"Irksome" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... successful soldiers of Napoleon; and the presence of so many youths of good condition and education, among the ranks of the private soldiery, could not fail, first, to render the situation immeasurably less irksome than it otherwise could have been to each individual of the class, and secondly, to elevate the standard of manners and acquirements among the soldiery generally. There never was an army in whose ranks intelligence so largely abounded, nor in which so many officers of the highest ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... working for the benefit of himself and his own in particular, and the public to which he belongs in general, not for the profit of a class of which he is not a representative, there is no feeling of irksome servitude. ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... opened to Ivy Geer. It was as if a corpse, cold, inert, lifeless, had suddenly sprung up, warm, invigorated, informed with a spirit which led her own spell-bound. Grammar,—Grammar, which had been a synonyme for all that was dry, irksome, useless,—a beating of the wind, the crackling of thorns under a pot,—Grammar even assumed for her a charm, a wonder, a glory. She saw how the great and wise had shrined in fitting words their purity, and wisdom, and sorrow, and suffering, and penitence; and how, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Swift, "could raise 10,000 men." The youth of Grattan had been neither joyous nor robust; in early manhood he had offended his father's conservatism; the profession of the law, to which he was bred, he found irksome and unsuited to his tastes; society, as then constituted, was repulsive to his over-sensitive spirit and high Spartan ideal of manly duty; no letters are sadder to read than the early correspondence of Grattan, till he had fairly found his ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... house had not proved so irksome as Easton and Ruth had dreaded it would be. Indeed, at first, he made a point of retiring to his own room after tea every evening, until they invited him to stay downstairs in the kitchen. Nearly every Wednesday and Saturday he went to a meeting, or an open-air preaching, ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... advert to anything which may appear worthy of blame: as the step of issuing the Torana Chits in Lord Macartney's own name can only be justified upon the ground of absolute necessity;[71] and as his Lordship had every reason to believe that the demand, when made, would be irksome and disagreeable to the feelings of Mahomed Ali, every precaution ought to have been used and more time allowed for proving that necessity, by previous acts of address, civility, and conciliation, applied ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... have already secured partners at the Retreta and elsewhere, and as at all respectable gatherings in Cuba everybody is supposed to know everybody else, the irksome formalities of ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... animals and implements led to economy, though it was said he seldom paid the full market price for them. He had walked home because it was impossible to keep warm driving, and felt tired and morose. The man had passed his prime and was beginning to find the labour he had never shirked more irksome than it had been, while he dispensed with a hired hand in winter, when there was less to be done. Clarke neglected no ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... without his seeing a sign of any approach, and the uncomfortable seat began to be irksome. Occasionally he stretched himself by climbing up into the tree a ways, and ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... that were covetousness. Silvius, the time was that I hated thee; And yet it is not that I bear thee love: But since that thou canst talk of love so well, Thy company, which erst was irksome to me, I will endure; and I'll employ thee too: But do not look for further recompense Than thine own gladness that ...
— As You Like It • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... and with enough distinctness to serve all purposes, that the filial back was no more ready now than ever before to submit to harness; that rules and regulations were sure to be resented; that dates and duties were fretful affairs at best; that engagements and responsibilities were far too irksome to be endured; and, above all, that anything like "hours" would be most emphatically beyond the pale of a moment's consideration. Truesdale professed to regard himself as having returned once more to the life of the frontier; and being thus placed, what could ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... words, for that is beyond my power. Take the money, M. de St. Genis, and earn not only the King's gratitude but also Mlle. Crystal's, which is far better worth having. And now, I pray you, leave me to rest. You must be tired too. And our mutual company hath become irksome to ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... with Fear as warder; the fetters of conventional life had so galled her that here in the accustomed solitude of this place, in which from childhood she had been used to move and think freely, she felt as does a captive who has escaped from an irksome durance. As Stephen had all along been free of movement and speech, no such opportunities of freedom called to her. The pent-up passion in her, however, found its own relief. Her voice was silent, and she moved with slow steps, halting ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... book assiduously; it was the "Comic Almanac," but I don't know that it made me feel very much inclined to laugh. The clock ticked loud and disagreeably. I determined not to speak till I was spoken to; but after a time the silence grew irksome, and the ticking of the clock so loud, that I ventured on a slight cough, merely to break it. "Ahem," said I, still intent on the "Comic Almanac." John turned slowly round, made a half rise, as if out of compliment to my presence, ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... far as the convent, I did not think it necessary this time to travel in the disguise of a pauper. Some few comforts may be enjoyed in the desert even by those who do not travel with tents and servants; and whenever these comforts must be relinquished, it becomes a very irksome task to cross a desert, as I fully experienced during several of ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... and himself had reached a greater pitch than ever before. He thought seriously of leaving her and the country. He still had some money left, the proceeds of the patent, and he could easily make more. How irksome it became to him to go into the fields and woods without Helene! He could not study; he had no one to talk to; what should ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... are no longer recognized as the objects of our highest regard, and most strenuous endeavours; as furnishing to us, a vigorous, habitual, and universal principle of action. We set up for ourselves: we are become our own masters. The sense of constant homage and continual service is irksome and galling to us; and we rejoice in being emancipated from it, as from a state of base and servile villainage. Thus the very tenure and condition, by which life and all its possessions are held, undergo a total change: our faculties and powers are now our own: whatever we ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... although she mentioned it to no one, not even to Old Mammy. For several nights a number of the younger men had kept watch, with their special attention directed to the big pine. This, however, soon proved very irksome, and as nothing further happened, the watch was discontinued. The men worked hard by day erecting their rude log cabins, so they could ill afford to sit up all night. A feeling of security gradually pervaded the camp, and all became ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... go about to instruct us, how her pursuit is very hard and laborious, and her jovisance [Footnote: Enjoyment] well-pleasing and delightfull: what else tell they us, but that shee is ever unpleasant and irksome? For what humane meane [Footnote: Human meana. man's life is subject, it is not with an equall care: as well because accidents are not of such a necessitie, for most men passe their whole life without feeling any want or povertie, and othersome without feeling ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... when a thousand rolling years are past, (So long their punishments and penance last,) Whole droves of minds are, by the driving god, Compell'd to drink the deep Lethaean flood, In large forgetful draughts to steep the cares Of their past labors, and their irksome years, That, unrememb'ring of its former pain, The soul may suffer mortal ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... downwards on his lap. While young Camp—young no longer, full of years indeed beyond the allotted portion of his kind—reposed, outstretched and snoring, on the all-too-wide space of rug and chair-seat at his feet. And this indifference, both of man and dog, grew irksome to Lady Calmady. She moved across the shining yellow and black surface of the tiger-skin and straightened the bronzes of Vinedresser and Lazy Lad ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... the many of us, no doubt, the thought naturally arises that we have enough problems to deal with in our work without having to take up the irksome question of self-support. Yet at the present time, when every strenuous effort is being made to evangelize the world in this generation, any plan which can help forward such a movement at once assumes an aspect of vital importance in our eyes. Let it not be presumed that self-support ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton
... felt it was necessary to defend her father, and she had done so. Indeed, he admitted that one must respect the man who had, with uncomplaining patience, for years carried on his disliked task for his wife and children's sake. Longing for the woods and the silent trail, Strange must have found it irksome to count dollar bills and weigh groceries in the store; but he had done his duty, and borne hardship and failure when at last freedom came. Still the girl must not ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... friends, I wonder if I have any anywhere. This Tom Trefethen claims to have a friendly feeling towards me, and, if he comes back, I will try to believe in him. It is more than likely though that his leaving me here is only a way of escaping an irksome obligation, and I shouldn't be one bit surprised never to see him again. It seems to be the way of the world, that if you place a fellow under an obligation he begins to dislike you from that moment. My! if all the fellows whom I have helped ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... my way through several venerable Castilian quartos, until I was satisfied of the practicability of the undertaking. I next procured the services of one more competent to aid me in pursuing my historical inquiries. The process was slow and irksome enough, doubtless, to both parties, at least till my ear was accommodated to foreign sounds, and an antiquated, oftentimes barbarous phraseology, when my progress became more sensible, and I was cheered with the prospect of success. It certainly would have been a far more serious ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... CONDITION.—Young men, you are apt to get into a morbid state of mind, which declines them to social intercourse. They become devoted to business with such exclusiveness, that all social intercourse is irksome. They go out to tea as if they were going to jail, and drag themselves to a party as to an execution. This disposition is thoroughly morbid, and to be overcome by going where you are invited, always, and with a ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... got up. Paliser, to whom solitude was always irksome, found himself alone. But his solitude was not prolonged. A man joined him. Another followed. Presently there ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... life of a bachelor in a garret, with a bad bed and a worse table. Besides, he did not contemplate working all his life; already he began to find his office singularly tedious. The light labour entrusted to him became irksome owing ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... general satisfaction with this statement, supplemented by one addressed to neutrals. Courteously assured them of desire not to make things unnecessarily irksome. But pointed out that in the matter of preventing supplies reaching the enemy by circuitous routes Great Britain has her own work to do and means to do ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various
... was evidently about to give a discourse, and much as she admired him, this idea prompted her to quit the church; for, though she could sit still for hours to hear music, she found nothing more irksome than to be compelled to listen for any length of time to a speech she might not interrupt. She was therefore rising to leave; but Papias held her back and entreated her so pathetically with his blue baby-eyes not to take him ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... February of 1899 were particularly irksome to Chekhov: he suffered from an intestinal trouble which poisoned his existence. Moreover consumptive patients from all over Russia began appealing to him to assist them to come to Yalta. These invalids were almost always ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... his sixteenth year he was decoyed into a ship of war at Greenock, and compelled to serve on board. Effecting his escape, after an arduous servitude of five years, he resumed the loom at Kilmarnock. He subsequently taught an adventure school, first in Kilmarnock, and afterwards at Paisley. The irksome labours of sea-faring life he had sought to relieve by the composition of verses; and these in 1816 he published, under the title of "Horae Poeticae; or, the Recreations of a Leisure Hour." In 1817 he emigrated to the United States, where his career has been prosperous. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... designs, And faithful nurse; and Philomel' to tempt With gifts immense,—his kingdom's mighty price. Or forceful snatch her, and the rape defend, With all the powers of war. Nought but he dares. Impell'd by love's unbridled power; his breast The raging fire contains not. Irksome seems Delay:—and eager to the anxious wish Of Procne, turns his converse; her desires His wishes aiding. Eloquent he spoke; For love inspir'd him. Often as he press'd More close than prudent, all his earnest speech, Procne, he ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... social position and the other things that cause a human being to feel that he or she is lifted clear of and high above the human condition. Josephine had her consolation. For Norman the only consolation was escape from a marriage which had become so irksome in anticipation that he did not dare think what it would be in the reality. Over against this consolation was set a long list of disasters. He found himself immediately shunned by all his friends. Their professed ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... assemble the stout-hearted and trust-worthy in the copse above Houndwood. Her kindred would have detained her longer; but she resisted their entreaties, and took leave of them saying, that "her bit lassie, Janet, would be growing irksome wi' being left alane, an' that, at ony rate, she had business on ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... influences in many ways showed their effect upon her. At first she was inclined to use language that shocked and annoyed both the girls and their guardian. She was not lazy and yet regular hours for work seemed irksome to her; she wanted to work when it was play time and play when work should be accomplished, and then her personal habits were not pleasant; but this was because she had never been taught better, for very soon she ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... by a constant unrest, my father would always break up whenever an abode began to feel homelike to me and I had found some friends in the vicinity, and it was wonderful with what strength of mind he persevered in this irksome, arduous and ofttimes ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... now that his apprenticeship was about to expire he amused her with surreptitious notes. To-day, for the first time, Tabea began to think of the possibility of marrying Scheible, chiefly, perhaps, from a vague desire to escape from the convent, which could not but be irksome to one of her spirit. Scheible was ambitious, and it was his plan, as she knew, to go to Philadelphia to make his fortune; and she and he together, what might they not do? Then she laughed at herself for such a day dream, and went out to do her share of household duties, singing ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... concentration of the inner eye, all outer regard being quite gratuitous, seemed to have been taken by insidious stratagem, and for the first time he had an interest outside the house. He walked from one window to another, and became aware that the most irksome of solitudes is not the solitude of remoteness, but that which is just outside ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... or two it was irksome for Ken; but as he and his captors grew better acquainted the strain eased up, and Ken began to enjoy himself as he had not since coming ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... freedom from your allegiance to one man, in order to swear fealty to another. That your vows to me are irksome because they prevent your taking other vows to Cecil Cumberland. I pass over the moral aspect of the affair; that must rest with your own conscience," (it is astonishing how exemplary Thorne felt in administering the rebuke); "that rests with your conscience," he repeated, "and with that ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... must, therefore, usually coincide with the metrical and thus emphasize unduly the line unit. Moreover, the quick return of the rime sound causes the couplet itself to be felt as a unit and produces what are called 'closed couplets,' in which the two lines contain an independent idea. To avoid irksome uniformity in this regard three devices are customary: to 'run-on' the meaning from one line to the next, thus momentarily obscuring the metrical pause, to 'run-on' the couplets themselves, and to divide ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... her husband, and hardly knew how to reply to her. He had been sharp enough to perceive already that Mr. Kennedy was an autocrat in his own house, and he knew Lady Laura well enough to be sure that such masterdom would be very irksome to her. But he had not imagined that she would complain to him. "It was so different at Saulsby," Lady Laura continued. "Everything there seemed to ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... betimes to torment your lover and pelt him with hard words. I do not think I ever had a more irksome task than to be obliged to hold converse with a lady I do not love. But since you take what I have done to serve you in bad part, I will never speak to her again, happen what may. And that I may hide my wrath as I have hidden my joy, I will betake ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... times and in all places within every man's reach. The absolute necessity, however, of performing some work, appears a sufficient reason with many people for doing away with the ordinance of Sunday altogether, and converting it into a day of hard and irksome toil, instead of a season of at least comparative rest. On the other hand, some officers either allow essential public interests to be neglected which ought to be attended to, or they harass their people by exacting ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... her home was escorted with military parade. The questions of etiquette had been settled by that time, and she performed her social duties with the ease of a Virginia gentlewoman always used to good society. She found them irksome, however, as such things had long since lost their novelty. Writing to a friend she said, "I think I am more like a state prisoner than anything else." She was then a grandmother through her children by her first husband. Although she preferred plain attire, ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... father, which took place early in 1747, rendered Goldsmith's situation at college extremely irksome. His mother was left with little more than the means of providing for the wants of her household, and was unable to furnish him any remittances. He would have been compelled, therefore, to leave college, had it not been for the occasional contributions of friends, the foremost among ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... Almas Ali Khan and Coja Ain ul Din have, from their regularity in the performance of pecuniary engagements, rendered themselves useful to the Vizier. A strict scrutiny into his affairs was at all times irksome to his Excellency, and none of the ministers or officers about his person possessing the active, persevering spirit requisite to conduct the detail of engagements for a number of small farms, it became convenient to receive a large sum from a great farmer without trouble ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... Moreover, will not the talents he possesses and which he is unwilling to use, assure him an honorable living anywhere? Let him come along with us; the carriage is large and we offer him a place in it. A young man should see the world, and there is nothing so irksome for a man of his age as confinement in an office and restriction to a narrow circle. Is it not true?" I asked, turning to Brigitte. "Come, my dear, let your wiles obtain from him what he might refuse me; urge him to give us six weeks of his time. ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... son, but she now excused herself from dancing any more, and sat quietly as a spectatress till the rest of the company gave over. Mr Marriot, however, would not quit her, and she was compelled to support with him a trifling conversation, which, though irksome to herself, to him, who had not seen her in her happier ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... hours spent in the schoolroom at Braeside. They never became irksome to Marjory, but they made her long to see more of this "great, wide, ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... from our irksome detention by the return of the courier with the passports visés from Ajaccio, and a boat we had hired, meanwhile, lying ready at the Marino to carry us over to Sardinia, not a moment was lost in getting under sail ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... released Mr. Polly from the irksome duty of issuing invitations, and as the moments of assembly drew near she sent him and Mr. Johnson out into the narrow long strip of garden at the back of the house, to be free to put a finishing touch or ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... and trumpets sounding, marched directly towards the city; but one of the guides desired Captain Morgan not to take the common highway, lest they should find in it many ambuscades. He took his advice, and chose another way through the wood, though very irksome and difficult. The Spaniards perceiving the pirates had taken another way they scarce had thought on, were compelled to leave their stops and batteries, and come out to meet them. The governor of Panama put his forces in order, consisting ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... assumes many shapes. He is now a tall man, and again a short man; sometimes young and audacious, sometimes old and leering. He only once took a feminine guise: that blessed form was irksome to him. He prefers the freedom of masculinity and ineffables. He was once a bookkeeper like myself; then a young attorney; then a medical student; then a bald-headed old gentleman, who seemed to blow a flageolet ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... considered the half-way house or station to Ghat. I'm told the route from Ghat to Aheer is much more easy and agreeable than this. Trust I shall find it so if I go. Begin to feel this irksome, and am in low spirits. People try to amuse me, and I have received many little presents of date-cakes and bazeen from them. Begin to relish this sort of food, and The Desert air sharpens the appetite. Yesterday, a slave of the ghafalah amused us with playing his rude bagpipe through these ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... to an end, and it was chapel time (mercifully)." One story Clark tells of an extraordinary attempt to smoke. Referring to the compulsory "chapels," he says that as a rule everybody behaved with propriety, whether they regarded the attendance as irksome or otherwise. But, he admits, "'Iniquity Corner,' as the space at the east end on each side of the altar was called, may occasionally have effectually sheltered card-playing; but when a young snob went so far as to light a cigar there, he had the pleasure ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... likely. In the case of the gold valley there was nothing for those in the secret to do but to hold their tongues; but to supply guardians to this place from generation to generation must have been a much more irksome task, and it may have been abandoned, either from the dislike of those who had to spend their lives in such a monotonous business, or by their families dying out. I certainly don't want to have a fight with men who are only following orders passed down to them for hundreds of years. If they ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... sum of my friend's information. I was not sorry to be left alone during the greater part of this day. Every employment was irksome which did not leave me at liberty to meditate. I had now a new subject on which to exercise my thoughts. Before evening I should be ushered into his presence, and listen to those tones whose magical and thrilling power I had already experienced. But with what new images ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... him, she jumped from the bed to the floor, and, spreading out her arms, and throwing back her head, she exclaimed in a jubilant voice: "I am free! I need no longer play my irksome ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... sir, about other people's affairs," I answered sharply, for the individual's manner, combined with my utter uncertainty as to his appearance, oppressed me with an irksome longing to be rid ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... picketed in the open. And thunder. It's often extremely difficult to tell whether, when the thunder is far away, it is thunder or guns. Quite a novel experience, and quite pleasant after the long period of make-believe in England. Discipline. So salutary and so irksome. Now for the battle. I own I long to get into the thick of it soon. We see infantry returning and going up, and we feel sick, somehow, to ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... family. Give me a deed, conveying two-thirds of that property to my unrestricted control during life—I have no ambition to make wills—and the secrets of this book are safe. The west is broad, and most conveniently accommodating when marriage ties become irksome. Mabel can take that direction for her summer travels, while I remain here. In three months the fashionable world may thank us for a week's gossip, which I can very well endure. The world is large—there is California, Australia, or Europe—her ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... charmed the Queen, had, by saving her life, made England her long debtor; but Leicester had judged rightly in believing that the Queen might find the debt irksome; that her gratitude would be corroded by other destructive emotions. It was true that Angele had saved her life, but Michel had charmed her eye. He had proved himself a more gallant fighter than any in her kingdom; and had done it, as he had said, in her honour. So, as her admiration ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... their ordinary Diversions, by a Dress suited to their Condition. This therefore was at first assumed by such only as were under real Distress; to whom it was a Relief that they had nothing about them so light and gay as to be irksome to the Gloom and Melancholy of their inward Reflections, or that might misrepresent them to others. In process of Time this laudable Distinction of the Sorrowful was lost, and Mourning is now worn by Heirs and Widows. You see nothing but Magnificence and Solemnity in the Equipage of the Relict, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Japanese chivalry. If you will follow the example of all the other officers and give your word of honor not to escape, you will receive all possible care and attention in the hospital at San Francisco without any irksome guard. Will you be so good as to give ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... some wild thing of the primeval forest—five feet eight inches in height, with broad chest and shoulders, dark locks, genial blue eyes arched with fair eyebrows, thin lips and wide mouth, nose of slightly Roman cast, and fair, ruddy countenance. Farming was irksome to this restless, nomadic spirit, who on the slightest excuse would exchange the plow and the grubbing hoe for the long rifle and keen-edged hunting knife. In a single day during the autumn season he would kill four or five deer; or ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... would not come, he would hold out again for more payment. In this manner my old sorcerer was very seldom mistaken in his forecasts, and the influence he exerted over the clerk of the weather must have been very irksome to that functionary. ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... virtues was his undeviating loyalty to a set purpose. He went back to America with the firm intention to clear up the mystery surrounding Hetty Castleton, no matter how irksome the delay in achieving his aim or how vigorous the methods he would have to employ. Sara Wrandall, to all purposes, held the key; his object in life now was to induce her to turn it in the lock and throw open ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... stood moveless where Casey had left him. Then fierce purpose, and a cautious recklessness, surged up and took mastery of him. It had required what Casey had told him to end his irksome waiting and wavering. No longer could he remain in his hiding-place, safe himself, trying to save Maggie by slow, indirect endeavor. The time had now come for very different methods. The time had come to step forth into the ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... yesterday, a fine countenance and simple manners; he conversed freely with my father, not at all afraid of committing himself. In general I do not see that prodigious fear of committing themselves, which makes the company of some English men of letters and reputation irksome even to their admirers. Mr. Palmer, the great man of taste, who has lived for many years in Italy, is here, and is very much provoked that the French can now see all the pictures and statues he has been admiring, ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... complete and the students had retired, there was some bantering among the professors as to which of them should take the register home and prepare from it an alphabetical roll,—a work always considered rather tedious and irksome. After a little hesitation, Dr. Alexander said, "There is no need of taking the register home; I will make the roll for you;" and, taking a sheet of paper, at once, from memory, without referring ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... account of his adventures affecting and delightful. To be now and then in Fairyland, among imaginary beings, is a pleasing variety, and helps to distinguish the poet from the orator or historian, but to be always there is irksome. ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... professors of this art never to tell stories but as they seem to grow out of the subject-matter of the conversation, or as they serve to illustrate or enliven it. Stories that are very common are generally irksome; but may be aptly introduced, provided they be only hinted at, and mentioned by way of allusion. Those that are altogether new, should never be ushered in without a short and pertinent character of the chief persons concerned, because, by that means, you ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... King is grateful, Angela, grateful enough and to spare. He never sees me at Court but he has some gracious speech about his father's regard for me. It grows irksome at last, by sheer repetition. The turn of the sentence varies, for his Majesty has a fine standing army of words, but the gist of the phrase is always the same, and it means, 'Here is a tiresome old Put to whom I must say something civil for the sake of his ancient vicissitudes.' And then ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... less bright. Above them, and to their right, Saturn shone refulgently, his spectacular rings plainly visible. All about them were the glories of the firmament, which never fail to awe the most seasoned observer. But idleness soon became irksome to those two active spirits, and Stevens prowled restlessly about ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... Stag, where stags abounded, Fell sick and was surrounded Forthwith by comrades kind, All—pressing to assist, Or see, their friend, at least, And ease his anxious mind— An irksome multitude. "Ah, sirs!" the sick was fain to cry, "Pray leave me here to die, As others do, in solitude. Pray, let your kind attentions cease, Till death my spirit shall release." But comforters are not so sent: On ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... for of course Mr. Hamilton's growl was meant for me, though it was addressed to Nathaniel. I heard him close the door a moment afterwards, and Nathaniel crept back into the kitchen. I woke rather tired the next day, and owned he was right, for I found my duties somewhat irksome that morning. The feeling did not pass off, and I actually discovered that I was dreading my visit to Phoebe, only of course ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... for a little deep into his heart; and I saw that it was filled with a kind of noble pity for me in my suffering; but behind the pity lay that blissful certainty which made Amroth so light-hearted, that it was just so, through suffering, that one became wise; and he could no more think of it as irksome or sad than a jolly undergraduate thinks of the training for a race or the rowing in the race as painful, but takes it all with a kind of high-hearted zest, and finds even the nervousness an exciting thing, life lived at high ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the irksome formula of lessons, prim governesses, satirical scholars." Neither Mrs. Hamilton nor Ellen could prevent ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... was not likely to recover favour in the court of Charles the Second, where man was never regarded in his true greatness, but to be ridiculed; a court where the awful presence of Clarendon became so irksome, that the worthless monarch exiled him; a court where nothing was listened to but wit at the cost of sense, the injury of truth, and the violation of decency; where a poem of magnitude with new claims was a very business ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Demonstration of my being an Adept in Physick. Ogul, upon making the first Experiment, was ready to expire for want of Breath, and thought he should die with the Fatigue. The second Day did not prove altogether so irksome, and he slept much better at Night than he had done before. In short, our Doctor in about eight Days Time, perform'd an absolute Cure. His Patient was as brisk, active and gay, as One in the Bloom ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... of the noise and hurry of war to stillness and repose. When the pleasure of novelty went away, I employed my hours in examining the plants which grow in the valley, and the minerals which I collected from the rocks. But that inquiry is now grown tasteless and irksome. I have been for some time unsettled and distracted: my mind is disturbed with a thousand perplexities of doubt and vanities of imagination, which hourly prevail upon me, because I have no opportunities of relaxation or diversion. ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... was he stimulated to greater activity of production, but his now more methodical way of life gave him time and inclination for that work of arrangement and preparation for the press which, distasteful to most writers, was no doubt especially irksome to him, and thus insured the publication of many pieces which otherwise might never have seen the light. The appearance of Christabel was, as we have said, received with signal marks of popular ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... those who by a thousand ways have exchanged a painful and irksome life for death. Lucius Aruntius killed himself, to fly, he said, both the future and the past. Granius Silvanus and Statius Proximus, after having been pardoned by Nero, killed themselves; either disdaining to live by the favour of so wicked a man, or that they might ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... great many things rather than let any of his people go hungry. But it was only because they were his people, part of the state and circumstance of Redmarley. He didn't care for them a bit as individuals. Any intercourse with the peasantry was irksome to him. Dialect afflicted him. He had nothing to say to them, and they were stricken dumb in his awe-inspiring presence. He was well content to have few personal dealings with those, who, in his own mind, he thought of as his ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... in intention, were crammed into the pupil, the process being repeated until they often became irksome, and he was expected to become moral and religious. I saw that precepts were of little use unless those whom they were meant to benefit were educated, fortified, and disciplined in the practical means of ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... not brook the tedium of this irksome and laborious process. To increase the number of impressions, he resorted to various expedients. The type was set up in duplicate, and even in triplicate; several Stanhope presses were kept constantly at work; and still the insatiable demands of ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... good dinner. He often took Anderson with him. He was the doyen among the diplomats in Brussels, and a little indulgence was shown to him. Therefore he thought that Anderson should be as true to him as was he to Anderson. It was not for Anderson's sake, indeed, who felt the bondage to be irksome;—and Sir Magnus knew that his subordinate sometimes groaned in spirit. But a good dinner is a good dinner,—especially the best dinner in Brussels,—and Sir Magnus felt that something ought to be given in return. He had not that perfect faith in mankind ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... handling O. Henry's incident now, and must use his leader-material, so the next situation must be broken into various "close-up" views to prevent having too long a scene and too irksome a run of spoken ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... one of her tantrums, positively hounded him from the doorstep and down the garden, in her passionate nonconformity. Mary Grace, however, recovered, and soon became, not merely Miss Marks' inseparable friend, but my Father's spiritual factotum. He found it irksome to visit the 'saints' from house to house, and Mary Grace Burmington gladly assumed this labour. She proved a most efficient coadjutor; searched out, cherished and confirmed any of those, especially the young, who were attracted by my Father's preaching, and for several ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... imposed upon the besieged, they were each day called together to oration. On this morning, however, their reunion was earlier than usual: since it had for its object not only the ordinary prayers, but preparation for the combat that was to decide the issue of a long and irksome siege. ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... field of operations was not only narrowed, but the work was robbed of much of its zest. When foxes are fairly numerous the trapper is always buoyed with the hope that a black or silver fox, the most valuable of the fur-bearing animals, may wander into his traps; and this hope renders less irksome the weary tramping of the trails at seasons when the returns might otherwise seem too small a recompense for ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... never shown any particular affection for their parents. The princes Rupert and Cyprian thought of nothing all day but sports and games of skill; they studied serious tasks unwillingly, and found their position as sons of the reigning monarch, irksome, and even ridiculous. They had caught the infection of that diseased idea which in various exaggerated forms is tending to become more or less universal, and to work great mischief to nations,—namely, that 'sport' is more important than ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... just, while boasting of better health, been struck down again by my haunting enemy, an enemy who was exciting at first, but has now, by the iteration of his strokes, become merely annoying and inexpressibly irksome. Can you fancy that to a person drawing towards the elderly this sort of conjunction of circumstances brings a rather aching sense of the past and the future? Well, it was just then that your letter ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... carry the acromial fragment laterally and backwards. A pad is inserted in the axilla, the elbow raised, and the arm placed by the side on a pillow and steadied with sand-bags. Massage is applied daily. As this position must be maintained uninterruptedly for two or three weeks, it proves too irksome for most patients. When both clavicles are fractured, however, it is, short of operation, the only available ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... could make her cease to view with love, The tender memory of the mournful past; And once when warring clouds grew black above, The shrieking Earth with awful night o'ercast, And long foiled Hatred hoped to glut his fast With English gore, with irksome steps she stole, O'er deep morass, through tangled brake, and cast The boon of life to each devoted soul, Who slept within that Castle's frail ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... and since it cannot bring the law into harmony with its desperate folly, deems it expedient to shape its own views in conformity with unbending law. To slay in a duel is to commit murder, though men do not hang for the crime. To be a murderer with benefit of clergy is but an odious and irksome ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... is, nevertheless, sufficiently irksome, nor is it possible that it should be otherwise, so long as the pupil works unassisted by a master. For the smooth and straight road which admits unembarrassed progress must, I fear, be dull as well as smooth; and the hedges need to be close and trim when there is no guide to warn or bring back ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... a.m., and he congratulated himself that what he hoped was the most irksome part of his vigil was over. Soon the place would awaken to life, and the time would then pass more quickly in observation of what ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... there were some details of the wizardry that he overlooked, as never again could he come out on the Enchanted Street in quite the same fashion. Alice had a different method. She fell down a rabbit-hole and thereby freed herself from some very irksome lessons and besides met several interesting people, including a Duchess. Alice may be considered the very John Cabot of the rabbit-hole. Before her time it was known only to rabbits, wood-chucks, and dogs on holidays, whose noses are muddy with poking. But since her time all this is changed. ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... as another; but it is, into the bargain, extremely imprudent; because you commonly defeat your own purpose by it, and while you are contending with each other, a third often prevails. I grant you that the situation is irksome; a man cannot help thinking as he thinks, nor feeling what he feels; and it is a very tender and sore point to be thwarted and counterworked in one's pursuits at court, or with a mistress; but prudence and abilities must check the effects, though they cannot remove the cause. ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... compulsion, my lord; I prefer to assign you a position in which your talents, being unfettered by your antipathies, will shine with undimmed lustre. You have complained of late that the duties of the war department have become irksome to you; if so, I can give you an appointment less onerous to you, but equally important to the state. I am just now in need of an intelligent representative before the imperial Diet. This charge ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... distasteful to Poe and he ran away to Boston, where he published his first volume of poems. Here he enlisted in the army, but when Mr. Allan heard of his whereabouts he secured his discharge and obtained an appointment for him, as a cadet, at West Point. The severe discipline of that school proved irksome to his restless nature and after a few months he brought upon himself his dismissal. At the age of twenty-two he found himself adrift with nothing further to ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... prepared for Cressy's absence from school that morning—indeed in his present vacillating mood he had felt that her presence would have been irksome and embarrassing; but it struck him suddenly and unpleasantly that her easy desertion of him at that critical moment in the barn had not since been followed by the least sign of anxiety to know the result of her mother's interference. What did she ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... inexplicable are the laws of the mind, this escape from the tyranny of convention, from the irksome round of practical details, recoiled perversely into an increased joy of living. Because he could escape at will from the routine, he no longer dreaded to return to it. The light which irradiated the image of Patty transfigured the events ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... ladies. Would Miss Bartlett and Miss Honeychurch join the party? Charlotte declined for herself; she had been there in the rain the previous afternoon. But she thought it an admirable idea for Lucy, who hated shopping, changing money, fetching letters, and other irksome duties—all of which Miss Bartlett must accomplish this morning and could easily ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... effect that cracking a flea and killing a camel are equally guilty. Dr. Edersheim evidently refers to the same authority in a footnote. On the whole this regulation against the killing of vermin must have been very irksome, and if the fleas were aware of it, they and the Jews must have had a lively time on the Sabbath. We cannot ascertain whether the prohibition extended to scratching. If it did, curses not loud but deep must have ascended to the throne of the Eternal; and if, ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... occupation permissible on a playground and the librarian thus finds her work ready to her hand. She is able to advertise her books, make friends with the children is a most effective way, and at the same time relieve the playground instructor of a duty which is sometimes found irksome. ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... as I live, have anything more to do with bringing about marriages!" she cried, tearfully, to her husband, when that worthy gentleman showed her a despatch in the evening paper to the effect that Mr. and Mrs. Jack had invoked the Western courts to free them from a contract which had grown irksome to both. "I shall not even help the most despairing lover over a misunderstanding which may result in two broken hearts. I'm through. The very idea of Marie Willoughby and Johnny Hearst not being able to ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... distinguished from a stoical indifference, or a sullen insensibility, occasioned by the conviction that, as afflictions could not be avoided, they must be borne; that it is in vain to struggle or resist; and that our weakness renders endurance necessary, however irksome. It consists rather in a pious acquiescence in the will of Heaven, arising from a persuasion that God knows what is really best for us; and that his dispensations, however painful or opposite to our wishes, will prove ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... and Harley lay back upon the cushions heaving a long sigh. The irksome period of inaction was ended. The cloud which for a time had dulled his usually keen wits was lifted. He was by no means sure that enlightenment had come in time, but at least he was in hot pursuit of a tangible clue, and he must hope that it would ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... proudly, "I have trusted you blindly, for I loved you madly, passionately. I would as soon believe the fair smiling heavens that bend above us false as you whom I loved so madly and so well. I was mad to bind you with such cruel, irksome bonds when your heart was not mine but another's. My dream of love is shattered now. You have broken my heart and ruined and blighted my life. God forgive you, Daisy, for I never can! I give you ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... cultivated country inland and the wilder scenery of the coast. Up the hill stretched a road nearly straight and perfectly white, the two sides approaching each other in a gradual taper till they met the sky at the top about two miles off. Throughout the length of this narrow and irksome inclined plane not a sign of life was visible on this garish afternoon. Troy toiled up the road with a languor and depression greater than any he had experienced for many a day and year before. The air was warm and muggy, and the top seemed ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... parts were the more irksome to me from the solitariness I underwent, and want of suitable society. For my business lying among the tenants, who were a rustic sort of people of various persuasions and humours, but not Friends, I had little opportunity of conversing with Friends, though I contrived to be with them as much ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... were on the most friendly terms with each other, and there was no jealousy of his power on the part of the emperor. The chancellor was a gentleman, and had extraordinary tact. But his labors were prodigious, and gave him no time for pleasure, or even social intercourse, which finally became irksome to him. He was too busy with public affairs to be a great scholar, and was not called upon to make speeches, as there was no deliberative assembly to address. Nor was he a national idol. He lived retired in his office, among ministers and secretaries, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... in anxious suspense about the non-arrival of our drays—the ground having been so good. With a country so interesting before us, this delay was doubly irksome, and as the cattle could only be watered by coming forward, why they did not come was the question; and this was not solved until evening, when a messenger came forward to ask if they might come, and to inform me that they were nearly exhausted. The fatal alternative of endeavouring ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... Fatima thought she had met with a more favourable occasion, which gave her hopes of being heard upon the subject; she therefore accosted him with all the eagerness imaginable: Son, said she, I beg of you, if it be not very irksome to you, to tell me what reason you have for your so great aversion to marriage? If you have no other than the badness and wickedness of some women, there can be nothing less reasonable, or more weak. I will not undertake the defence of those who are bad, there are a great number of them ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... her new equipage without the least fear, and Ben trundled her off at a good pace, while the boy retired to the shelter of a barn to watch their progress, glad to be rid of an irksome errand. ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... change from a diet of pork and beans and army hard tack was so marked that Uncle Sam's young men threw restraint to the winds, took the mask balls by storm and gallantly assailed and made willing prisoners of the fair sex. Eager to exchange their irksome life in camp for the active campaign in Mexico, it was small wonder they relieved their impatience by many a valiant dash into ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... doubted that it would not be possible to prevail on Dr. Johnson to relinquish, for some time, the felicity of a London life, which, to a man who can enjoy it with full intellectual relish, is apt to make existence in any narrower sphere seem insipid or irksome. I doubted that he would not be willing to come down from his elevated state of philosophical dignity; from a superiority of wisdom among the wise, and of learning among the learned; and from flashing his wit upon minds ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... tokens seemed hardly a day old, might have measured some fourteen feet in length, and some six feet in girth. He was a little frisky; though as yet his body seemed scarce yet recovered from that irksome position it had so lately occupied in the maternal reticule; where, tail to head, and all ready for the final spring, the unborn whale lies bent like a Tartar's bow. The delicate side-fins, and the palms of his flukes, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... hammer, because it has come out rough. Well, well, there is much to thank God for; as I said, it might have been worse." On making further discoveries, he finds that the cast is far less bad than he expected; but the labour of cleaning it with polishing tools proved longer and more irksome than he expected: "I am exceedingly anxious to get away home, for here I pass my life in huge discomfort and with extreme fatigue. I work night and day, do nothing else; and the labour I am forced to undergo is such, that if I had to begin the whole thing ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... Wrapped in dreamy selfishness, unnerved for the toil of reaching the far-off shore, he grew indifferent to country and friends.... So earth would be to us an enchanted isle. The stern toil by which we are to reach that better land, our home, would become irksome to us. It is well for us that we can ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... of Colonel Hamilton that Macartney had stabbed the duke, although it was universally admitted that he had been much too busy and presuming. Hamilton was shunned by all his former companions, and his life rendered so irksome to him, that he sold out of the Guards and retired to private life, in which he ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... First by this path, and then by that one, giving them different glimpses of the desired point, until finally the student finds a path best fitted for his feet, and he moves along straight to the mark, and throwing aside the confining bonds that have proved so irksome, he cries aloud for joy at his ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... the simple answer that this happy state of things will not be realised until human nature has been reformed. Need individuality suffer? It need fear only the restraint imposed by candid public opinion. That will not be irksome, because it will be frank. We shrink from it to-day, only because it takes the form of clandestine scandal and backbiting. Godwin contemplates no Spartan plan of common labour or common meals. "Everything understood by the term co-operation ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... forced to let Captain Delarue post guards at the outlets of this tower. A room beneath is prepared for your grooms, and the court is likewise free to you. I will endeavour to make your detention as little irksome as you will permit, and meantime allow me to show you your sleeping chamber. He then politely, as if he had been ushering a prince to his apartment, led the way, pointing to the door through which they had entered the keep, and saying, 'This is the only present communication ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... society, and the preference shown by the fair sex; their happy and well-conducted mess; the collecting together of so many young men, with all their varied plans of amusement, into which the others are easily persuaded to enter, with just sufficient duty on guard, or otherwise, not to make the duty irksome; all delight too much at first, and, eventually from habit, too much occupy their minds, to afford time ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... fearlessness, her cheerful audacity of speech, and quick comprehension, had won back the fickle hearts of the people, who weighed her words again superstitiously, and made much of her. The workmen, with the indolent, inconsequent Irish temperament which makes it irksome to follow up a task continuously, and easier to do anything than the work in hand, would break off to amuse her at any time. One young carpenter—lean, sallow, and sulky—who was working for her mother, interested her greatly. He ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... Boers instantly (they were very weak) and saved both time and lives. Instead of this, however, it is thought more advisable to keep every one standing still in order to afford a more satisfactory test of Boer marksmanship. It is very irksome. The air seems full of the little shrill-voiced messengers. Our ponies wince and shiver; they know perfectly well what the sound means. At last the fact that the hills are held is revealed to the sagacity of our commanders, and we are moved aside and ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... every tone of it must have pervaded him and possessed him. He was in love with it, he was as entirely fascinated by it as if it were the girl's whole presence, her looks, her qualities. The remnant of the summer passed in the fret of business, which was doubly irksome through his feeling of injury in being kept from the girl whose personality he constructed from the sound of her voice, and set over his fancy in an absolute sovereignty. The image he had created of her remained a dim and blurred vision throughout the day, but by night it became distinct and compelling. ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... It was their expectation that we should remain in camp until they got back with other things to aid my journey out; but, although I was still very ill, and the heated tent was comfortable, I found waiting irksome, and at daylight the next morning (Sunday, November 1st) the boys and I pulled up stakes. To protect my hands during the journey I made a pair of mittens from a piece of blanket duffel that had been brought back from the tent where ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... secret of her bad temper was that she had all her life been allowed to vent it, and now that she was married she felt the necessity of restraining it very irksome. Whenever she had gone far enough with Ned, and saw that he was not to be trifled with, she found that she possessed not only power to control her temper, but the sense, now and then, to do so! On the present ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne
... grew weary of his irksome position, and, letting himself down, he had a walk along each side of the old chapel, striding out as fast as he could, till he fancied he heard his old playmate outside, when he pounded up to the window again, but only ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... was imprisoned here after the Battle of Langside in 1568. It was the ninth Lord Scrope who had the custody of the Queen, and he was assisted by Sir Francis Knollys. Mary, no doubt, found the time of her imprisonment irksome enough, despite the magnificent views over the dale which her windows appear to have commanded; but the monotony was relieved to some extent by the lessons in English which she received from Sir ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... to do so, begging me to stay with him until I should be independent. The day following I was engaged to pull a punkah in the house of an English lawyer connected with an immense lawsuit involving one of the Mohammedan principalities. For this irksome work I was to receive six rupees—twelve shillings—monthly, but before the month was up I was transferred, by the kindness of the English lawyer and the good offices of my co-religionist the moolah, to the retinue of the Nizam of Haiderabad, then in Bombay. Since ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... have no possible need of your sympathy. Put me alone, sir, and with my back to the wall. G. E. C. is happiest then. Well, sir, let us do what we can to curtail this visit, which can hardly be agreeable to you, and is inexpressibly irksome to me. You had, as I have been led to believe, some comments to make upon the proposition which I advanced in ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a long, long, dreary afternoon and night, which they tried to while away in sleeping, for conversation, under the circumstances, soon became irksome. When they awoke, or, rather, when all were again alert and felt as though the night must have passed, the captain was the first to break the ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... noon we were shadowless. The sky was as calm as a vault, and the surface of the water was like burnished steel. The heat became so stifling that even the Africans were gasping for breath, and we envied them their freedom from all impediments. The least exertion was irksome, and attended with extreme lassitude. During the afternoon thin cirri clouds, flying very high, spread out over the western heavens like a fan. As the day lengthened they thickened to resemble the scales of a fish, bringing to mind the old saying, ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... How irksome were these three days to me! All sleep and appetite fled from me; I could only read and re-read his letter, and in the solitude of the woods imagine the moment of our meeting. On the eve of the third day I retired early to my room; I could not sleep but ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... remembered that the Irish are naturally or by habit a migratory people, fond of change, full of hope, and eager for experiment. They had never been tied down to one limited settlement, and consequently confinement of any kind would be irksome, and therefore the test of the workhouse is likely to prove fully as efficient in Ireland as in England. With respect to the' supply of local machinery for the execution of the law, Mr. Nicholls considered that by making the unions sufficiently large, there would be no difficulty of obtaining boards ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... of happy infancy was not to last long; for doubtless Godwin felt it irksome to have to consider whether the house-linen was in order, and such like details, and was thus prepared, in 1801, to accept the demonstrative advances of Mrs. Clairmont, a widow who took up her residence next door to him in the Polygon, Somers Town. She ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... Preachings and prayers to him only meant a time of intolerable restraint, usually ending in disgrace and punishment; Scripture and the Westminster Catechism contained a collection of tasks more tedious and irksome than the Latin and Greek Grammar; Sunday was his worst day of the week, and these repugnances, as he had been taught to believe, were so many proofs that he was a being ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... required to remain in the house in sight of his mother, the mother should not try to make the punishment more heavy by speaking again and again of his fault, and evincing her displeasure by trying to make the confinement as irksome to the child as possible; but, on the other hand, should do all in her power to alleviate it. "I am very sorry," she might say, "to have to keep you in the house. It would be much pleasanter for ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... superior, or whether he had formed, during the voyage he had made, some plan of individual enterprise, he did not accompany the admiral in his subsequent expeditions. He could not, however, long endure the irksome life of a courtier; and he could less bear to hear, without desiring to partake of the discoveries which were announced by every returning vessel, of new coasts and islands, abounding with drugs, spices, precious stones, and pearls, said to surpass in size and clearness ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... have had to entreat Papa's consideration on this point. My nervous system is soon wrought on. I should wish to keep it in rational strength and coolness; but to do so I must determinedly resist the kindly-meant, but too irksome expression of an apprehension, for the realisation or defeat of which I have no possible power to be responsible. At present, I am pretty well. Thank God! Papa, I trust, is no worse, but he ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... at the Court of Edward III., and was a canon of Exeter when chosen bishop. He was a constant adviser of the king, only being released from his privy council and parliamentary duties when his advanced age made them irksome to him. He was very busy in all the affairs of the diocese, but found time to complete the cloisters, east window, and ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw
... was in the room leading to the cabinet, stopped me as I passed, and said, "He wishes you to remain. I beg of you not to refuse; do me this favour. I have assured him that I am incapable of filling your office. It does not suit my habits; and besides, to tell you the truth, the business is too irksome for me." I proceeded to the cabinet without replying to Duroc. The First Consul came up to me smiling, and pulling me by the ear, as he did when he was in the best of humours, said to me, "Are you still in the sulks?" ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... from the frozen North to represent great financial interests on the Cotton Exchange at New Orleans. For two years the young man stuck manfully to his post in the southern city, but it was an irksome restraint to one whose heart was turbulent with the love of travel and adventure. Just at the time when he was ready to resign his position and hie himself into the jungles of the Amazon on an exploring expedition two things happened, either of which was in itself sufficient to ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... struggle with the storm and astounded at her greeting, Thayer halted just across the threshold and looked at her in silence. The silence grew irksome to her. She changed the ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... or follow with full understanding the phonographic version of some mighty, four-part fugue. To attain this means work. But if your body is shouting for joy over the mere act of living, mental calisthenics no longer appear so impossibly irksome. And anyway, the discipline of your physical training has induced your will to put up with a good deal of irksomeness. This is partly because its eye is fixed on something beyond the far-off, divine event of achieving concentration on one ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... example, as a good millionaire; that human life, in short, is a complex of countless different uses, each one of which is as important on its own plane as any of the others. But the intermediate period is undeniably irksome. ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... happy hours with her flowers and her birds, distributed her pretty things among her friends, and accepted all the small trials of strict convent life—no bath, nor mirror, coarse underlinen and sheets—no fire, no lights, no privacy, the regular irksome routine of a nun's life, and is perfectly happy—never misses the intellectual companionship and the refinement and daintiness of her former life,—likes the commonplace routine of the convent—the books they read to each other in "recreation," simple stories one would ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... you are all that is benevolent, but Singleton requires a care which many men would feel to be irksome. It is at moments like these, and in sufferings like this, that the soldier most finds the want of female tenderness." As he spoke, he turned his eyes on Frances with an expression that again thrilled to the heart of his mistress; she rose from her seat with burning cheeks, ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... more receptive and more effective under a pleasant stimulus than she was under the gray grind which she considered her salvation. She was still Methodist enough to believe that if a thing were hard and irksome, it must be good for her. And yet, whatever she did well was spontaneous. Under the least glow of excitement, as at Mrs. Nathanmeyer's, he had seen the apprehensive, frowning drudge of Bowers's studio flash into a resourceful and ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... later by the Government under its new powers of conscription, but the Battalion saw few of them more. These men—W. Jones, Mort, Woods, Stanton, Fielding, Lyth, Bracken, Houghton, Dermody, Parkinson, Barber—were the salt of the Regiment. During the long years when Territorial service had been irksome and unfashionable, they made it succeed. With a few old hands like Regimental Quartermaster-Sergeant Ogden, who elected to remain with the unit, they had borne the burden of the trenches manfully, ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... Moorish word which meant a man of great valour and fame, went home for a short space to see his wife and his little daughter, who by this time was seven years old and had never beheld her father. Rest was sweet to Don Rodrigo, but before it could grow irksome to him he was summoned to court by the death of Fernando, who left all his children under the wardship of the Cid. Unluckily, the old man's will had not been a wise one, and bitter quarrels soon raged between the new king Sancho and his brothers and sisters. In vain Don Rodrigo tried ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... Elizabethan Grammar School at Horncastle to finish his education. Upon the death of his father in 1818 Hill returned to Jamaica. Although his property came into the possession of his son and two daughters the father's death in some way involved Richard Hill in irksome money obligations which harassed him for many years, and even after he had discharged them left a gloom over ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... perplexed me. Our unhappy marriage had taken place three years before. We brought to one another youth, wealth and position. Yet our marriage was a failure. My wife—for what reason I cannot guess—seemed to find my society irksome. In vain I tried to interest her with narratives of my travels. They seemed—in some way that I could not divine—to fatigue her. "Leave me for a little, Harold," she would say (I forgot to mention that my name is Harold Borus), "I have a pain in my neck." ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... ambitions of the Burggrafs increased, and as the smallness of their castle at Nuremberg, and the constant friction with the townspeople, who were able to annoy them in many ways, became more irksome, they gave up living at Nuremberg, and finally were content to sell their rights and possessions there to the town. Beside the guard door of the Burggrafs, which together with their castle passed by purchase into ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... of the people also was irksome to me; I thought there was something in it very sordid. The entire empire the priests have over both the souls and bodies of the people, gave me a specimen of that meanness of spirit, which is nowhere else to be seen but in Italy, especially in ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... sixteen, was a farmer from her early home at Kibworth. He stated his wishes to her father. "She is in the garden," said Mr. Aikin. "You may ask her yourself." Laetitia was not propitious, but the young man was persistent, and the position grew irksome. So the nimble girl scrambled into a convenient tree, and escaped her rustic wooer by swinging herself down upon the other side of the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... all sinne, is, in Homere, the herbe Moly, with the blacke roote, and white flooer, sower at the first, but sweete in the end: which, Hesiodus termeth the study of vertue, hard and // Hesiodus irksome in the beginnyng, but in the end, easie // de virtute. and pleasant. And that, which is most to be marueled at, the diuine Poete Homere sayth plainlie that this medicine against sinne and vanitie, is not found // Homerus, out by man, but ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham |
