"Circuitous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nothing of our personal belongings. The day after, however, was beautifully fine, and we left Skagen harbour in two motor barges, almost touching a floating mine on the way. It took more than an hour to get from the harbour to the ship, for we had to take a very circuitous route owing to the shallow water and many sandbanks. It was a bitterly cold trip, but at last we reached and with great difficulty—as no gangway was down and we had to climb a ladder projecting a few feet out from the ship's side—boarded the ship, which was in charge of the Danish ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... a circuitous route I had arrived at a position where I found myself inevitably a supporter not only of Howells but of Henry James whose work assumed ever larger significance in my mind. I was ready to concede with ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... had as yet escaped the fire of the Indians. Leaving the larger part of my outfit and about half of my mules in charge of my chief packer, Mr. Taylor and I continued the journey with the best and strongest of the animals, making a circuitous tour to the little mining town of Zapuri, in the neighbourhood of which were some caves I wanted ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... himself. In every direction from the village the rock dipped almost perpendicularly, beside being protected by the river, which wound partly around it. Access was by paths, partly lying in hollows formed by former streams, and partly cut through the rock. These paths were circuitous, and nearly covered with brushwood, admitting only by single file of an approach to the platform on which the village rested. On either side of the path were precipices from twenty to eighty feet deep, and huge boulders lay profusely across the way. A few men ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... of its own accord turned, and by a circuitous route headed at last for the home canon as if it knew its master's wavering mind. Cavanagh observed what he was doing, but his lax hand did not intervene. Helpless to make the decision himself, he welcomed the intervention of the homing instinct ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... everything, even without the protection of the clergy, freemasonry or any other powerful association or personality (male or female)! If they do not possess these natural secondary gifts, the most capable men, even men of genius, are passed over or only obtain a situation by circuitous routes and great efforts, after much ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... long after nightfall, with baby fast asleep, Scattergood drove into Coldriver by deserted and circuitous roads. He stopped his horse in a dark spot on the edge of the village, and, with the baby cautiously held in his arms, he slunk through back ways and short cuts to the house where Jed and Martha Lewis made their home. With meticulous stealth he passed through ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... enchanting spot by a most circuitous and varied route, which I outline for you, as you may be coming this way some time. From Bellagio we crossed over to Menaggio, on Monday after dejeuner, where we took an electric tram which brought us to Porlezza in less ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... entered the park since the fall of snow. Now, it was a very foggy night, and some of these pedestrians had consequently taken circuitous routes, but it was particularly noticed that no track ever crossed another track. Of this the police were absolutely certain, but they stupidly omitted to make a sketch of the various routes before the snow had melted and utterly ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... it prudent to spend the night upon the sides of the cone. We continued our zigzag climb. The fifteen hundred remaining feet took us five hours to clear; the circuitous route, the diagonal and the counter marches, must have measured at least three leagues. I could stand it no longer. I was yielding to the effects of hunger and cold. The rarefied air scarcely gave play to the action of ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... navigation loses accordingly, and the loss is augmented by the advantage which is given to the British competition over the American in the navigation between our ports and British ports in Europe by the circuitous voyages enjoyed by the one and not enjoyed by ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... and religious behavior of the individual. Conscious reflection is the worst enemy of the mores, because mores begin unconsciously and pursue unconscious purposes, which are recognized by reflection often only after long and circuitous processes, and because their expediency often depends on the assumption that they will have general acceptance and currency, uninterfered with by reflection."[77] "The mores are usage in any group, in so far as it, on the one ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... at college. In truth it was so by a set of lucky accidents; had not Dr. Japp come on his visit, had not the tale flowed from me with singular case, it must have been laid aside like its predecessors, and found a circuitous and unlamented way to the fire. Purists may suggest it would have been better so. I am not of that mind. The tale seems to have given much pleasure, and it brought (or, was the means of bringing) fire and food and wine to a ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the judge, and we started off across the fields, in no very mild state of fear of that gentleman's wife, whose vigilance was seldom relaxed. And thus we came by a circuitous route to Mohair, the judge occupied by his own guilty thoughts, and I by others not less disturbing. My client welcomed the judge with that warmth of manner which grappled so many of his friends ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... away, bore W. 15 degrees S., and next day we made a bid for it by a march of sixteen miles. There was eleven days' ration on the sledge to take us to Mount Murchison, ninety miles away; consequently the circuitous route to the land was held to be ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... going through the narrow passage that led to the offices, but avoiding it by a circuitous route. If it cost him any pain to think why he did it, he showed none in his calm, observant face. Buttoning up his coat as he went: the October sunset looked as if it ought to be warm, but he was deathly cold. On the street the young doctor beset him again, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... cunning of an adventurer—a cunning most humiliating in the narrative! The great difficulty to overcome in this discovery is, how to account for a sage and a hero acting folly and cowardice, and attempting to obtain by circuitous deception what it may be supposed so magnanimous a spirit would only deign to possess himself of by direct ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... and his host climbed the snow-covered slope at the back of a long fir plantation, towards the little beflagged sticks which indicated their stand. There was not a human being in sight, for the rest of the guns had chosen a steeper but somewhat less circuitous route. ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... spread their canvas and begun to move, a salute was fired, quite unexpectedly by the visitors, from the fort. Catherine's horse immediately took fright, and darted across the drawbridge with the speed of lightning. Herbert lost not a moment; but spurring his own steed, galloped away, taking a circuitous route, lest the clattering of his own horse's hoofs should impel Catherine's to run the faster. On she sped, and as long as she remained within sight, her friends trembled lest some frightful catastrophe ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... affairs through representation in the Imperial Parliament. In practice, however, this control has always been, and still remains, illusory, just as it would certainly have proved illusory if conferred upon any Colony. It can be exercised only by cumbrous, circuitous, and often profoundly unhealthy methods; and over a wide range of matters it cannot by any method ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... humor for the full long day. With it I could not quarrel, for it did its best to help me with my weary men onwards over the now darkened landscape, and ever took the lead to urge us forward. If it came to a great upstanding mountain, with marked politeness it ran round by a circuitous route, more easily if of greater length; at other times it scaled clear up, nimbly and straight, turning not once to us in its self-appointed task, and at the top, standing like some fairy on a steeple-point, beckoned us on encouragingly. At times ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... cover or at a safe distance from the hurtling pans, cans and stove wood, caressed sundry bumps and waited meekly. Irish and Big Medicine, once more disclosing the features God had given them, returned by a circuitous route and ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... if scheming woman who had come to Wirtemberg sixteen months before. She had developed. Her extraordinary prosperity had poisoned her being. She had grown hard. Could she not achieve the height of power by one road, very well, she was ready to climb back by any circuitous path she could find. For many days her ingenuity and her searchings failed to show her any way back to Stuttgart. It was the pretext for returning which she sought; once there she knew she could grasp ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... By a circuitous route, indeed, the Marxist reaches a moral position curiously analogous to that of the disciple of Herbert Spencer. Since all improvement will arrive by leaving things alone, the worse things get, the better; for so much the nearer one comes to the final exasperation, to the class war ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... course, have found alien influences here," said the architect. "They would have enjoyed the sequestration of the Palace, its being set apart, giving the impression of loneliness. The architects were shrewd in making the approach long and circuitous." ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... occupied, cut him off from the base of his supplies; but he might have waited for a few hours, and in that time he could have sent messengers, and brought up the force of Bougainville, which could have marched, by a circuitous route, and have joined him without coming in contact ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... duelists, he hovered not far off, in order to learn at the earliest possible moment the result of the most important personal encounter that had ever taken place in the history of the Blackfoot nation. Because of the circuitous course taken by George and Victor Shelton, Mul-tal-la saw nothing of them and never learned of the humorous ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... a certain rule should or should not be adopted, the test is not its capacity to be carried through a circuitous and artificial course, beginning in a supposed natural independence of the human being, and ending in another supposed entity compounded of all civilized states, but various elements enter into the solution of international questions, and in various degrees, as fitness to conduce ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... had seen before us, and which we now left to the right, but those of the Telleno range, just before they unite with that chain. Round the sides of this valley, which exhibited something of the appearance of a horse-shoe, wound the road in a circuitous manner; just before us, however, and diverging from the road, lay a footpath which seemed, by a gradual descent, to lead across the valley, and to rejoin the road on the other side, at the distance of about a furlong; and into this we struck in ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... at the same time rather nervous, because I knew that unless you are a master and the other person happens to be a boy it is much easier to talk about a plain understanding than to arrive at it, I strolled on to the lawn, and after taking a circuitous route I sat down by Nina. I had got her at a disadvantage because she was reading a book which my mother had said was good for her, and if I sat there long enough and bounced a tennis-ball up and ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... store and, in certain parts of the world, the saloon. Sanchia's Town was, upon the first day, a town in these essentials. Shortly after dawn a string of three six-horse teams crawled across the lowlands and, by a circuitous way, to the camp. One wagon was heaped with bits of second-hand lumber and a jumbled assortment of old tents and strips of canvas. In it, also, were hammers, saws and nails. The two other wagons were filled with boxes and bags—and kegs. There were two men to each team. ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... rivers or other obstacles made their progress peculiarly difficult. On such occasions, Yarrow continued his efforts to drive his plunder forward, until the day began to dawn, a signal which, he conceived, rendered it necessary for him to desert his spoil, and slink homeward by a circuitous road. It is generally said this accomplished dog was hanged along with his master; but the truth is, he survived him long, in the service of a man in Leithen, yet was said afterwards to have shown little of the wonderful instinct exhibited in ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... prisoners then appointed a night for their attempt, and agreed upon a place of rendezvous. They met at the time and place appointed, without discovery, and, taking a circuitous route, avoiding pursuit by traveling only during the night, they at length arrived safely at Louisville, after a march ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... then concluded: "For this cause behooves, The roots, from whence your operations come, Must differ. Therefore one is Solon born; Another, Xerxes; and Melchisidec A third; and he a fourth, whose airy voyage Cost him his son. In her circuitous course, Nature, that is the seal to mortal wax, Doth well her art, but no distinctions owns 'Twixt one or other household. Hence befalls That Esau is so wide of Jacob: hence Quirinus of so base a father springs, He dates from Mars ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... life boat. This lay about three miles from the village, reckoning as the crow flies, and was sheltered under a rude house which stood on the shores of a bay opening by an inlet into the sea. Our common way of gaining this house was through a circuitous passage of the sounds; but these we soon discovered, in consonance with a previous prediction of old Bill's, were entirely frozen over save in certain parts of their channels; and hence, this route being unnavigable for such boats as were at hand, which, without exception, were light gunning ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... ten minutes Ysidria reached the path where I was waiting, it having been necessary for her to come by a circuitous trail. ...
— The Beautiful Eyes of Ysidria • Charles A. Gunnison
... the planter, then at the trader, and seemed perfectly bewildered. He had forgotten the lesson given him by Pompey relative to his age; and the planter's circuitous questions—doubtless to find out the slave's real age—had thrown ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... hut: Bill had looked out a route for the ponies, to avoid slippery places. It started to bliz, but was not too thick for us to see our bearings. At the top of Ski Slope the ponies were taken out of the sledges and led down a circuitous route over the rocks. The rest of us put everything we wanted on one sledge and leaving the others up there went down the slope as before. The two ponies arrived before us and were stabled ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... that of his leaving the neighborhood had arrived, and as an interview with her was, in a religious point of view, essentially necessary, he took his book in the course of the evening, and by a path slightly circuitous, descended the valley that ran between his father's house and hers. With solemn strides he perambulated it in every direction—north, south, east, and west; not a natural bower in the glen was unexplored; not a green, quiet nook unsearched; not a shady tree unexam-ined; but all ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... pony was gone also, the women surmised that he had taken it with him, for they could not know that after he was spanked from the provision wagon, he had slipped out to the pasture and ridden by a circuitous ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... subdivision of labor as insures great thoroughness in all its branches. We are ashamed or afraid to conform honestly and hardily to a state of things purely American. We have not yet accomplished what our friend the Doctor calls "our weaning," and learned that dinners with circuitous courses and divers other Continental and English refinements, well enough in their way, cannot be accomplished in families with two or three untrained servants, without an expense of care and anxiety which makes them heart-withering to the delicate wife, and too severe ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... troops in positions in which they were as much protected as possible from the enemy's fire, he opened upon them a fierce and continuous cannonade, while he ordered Colonel Campian and eight hundred men to fall back among the hills, and, following a circuitous path which had been revealed by a shepherd, gain the spur of the mountains, and attack the enemy in their rear through the olive-wood. It was calculated that this movement, if successful, would require about three hours, and the general, for that period of the time, had to occupy the enemy and ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... of this fact; he betrays her with a little honey. He wants to steal her stores, and he first encourages her to steal his, then follows the thief home with her booty. This is the whole trick of the bee-hunter. The bees never suspect his game, else by taking a circuitous route they could easily baffle him. But the honey-bee has absolutely no wit or cunning outside of her special gifts as a gatherer and storer of honey. She is a simple-minded creature, and can be imposed upon by any novice. Yet it is not every novice that can find a bee-tree. The sportsman ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... voyage. Suns rise and set, and weeks and months pass, and winter surprises them on the deep, but brings them not the sight of the wished-for shore. I see them now, scantily supplied with provisions, crowded almost to suffocation in their ill-stored prison, delayed by calms, pursuing a circuitous route; and now driven in fury before the raging tempest, on the high and giddy wave. The awful voice of the storm howls through the rigging; the laboring masts seem straining from their base; the dismal sound of the pumps is heard; the ship ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... to be disregarded even by the irrepressible Jacobi; but the next minute Malcolm added, "Will you excuse my leaving you, I see some old friends of mine on their way to the Pool, and they will expect me to join them;" but if Malcolm intended to do so, he chose a most circuitous route. ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... hundred feet—an altitude diminished in appearance by the tenfold greater height of the surrounding mountains. Finding, after a few minutes' close observation, that nothing could be done from the base of the cliff, we proceeded to scale it by a circuitous route up a practicable but nevertheless terribly steep incline. Safely arrived at the top, we threw down our burdens and began to reconnoitre the terrain, which we did ventre a terre, bending over the cliff as far as we dared. Great was our dismay to perceive that some eighty or ninety feet ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... a little back-room, used as a private tap-room, which had a separate entrance by a dark and crooked alley, which communicated with Fleet Street, after a circuitous passage through several by-lanes and courts. This retired temple of Bacchus had also a connexion with Benjamin's more public shop by a long and narrow entrance, conducting to the secret premises in which a few ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... broad backs a crowd of women with light umbrellas, of children with straw hats and colored ribbons. Following the elephant came a giraffe carrying his small and haughty head very high. This singular caravan wound through the circuitous road, with many nervous laughs ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... highest or northern point of Mount Cunningham (a). The distance was full five miles; yet we could not proceed direct on horseback, the scorched plains being full of deep, wide cracks; and we were therefore compelled to take a circuitous route nearer ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... were silent; they sat pressing closely against each other. The carriage rolled on, a long, long way. Wherever could it be, then, that Emil lived? But, perhaps, he had purposely told the driver to take a circuitous route, knowing, no doubt, how pleasant it was to drive together through the night ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... first of all to pass my examination as Regierungs-Assessor, and then, by the circuitous route of employment in the Zollverein to seek admittance into the German diplomacy of Prussia; he did not, it would seem, anticipate in a scion of the native squirearchy a vocation for European diplomacy. I took his hint to heart, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... spoken to the muleteer when he refused to accept their first offer, and they had no doubt that he had arranged with the man to lead them to a certain spot, to which he had proceeded direct, while their guide had conducted them by a circuitous route. ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... escaped his pursuers by too wide a margin, but he had escaped. He had come by a circuitous course to this place where he hoped to find quiet under his assumed name of Maggard, nor was his choice of ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... car to the point where a lady should enter it. He was at that point to leave, without words. It had been impressed on McGuire that utter silence was imperative. The chauffeur was then to follow in the runabout, acting as a reserve in the event of need. Both cars were to take a certain circuitous route to a point on the shore thirty miles distant, the runabout keeping just close enough to hold the first car in sight. McGuire had listened and understood. Yet now McGuire was missing, together ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... likely to meet with it. It appears the Indians were this winter encamped on the banks of the River Exploits, and observed Captain B.'s party passing up the river on the ice. They retired from their encampments in consequence; and, some weeks afterwards, went by a circuitous route to the lake, to ascertain what the party had been doing there. They found Mary March's body, and removed it from where Captain B. had left it to where it now lies, by the side of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various
... along the lines, and our Regiment was selected to attack a portion of the enemy's works, and storm it. The 25th Connecticut Volunteers was consolidated with us, commanded by Major Burt. It was necessary to make a circuitous route three miles through the woods to the right, to reach the position to be attacked, exposed the whole way to a continued and terrific fire of shot and shell; but our boys unflinchingly pressed on through ravines, over felled trees, and all sorts of intricacies natural and ...
— History of the 159th Regiment, N.Y.S.V. • Edward Duffy
... the worst, found favor in Council of War: That of leaving Gabel and Puttkammer to their fate; and of pushing off for Zittau leftwards through the safe Hills, by Kamnitz, Kreywitz, Rumburg;—which, if the reader look, is by a circuitous, nay quite parabolic course, twice or thrice as far:—'In that manner let us save Zittau and our Main Body!' said the Council of War. Yes, my friends: a cannon-ball, endeavoring to get into Zittau from the town-ditch, would have to take a parabolic ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... darkness. It was his wish to make the night day, as he had made the sea land. When he had become full to excess of food and strong drink, he threw numbers of his companions off the bridge into the sea and sank many of the rest by making a circuitous attack upon them in boats that had rams. Some perished, but the majority though drunk managed to save themselves. The reason was that the sea showed itself extremely smooth and tranquil both while the bridge was being put together ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... This circuitous march made by Kutusoff, either from indecision or stratagem, turned out fortunate for him. Murat lost all trace of him for three days. The Russian employed this interval in studying the ground and entrenching himself. His advanced guard had nearly reached Woronowo, one of the finest domains ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... consequence was that not only were their arguments mistrusted, but even their good faith was, as we saw, momentarily subjected to doubt. "Bitter prejudice, furious antipathy" were freely predicated of the two Anglo-Saxon statesmen, who were rashly accused of attempting by circuitous methods to deprive France of her new Slav ally in eastern Europe. Sweeping recriminations of this character deserve notice only as indicating the spirit of discord—not to use a stronger term—prevailing at a Conference which was professedly endeavoring to knit ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... lives on the first sign of a gale; and late as it was in the season, we got up our slip-rope and gear, though we meant to stay only twenty-four hours. We pulled the agent ashore, and were ordered to wait for him, while he took a circuitous way round the hill to the mission, which was hidden behind it. We were glad of the opportunity to examine this singular place, and hauling the boat up and making her well fast, took different directions up and down the beach, to ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... its accumulated violence,—as demonstrating thus the melancholy persistence with which that ugly Sphinx who impersonates Justice in our human affairs doggedly insists on having her questions answered, and, coming by a circuitous route upon those who by good luck have escaped her direct path, through an incarnation of unusual terror compels her dread alternative,—it is interesting to note how this same family, separated by over seven generations from one political revolution, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... hem his watery march, and dam his streams, And split his currents; that for many a league The shorn and parcell'd Oxus strains along Through beds of sand and matted rushy isles— Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had In his high mountain cradle in Pamere, A foil'd circuitous wanderer:—till at last The long'd-for dash of waves is heard, and wide His luminous home of waters opens, bright And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars Emerge and ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... The river was circuitous in its course, and its banks were in some places steep, and in others low and sandy. The water was generally shallow, but in some places it was deep,—especially under the high banks. In many places there were willows ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott
... to say. I did not wait, for I had heard enough to know that Marut was in instant danger. I made my escape as best I could, but in order to avoid notice I had to resort to circuitous paths, and ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... not those for whom he could now do most. If he was sober, he made him signs of invitation. If he would not go with him, he left him, but kept him in view, and tried him again. If still he would not, he gave him a piece of bread, and left him. If he called, he stopped, and by circuitous ways brought him to the little house at the back. It was purposely quite dark. If the man was too apprehensive to enter, he left him; if he followed, he led him to Mistress Croale. If anything suggested ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... cables messages have sometimes to take very circuitous routes. For instance, during the two days, three years ago, that a tremendous storm committed such havoc among the telegraph wires around London, cutting off all communication with the lines connected with the Channel cables at Dover, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... then, if he would be successful. These fellows know that a strong party is in pursuit of them, and each of them will do everything they can to throw us off the scent. They are sure not to go straight to their place of meeting, but each will take circuitous routes, and will make for thick bush, where it will be next to impossible for even a native to follow them. No, they ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... took a strong liking to Bertie, though he showed it little outwardly. The latter probably in his naivete and directness unveiled his full purpose to this gum-chewing, grey-eyed American. When the news of Mrs. Warren's death had reached Bertie through a circuitous course—Praed-Honoria-Rossiter—he had modified his scheme and at the same time had become still more ardent about carrying it into execution. In fact he felt that Mrs. Warren's death was opportune, as with her still living and impossible to include in a flight, Vivie would probably ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... should be done kept Mark Breezy and his companions rooted for a few seconds to the spot. Indecision was banished, however, when they suddenly perceived a band of thirty or forty natives moving stealthily towards them by a circuitous route, evidently with the intention of taking them in rear and preventing them from finding shelter in ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... come nearly together. Chattanooga was in the valley between, near the centre of which, behind the town, was an elevation, Orchard Knob, held by the enemy. Bragg commanded the river and the railroads. The route for supplies was circuitous, inadequate, and insecure, over mountain roads that had become horrible. Horses and mules had perished by thousands. The soldiers were on half rations. Word came to Grant in Louisville, that Rosecrans was contemplating ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... pines, but had not announced himself. His arrival had been too tardy to give him a view of their first—and only—embrace, and his distance had been too great to let him hear any of their words. When, after a circuitous return, he reached the terrace, his wife was sitting, pale, but with recovered consciousness, in a chair, and he himself went direct to ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... know the reason of this sudden relaxation of vigilance. Perhaps it was because all their attention was directed to Huntsville, which was now occupied in force by General Mitchel. The panic produced by this occupation was immense, as the only communication it left them with Beauregard was by the circuitous route through Atlanta, and when, the next day, this too was endangered, their excitement knew ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... interest were already in motion, mustering men and horses, while the Whigs assembled themselves in the principal towns, armed the inhabitants, and prepared for civil war. We narrowly escaped being stopped on more occasions than one, and were often compelled to take circuitous routes to avoid the points ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... continual pictures of the miseries, the actual want and poverty, produced by the grasping avidity of gold. It had rendered the Spaniards heedless of all the less obvious, but more certain and salubrious, sources of wealth. All labor seemed lost that was to produce profit by a circuitous process. Instead of cultivating the luxuriant soil around them, and deriving real treasures from its surface, they wasted their time in seeking for mines and golden streams, and were starving in the ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... engineering, art and the relative crafts, precious stones, astronomy and the applied sciences, music, horses, and geology, with long pauses in between. Both knew instinctively that this learned discourse was but a makeshift, a circuitous route past danger-points. "Have you ever heard of telling fortunes in ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... arguments derived from the testimony of government witnesses. The prizes taken and distributed to British seamen, he said, so far from being a balance in our favour, added to our loss; for if we had not been at war with America, the value of all these cargoes in the circuitous course of trade, must have centred in Great Britain. The propositions were disposed of by the previous question, and other motions made by the Duke of Richmond for ascertaining the number of troops sent to America, as well as the expenses incurred by the war, though they occasioned long and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... unhappily for the lovers of the marvellous, altogether unable to disclose the horrors which he had seen. Under the evil repute arising from this tale of wonder, the guard-room was abandoned, and a new one constructed. In like manner, the guards after that period held another and more circuitous communication with the Governor or Seneschal of the Castle; and that which lay through the ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... when he entered Jonesville. Following a matter-of-fact idea of his own, he had brought his men the greater distance by a circuitous route through the woods, thus avoiding the ostentatious exposure of his party on the open bay in a well-manned boat to an extended view from the three leagues of shore and marsh opposite. Crossing the stream, which ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... of Inchi. Had that circumstance been fortunately known at the time, a detachment of the British army might easily have marched along the Chaussee, and taken possession of the place ere the Republicans could possibly have returned, as they had in their retreat described a circuitous detour of some miles." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... still, Spunkie isn't Spunk, you understand!" he had finished, with a vision in his eyes of Billy as she had looked that first night when she had triumphantly lifted from the green basket the little gray kitten with its enormous pink bow. This time there was no circuitous journeying, no secrecy in the trip to New York. Quite as a matter of course the three brother made their plans to meet Billy, and quite as a matter of course they met her. Perhaps the only cloud in the horizon of their happiness was the presence of Calderwell. He, too, had come ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... Boehme, however, shows this fascination for the super-empirical at its height and culmination. It was an attempt, though a bungling attempt, to pass from an abstract God to a God of character, and it was a circuitous way of getting round ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... a battle in a comparatively level country. Numerically, the Carlists were superior to their opponents, but in artillery, and especially in cavalry, the Christinos had the advantage. From various garrison towns, through which he had passed in his circuitous route from Bilboa to Larraga, the Christino commander had collected reinforcements, and an imposing number of squadrons, including several of lancers and dragoons of the royal guard, formed part of the force now ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... was carried on through two routes: one was the famous canal which, begun by Pharaoh Necho, was completed under the government of the Ptolemies. Leaving the Nile near the southern point of the Delta, the canal, after a somewhat circuitous course, joined the Red Sea at the town of Arsinoe, near the modern town of Suez. Another route was overland from Coptos, on the Nile, across the desert, to Berenice and Myos Hormos. Along this road wells were dug or reservoirs of water provided, ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... And in this circuitous way you see I have reached my present subject, which is, Ogres. You fancy they are dead or only fictitious characters—mythical representatives of strength, cruelty, stupidity, and lust for blood? Though they had seven-leagued boots, you remember all sorts ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... company carries goods a hundred and thirty miles in a roundabout way (on a long distance) to favour its influential shareholders, and thus ruins the secondary lines. In the United States travellers and goods are sometimes compelled to travel impossibly circuitous routes so that dollars may flow into the pocket of ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... their much-needed loans on better terms, even if less promptly, by the circuitous process mentioned than if they could borrow directly in our markets; for their own citizens will pay higher prices than we would, even if, to get the money, they have to sell their other investment securities to us at a considerable sacrifice. England has sold Treasury bills for seventy-five ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... hours, however, from the top of a hill I saw ahead of me an impi and with it captured wagons, which was evidently heading for the king's kraal. So as I knew what kind of a greeting these warriors would give me, I bore away in another direction with the hope of reaching the border by a circuitous route. In this too I had no luck, since presently I caught sight of outposts stationed upon rocks, which doubtless belonged to another impi or regiment. Indeed one soldier, thinking from my dress that I also was a Zulu, called to me for ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... indefatigable exertions of Gen. Marion, that from the 9th of March until the 10th of April, he had not reached his place of destination, and then made a hasty retreat through roads unfrequented, and over wide swamps and rivers, unpursued. To effect this he took a circuitous route, nearly one hundred miles out of his way, which detained him until about the 9th of May, more than two months from his first ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... and, locking the office, took a circuitous and little traveled road, determined to fully understand his own heart before he again looked into those eyes with their depths of ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... chateaux, moulins, etc., are so numerous as to be entitled to a special chapter. One of the most famous, the Moulin de la Galette, of the Montmartre quarter, is here illustrated, with a touch of the picturesque. It may be reached by the Rue Lepic, more circuitous and possibly more safe than the acrobatic ladders which lead directly to its door. Its usual customers vary from workmen's families through many varieties of painters, strangers, filles, and marlous. Its dances are not of a kind to recommend themselves ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... following day we had to leave these positions and the other side took them and camped there. Next day they moved along Ohrigstad River with a strong mounted force and a good many empty waggons, evidently to collect the women-folk in that place. I had to proceed by a circuitous route in order to get ahead of the enemy. The road led across a steep mountain and through thickly grown kloofs, which prevented us from reaching the enemy until they had burnt all the houses, destroyed the seed plants, and loaded the families ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... distance in his circuitous return when he became aware of the sound of voices that seemed to be drawing closer to him as he came toward the speakers. He stopped and stood listening, and instantly, as he stopped, the voices stopped also. He crouched ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... issued by him, under which the pope was seized in his palace, and transported over Mount Cenis to Savona, where he lived three years, partly on a prison allowance and partly on alms. On the defeat of the Austrians, who were commanded by the Archduke Charles, that commander took a circuitous route through Bohemia, and finally occupied the bank of the Danube opposite Vienna, over against the proud victor Napoleon, who, selecting for the passage of the river the place where two islands divide the Danube into three arms, conducted his battalions to the left bank, occupied Aspern, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... have to do is this, General," said the other: "from here, I go to the house we know of, taking a circuitous route, loitering on the way, and making certain that I am not followed. If I find myself followed, I will pass this shop, dropping my handkerchief in front of it and then turning back to pick it up. If I am not followed, I enter the other house, mount ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... feudal castle with a modern dwelling, though with only indifferent success, excepting in the expenditure involved. The roads from the great suspension-bridge across the strait lead on either hand to Bangor and Beaumaris, although the route is rather circuitous. This bridge, crossing at the narrowest and most beautiful part of the strait, was long regarded as the greatest triumph of bridge-engineering. It carried the Holyhead high-road across the strait, and was built ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... bodily infirmities, nor any other consideration, could prevent him a moment from resolving on an undertaking that might have deterred the most active young man. He almost immediately, with an alertness by no means natural to him, undertook a great circuitous journey along the frontier of an enemy worse than savage, within the sound of their cannon, within the range of the light troops of the different armies, and through roads ruined by the ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... school in the south, she was led to offer her services to the Presbyterian Board of Missions for Freedmen. In December 1885, she received a commission with request to locate among the Choctaw Freedmen at Lukfata, in the southeast part of Indian Territory. The route at that early date was quite circuitous. Going south through Kansas City over the M. K. T. Ry., to Denison, Texas, she passed eastward by rail to Bells, through Paris to Clarksville, Texas; and thence northward forty miles to Wheelock and Lukfata. Clarksville, south of Red river continued to be the nearest town and station ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... and thrown into prison for a fortnight. The result was that the ship sailed without him. It was just as well for him and for us, for it sank at the mouth of the Garonne. In 1755, however, he was in Leyden, although by what route, circuitous or direct, he reached that city ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... the struggle that would follow such a determination, a struggle with the pink fox, Valentine Simmons. He thought of himself as an equal with the other; for, if Simmons were practised in cunning, if Simmons were deep, he, Gordon Makimmon, would have no necessity for circuitous dealing; his course would be simple, unmistakable.—He would lend money at, say, three per cent, grant extensions of time wherever necessary, and knock the bottom out of the storekeepers' usurious monopoly, drag the farms ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... furnished with the requisite guarantees from the Holland cities for three months' pay, on the 27th of August, the day of the publication of his letter to the Emperor, he crossed the Meuse and took his circuitous way through Diest, Tirlemont, Sichem, Louvain, Mechlin, Termonde, Oudenarde, Nivelles. Many cities and villages accepted his authority and admitted his garrisons. Of these Mechlin was the most considerable, in which he stationed a detachment of his troops. Its doom was sealed ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a curious discussion of the difference between intuition and sagacity; one being immediate in its effect, the other requiring a circuitous process; one he observed was the eye of the mind, the other the nose of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... life; and His grace comforted and aided me greatly in this emergency. Forever blessed and hallowed be His holy name, que attingit a fine, usque ad finem fortiter, et disponit omnia suaviter, [90] who hath brought me by so many circuitous ways to a position so in accord with my life-long desires. Thus, what distressed me on that day was not fear, but the sight of the bravest and most gallant soldiers either dead or wounded; nevertheless, it consoled me much to see them enter the battle with the names of Christ and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... with a vivid colour at the mention of those she had lost. When led out to execution, she was dressed in white; she had cut off her hair with her own hands. Placed in a tumbrel, with her arms tied behind her, she was taken by a circuitous route to the Place de la Revolution, and she ascended the scaffold with a firm and dignified step, as if she had been about to take her place on a throne by ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... to Ballyvaughn, a fishing village opposite Galway, winds, by a circuitous course, through these freaks of nature, and, on the long descent from the high land to the sea level, passes the most conspicuous of the neighboring mountains, the Corkscrew Hill. The general shape of the mountain is conical, the terraces composing it are of wonderful regularity from the base to ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... purpose; except, indeed, that they do stop short of the old English legislation which provided that when a laborer broke his contract or refused to work he could be committed before the nearest magistrate and summarily punished. Even this result, however, has been arrived at by the more circuitous and ingenious legislation of Southern States such as in Georgia, cited in the charge to the Grand Jury.[1] The principle of this elaborate machinery is always that money advances, or supplies, or a ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... and by a circuitous route they reached the place indicated, which, in English, is the Deer Garden. It is on an island, separated from the main land by a channel. The southern portion of it is a thickly-populated village, but the principal part of the island is laid out as a park, of which ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... before him into the account, Roswell Gardiner felt that he was now enlisted in the most important undertaking of his whole life, as he and Stephen shook hands with the two mates, and left the point. The drifts rendered a somewhat circuitous path necessary at first; but the moon and stars shed so much of their radiance on the frozen covering of the earth, that the night was quite as light as many a London day. Excitement and motion kept the blood of our two adventurers in a brisk circulation, and prevented their becoming immediately ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... else than what he is. The very attempt to do it would inevitably introduce a confusion, if possible, more horrid than the present. There is no way to make a connection between the original constituent and the representative, but by the circuitous means which may lead the candidate to apply in the first instance to the primary electors, in order that by their authoritative instructions (and something more perhaps) these primary electors may force the two ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... snare. He saw the regular soldiery of the enemy standing unmoved; he had learned that a regiment of American regulars, under Colonel Tutle, were marching at double step, to the scene of action; and he fancied that the retreating militia were not at all afraid, but brilliantly executing a circuitous march to gain the rear of the British line, and cut off their retreat. It was true Fort Tomkins was about to fall into British hands. Already the officer in charge of Navy Point, agreeably to orders, and supposing the fort to be lost, had set on fire the naval magazine, containing ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... explained to him my desire to convey the body of Mr. Heywood across the river, and bury him secretly in his own grounds, but that it was necessary, in order to do this effectually, that he and his son should go with me, and by some circuitous route. Entering at once into my views, he said he would show me a place where we could cross without being seen either from the Fort or from his own encampment, and then led the way back to the wood where the party ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... for his capital, Radetsky offered to draw up his troops as a guard of honour over the whole extent of occupied territory between Novara and Turin. The offer was declined, and Victor Emmanuel took a circuitous route to avoid observation. His journey was marked throughout by a complete absence of state. Before he arrived, a trusty hand consigned to him a note written in haste and in much anguish by the Queen, in which she warned him to enter by night, as he was likely to have a very bad reception. ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... something to communicate. A man of more refinement and address than I can pretend to would make this communication in a more circuitous and artful manner; and a man less deeply interested in the establishment of truth would act with more caution and forbearance. I have no excuse to plead, no forgiveness to ask, for what I am now going ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... closing time that night, and made my way, by a circuitous route, to my cousin's club. I was shown into the strangers' room, and Gilbert came to me in a few moments. His face told me at once that he had met with no success. He carefully closed the door, and came over to my ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with such effect that, more than four hundred horses having perished in the assault, they were driven back on the infantry, who were posted in their rear, and compelled to flee along with them, while Lawrence Ericson pushed into the town by a circuitous road and possessed himself of the enemy's artillery in the market-place. When the garrison of the castle observed this, they set fire to the houses by shooting their combustibles, and burned the greatest part of the town. The miners and peasants dispersed to extinguish the flames or to plunder, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... in their cookery, and formed the principal ingredients in their medicines. As, however, the price of all Indian commodities was necessarily high, so long as they were obliged to be brought to Europe by a circuitous route, and loaded with accumulated profits, it was impossible that they could be purchased, except by the more wealthy classes. The Portuguese, enabled to sell them in greater abundance, and at a much cheaper rate, ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... for the occasion. During the progress of this expedition, however, so terrible a caterwauling broke forth, as it seemed, from the immediate neighbourhood of the fender, that my disconcerted helpmate made a most precipitate retreat. She managed after this mishap to procure a light, and by a circuitous route, constructed of tables and chairs, to avoid stepping upon the floor, Mrs. B. obtained the desired weapon. It was then much better than a play to behold that heroic woman defying grimalkin ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... neighbouring country. We succeeded in finding a small pond of water in one of the former, hardly large enough to supply our necessities, but as it enabled us to push so much further on, we turned towards the lagoon, making a circuitous journey to the right, across a large plain, bounded to the north by low acacia brush and box. We struck upon a creek at the further extremity of the plain, in which there was a tolerably sized pond. It appeared from the traces of ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... frontiers of his kingdom as was consistent with safety. Finding that I was determined to proceed, the king told me that one route still remained, but that, he said, was by no means free from danger; which was to go from Kaarta into the Moorish kingdom of Ludamar, from whence I might pass, by a circuitous route, into Bambarra. If I wished to follow this route, he would appoint people to conduct me to Jarra, the frontier town of Ludamar. He then enquired very particularly how I had been treated since I had left the Gambia, and asked in ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... of poor Mr. Kemp's seeds, especially as I believed, from his statements and the appearance of the seeds, that they did germinate, and I further have no doubt that their antiquity must be immense. I am sorry also for the trouble you have had. I heard the other day through a circuitous course how you are astonishing all the clodhoppers in your whole part of the county: and [what is] far more wonderful, as it was remarked to me, that you had not, in doing this, aroused the envy of all the good surrounding sleeping ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... off indeed, speeding on to the busy wharf, scene of many a "lark" in Dan's boyish past. Here the great steamboat was awaiting them: for, although the route was longer and more circuitous, Father Regan had decided it best for his young travellers to make their journey ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... however, soon changed his course, so that Hood was obliged to take a circuitous route to the west and north. To follow Hood indefinitely, without much prospect of overtaking and overwhelming his army, would be for Sherman equivalent to being decoyed out of Georgia. To remain on the defensive, on the other hand, would ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... auberge. The very place was marked down in my itinerary simply because it seemed impossible to reach the region we were bound for from any other starting-point. At least, the two other alternatives had drawbacks: we must either make a circuitous railway journey round to Mende, or a still longer detour by way ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... on crossing the Spey, and houses of a warm yellow tint on reaching Elgin,—geologically the Cupar-Fife of the north. And the story that the colored buildings tell him is, that he has been passing, though by a somewhat circuitous route of a hundred and fifty miles, over an anticlinal geological section,—down in the scale till he reached Aberdeen and had gone a little beyond it, and then up again, until at Elgin he arrives ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... contending powers and parties at the same time; to be ready to adopt any opinion and to possess none; to fall into the public humour of the moment, and to evade the impending catastrophe; to look upon every man as a tool, and never do anything which had not a definite though circuitous purpose; these were his political accomplishments; and, while he recognised them as the best means of success, he found in their exercise excitement and delight. To be the centre of a maze of manoeuvres was his empyrean. He was never ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... country. But unhappily our one need was to be secret; and all this rapid and animated picture of the road swept quite apart from us, as we rumbled up hill and down dale, under hedge and over stone, among circuitous byways. Only twice did I receive, as it were, a whiff of the highway. The first reached my ears alone. I might have been anywhere. I only knew I was walking in the dark night and among ruts, when I heard very far off, over the silent country that surrounded us, the guard's horn wailing its ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... saluted with three hearty cheers by their fellow-students, and then continued through College Street in front of the whole College square, at the north extremity of which they were again greeted by cheers, and thence followed a circuitous way to quasi Potter's Field, about a mile from the city, where the concluding ceremonies were performed. These consist of walking over the coffin, thus surmounting the difficulties of the author; boring a hole through ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... later the two men had reached a trolley line that ran into Atlantis, and they arrived at the city before Mr. Damon and Tom got there, as the latter had to go by a circuitous route. Mr. Berg lost no time in calling up his ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... kerosene lamps, and as she drew nearer she even descried Ossian himself, seated at the cabinet organ in his shirt-sleeves, practicing the Christmas anthem, his daughter holding a candle to the page while she struggled to adjust a circuitous alto to her father's tenor. On the hither side of the Popham house, and quite obscured by it, stood Letitia Boynton's one-story gray cottage. It had a clump of tall cedar trees for background and the bare branches ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... receive from the gratitude, the veneration, and the love, of his fellow-mortals; seen, as he then is, like a luminary of the first magnitude in the full blaze of meridian glory, we are generally too dazzled by the lustre we behold, to penetrate, or even to reflect on, the circuitous, the tedious, or the perplexed path, through which he may have been constrained to pass, in pursuit of the splendid destiny at ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... in his own thoughts. His aim was to remedy the abuse nearest at hand, in the hope of thus getting gradually closer to the central evil; and, had his action been unhampered, he would still have preferred the longer and more circuitous path of practical experiment to the sweeping adoption of a new ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... They collected great stones on the brinks of precipices, and on the declivities of the mountains, to roll down upon the heads of their enemies. By these and every other means they attempted to stop Alexander's passage. But he had contrived to send detachments around by circuitous and precipitous paths, which even the mountaineers had deemed impracticable, and thus attack his enemies suddenly and unexpectedly from above their own positions. As usual, his plan succeeded. The mountaineers were driven away, ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... feathers, from one dingle to the other; the two terminations of my intended garden. The distance is nearly a thousand paces, and the path, perfectly on a level, will be two paces broad, so that I may walk between you; but another could not join us conveniently. From this there will be several circuitous and spiral, leading by the easiest ascent to the summit; and several more, to the road along the cultivation underneath: here will, however, be but one entrance. Among the projecting fragments and the massive stones yet standing of the ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... carried the day, and we hurried on shore, and returned by a circuitous route to the spot whence we had witnessed the engagement between the two vessels. William eagerly swept the dark well-defined line of the ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... whole country betwixt the Elbe and the Oder was so desolated by the past marchings and quarterings of the troops, that, in order to support his army on its march into Saxony and Bohemia, Banner was obliged to take a circuitous route from Lower Pomerania into Lower Saxony, and then into the Electorate of Saxony through the territory of Halberstadt. The impatience of the Lower Saxon States to get rid of such troublesome guests, procured him ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... men, too probably lying lifeless at the foot of this mountain. I stated my fears to the two seamen who were with me, and who had just come up. The whole bore too much the appearance of truth to admit of a doubt. We descended the ruins by a circuitous and winding way; and, after an hour's difficult and dangerous walk, we reached the spot, where all our fears were too fully confirmed. There lay the two dead bodies of our companions, and that of my dog, all mangled in a shocking manner; both, it would appear, had attempted ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... rejoined, "come often to see you;" and forthwith leading off the matrons and married women, who had come over with her, as well as the women and matrons of the Ning mansion, she passed through the inner part of the house, and entered, by a circuitous way, the side gate of the park, when she perceived: yellow flowers covering the ground; white willows flanking the slopes; diminutive bridges spanning streams, resembling the Jo Yeh; zigzag pathways ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... religious, it is more prudent to trust to time and truth for their defence, than to sword and pistol. I know you are impatient to hear what were the reports to your disadvantage, and from whom I had them. I had them from the Annalys; and they heard them in England, through various circuitous channels of female correspondents in Ireland. As far as we can trace them, we think that they originated with your old friend Miss Black. The first account Lady Annaly heard of you after she went to England, was, that you were living a most dissolute life in ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... left. Or if it be deduction from cause to effect, then it will be motion backwards and forwards. And finally, if it mean arguing from the accidents which surround a thing, whether nearly or remotely, it will be circuitous motion. But the discursive action of the reason arguing from the things of sense to intelligible things according to the orderly progress of the natural reason, belongs to direct motion. When, however, it arises from Divine illuminations, it comes under oblique motion, as ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... been expected, prepared to set out; and riding on till he came to a cross-way, much less circuitous than the high road, his knights said, "My lord, it will be better for you to go this way, than to pass along the broad road; it is ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... some doubt whether they were right, and Forester thought, as they proceeded, that the road appeared somewhat different from the one in which they had been travelling. However, they thought it best to go on. After advancing about two miles, in a very circuitous direction, they came at last to a place where several trees seemed to have been cut away, and there were remains of several log huts. Marco was very much interested in this discovery, and he wanted to examine the huts very particularly. But Forester, when he found that they were ...
— Forests of Maine - Marco Paul's Adventures in Pursuit of Knowledge • Jacob S. Abbott
... and that we had been successful in holding it, but the rumours were that the fighting was terrific. We were soon marching on the road past battered Vlamertinghe. Shells of heavy calibre were falling on all sides, and we made for the Convent by the Lille gate, by a circuitous route—round by the Infantry Barracks. We dumped our packs in this Convent, where there were still one or two of the nuns who had decided to face the shelling rather than ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... usual hour. We have been travelling through a very rough country for these two days past. The fact is, that our guides, having only passed here in summer, are unacquainted with the winter track. We are, therefore, evidently pursuing a circuitous course, which, with every other disadvantage, subjects us to the risk of running short of provisions,—a contingency which our reduced stock warns us to prepare for ere long. We can afford no more food to the dogs; their ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... soon after the return of Lorry and Anguish from a trip to the frontier, Beverly expressed a desire to visit the monastery of St. Valentine, high on the mountain top. It was a long ride over the circuitous route by which the steep incline was avoided and it was necessary for the party to make an early start. Yetive rode with Harry Anguish and his wife the countess, while Beverly's companion was the gallant Colonel Quinnox. Baldos, relegated to the background, brought ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Ross and Miss Dangerfield soon appeared and, with Wallace, started on a trip which was to include a call at Bishops, and later a spin down the old post road and back by some circuitous route. ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... him; who else, official and non-official, ask not. The Journey is to be circuitous; to combine various businesses, and also to have its amusements. They went by Custrin; glancing at old known Country, which is at its greenest in this season. By Custrin, across the Neumark, into Pommern; after that by an intricate winding route; reviewing regiments, inspecting garrisons, now here ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... is best that the bold course was taken, We rode boldly, and, in the last months, we had to ride for a fall. An experiment has been made by frontal attack, and with the slenderest of resources. Now that all that is over, the time has come to begin the slow and circuitous approach toward political ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... Lewis, formerly so distant from Edinburgh and Glasgow, can now be reached in fourteen hours by one who leaves the latter city at 5.40 A.M. The old route was very tiresome and circuitous: the traveller had to proceed to Inverness, take the Dingwall and Skye line to Strome Ferry, and then sail over the Minch to Stornoway. The opening up of the West Highlands by the railway to Mallaig has changed all that. At Mallaig pier, when you leave the train, you find the connecting ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... impossible, however, for a stranger in the Garden of Plants to be sure of going any considerable distance in any one direction, for the walks are meandering and circuitous beyond description. They wind about perpetually in endless mazes; and the little fields, and parks, and gardens that are enclosed between them are so enveloped in shrubbery, and the view, moreover, is so intercepted with the huts and cabins built for ...
— Rollo in Paris • Jacob Abbott
... this morning, but only two pages or thereabouts. At twelve o'clock set out with Anne and Walter to visit at Makerstoun, but the road between Makerstoun and Merton being very bad, we drove, I dare say, thirty miles in going and coming, by a circuitous route, and only got home at half-past seven at night. Saw Lady Brisbane Makdougall, but not Sir Thomas.[333] Thought of old Sir Henry and his older father Sir George. Received a box of Australian seeds, forwarded by Andrew Murray, now ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... mother had died lately, watched over, as I was told, by his Intended. A clean-shaved man, with an official manner and wearing gold-rimmed spectacles, called on me one day and made inquiries, at first circuitous, afterwards suavely pressing, about what he was pleased to denominate certain 'documents.' I was not surprised, because I had had two rows with the manager on the subject out there. I had refused to give up the smallest scrap out of that package, and I took ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... the valleys, and shaking out gold pieces in Miss Bezac's little brown sitting-room like the Will-o'-wisps in the "Tale of tales". Through the open door her red cow might be seen returning home by a winding and circuitous path, such as cows love, and a little sparrow hopped in and out, from the doorstep, looking for "One, two, three, four", crumbs. Faith from her seat near the fire could see it all—if her eyes chose to pass Mr. Linden,—what he saw, she found out ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... apparently another remnant of the old Druidical chants sung by the priests when they walked in procession round their sacred circles of Stonehenge and others, and clearly traceable to the Gaelic—Riomball, a circle; riomballach, circuitous; riomballachd, circularity. ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various
... B.C. when an envoy from Kara arrived at the Mizugaki Court, praying that a Japanese general might be sent to compose a quarrel which had long raged between Kara and Shiragi, and to take the former under Japan's protection. It appears that this envoy had travelled by a very circuitous route. He originally made the port of Anato (modern Nagato), but Prince Itsutsu, who ruled there, claimed to be the sole monarch of Japan and refused to allow the envoy to proceed, so that the latter had to travel north and ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... twenty-five wagons, and at least two hundred prisoners. Moving boldly northward, he struck the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, burning the bridge across the Accotink Run, and from Burke's Station he swung around Fairfax Court House, and returned, by long, circuitous route, into their ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... on condition of obtaining his freedom, promised to show the road. The army, following him as its guide, was soon obstructed by an abattis of lofty trees, which had been cut down; but by taking long and circuitous paths, they at last came to the desired spot, and the soldiers in their rage laid waste the fields with fire, carried off the cattle and the inhabitants, and slew ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... warriors. The rivulet lay between her and the Hut, and the nearest bridge that crossed it would have brought her within reach of danger. Then it would require at least half an hour to reach that bridge by the circuitous path she would be compelled to take, and there was little hope of getting over it before the strangers should have advanced. It was better to remain where she could behold what was passing, and to be governed by events, than to rush blindly ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... to sail at eleven o'clock. Half an hour before that time Mark's hackney coach drew up at the wharf. Ten minutes later Dick Chetwynd, who had, like Mark, driven by a circuitous route, and had made several stoppages, joined him, and as they shook hands slipped a parcel into his hand, and this Mark at once pocketed, and buttoned his coat up tightly; then hailing a boat, they went on board together; they had sent their luggage on the ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... the Andes, to receive their goods from, and to export their India-rubber, cinchona, etc., to the United States and Europe, via the great water highway which discharges into the Atlantic, than by the long, circuitous route of Cape Horn or the trans-Isthmian ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton |
