"Fractious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... some jarred to learn that the enterprise was a payin' one almost from the start. Folks was just tickled to death with havin' perfectly good meals, well cooked, well seasoned and pipin' hot, set down at their back doors prompt every day, with no fractious fryin'-pan pirates growlin' around the kitchens, and no local food profiteers soakin' 'em ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... sure, Miss Elliott. I have grown so fractious and contrary lately that maybe my sister winna care to have me. And as ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... process. What are a man's feelings anyway, compared with a woman's? And what rights has he as against hers? No: between man and man all that can be needed is plain speech and manly frankness—aided by a little diplomacy. I'll break you to pieces, James H., if you are fractious; and I've got the weapons to do it with. It is all for your good, and you'll bless me the rest of your life. One thing must be understood: I can't have you coming to my place and practising your wild backwoods ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... no wonder, with me a wastin' of his substance; Hen'retta went off suddin', with whatever she could lay her hands on, and everything was at sixes and sevens. Lisha's patience give out at last, for I was dreadful fractious, knowin' it was all my fault. The children seemed to git out of sorts, too, and acted like time in the primer, with croup and pins, and whoopin'-cough and temper. I declare I used to think the pots and kettles biled over to spite each other and ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... next morning, a thing that Mrs. Brandeis took to most ungracefully. After the holiday rush and strain she invariably had a severe cold, the protest of the body she had over-driven and under-nourished for two or three weeks. As a patient she was as trying and fractious as a man, tossing about, threatening to get up, demanding hot-water bags, cold compresses, alcohol rubs. She fretted about the business, and imagined that things were at ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... a more fractious patient than Du Meresq as he lay listlessly on the sofa, while the bone reunited. He had speculated on many a stolen walk with Bluebell in that unfrequented wood, where they would be far less liable to interruption than at "The Maples." He thought of his cavalier parting with her,—a ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... 720; cantankerous, exceptious[obs3]; restiff &c. (perverse) 901a[obs3]; churlish &c. (discourteous) 895. cross, cross as crabs, cross as two sticks, cross as a cat, cross as a dog, cross as the tongs; fractious, peevish, acaritre[obs3]. in a bad temper; sulky &c. 901a; angry &c. 900. resentful, resentive[obs3]; vindictive &c. 919. Int. pish! Phr. a vieux comptes nouvelles disputes[Fr]; quamvis tegatur proditur vultu furor [Lat][Seneca]; vino ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... isn't—well, you know, it isn't quite sporting to shoot out of season." Barry's manner was as if dealing with a fractious child. ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... country is no sinecure,'" A third Virginian, endorsing Olmsted's observations, wrote that a planter's cares and troubles were endless; the slaves, men, women and children, infirm and aged, had wants innumerable; some were indolent, some obstinate, some fractious, and each class required different treatment. With the daily wants of food, clothing and the like, "the poor man's time and thoughts, indeed every faculty of mind, must be exercised on behalf of those who have no ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... pick-a-back, o' course I shall leave it the least bit o' time possible afore you; but allow me to express a hope as you won't reduce me to extremities; in saying wich, I merely quote wot the nobleman said to the fractious pennywinkle, ven he vouldn't come out of his shell by means of a pin, and he conseqvently began to be afeered that he should be obliged to crack him in the parlour door.' At the end of this address, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... afore I could say one word, the trader, wid a dreadful curse, seize her by de throat, and in his hurry to get her away, stumbled ober one ob de young uns wid his great heaby boots, dat was made 'spressly to kick de fractious niggars, as he called it, and de chile neber breathe again! he had step clean on to its neck, strangling it in an instant! At de sight ob her chile, all bleedin', and still, poor Phillis become all quiet, and her eyes were shut, just like good missus, when she find ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... the officer (spurs, boots, and all) was sitting in it with his legs out of one end and his head groaning and bellowing from the other. This was his specific for sea-sickness, and for three days he behaved about as well as a fractious child who sadly wants a good whipping. It is no discredit to a man to be sea-sick. Nelson, we are told, was so far human. But it is somewhat unmanly for an officer to whine and blubber like a baby, and yet we have several ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... up more than you think, sir; there is indeed. He was that fractious that he wouldn't hold the hosses for me, not for a minute, till I could go in ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... blockade as effective as possible. In one of his comprehensive, quietly delivered and powerful speeches EDWARD GREY showed that situation is not so easily managed as amateur diplomatists below the Gangway believe, or as fractious newspapers, bent on damaging the Government even if the Empire falls, assert. Explained in detail steps taken by Foreign Office to deal with it. House listened critically but approvingly. Took note of fact that FIRST LORD OF ADMIRALTY ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various
... interested in preserving that power. However, fissures have emerged within the broad Shia coalition, known as the United Iraqi Alliance. Shia factions are struggling for power—over regions, ministries, and Iraq as a whole. The difficulties in holding together a broad and fractious coalition have led several observers in Baghdad to comment that Shia leaders are held "hostage to extremes." Within the coalition as a whole, there is a reluctance to reach a political accommodation with the Sunnis ...
— The Iraq Study Group Report • United States Institute for Peace
... know her room. You will find her very poorly and fractious this afternoon. Will you tell her that you are coming to live ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... master had sworn volcanically at her for the fifth time in the course of one forenoon, "I'se jus' erbout wo'ed out! I done been knowin' Mawstuh Caspah ebber sence I was Ol' Mistis's tiah-'ooman—dat's what she call me in de plantashum days—an' I ain't nev' seen him so fractious ez he been sence dat letter come tellin' him come get dat po' li'l gal-child o' Mawstuh Louis's. Seems lak he jus' gwine r'ar round twel he ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... tend to that," answered the retired buccaneer, "And from what gossip I glean in the tavern, Cap'n Bonnet had best steer for his home port of Barbadoes and quit his fancy piratin'. This fractious Governor has set his heart on hangin' him. And Colonel Stuart is up and about again and has ordered the King George to fit for sea. 'Tis rumored he has sent messages to the north'ard for Lieutenant Maynard to sail ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... Wesley graphically. "But if she wants to leave the raising of her girl to the neighbours, she needn't get fractious if they take some pride in doing a good job. From now on I calculate Elnora shall go to school; and she shall have all the clothes and books she needs, if I go around on the back of Kate Comstock's land and cut a tree, or drive off a calf to pay for them. Why I know one tree ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... at one corner of the ring, and I saw a small, bullet-headed man, with a voice like a fractious child, striving frantically to force his way through. "Don't let 'em fight!" he screamed: "it's robbery, I tell you. There's hundreds of pounds on him for Thursday next, I'm his trainer; and I daren't show him ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... name, who was a persistent runaway, and who whipped the overseer and was obstreperous generally. Another slave committed so serious an offense that he was tried under state law and >vas executed. When a bondman became particularly fractious he was threatened with being sent to the West Indies, a place held in as much dread as was "down the river" in later years. In 1766 Washington sent such a fellow off and to the captain of the ship that carried the ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... Hercules. Hercules was evidently not in a good humour. His ears were laid back, and the rolling white eye showed mischief. Sponge saw all this, and turned to see whether Thornton's clumsy, wash-ball seat, would be able to control the fractious spirit of ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... We call him Andy, in the family. Somewhat fractious at first—colic and things. I suppose it is right, or it would n't be so; but the usefulness of measles, mumps, croup, whooping-cough, scarlatina, and fits is not clear to the parental eye. I wish Andy would be a model infant, and ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... fractious young lady," she said, "you can feed, and as you feed, I hope you will consider the error of your ways, and give up any more attempts to buck me off. You ought to know me ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... to dazzle the homely housewife with the wonderful tales of French gaieties, or the splendid castles in the air she had heard in the Queen's rooms, but she resented the doubt and disapproval they sometimes excited; she was petulant and fractious at any exercise of authority from her foster-mother, and once or twice went near to betray herself by lapsing into a tone towards her which would have brought down severe personal chastisement on any real daughter even of seventeen. It was well that the Countess ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to watch her faults and try to conquer them. It was hard work; often she felt discouraged, but she kept on. Week after week and month after month she grew less selfish, kinder, more obliging than she used to be. When she failed and her old fractious temper got the better of her, she was sorry and begged every one's pardon so humbly that they could not but forgive. The mother began to think that the elves really had bewitched her child. As for the ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... now as from another world on that unkempt fractious Marcie of Cliff House, the Marcella of the present saw with a mixture of amusement and self-pity that one great aggravation of that child's daily miseries had been a certain injured, irritable sense of social difference between herself and her companions. Some proportion ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... wouldn't have taken it upon herself to call it a remarkably suitable alliance had she been asked; but then she hadn't been asked, and Peter was such a sweet-natured, loving, lovable dear that he would get on with anyone, and Rhoda, though sometimes a silly and sometimes fractious, was a dear little girl too. The two facts that would have occurred to some sisters-in-law, that they had extremely few pennies between them, and that Rhoda wasn't precisely of Peter's gentle extraction, didn't bother ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... up in a tower, exposed to manifold dangers, beset by robbers, abducted, assaulted, barely rescued, and, finally, even teased and tormented by the chosen lover of her heart, a jealous-pated fellow, who was always making her miserable and himself ridiculous by his absurd suspicions and fractious behavior. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... of five children, who, by the death of both parents, had been thrown penniless upon the world, and found a temporary asylum in the county poor-house. Her mother she remembered merely as a feeble, fractious invalid; and her father, who had long been employed as superintendent of large mills belonging to Miss Jane Grey, had, after years of reckless intemperance, ended his wretched career in a fit of mania a potu. His death occurred at a season when Miss Grey was confined to her bed by an attack ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... work at hand I had full confidence in my mount. Whenever Custer was not looking I slyly spurred the mule ahead, and when he would start forward I would rein him in and pat him by way of restraint, bidding him not to be too fractious, as we hadn't yet reached the sandhills. In this way I set a good lively pace—something like nine ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... effect upon human character. I believe that the happier a man is, the better and kinder he will be. The greater part of unamiability, ill-temper, impatience, bitterness, and uncharitableness comes out of unhappiness. It is because a man is so miserable that he is such a sour, suspicious, fractious, petted creature. I was amused, this morning, to read in the newspaper an account of a very small incident which befell the new Primate of England on his journey back to London, after being enthroned at Canterbury. The reporter of that small incident takes occasion to record that the Archbishop ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... fear, rage, and pain. And still the work of sorting, branding, cutting-out, went steadily on. Though an outsider would not have perceived it, the work was as crisp-cut and exact in its methods as the work in a counting-house. One of the cow-boys, in hot pursuit of a fractious heifer, encountered a gopher-hole, and horse and rider were down in a heap. In a second a dozen helping hands were dragging him from under the horse. He limped painfully, but stooped to examine his horse. The beast had broken a leg, and turned on the man eyes ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... her brother had reached an age when it was convenient, if possible, to throw the blame of all nursery differences on Polly. In families where domestic discipline is rather fractious than firm, there comes a stage when the girls almost invariably go to the wall, because they will stand snubbing, and the boys will not. Domestic authority, like some other powers, is apt to be magnified on ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... thirty lariats were quickly looped round guy ropes and snubbed to saddle horns, and then, incited by simultaneous spur digs and yells, thirty fractious broncos bounded away from the tent, fetching it down in sheets and ribbons, ropes popping like pistols, the rent canvas shrieking like a creature in pain, startled animals threshing about their cages and crying their alarm. ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... out, herself mounted, and now upon the point of trying conclusions with her mount. Whether dissatisfaction with the latter or some fear of her own had caused her to cry out might have been less certain, had it not been sure that her eye was at the moment fastened, not upon the fractious steed, but upon the ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... space, He, who in love both clouds and cheers our life, Would lay on you, so full of light, joy, grace, The darker, sadder duties of the wife,— Doubts, fears, and frequent toil, and constant care For this poor frame, by sickness sore bested; The daily tendance on the fractious chair, The nightly vigil ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... of what had imbued his mind with this fear, was a tolerably correct one. Charley was somewhat troublesome and fractious as a young child, and the wicked nurse girl who attended upon him would dress up frightful figures to terrify him into quietness. She might not have been able to accomplish this without detection, ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... colt the next morning, that fractious animal could not resist having another set-to, just to convince himself that his master was really on his back. Hil was quite agreeable and having satisfied the creature on that point, she and May started at a brisk canter along the road, following the wheel-tracks, which were still clearly ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... have you been doing?" she asked, when I got into her room, where her maid was settling her veil before the glass, and trembling over it. Lady Ver is sometimes fractious with her—worse than I am ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... the money way, for she will have enough for her and Aunt Alice; but you must let her talk to you of me; and show her that (whatever others may do) you think I died innocent. I don't reckon she'll stay long behind when we are all gone. Be tender with her, Job, for my sake; and if she is a bit fractious at times, remember what she has gone through. I know mother will never doubt ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... in this country?" she said in a low but harsh voice, which always made the hearer feel that it was that of a dull, fractious, childless woman. "At noon the sun burns you up, and in the evening it is so cold—so intolerably cold!' As she spoke she drew her robe closer round her, but Titianus, pointing to the stoves in the middle of the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... seem to those of my readers who may have admired the general good qualities of this singularly faithful animal, so disturbed old Battle's equanimity that he made several attempts to bring his master to the ground: indeed he became so fractious that the general again found it necessary to resign the honor of fighting this great battle to Don Perez Goneti, since the management of his horse was quite enough for the head of any one general. The reserve of the Kaloramas now appeared in the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... bank like that," was Davies' comment. "What it did do was to go down the bank—take a scout after it, Charley, while Wemple and I get Mrs. Morgan off her fractious mount. No machine ever built could travel far through ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... of them and go off on her good time. It wouldn't be housekeeping and spinning and looking after fractious children. But those evenings out on the stoop, and the timid invitations to take a walk, the pressure of the hand, the smile ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... is made for me, but I can come away early and make up lost sleep. I do hate to be so fractious," and Rose rubbed the forehead that ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... With no serious difficulty the entire party was thus transported, and soon the heavier of the two boats, with most of the camp supplies, was loaded on the new red wagon of Leo's other cousin, who now stood waiting for them, having his own troubles with a pair of fractious young cayuses that he had managed ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... and put her arm around Amy's neck. "Don't, dear, be so fractious," she begged. "We had all to go through a process of 'fagging' when we first came to Briarwood. It is good for us—part of the discipline. I asked Mrs. Tellingham to let you come over here with us so that you really would ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... probably no psychosis in which the patients exhibit such infantile reactions as in stupor. Except for the stature and obvious age of these patients, one could easily imagine that he was dealing with a spoiled and fractious infant. One thinks at once of the negativism which is so like that of a perverse child and of the unconventional, personal habits to which these patients cling so stubbornly. Masturbation, for instance, is quite frequent, while willful wetting and soiling ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... young German Emperor, who aims to lead the dance, Has a very trying vis-a-vis, that fractious dame, La France, To keep step with that lady, without treading on her train, Would tax Terpsichore herself; he finds the effort vain; Does this fine young German ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... at Congleton till about 1643, when he became judge of the Sheriff's Court in London, and was enjoying, according to Campbell, 'a considerable but obscure practice'; had, according to Clarendon, 'a good practice in his chamber, and [was] much employed by the fractious'; and became, according to Milton, 'a profound lawyer, an eloquent advocate.' He defended Lilburne successfully in 1645. He was made President of the High Court for the purpose of this trial, after the position ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... said Lord Bracondale, with feeling; "but couldn't you stuff these in the hiatus," and he tenderly lifted a bunch of nut-brown curls from the dressing-table. "They would fill up the gap and keep the fractious thing steady." ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... master! Why, before the fifteen thirty, I was up the Plate with Cabot (and a cruel fractious ontrustful fellow he was, like all they Portingals), and bid there a year and more, and up the Paraguaio with him, diskivering no end; whereby, gentles, I was the first Englishman, I hold, that ever sot a foot on ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... gal. I likes ter see a woman thet kin toss her head like a fractious filly. I hain't got no manner of use fer ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... over their possessions, their toys and their rights—they wuz jealous of each other, and greedy, as children will be; and they had their perplexities, and their deep troubles, and their vexations, as children must have in this world, and some wuz fractious, and some wuz balky, and some wuz good dispositioned, and some wuz cross and mean, and had to be spanked ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... Miles, alias Robert King. Samuel was a representative of Revel's Neck, Somerset Co., Md. His master he regarded as a "very fractious man, hard to please." The cause of the trouble or unpleasantness, which resulted in Samuel's Underground adventure, was traceable to his master's refusal to allow him to visit his wife. Not only was Samuel denied this privilege, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... yon as he thought fractions of it to be needed. Grant wanted to move on Mobile from Lake Pontchartrain, but was not permitted to do it. Having gone to New Orleans in obedience to a necessity of conference with General Banks, he suffered a severe injury by the fall of a fractious horse, as he was returning from a review of Banks's army. For a long time he was unconscious. As soon as he could be moved he was taken on a bed to a steamer. For several days after reaching Vicksburg he was unable to leave his bed. Meantime he was repeatedly ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... augur well of it; but if so, she held her peace, though I was not so sparing. For many things contributed to make me less good-humoured now than my real nature was; and the very least of all these things would have been enough to make some people cross, and rude, and fractious. I mean the red and painful chapping of my face and hands, from working in the snow all day, and lying in the frost all night. For being of a fair complexion, and a ruddy nature, and pretty plump withal, and fed on plenty of hot victuals, and always forced by my mother to sit nearer ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... delightfully insensible to one fruitful source of provocation among inanimate things. I am so dull as to regard all distinctions between "rights" and "lefts" as invidious; but I have witnessed the agonized struggles of many a victim of fractious boots, and been thankful that "I am not as other men are," in ability to comprehend the difference between my right and left foot. Still, as already intimated, I have seen wise men driven mad by a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... pass without an outbreak of this sort. It occurred about tea-time. Perhaps the infants were fractious because there was no tea. Esther had to economize her resources and a repast at seven would serve for both tea and supper. Among the poor, combination meals are as common as combination beds and chests. Esther had quieted Sarah by slapping Isaac, but as this made Isaac howl the ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... marry her? A sickly, fractious thing! I saw enough of her in the old days. There! be quiet! I have done. If it hadn't been for her, I'd have asked you to come here to your old home; you and I should jog along together first-rate. But Sibylla bars it. She may be a model ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... do, or not," returned the trader. "It's a fact. His wife's a Sioux chief's daughter. She went north with a gang of half-breeds and hunters last month; and he's been fractious ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... know everything, she devoted herself to the task with great energy, going from Sue to Swedenborg with perfect impartiality, and having different authors as children have sundry distempers, being fractious while they lasted, but all the better for them when once over. Carlyle appeared like scarlet-fever, and raged violently for a time; for, being anything but a "passive bucket," Di became prophetic with Mahomet, belligerent with Cromwell, and made the French Revolution a veritable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... that the first rule for all who believe in a progressive world is not to believe in it too much. Long ago Plato said that he drove two horses, one white and tractable, the other black and fractious; Jesus said that two masters sought man's allegiance, one God, the other mammon; Paul said that his soul was the battle-ground of two forces, one of which he called spirit and the other flesh; and only the other day one of our own number told of the same struggle between two men in each of us, one ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... before the fire (which I had mended during the night), dejected in mind, and heavy with lack of sleep. Somewhere further down the corridor I could hear Bentley snoring, and the sound, rising and falling in the quietude with wearisome monotony, irritated my fractious nerves to that degree that I was of half a mind to go and wake him. Since Penelope had left for London, two days before, he and I had been staying with Jack at the Manor. And very silent the great place had seemed without her; ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... mascot. "Hooray!" cries the man. His confidence returns. He hears the boy paddling the water. The rebellious oars are seized with hope, but Corkey feels as if he were high on a fractious horse, ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... telled you wot you wa—No, the's no sorter use your making fyces at me. And you keep your ——y legs in, or I'll—" The propositions that followed were murmured in a hoarse but crooning tone such as a mother might have used to soothe a fractious child. She went away, carrying the clothes with her, and turned out the pockets in ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... on her shoulder and shook her gently. Then he kissed her. "Thee is fractious this morning, Ruth. Friend Randolph had a son, thee dost mind, whom Robert Hawthorne took to live at Hollywood. It is he whom the good Lord has sent to us to care for, Ruth. He's just ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... asked. "There! don't put yourself out. I'll answer the gate-bell this morning; and we'll see if I can't bring you a letter when the postman comes." Saying those words, with the tone and manner of a woman who is quieting a fractious child, the nurse, without waiting to be ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... the Jupiter the next morning settled the whole question, and made it known to the world that, in spite of all the sendings and resendings, Lord Brock and the gods were permanently out, and Lord De Terrier and the giants permanently in. That fractious giant who would only go to the Foreign Office, had, in fact, gone to some sphere of much less important duty, and Sidonia, in spite of the whispered dislike of an illustrious personage, opened the campaign with all the full appanages of a giant ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... resulting material possess the appearance or character which a pure product would be expected to show. Solvents such as benzene, ethylacetate and chloroform fail to effect a separation of active from inactive material. In all fractioning operations the vitamine tends to distribute itself between the fractious rather than to become concentrated in one or ...
— The Vitamine Manual • Walter H. Eddy
... weary day and night dragged on, they were, almost all of them, the crippled victims of disease. They were there because they had no homes, nor hospital, nor poorhouse, nor friends to offer them any. They could not minister to the needs of their sick; they had no bread to quiet the fractious, hungry cries of their children. Mothers and babes, daughters and grandparents, all alike were clothed in tatters, lacking even sufficient ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... players at the table, as well as the two Endicotts, had listened to this colloquy with varying feelings. Segrave was burning with impatience, Lord Walterton was getting more and more fractious, whilst Sir Michael Isherwood viewed the young secretary with marked hauteur. At the last words spoken by Lambert there came from all these gentlemen sundry ejaculations, expressive of contempt or annoyance, which caused an ugly frown to appear between ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... I am not yet quite free from," he wrote to Swift in October, 1726. "If the engravers keep their word with me I shall be able to publish my poems soon after Christmas." But of course the engravers did not keep their word. Swift, a more energetic person, became almost fractious at the repeated delays in the publication, and wrote to Pope on November 17th: "How comes Gay to be so tedious? Another man can publish fifty thousand lies sooner than he can publish fifty fables."[13] And still ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... rose to meet the doctor with an alacrity that made Edmonson bite his under lip hard. She thought that dressing the wound took a long time that evening, that the physician had never been so slow before, nor the patient so fractious. But to Edmonson it seemed as if she vanished ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... her burro follow after Noddy, but he was fractious and would not go near the cliff. He made a detour, however, about a small group of trees and just as he came opposite them, something upon the snow-drift at the base of the largest tree, caused him ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... reached Bristol, for birds of the air do carry a matter even from the loneliness of the upward path to the table-land of the Mendips. But the day dragged wearily on to evening, and still no news. Mrs Lambert was very fractious and fault-finding, and complained that a hole in a bit of lace had been so ill mended that she must have every thread unpicked. Then the water for the tea was smoked, and the 'muffin' too much buttered, with a dozen more grievances of a ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... to Russia, falling from a fractious horse. Left a sweetheart, too, they tell me. Married, I suppose, ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... petting, Chambers got none. Tom got all the delicacies, Chambers got mush and milk, and clabber without sugar. In consequence Tom was a sickly child and Chambers wasn't. Tom was "fractious," as Roxy called it, and overbearing; Chambers ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... his fault, as young Glazier discovered—a disagreeable habit of running away every time he saw a train of cars. Perhaps the horse couldn't help it; it was no doubt an inherited disposition, descended to him through long lines of fractious ancestors, and therefore it need not be set down against him in the catalogue of wilful sins. But whether so or otherwise, this little unpleasantness in his disposition was an established fact, and unfortunately there were two railroads ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... Burley then dispatched a messenger to Morton's quarters to summon him to an immediate council. The messenger returned with news that he had left the place. Poundtext was next summoned; but he thinking, as he said himself, that it was ill dealing with fractious folk, had withdrawn to his own quiet manse, preferring a dark ride, though he had been on horseback the whole preceding day, to a renewal in the morning of a controversy with Burley, whose ferocity overawed him when unsupported by the firmness of Morton. Burley's next enquiries were ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... squire had, on his son's suggestion, taken with him his long unused spud. The two had wandered far afield; perhaps the elder man had found the unwonted length of exercise too much for him, for, as he approached the house, on his return, he became what nurses call in children 'fractious,' and ready to turn on his companion for every remark he made. Roger understood the case by instinct, as it were, and bore it all with his usual sweetness of temper. They entered the house by the front door; it lay straight on their line of march. On the old cracked yellow-marble slab, there ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Liza's part, maintaining that it was the right waltz. The elder lady was so angry that she began to cry. She was ill and walked with difficulty. Her legs were swollen, and for the last few days she had been continually fractious, quarrelling with every one, though she always stood rather in awe of Liza. They were pleased to see us. Liza flushed with pleasure, and saying "merci" to me, on Shatov's account of course, went to meet him, looking at him ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... possibilities of Burkett as an aid in his affairs was a bit quickened by that piece of news, and he hurried up to the jail. If ever a captured and fractious bird of passage was beating wings against his cage's bars in fury and despair, Mr. Burkett was doing it with vigor. Mayo, admitted as a friend who might aid in quelling the disturbance that was making ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... yet she realized that her own course was by no means open before her, that it would be long before Theodora would accept her sway in the home. It would be necessary to proceed slowly, but firmly. Little Allyn and fractious Phebe would be less difficult for her to manage than their older sister. She lingered for half an hour longer, talking with Theodora until she heard Dr. McAlister's step upon the stairs; and when at last she left the room, Theodora's good-night sounded ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... the devil at rest underneath my vest Gets up and begins to paw, And my hot tongue strains at its bridle-reins, Then I tackle the real outlaw; When I get plumb riled and my sense goes wild, And my temper has fractious growed, If he'll hump his neck just a triflin' speck, Then it's dollars to dimes ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... 'tod.' It was some time before Tom realized the full horror of the proposition: when he did, he shut his eyes like a bull that is going to charge, and literally fell upon the duinhe-wassel, bellowing savagely. He had no more idea of using his hands than a fractious baby; but it is rather a serious thing when sixteen stone of solid flesh becomes possessed by a devil. Robin Oig was overborne by the onset, and did not forget the effects of ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... nasty tricks out of him. On the day fixed for Johnny's departure husband and wife were astir soon after dawn. Mahony was to have taken the child down to the coach-office. But Johnny had been awake since two o'clock with excitement, and was now so fractious that Polly tied on her bonnet and accompanied them. She knew Richard's hatred ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... of Hetty's parents taking her home, if the little maid intends to be just as fond of Harry absent as of Harry present? Why not let her see him before Ball and Dobbin are put to, and say, "Good-bye, Harry! I was very wilful and fractious last night, and you were very kind: but good-bye, Harry!" She will show no special emotion: she is so ashamed of her secret, that she will not betray it. Harry is too much preoccupied to discover it for himself. He does not know what grief is lying behind Hetty's glances, or hidden under ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... disastrous to me, though my mother's discipline has never made me an enemy of the rod for children. My own experience as child and parent convinces me that an inexorable, though mild, physical punishment is the only remedy for the obstinacy of certain fractious child natures, in the years before reason operates, and for the assurance ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... began to experience, however, the cares of command. I discovered that there were cabals breaking out in the company, headed by the clown, who you may recollect was a terribly peevish, fractious fellow, and always in ill-humor. I had a great mind to turn him off at once, but I could not do without him, for there was not a droller scoundrel on the stage. His very shape was comic, for he had to turn his back upon the audience and ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... Egyptian task-master ever devised a slavery like to that, our slavery. No fractious operants ever turned out for half the tyranny, which this necessity exercised upon us. Half-a-dozen jests in a day, (bating Sundays too,) why, it seems nothing! We make twice the number every day in ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... almost consecrated habit, would be a monstrous and almost unthinkable crime. The National Government, as established by the Constitution, is in fact a permanent court of arbitration between the States; and the common-sense of all may be trusted to "hold a fractious State in awe." "Did not people say and think the same thing in 1859," it may be asked, "on the eve of the greatest Civil War in history?" Possibly; but that war was precisely what was needed to ratify the Union, and lift it out of the experimental stage. "Blut ist ein ganz besondrer ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... clear off its hook and into the middle of the floor,—and seven for that very looking-glass which my father used to shave by, and which I, sparring at my image in it, to amuse my little brother, knocked into smithareens with my fractious fist. Why, man, it was not only awful, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... or Burnville, or Viewforth might do, that were strangers in the country; but Ellangowan! that had been a name amang them since the Mirk Monanday, and lang before—HIM to be grinding the puir at that rate! They ca'd his grandfather the Wicked Laird; but, though he was whiles fractious aneuch, when he got into roving company and had ta'en the drap drink, he would have scorned to gang on at this gate. Na, na, the muckle chumlay in the Auld Place reeked like a killogie in his time, and there were as mony ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... wasting their time, and heating themselves in fractious disputations about doctrinal points drawn from the Bible, these men ought to know, and if they do not it is civility to inform them, that the first thing to be understood is, whether there is sufficient authority for believing the Bible ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... with her children. They tried her a good deal, for Arthur was fractious, and Oliver went into one of his storms of passion, which upon him, as once upon his elder brother, were increasing day by day. It was impossible it should be otherwise ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... he replied, "that understands horses, has a pretty considerable fair knowledge of women too, for they are jist alike in temper, and require the very identical same treatment. Encourage the timid ones, be gentle and steady with the fractious, but lather ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... in the house, but this will go a little way. You are a fine fellow, I can see that; don't let the poor thing suffer—if help is wanted, I'm always on hand for a trifle like that; but good night, good night, the governor is getting fractious, and my lady mother ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... up if I wanted to. I never encountered a heroine like her in all my life before, and the one object of my future career will be to catch her finally in the meshes of a romance. Romance will come into her life some time. She is not at all of an unsentimental nature—only fractious—new-womanish, perhaps; but none the less lovable, and Cupid will have a shot at her when she least expects it; and when it does come, I'll be on hand to report the attempted assassination for the delectation of the Herring, ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... cheerful if she had been going over to Flagstaff to sit for her photograph on her birthday. The rest of us just groaned and bore it. We lost our temper with one another and never found it again till the wind quit. We were ornery and fractious. We just couldn't help it. But Mrs. Masters went around the house nursing the baby and a toothache and singing so loud you could hear her way ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... tardiness, so perfectly satisfied am I with the prospect before me." Some time later he notes: "We have been three weeks effecting what might be accomplished in two days. This extraordinary delay makes me more fractious than can be imagined, and I begin to lose the character for patience which I had given myself, by so tiresome a situation." It was still the season of westerly winds, and the voyage from Alexandria to Gibraltar ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... She might as well have attempted to move the house from its foundations. He took her by the shoulders and put her back in her chair. His inexorable eyes looked her into submission; and his lean forefinger shook at her warningly, as if he was quieting a fractious child. ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... has been sold, and Faye has bought another, a sorrel, that seems to be a very satisfactory animal. He is not as handsome as Ben, nor as fractious, either. Bettie is behaving very well, but is still nervous, and keeps her forefeet down just long enough to get herself over the ground. She is beautiful, and Kelly simply adores her and keeps her bright-red coat like satin. Faye can seldom ride with me ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... Of grace he had plenty. In manners he could be perfect, when he so chose. Courage and strength he had none. Ellis had seen this fellow, who boasted of his descent from a line of cavaliers, turn pale with fright and spring from a buggy to which was harnessed a fractious horse, which a negro stable-boy drove fearlessly. A valiant carpet-knight, skilled in all parlor exercises, great at whist or euchre, a dream of a dancer, unexcelled in Cakewalk or "coon" impersonations, for which he was in large social demand, Ellis had seen him kick an ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... sending a pointed reply, agreeing to meet the British Commissioners "at any place other than their own lodgings;" but Mr. Gallatin, whose valuable function was destined to be the keeping of the peace among his fractious colleagues, as well as (p. 078) betwixt them and the Englishmen, substituted the milder phrase, "at any place which may be mutually agreed upon." The first meeting accordingly took place at the Hotel des Pays Bas, where it was arranged that the subsequent conferences should be held alternately ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... Into the very midst of the seething mass would a vaquero dart, single out his victim without a moment's halt, drive the animal to the open space, and throw his lasso with unerring aim. If a steer proved fractious two of the centaurs would divide the labor, and while one dexterously threw the rope around his horns, the other's lasso had quickly caught the hind foot, and together they brought him ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... the Arpan sub-base like a fractious child. Kincaide and I endeavored to cheer him up, and Hendricks, the Ertak's young third officer, tried in vain to induce Correy to take in ...
— The Terror from the Depths • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... all these gowns into that trunk passes my comprehension. There's a tray for each, of course; but a ball dress is such a fractious thing. I could shake that Antoinette Roche for disappointing you at the last minute; and what you are to do for a maid, I don't know. You'll have so much dressing to do you will be quite worn out; and I ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... of infancy and early childhood. I, being the younger by five or six years, was always regarded as THE child, and the pet of the family: father, mother, and sister, all combined to spoil me—not by foolish indulgence, to render me fractious and ungovernable, but by ceaseless kindness, to make me too helpless and dependent—too unfit for buffeting with the ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... the note, hastening to ward off a refusal, "do, please'm, let the little girl come. He's that fractious he has us all wore out. And he do say if the little girl don't come ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... I'm no' going to be fractious. But we might just look in and ask for Mrs Beaton, as we are so near. And Robin says John is coming home, and we ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... row the natives are making in the city," was the fractious comment of one heat-distracted tourist to another through the mosquito netting which ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... aimlessly about, outside. Without, of course, being able to analyze it, he felt as if some rare source of entertainment had been withdrawn from him, leaving life flat and tasteless. He felt like being, what his mother called, "fractious," but—he remembered, as in a flash, "you never catch a thorerbred whinin'," and he snapped his jaws ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... floor, his back against a stanchion, his hands lashed behind him by bonds which confined him to the upright support. But the most uncomfortable feature of his predicament was a marlinespike which was stuck into his mouth like a bit provided for a fractious horse, and was secured by lashings behind his head. He was effectually gagged. Furthermore, the back of his head ached in most acute fashion. He rolled his eyes about and discovered that he had a companion in misery. A very ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... with it, particularly because you tell me of your full recovery, the best news I could have. If God grants life to us both I expect to make a good man of you, only you must do your fair share yourself.' Guido is to stick to his books and music, and if the family mule is too fractious, 'Unbridle him, take off the halter and turn him loose at Montepulciano. The farm is large, the mule is small, so no harm can come of it. Tell your mother, with my love, not to be nervous. I shall surely be home before any trouble ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... it,' said Ethel. 'But you know, Daisy, the little last treasure that mamma left did always seem something we could not make enough of, and it didn't make you fractious or tiresome—at least not to us—till we thought you could not be spoilt. And then I didn't see the little faults so soon as I ought; and I'm only an elder sister, ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... chimed mournfully from the Norman tower of the church hard by, yet still my pen was idle and the paper before me blank; also I became conscious of a tapping somewhere close at hand, now stopping, now beginning again, whose wearisome iteration so irritated my fractious nerves that I flung ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... There is no credulity so eager and blind as the credulity of covetousness, which, in its universal extent, measures the moral misery and the intellectual destitution of mankind. Ah! he had confessed everything, this fractious Jew, this bribon. Good! Then he was no longer wanted. A sudden dense guffaw was heard from the senior captain—a big-headed man, with little round eyes and monstrously fat cheeks which never moved. The old major, tall and fantastically ragged like a ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... my first lesson in agriculture, except that I went to see our cows foddered, yesterday afternoon. We have eight of our own; and the number is now increased by a transcendental heifer belonging to Miss Margaret Fuller. She is very fractious, I believe, and apt to kick over the milk-pail. . . . I intend to convert myself into a milkmaid this evening, but I pray Heaven that Mr. Ripley may be moved to assign me the kindliest cow in the herd, otherwise I ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... However wild and fractious a horse may be naturally, after practicing this process a few times, you will find him perfectly gentle and submissive, and even disposed to follow you anywhere, and unwilling to ...
— The Arabian Art of Taming and Training Wild and Vicious Horses • P. R. Kincaid
... course, 'Within limits.' But that we shall see. I'm not a pauper, you know. My trustees pay Lord Buntingford whatever I cost him, and I shall have a good deal to spend. I shall have a horse—and perhaps a little motor. The chauffeur here is a fractious idiot. He has done that Rolls-Royce car of Cousin Philip's balmy, and cut up quite rough when I spoke to ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the Hampshire Coopers, and the first earl. He was a sort of English Voltaire: small and thin, nervous and fractious, with a great cold brain, no affections and no illusions; he had faith in organizations, but none in man; was destitute of compunctions, careless of conventions and appearances, cynical, penetrating, and frivolous. He was a skeptic in religion, but a devotee of astrology; easily worried ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... don't remember you so fractious since you were cutting your teeth!" complained her ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... her head from the rice pudding in a kind of gesture of repulsion. She was in the fractious period of influenza, and Maggie had had a ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... lovers, in her presence, that he "has the intention of asking this young lady to become his wife." During the engagement, however, he contrives to disturb her tranquillity by insisting prematurely on the right divine of husbands, and, as she proves fractious, announces to her, that, much as he loves her, he sees no prospect of future happiness in their union, and that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... how 'twas with Mars Sam, on' how contrary an' fractious an' wicked dat young white man was, I wants to tell you 'bout de time dat Aunt Hannah's little boy Mose died. Mose, he sick 'bout er week. Aunt Hannah, she try to doctor on him an' git him well an' she tell ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... Beauty to their charge ... he had never been able to understand or agree with their arguments against great engines and the instruments of power and energy ... and it seemed to him that many of these writers were querulous, fractious people who had not the capacity to make themselves at ease in a striving world. That poet fellow ... what was his name? ... whom he had met at Hampstead ... Palfrey, that was the man's name ... had sneered at Commerce! John had not been able to make ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... door till an irregular double kick and a breathless cry of "Balbus, look sharp," apprised him that another of the electioneering agents had returned. He then cautiously opened the door, and in tumbled D'Arcy, gasping, yet triumphant, under the weight of three fractious youngsters. ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... be pleasant, though I do not know that it will be so for you; for I own the majority of us are rather sour-tempered, at present. Though we may be glad enough to go, one does not care to be sent off at a moment's notice, just as fractious children are turned out of a room, when their elders want a private chat. However, for myself, I am not inclined to grumble. I want to go, and therefore I do not stand on the order ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... a chair. In her secret heart Eunice knew that when her sister was tired out she was fractious; she loved her too ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... She found pictures, and got everything ready for them good-naturedly, and then they sat themselves down at a little table opposite each other; but the weather affected their spirits, and made them both fractious. They wanted the same picture to begin with, and only settled the question by demolishing it in their attempts to snatch it from each other. Then there was only one left between them, but happily they remembered that artists sometimes work at the same picture, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... I am in the most unpleasant, contradictory, fractious humour, when I tell you that I do not like your term of "precocious fertilisation" for your second class of dimorphism [i.e. for cleistogamic fertilisation]. If I can trust my memory, the state of the corolla, of ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... comrades righted them; and others, after getting over safely, would slip back from the sandy bank, and take an involuntary immersion. Some clung to the rear of the wagons, but in the middle of the stream the mules would become fractious, or the wagon would get jammed against a stone, and the unfortunate passengers were compelled to drop off and wade ashore, greeted by roars of derisive laughter. On such occasions soldiers give full play to their humor. They accept the hardships with good nature, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... is irritable, and fractious, peevish, and pettish. He is morbidly anxious about trifles: slight ruffles on the surface, and trivial annoyances in the family circle or during the course of business, worry, flurry, tease and fret him, nothing satisfying ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... a second when I entertained a wild notion of getting fractious. A fellow hates to make a bungle of the first decent trust he's had in a long time; but I was in a tight place, and I couldn't figure where I'd delay giving up beyond the length of time it would take the gentleman with the Winchester to ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... ways of learning to ride a fractious horse: one is to get on him and learn by actual practice how each motion and trick may be best met; the other is to sit on a fence and watch the beast awhile, and then retire to the house and at leisure figure out the best way of overcoming his jumps and kicks. The latter system is the safer, but ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... like a fractious child all day. But I've had a good time and want to come oftener ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... fell, bounced noisily, and then settled over the crowd. Gofredo went on talking to them: "Take it easy, now; easy." He might have been speaking to a frightened dog or a fractious horse. "Nobody's going to hurt you. This is nothing but the great noise-magic ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... down the lane first. They will be easier to manage on a straight road than in among the trees, if they are fractious." ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... only want to say this, we must take our punishment like men, and not whine like fractious children who want the moon—the moon is no nearer for all that." He sighed a little bitterly, for he was tired and depressed; and after that Cedric was more reasonable, and Malcolm regained ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... thoroughly exasperated. His brown eyes were disproportionately angry, considering the slight importance of his enterprise. He was evidently a man of keen, quick temper, easily aroused and nervous. His handsome, well-groomed horse was fractious, and difficult for so impatient a rider to control. His equestrian outfit once more attracted the covert glance of Con Hite, whose experience and observation could duplicate no such attire. He was tall, somewhat heavily built, and altogether a sufficiently stalwart ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... to herself; for in the recesses of her bosom she spoke the Scotch she scorned to utter aloud; "and sits jist like himsel', wi' a wee stoop i' the saiddle, and ilka noo an' than a swing o' his haill boady back, as gien some thoucht had set him straught.—Gien the fractious brute wad but brak a bane or twa o' him!" she went on in growing anger. "The impidence o' the fallow! He has his leave: what for disna he tak' it an' gang? But oot o' this gang he sail. To ca' a man like mine a heepocreet 'cause ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... slave if you only take the right way to win him. Surely, you will forgive him for the deception which his great affection led him to practice upon you," she concluded, with a coaxing smile, such as she would have assumed in dealing with a fractious child. ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... talking about it, and enforcing it. If he has preached against slavery, or intemperance, or any other public wrong or popular vice, and been fiercely and persistently opposed by any portion of his charge, he will betray the sore under his collar on all occasions, and very possibly become so fractious and violent that his flock will be obliged to turn him out to pasture. A minister who gets sore under the friction of any particular collar seems to feel that it is necessary for him to wear that particular collar all the time; and he fails to remember that the reason ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... opposition of the barons, who rebelled in 1173, and of disputes with his fractious children which embittered his closing years, Henry II had laid the foundations of national monarchy. But in completing one part of the Norman Conquest, namely, the establishment of royal supremacy over ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... machinery and taking on new men he had had scant leisure for affairs of the heart. He was young and inexperienced and the dealers took advantage of it to foist off old stock and odd parts, and then his engineers became fractious and disgruntled because he expected quick results. It was all very different from what he had expected when he had taken over the Paymaster lease, and yet it had to be endured and muddled through somehow until the mine ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... "Cousin Stephen" home for dinner, but Emily turned fractious, and announced that she ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... spoke; he opened his dark eyes and smiled upon us; he demanded a battered "boy stout" doll, and hugged it to his pneumonia jacket; he drank his milk, and said "More!" he grew cross and fractious—oh, welcome, gladdening sign!—and said, "Doe away! No more daddies! No more nursies! Don't want nobodies! Boo-hoo-hoo!" and we went and wept ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Webb and Leonard, at work in a field not far away, often paused to listen, the former never failing to catch Amy's clear notes as she sat on a rock, the gentle power behind the throne, that had maintained peace and good-will among all the little fractious subjects. ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... resign himself; and so exceedingly fractious was he, that Clara had been feeling quite dispirited, when her brother called her to tell her joyously that Lord Ormersfield and Louis were coming home, and would call in on their way the next evening. Those wretched children must not take ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... less of a king that day. When he tried to start his men into a revolt his hosts acted promptly, with the result that the uprising was nipped in the bud and the baron was shot through the leg, leaving him still "fractious and patronizing." Then the little colonel of the French-Canadians said, "I think I might as well shoot you in a more vital part and have done with it!" or something equally to the point and suddenly the baron ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... travelling up and down among them. It is not my business to insist that he was a great man, but it is certain that through all my younger years I received kindnesses from many people because I was my father's son. For my own part I but faintly remember him, he having been killed by a fractious horse when I was a very ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... a fractious state. The situation was perhaps perilous. But she could not allow her conduct to be influenced by danger or difficulty, which indeed nearly always had the effect of confirming her purpose. If something had to be done, it had to be done—and let that suffice! ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... conduct of the young French chevaliers, and to entreat him to exert the great influence he so deservedly possessed over them, to restrain their excesses. Don Luis was aware, however, of the peril that attended any interview of the kind with this imperious and fractious man, and apprehended, however it might commence, that it would terminate in a duel. Still, it was an affair of honor, in which Castilian dignity was concerned; beside, he had a lurking disgust at the overbearing manners of De Foulquerre, and perhaps had been somewhat offended by certain ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... alternate from a mood of excitement to one of depression, and more than once while I was talking to her, I saw the tears well up to her eyes. I, at first, thought that her mother had been bothering her, for that Venus was in one of her most exacting and fractious moods, but I soon came to the conclusion that that was not the root of the trouble. Fortunately, Marcia and I were alone for a short time before I left and I endeavored to find out what was weighing on her mind. Not from curiosity, believe me, but because I felt convinced ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... name of Diver, who was so great a scandal to her sex that the most abandoned of that low crew with whom he conversed, hated and despised her. With her Lewis went to live after his usual manner, and was very fond of her after his way, for about a fortnight; at the end of which he grew fractious, and in about nine weeks' time more he beat her. Moll wept and took on at a sad rate for his unkindness and told him that if would but promise faithfully never to live with any other woman, she should fairly present him with a brace of hundred ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... should prefer not to take the responsibility of advising you," nor "Pray do as you think best"; she simply said, in a tone she might have used to a fractious boy: ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... was a graft on the family stock, in temperament, at least. Born into a genial, jovial, healthy family, his was the only moody nature there. His brother and sisters might be mischievous or even fractious; but they were never prone to have black half-hours. It was reserved for the youngest one of them all, Allyn McAlister, aged fifteen, to spell his moods with a capital M. His father was wont to say that Allyn was a mixture of two people, of two nameless, far-off ancestors. ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... far deeper. Had he been fretful, fractious, disagreeable, she would still have been very sorry for him and very kind to him. But now, to see him as he was—cheerful, patient; so ready with his interest in others, so utterly without envying and complaining regarding himself—changed what would otherwise have ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... on exhibition in New York a young horse which can do most marvelous things; and yet his trainer says that only five years ago he had a very bad disposition. He was fractious, and would kick and bite, but now instead of displaying his former viciousness, he is obedient, tractable, and affectionate. He can readily count and reckon up figures, can spell many words, and knows what ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... and sleepiness with little or no inclination to move about. The head may be placed against a wall or fence and the legs kept moving as if the horse were trying to walk. As the disease progresses and no attempts are made to relieve it, they will become fractious, nervous, easily excited, pawing and eventually fall, keeping the feet moving as if walking, throwing their heads about in a delirious manner and eventually death follows. The horse as a rule eats and drinks ravenously when the first signs of staggers are noticed, but in its latter ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... friend from Iowa who confessed that he had been in an automobile but once before. He had ridden with a relative through a retired section of his native state, traversed for the first time by an automobile, and he had quit trying to remember how many run-aways and smash-ups were caused by the fractious horses they met on the short journey. Visions of damage suits haunted him for months thereafter. In our meanderings through the London streets, the fears for the other fellow which had harassed him during his former experience, were speedily ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy |
