admirer of the fair sex, happened in this his ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... marks him down fifteen points out of a possible thirty. He flocks by himself, thinking high thoughts about his purity of purpose, his vast wisdom, his acute realization of the dangers that formerly beset his path and now beset the path of all those who are not walking side by side and in close communion with him. He pins medals all over himself, pats himself on the chest, and is much better than ...
— The Old Game - A Retrospect after Three and a Half Years on the Water-wagon • Samuel G. Blythe
... my lord, he shall be welcome then, And I hope that you will entertain him so, That he may know how Osrick honours him. And I will be attired in cloth of biss[315], Beset with Orient pearl, fetch'd from rich India[316]. And all my chamber shall be richly [decked,] With arras hanging, fetch'd from Alexandria. Then will I have rich counterpoints and musk, Calambac[317] and cassia, sweet-smelling ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... misfortune, however they should, as incident to humanity, glance a slight wound, may never reach your heart; that the snares of villainy may never beset you in the road of life; that innocence may hand you by the path of honour to the dwelling of peace—is the sincere wish of him who has the honour ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... with his blanket wrapped around him; but suddenly he threw off the blanket and sprung upon Kenton as he advanced. Exhausted with fatigue and wounds, he was thrown to the ground, and in a moment he was beset with crowds, eager to inflict upon him the kick or blow which had been avoided by breaking through the line. Here beaten, kicked and scourged, until he was nearly lifeless, ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... seems to you a foul thing, the produce of mean, ugly, contemptible creatures. Be it so. Yet it is to the eyes of the wise man a yearly MIRACLE; a thing past understanding, past explaining; one which will make him feel the truth of that great 139th Psalm: 'Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it. Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... horse. But the true interest of this figure, and of the whole picture, is concentrated in the eyes. Those sad, dark eyes, steady and immovable in their fixed gaze, reveal whole pages of history and whole years of suffering. The fugitive king is not thinking of his flight, of any dangers that may beset him, of the companions at his side, or even of where he shall lay his perilled head in the night that is coming. Those eyes have shut away the physical and the real, and through the mists of the future they are trying to read the great question of fate! ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... woman—what more can I possibly desire? It is strange how soon one becomes accustomed to changes in life, and how quickly an emotion fades into a memory. If I could but feel as I felt when I was struggling along battling with the hundred and one difficulties which beset the path of a poor man, instead of having to remind myself perpetually what my emotions were then, there would be some excitement in the contrast. I—I wonder—what she is doing? Is she alive or is she dead? ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... vivacious kindness seemed disposed to take up Faith bodily and carry her off. It was a novel scene for Faith, and she was amused. Amused too with the overpowering curiosity which took the guise, or the veil, of so much kindness, and beset her, because—Mr. Linden had married her. Yet Faith did not see the hundredth part of their curiosity. Mr. Linden, whose eyes were more open, was proportionably amused, both with that and with Faith's simplicity, ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... expired of famine in the granary of India. I was going to awake your justice towards this unhappy part of our fellow-citizens by bringing before you some of the circumstances of this plague of hunger. Of all the calamities which beset and waylay the life of man, this comes the nearest to our heart, and is that wherein the proudest of us all feels himself to be nothing more than he is: but I find myself unable to manage it with decorum; these details are of a ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... It has been admitted by divines, even that some sins do more especially beset particular individuals. Mr. Roscoe enters into a long vindication of Pope's doctrine against the imputations of Dr. Johnson; the most satisfactory parts of which are the refutations drawn from Pope's ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... weary open eye, No marvellous romances Make night go swiftly by; But only feverish fancies Beset me ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... Alarmed by frequent hints from his friends, he petitioned to retire beyond the sea, and was told that he might expect an answer the following morning. This unnecessary delay increased his apprehensions. To deceive the vigilance of the spies that beset him, he ordered a bed to be prepared in the church, and in the dusk of the evening, accompanied by two clerks and a servant on foot, escaped by the north gate. After fifteen days of perils and adventures, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... afternoon Calabressa was walking quickly along the crowded quays of Naples, when he was beset by a more than usually importunate beggar—a youth ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... adrift he was midway in the valley of the shadow, which he represents as "The Everlasting No," and beset by "temptations in the wilderness." At this crisis he writes, "The biographies of men of letters are the wretchedest chapters in our history, except perhaps the Newgate Calendar," a remark that ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... feel in deep adversity, that it is all illusion, and will in a moment float away like other dreams. Brought to this house an orphan, and twice deprived of a mother's love, she had only entered woman's estate when another class of cares beset her. Her beauty and sweetness of disposition had brought her more lovers than could make her happy. There was but one on whom she could confer her heart, and this natural choice had drawn around her the perils which now overwhelmed them all. ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... with Lou Chada had first opened his eyes to the perils which beset the road of least resistance. Sir Noel Rourke was an Anglo-Indian, and his prejudice against the Eurasian was one not lightly to be surmounted. Not all the polish which English culture had given to this child of a mixed union could blind Sir Noel ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... movement in the Reformation, rush to the other extreme and deny the existence of evil and even the reality of matter, while spiritism, the most insidious, perilous and fatal of all the spiritual temptations that beset the world at this time, gains as its adherents those who have been deprived of the Catholic belief in the Communion of Saints and have been forbidden to pray for the dead or to ask for their prayers ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... army, but was at last captured. The Scots fell back as Edward advanced, renewing Wallace's tactics of wasting the country, and Edward could get no further than Dumfries. Here, finding the enormous difficulties which beset him, he made a pretence of yielding with a good grace to the entreaties of the pope and the King of France that he would spare Scotland; he retired to England and disbanded his army, having accomplished nothing in the campaign save the capture ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... no impropriety in my offering to the members some remarks upon the peculiar difficulties which beset the medical practitioner in the discharge of his ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... progress effectually blocked. In essaying to force her way into a lead the ice had closed in behind her, and, while not as yet nipped, the vessel was immobilised. There was no hope that she would advance northward until the following summer. The collier, which had not been beset, had returned to Tasiusak with the news ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... and placed alternately; its Blossoms grow in Bunches at the end of the Boughs, they are white, mix'd with Carnation, like the Flowers of the wild Rose-Tree. In the middle, there is a Tuft of yellow Stamina with red Points; when these Blossoms fall off, there appears tawny Buds, beset with fine Prickles: These Buds grow to be Shells, which, when ripe, open on the upper side, and discover within, two Rows of Pippins, almost like little Peas, cover'd with Vermilion, which sticks to the ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus
... easily to be distinguished in the night-time from the merest puddle. There was scarcely a light agleam in the whole village, and it is not at all a thing to be surprised at that our jackdaw lost his way and had a stumble or two into the icy pools which beset him. He did succeed at last in finding the hut in which he lived, or rather, he found the site of it, for an 18 centimetre shell had burst there in his absence and the hut was not. We were making our apology for breakfast ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... and perplexities that beset Gregory in the fall of 1780, he bravely held his ground; and by the end of November he wrote Governor Nash from his camp at North West that the British had abandoned Portsmouth, and had departed ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... troublesome Tempter beset us, said I, 5 "Let him come, with his purse proudly grasped in his hand; But, Allan, be true to me, Allan,—we'll die [2] Before he shall go with an ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... to join Shelley at Byron's villa. Clara was not well when they started, and she grew worse on the journey. From Este Shelley and Mary took her to Venice to consult a physician, a trip which was beset with delays and difficulties. She died almost as soon as they arrived. According to Newman Ivey White,[xii] Mary, in the unreasoning agony of her grief, blamed Shelley for the child's death and for a time felt toward him an extreme physical antagonism which subsided ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... has been beset with foes, so has it with friends. Such love as yours, Alfgar, I say as yours has been!—well, few kings share ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... introduction of the teaching of medicine in the University. But Dr. Gunn was on the ground as early as 1849, and from the first he labored earnestly and effectively in the organization of the new Department, which was beset by many difficulties, particularly in his own field, where the problem of finding adequate material for the study of anatomy was almost insuperable for many years. Many are the hints given in the reminiscences ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... unity of idea, the limitation of each subject to a single figure, or at most two or three, perhaps too the repose and simplicity which characterize antique art, make the path less arduous. I never, even in the infinite vistas of the Vatican, felt the fatigue and perplexity which have beset me in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... European side, called Soloy Kamoskoi, where we found the people mostly Pagans as before. We then passed a desert of about two hundred miles over; but in other places it is near seven hundred. In passing this wild place, we were beset by a troop of men on horseback, and about five and forty men armed with bows and arrows. At first they looked earnestly on us, and then placed themselves in our way. We were above sixteen men, and drew up a little line before our camels. My young Lord sent out his Siberian servant, to know ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... beyond the enemy, and out of their sight, when we should have the advantage of daylight for seeing our way. I confess I felt more out of spirits than usual when I bade my friend Juan farewell. A presentiment of evil oppressed me, as I thought of the dangers by which he was beset. ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... strange creatures are seen at Yatton by Mr. Aubrey and his sister; and a hand-grenade is thrown, unseen, at the feet of the latter.—Country life; Yatton; Fotheringham; the two beauties; and an angel beset ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... and plans for them. Almost every personal luxury and pleasure had been abnegated. He had found a sort of fierce delight in the asceticism of his daily life, in the unflinching firmness with which he had barred the gates which might lead him into smoother and happier ways. To-night he was beset with a sudden fear. He rose and looked at himself in the glass. He was pale and wan. His face lacked the robust vitality of a few years ago. He was ageing fast. He was conscious of certain disquieting symptoms in the routine of his daily life. He threw himself ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Before the supreme sad experience, the sudden, and to him incomprehensible, death of Arthur Hallam, the poet had agnostic leanings. He did then veritably fail and "falter" before the questions of life and death which beset him. His long years of comparative poverty, "the eternal want of pence," his failure to attract any measure of attention, his long-delayed marriage as far off as ever, the res angusta domi which made his family dependent upon him, all conspired to shut out ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... the work of the trading, was eaten by a thousand qualms and torments. All those doubts that beset lovers tore at his heart and made of ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... the volunteers were greatly excited by the tales of Indian murders, and were beset by foes lurking in ambush and pirogue, a remarkable scene occurred in ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... Disastrous dreams had beset his sleeping hours; and, at his waking, they and the true occurrences of the past day, seemed all blended and confused into one horrible ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... seasons in the XV; his own name from a thousand throats upon the wintry air. His muscles tautened as again he fought some certain of those enormous moments when the whole of life was bound up solely in the unspeakable necessity to win. Astounding trick of thought from what beset him! He was alone upon The Strip, in an overcoat, on the way to forty, not a sound, not a soul, and with that brooding sense of being upon the edge and threshold of something ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... buckles, foretells that you will be beset with invitations to places of pleasure, and your affairs will be in danger ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... to hand, and hauled on board with breathless rapidity. The officers, smartly dressed, are at the gangway handing the passengers up the side, and hurrying the men. In five minutes' time, the little steamer is utterly deserted, and the packet is beset and over-run by its late freight, who instantly pervade the whole ship, and are to be met with by the dozen in every nook and corner: swarming down below with their own baggage, and stumbling over other people's; disposing themselves comfortably ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... but not damp, and there was not a drop of sweat on the skin-leather of his fatigue cap. When he got to Koongat Bridge he was like a racer after practice, ready for a fight from start to finish. Yet he was not foolhardy. He knew the danger that beset him, for he could not tell, in the crisis come to Mandakan, what designs might be abroad. He now saw through Boonda Broke's friendship for him, and he only found peace for his mind upon the point by remembering that he had told no secrets, had given no ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... from out of the darkness had seized him; and as the cry went echoing down the long zigzag passage in which they were, Joe uttered a gasp, and in spite of his desire to stand by his friend, dashed off from the unknown danger by which they were beset. ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... that has gone, I would still do the last. I speak to you no more of love or tenderness, nor do I pretend that this is for your sake alone. It is for mine also. My name is smirched, and only marriage can cover up the stain upon it. Moreover, I am beset by troubles and by dangers. Those accursed Northmen, who love you so well and who fight, not like men but like devils, are in league with the Armenian legions and with Constantine. My generals and my troops fall away from me. If it were ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... concerning fidelity and friendship, and what he had said about my being in no danger, so long as I was faithful, and the rest of it; and then I wished I had thrown myself over Blackfriars' Bridge as I had intended, and so put an end to all the trials that beset my path. But this wish was scarcely felt before it was regretted and checked at once. Mr Clayton had taught me wisdom, which his own bad conduct could not sully or affect. It was not because under the garb of religion he concealed the tainted ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... of parents who bowed before the Lama or the ox, an image of brass or the stock of a tree. In the book of His counsels, your names, so far as we are able to judge, were written in the fair lines of mercy. It is of His overflowing goodness that you are now here; surrounded with privileges, and beset with blessings, educated to knowledge, usefulness and piety, and prepared to begin an endless course of happiness and glory. All these delightful things have been poured into your lap, and have come, unbidden, to solicit ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... looking hopefully to the future, McGill University has rounded out its first century of life. The road over which it has passed, as we look back from the hilltop of to-day, has been long and arduous. It has been beset with many trials and difficulties. But the obstacles in the way of its advance were not unsurmountable; they were perhaps objects of discouragement, but never objects of total despair to the men of stout heart and firm faith and ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... but in Italy she found a real royalty. At Milan she took possession of the Serbelloni Palace, where she did the honors most admirably and received the homage of the proud aristocracy of Milan. She followed her husband to the war, for he could not bear to be separated from her, and one day when, beset with dangers, she was crying, he exclaimed: "Wurmser shall pay dearly for the tears he causes you." After Arcole, Madame Bonaparte resembled a sovereign. She singularly aided her husband to play the double part which was soon to carry him to ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... rests, for I must have no more of you men down with sickness. Let us hope that we may win our way safely to the ship and the island yet. I would send out a little party to try and fetch help, but I fear they are beset at the residency already, and I do not think a detachment could succeed. I propose then that we all hold together and do ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... tent, and tried to prevail upon himself that he ought to go to sleep—that it was ridiculous to beset himself with imaginary dangers, and to suffer from them as much as if they had been real ones. But such reasoning was vain, and he sat up or walked about near his tent all night, listening and listening, and trying to think of the best thing to ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... other occasions, sorely beset and almost despairing, he would essay to melt the hearts of the pitiless pursuers of his people, and give utterance to such touching ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... which beset the critical study of this group can not be easily exaggerated. Such scanty material as has been collected has been for the most part very incomplete, consisting of plant bodies without flower or fruit, flower or fruit without plant bodies, and bunches of spines ...
— The North American Species of Cactus, Anhalonium, and Lophophora • John M. Coulter
... feel the contrast of liberty with bondage, and demonstrate by bombardment of wit and humor, how intellectually thin are the walls against which certain forms of skepticism and fun offend. Eugene Field did not belong to these. He called them "a tribe which do unseemly beset the saints." Nobody has ever had a more numerous or loving clientage of friendship among the ministers of this city than the author of "The Holy Cross" and "The Little Yaller Baby." Those of this number who were closest to the full-hearted singer know ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... counsel can for us be found, Than in close fight with heart and hand to join. 'Twere better far at once to die, than live Hemm'd in and straiten'd thus, in dire distress, Close to our ships, by meaner men beset." ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... helm, steering more by instinct than any thing else, and occasionally nodding at his post; for two successive nights of watching and a day of severe toil had overcome his sense of danger, and his care for others. Strange fancies beset men at such moments; and his busy imagination was running over some of the scenes of his early youth, when either his sense or his wandering faculties made him hear the usual brief, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... to talk, and drew out much of the hidden treasure of her spirit respecting her husband, who, though ailing for years, had finally passed away with only the immediate warning of a week—the final cause being harass from the difficulties from those above and below him that beset an earnest clergyman ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... or of her passage through the ice of Baffin's Bay. But here is one incident, which, as the event has proved, is part of a singular coincidence. On the 6th of July all the squadron, tangled in the ice, joined a fleet of whalers beset in it, by a temporary opening between the gigantic masses. Caught at the head of a bight in the ice, with the "Assistance" and the "Pioneer," the "Resolute" was, for the emergency, docked there, and, ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... hath beset thee, Dudley! Thou wouldst not go into the forest again, at this hour and alone, if there be reason for fear! Come farther within the gate, man, that I may draw the bolt the Madam will wonder that ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... that beset him, as he motored out of Havre in the morning, was of another kind. It was that which attaches to the unlikely and the queer. Once having plunged into a country road, away from railways and hotels, he felt himself ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... little younger brother, was openly planning to outwit the guard and escape to the Siberian wilds. It was doubtless her undisguised activity that ultimately betrayed the Royal prisoners into the unhappy tangle that beset their ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... couple of "wits," with, at most, some graceful indulgence in passing moods of solemn or tender sentiment. Johnson, though devoted to society in his own way, was anything but a producer of small talk. Society meant to him an escape from the gloom which beset him whenever he was abandoned to his thoughts. Neither his education nor the manners acquired in Grub Street had qualified him to be an observer of those lighter foibles which were touched by Addison ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... part of the seventeenth century a Spanish ship, richly laden, was beset off Marblehead by English pirates, who killed every person on board, at the time of the capture, except a beautiful English lady, a passenger on the ship, who was brought ashore at night and brutally murdered at a ledge of rocks near Oakum Bay. As the fishermen who lived near were absent ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... bay in which they lay, they could see by the light of the frequent flashes a point on which the waves were beating wildly; and beyond there was a promise of smooth water and safety. It was only a little way, scarcely an eighth of a mile; but the way was beset ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... France was beset with enemies within as well as without. Some of the "suspects" were members of her official household. Her Minister of Interior was thrown into prison. She was distracted with fear. Her existence was at stake. Under such circumstances excesses were sure ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... holy. God had planted in the beginning Paradise a place of desire and delices. And man was made in the field of Damascus; he was made of the slime of the earth. Paradise was made the third day of creation, and was beset with herbs, plants and trees, and is a place of most mirth and joy. In the midst whereof be set two trees, that is the tree of life, and that other the tree of knowing good and evil. And there is ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... of a vision, which was the most popular style of poetry at that age. At the close of the year 1300 Dante represents himself as lost in a forest at the foot of a hill, near Jerusalem. He wishes to ascend it, but is prevented by a panther, a lion, and a she-wolf which beset the way. He is met by Virgil, who tells him that he is sent by Beatrice as a guide through the realm of shadows, hell, and purgatory, and that she will afterwards lead him up to heaven. They pass the gates of hell, and penetrate into the dismal region beyond. This, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... Saturn's curved fang pursues and prunes The vine forlorn, and lops it into shape. Be first to dig the ground up, first to clear And burn the refuse-branches, first to house Again your vine-poles, last to gather fruit. Twice doth the thickening shade beset the vine, Twice weeds with stifling briers o'ergrow the crop; And each a toilsome labour. Do thou praise Broad acres, farm but few. Rough twigs beside Of butcher's broom among the woods are cut, And reeds upon the river-banks, and still The undressed willow claims thy fostering ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... in that special attitude towards the universe which is now loosely called "mystical," find themselves beset by a multitude of persons who are constantly asking—some with real fervour, some with curiosity, and some with disdain— "What is mysticism?" When referred to the writings of the mystics themselves, and to other works ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... shall be an expert, consequently a few simple rules and suggestions will be here given to guide the amateur and he must depend upon his own judgment and common sense to work out the minor problems which will beset him in the ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... ingenuity. Intrigues of all sorts—violent and other (for his wicked relative, the Comtesse d'Alinvil, is always trying to play Potiphar's wife to him, and there is a certain Mademoiselle Gothon who would not figure as she does here in a book by Mr. Thomas Day)—beset him constantly; he is induced not merely to trust his enemies, but to distrust his friends; there is a good deal of underground work and of the explained supernatural; a benevolent musician; an excellent cure; a rather "coming" ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... is often a different strain. Arnold is beset with doubt, and hears no "clear call," such as Tennyson voices in Crossing the Bar. Swinburne, seeing the pessimistic side of the shield ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... scope for conversation; and once again Esclairmonde was talking freely of the matters regarding the distress in Paris, that Bedford had consulted her upon before he became so engrossed with his brother's affairs, or she so beset by ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... too much. Beset and pressed on every hand by accusations, in which gross falsehoods were blended with such circumstances of truth as could not fail to procure them credit,—alone, unfriended, and in a strange land, Waverley almost gave up his life and honour for lost, and, leaning his head ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... us are obstinate. We see one pathway we long to tread even though it is beset with stones and briers. We are determined to take that way, even if we never climb high enough to penetrate the low-lying mists which darken it. We would rather pursue even a little way the painful pathway which leads to the glorious mountain-top ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... "we have no doubt, has formed this plot—he has for some time past beset the house where she lived; and when his visits were refused, he threatened this. Besides, one of his servants attended the carriage; I saw, ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... distinct feature of our Association has been the right of individual opinion for every member. We have been beset at every step with the cry that somebody was injuring the cause by the expression of some sentiments that differed with those held by the majority of mankind. The religious persecution of the ages ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... helper, collaborator, coadjutor, companion, helpmate, mate, team-mate, comrade, chum, crony, consort, accomplice, confederate. Attach, affix, annex, append, subjoin. Attack, assail, assault, invade, beset, besiege, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Bay which commeth out of the mistaken streights before spoken of, they were so suddenly compassed with yce round about by meanes of the swift Tydes which ran in that place, that they were neuer afore so hardly beset as now. And in seeking to auoyde these dangers in the darke weather, the Anne Francis lost sight of the other two Ships, who being likewise hardly distressed, signified their danger, as they since reported, by shooting off their ordinance, which the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... And mutually they worke destruction: The slaughtered heapes in reeking gore With bloudy covering spread the fields all o're: Here on safe Seas, as joyfull prize Is strip'd away th'AEgyptian Merchandize, Whilst the full Havens thick beset, Doe ...
— The Odes of Casimire, Translated by G. Hils • Mathias Casimire Sarbiewski
... Lord, it was a vale of tears Where Thou hast placed me, wickedness and woe My twain companions whereso I might go; That I through ten and threescore weary years Should stumble on beset by pains and fears, Fierce conflict round me, passions hot within, Enjoyment brief and fatal but in sin. When all was ended then should I demand Full compensation from thine austere hand: For, 'tis thy pleasure, all temptation past, To be not just ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... her neat rubb'd pail, and now She trips to milk the sand-red Cow; Where for some sturdy foot-ball Swain, Jone strokes a Sillibub or twaine. The fields and gardens were beset With Tulips, Crocus, Violet, And now, though late, the modest Rose Did more then half a blush disclose. Thus all looks gay and full of chear To welcome the new ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... short of cash. Next we contemplated a flying trip to Fuga, for which alternative Sultan Majid had provided us with introductions to the king, Kimueri, living there; and this, of course, being known to the people through the medium of Sheikh Said, they at once beset our doors to meet our ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... to surrender its trading monopoly. It was the first step towards the abrogation of all its trading privileges twenty years later, when the Company, finally delivered from the temptations which beset a commercial corporation, became for the first time a purely governing body, free to devote its entire energies to the discharge of the immense responsibilities that had devolved upon it. This was, however, only one, though not the least significant of the momentous changes that accompanied the renewal ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... be up there, hidden among the rocks, or sitting among the ferns in the highest of those valleys, with the very clouds between us and this weary world below—never to see a white face more! Then, at last, we could be at peace. Everywhere else we are beset with this enemy. They are in the streets, in the churches, on the plain. We meet them in the shade of the woods, and have to pass them basking on the sea-shore. There is no peace but high up in the mornes—too ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... unable to disobey thy command. And when darkness hath covered the world, the born beings were harassed by death, but having obtained thee for a protector, they attained the utmost security. Whenever we are beset by perils, thy reverence is always our refuge; for this reason it is that we solicit a boon from thee; as thou ever grantest ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... great slides on Dix, keeping along the ragged spurs of the mountain through the virgin forest. The pass is narrow, walled in on each side by precipices of granite, and blocked up with bowlders and fallen trees, and beset with pitfalls in the roads ingeniously covered with fair-seeming moss. When the climber occasionally loses sight of a leg in one of these treacherous holes, and feels a cold sensation in his foot, he learns that he has dipped into the sources of the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... more than had Teeka, but leaped upon Histah with all the speed and impetuosity that he would have shown had he been springing upon Bara, the deer, to make a kill for food. Thus beset the snake writhed and twisted horribly; but not for an instant did it loose its hold upon any of its intended victims, for it had included the ape-man in its cold embrace the minute that ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... by nomadic tribes and beset by years of drouth, village dwelling Indians left their great cliff dwellings in the myriad canyons of the Mesa Verde, and thus ended a period of 1300 years of occupancy. The story of those 1300 years, unfolded ...
— Mammals of Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado • Sydney Anderson
... sport for Elsie and Mrs. Harrington; Tom would have enjoyed it more if the spinster had not beset him as much as her divided attention would permit, and Elizabeth and Mellen bore the infliction as people must endure all things that come to an issue in their own house, smiling and polite, however much they ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... which he aspired to play, and, failing to discern the signs of the times, was whirled aside by the forces which he claimed to control. Is it surprising that Pitt, more slightly endowed by nature, and beset by the many limitations which hampered the advisers of George III, should have sunk beneath burdens such as no other English statesman has been called upon to bear? The success or failure of such a career is, however, to be measured ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose |
