"Roundabout" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... self-imposed duties had called him to bring to naught the cunning of his great enemy, the principal war-chief of the Apaches. But the truth was, the camps of the scout and the redskins were not so widely separated as Mickey and Fred believed. He had selected the best site possible, and took a roundabout course in going to or from it, as he had more means given him of concealing his trail. There were places where the soil was so rocky and stony that the foot left not the ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... Yet it was this queer little beak, with his eyes, that made his countenance anything of a face at all. From a distance he looked like the groceryman's delivery boy in a small town. His dress seemed an acknowledgment of his grotesqueness: a short coat, like a little boys' roundabout, and a vest fantastically sprigged and dotted, over ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... by their number and proximity. Nothing like this was to be seen at home. Well knowing that in these villages he ran much more risk of detection than in the open country, he henceforth did his best to avoid them, by taking a roundabout course whenever they came in sight from a distance. This mode of travelling not only lengthened his journey, but put unlooked-for obstacles in ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... those sage carters who rest for ever in the taps of country inns, while the big sleek brass jingling horses wait patiently outside with their waggons; he got a job with some van people who were wandering about the country with swings and a steam roundabout and remained with them for three days, until one of their dogs took a violent dislike to him and made his duties unpleasant; he talked to tramps and wayside labourers, he snoozed under hedges by day and in outhouses and hayricks at night, and once, but only once, he slept in a casual ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... God's as much as first, and Christ made use of them as his father's way. It were a sad world indeed if God's presence were only interference, that is, miracle. The roundabout common ways of things are just as much his as the straight, miraculous ones—I incline to think more his, in the sense that they are plainly the ways he prefers. In all things that are, he is—present even in the evil we bring into the ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... profound conviction that a reasonable selflessness is very far from uncommon, very far from being confined to the "converted" of any religion. For forty years I have watched it growing and spreading before my very eyes. Reading the other way The Roundabout Papers, I was greatly struck by the antiquated cast of the manners therein described. Of course Thackeray, in his day, was reputed a cynic, and supposed to have an over-partiality for studying the seamy side of things. But even if that had been true (which I do not believe) it would ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... exhale, and leave nothing but the bare seams, by way of a skeleton, on my back. It became unspeakably unpleasant, when we got into rather cold weather, crossing the Banks of Newfoundland, when the only way I had to keep warm during the night, was to pull on my waistcoat and my roundabout, and then clap the shooting-jacket over all. This made it pinch me under the arms, and it vexed, irritated, and tormented me every way; and used to incommode my arms seriously when I was pulling the ropes; so much so, that the mate asked me once ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... Undoubtedly it was colder than fifty below—how much colder he did not know. But the temperature did not matter. He was bound for the old claim on the left fork of Henderson Creek, where the boys were already. They had come over across the divide from the Indian Creek country, while he had come the roundabout way to take a look at the possibilities of getting out logs in the spring from the islands in the Yukon. He would be in to camp by six o'clock; a bit after dark, it was true, but the boys would be there, ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... four-wheeled disgrace to London, and the fittings, though frayed, were of rich quality. Mr. Latimer seated himself opposite to me and we started off through Charing Cross and up the Shaftesbury Avenue. We had come out upon Oxford Street and I had ventured some remark as to this being a roundabout way to Kensington, when my words were arrested by the extraordinary conduct of ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... A roundabout route, via the Postage and Inwards Bills Departments, took him to the swing-doors. It was here that the danger became acute. The doors were well within view of the Fixed Deposits Department, and Mr Gregory ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... composition are invariably formed in all development, of plants and animals alike, however diverse the goal of development may be. If there were a vital principle would we not expect to find that, scorning this roundabout way of reaching its goal, it went straight to the mark, taking a different and distinctive course for each individual development, building up the organism direct without the intermediary of cells? But since there is a universal ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... with the Samaritan upland, and Thothmes was advised by his captains to avoid a direct attack, and march against them by a circuitous route, which was undefended. But the intrepid warrior scorned this prudent counsel. "His generals," he said, "might take the roundabout road, if they liked; he would follow the straight one." The event justified his determination. Megiddo was reached in a week without loss or difficulty, and a great battle was fought in the fertile plain to the north-west of the ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... will aid you to patience, though, I will assure you that Miss Sheldon is absolutely beyond Leyden's influence; free as the air, she knows everything now; Mrs. Goring is with her, and they know they are surrounded by friends too strong for Leyden to combat. Leyden is now making his way by a roundabout track to the stream where he left his steam launch, believing he has escaped my line. He intends to overtake the schooner here, lift the gold dust out of the Barang, and board his own schooner, which cleared direct ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... Donovan delivered that well-timber in the Quondong Paddock, the other day, they were n't five mile from the main road—and a gate to go through—but he made them come right back by the station; thirty mile of a roundabout; and their cheques were n't forthcoming till they did it. No, Priestley; to ask Montgomery is simply to get a refusal; and to argue with him is simply to ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... had to say to you is something very general, and yet I prefer to choose this roundabout way. I do not know whether it is false or true delicacy, but I should find it very hard to talk with you, face to face, about friendship. And yet it is thoughts on that subject that I wish to convey to you. The application—and it is about that I ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... overjoyed at finding the pony all that her brother had said of it. The little animal was tireless, and often, after a trip over the plains, or to Dry Bottom to mail a letter, she would return by a roundabout trail. ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the Emperor, if he has not gone to bed, or else the very first thing to-morrow morning. Remember, you must seem to have consulted no one. Make him read this letter; watch him as closely as you can; but, whatever happens, show that you hate these roundabout methods, and tell him again that you will never listen to anything but a direct order ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... things: "Were I at Sans-Souci, amid the Gardens!" thought he. APRIL 17th, he shifted thither: not in a sedan, as Marwitz told us of the former journey; but "in his carriage, very early in the morning, making a long roundabout through various Villages, with new relays,"—probably with the motive Marwitz assigns. Here are ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... in particular; together with the wars of Rome and Carthage, and the rise and fall of sundry outlandish empires which the worthy burghers had never read nor heard of. Having thus, after the manner of your learned orators, treated of things in general, he came by a natural roundabout transition to the matter in hand, namely, the ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... the powder, "for it isn't the 'Rachel' shade that brunettes use. Now up to that point everything had been going nicely, but then and there I spoiled it. Moved by I know not what folly, I wrote her a yet more roundabout letter, which, however, was very pressing. In attempting to fan her flame I kindled myself—for a spectre—and at once I ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... Smiling Pool before Longlegs, who had taken a roundabout way, and they hid among the bulrushes where they could ...
— The Adventures of Grandfather Frog • Thornton W. Burgess
... sure how queerly things are found out! Here is an instance. Only the other day I was writing in these Roundabout Papers about a certain man, whom I facetiously called Baggs, and who had abused me to my friends, who of course told me. Shortly after that paper was published another friend—Sacks let us call him—scowls fiercely at me as I am sitting in ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... a roundabout way, walking down F Street and stopping to make some trifling purchases in two or three shops. She could not detect that she was being followed, but she went into a large department store, and spent considerable ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... proclaimed, and already the committee charged by Congress "to correspond with friends in England, Ireland, and other parts of the world," had made inquiry of the French government, by roundabout ways, as to what were its intentions regarding the American colonies, and was soliciting the aid of France. On the 3d of March, 1776, an agent of the committee, Mr. Silas Deane, started for France; he had orders to put the same question point blank ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... foreshore rights, and had employed those to lay a tramway from their hustling centre; and as the rival town was on the main line, the majority of visitors preferred going by the foreshore route in preference to the roundabout branch line route, which was somewhat handicapped by the fact that this, too, connected with the branch line at Tolness, a little town which had done great work in the War, but which did not attract the tourist ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... I know there is a roundabout way of explaining that statement, apart from the idea of Restoration. But it seems far-fetched and strained. When once we grasp the theory of Restoration, the words seem natural and ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... seen in 'er I don't know. I asked 'im one evening—in a roundabout way—and he answered in such a long, roundabout way that I didn't know wot to make of it till I see that she was standing just behind me, listening. Arter that I heard 'er asking questions about me, but I didn't 'ave to listen: I could hear 'er twenty yards away, ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... who could not get out of the plastic block; but I am moving forward little by little, even if I have to take three steps roundabout ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... Sir Richard of the Lee, with his son and retinue, journeying in a roundabout way in order to throw Monceux off the scent, and so give Robin a chance to reach his stronghold in Barnesdale. Both knights paused in amazement ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... roundabout one. Our petty economies are no concern of hers. Man wants specific results at once. Nature works slowly to general results. Her army is drilled only in battle. Her tools grow sharper in the using. The strength of her ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... will here admit that away down in his heart he did permit a little flame of hope to smolder that in a roundabout way he might some day secure the whole of it practically, and something with the fortune more precious to him than the gold and ...
— A Successful Shadow - A Detective's Successful Quest • Harlan Page Halsey
... States have been hearing both sides, English and the Hollanders, over and over again, and that the States have passed a provisional resolution, which however does not suit us. Now it is not reasonable, as we are allies, that our merchants should be obliged to send their cloths roundabout, not being allowed either to sell them in the United Provinces or to pass them through your territories. I wish I could talk with them myself, for I am certain, if they would send some one here, we could make an agreement. It is not necessary that one should take everything from them, or that one ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... trouble that evening at the big-riffle crossing was this way"—it is the dying Bledsoe, of course, who is being quoted. "The man they sent to the mill with the message did a lot of loose talking on his way back after he gave in the message, and in this roundabout way the word got to me at my house on the Eden's Swamp road soon after dinnertime. Now I had always got along fine with both of the Stackpoles, and had only friendly feelings toward them; but maybe there's some people still alive back there in that county who can remember what the reason ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... everything is quite ordinary. The game is over, the ball is lost, and you prepare to go. But you decide to go home by a rather roundabout way that brings you by the spot that you have scoured in vain. You are not going to search for the ball. That would simply put the creature up to some new artifice. No, you are just walking round that way accidentally. What so ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... mama," Mildred begged. "Of course Arthur didn't tell anybody. It's roundabout enough, but it's true. I know it! I hadn't quite believed it, but I knew it was true when he got so red. He looked—oh, for a second or so he looked—stricken! He thought I didn't notice it. Mama, he's been to see her almost every ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... the Austrians. German officers and men were therefore rushed from the eastern and western fronts to the south of the Carpathians to form the three armies we have labeled A, B, and C. The points of attack for which they were intended have already been stated; but the roundabout manner in which they traveled to their respective sections is both interesting and worthy of notice. At this stage a new spirit seemed to dominate Austro-Hungarian military affairs; we suddenly encounter greater precision, sounder strategy, and deeper plans: a master mind appears ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... can possess neither more nor less virtue than one which he has struck in a moment by the friction of a lucifer match; but to the ignorant and superstitious this truth is far from apparent, and accordingly they take infinite pains to do in a roundabout way what they might have done directly with the greatest ease, and what, even when it is done, is of no use whatever for the purpose in hand. A vast proportion of the labour which mankind has expended throughout the ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... never send another Minister to France without assurance that he will be received, respected, and honored, as the representative of a great, free, powerful, and independent nation." But on receiving an authentic though roundabout intimation that a new mission would have a friendly reception, he concluded to dispense with direct assurances, and, without consulting his Cabinet, sent a message to the Senate on February 18, 1799, nominating Murray, then American Minister to Holland, to be Minister ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... of the gold discovery filtered to us in a roundabout way through vessels to the Sandwich Islands, and then appeared again in the columns of some Baltimore paper. Everybody laughed at the rumour; but everybody remembered it. The land was infinitely remote; and then, as now, romance increases as the square of the distance. There might well be ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... entered the castle, which was now theirs, and held their wedding; and all the kings roundabout, who had been in the troll's debt, and were now out of it, came to the wedding, and saluted the youth as their emperor, and he ruled over them all, and kept peace between them, and lived in his castle with his beautiful empress in great joy and magnificence. ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... English counterpart in the north to the Spanish empire in the south. He had already begun to equip a couple of vessels. He despatched them to America on April 27, 1584, under Captains Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlow. They took the roundabout route by the Canaries and West Indies. In July they were saluted with a most fragrant gale from the land they were seeking. Sailing into the mouth of a river they saw vines laden with grapes, climbing up tall cedars. On July 13 they proclaimed the Queen's ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... it was horrible to think that his chum was lost under the sea, not knowing his way back to the Searcher, for they had come a roundabout way. ...
— The Wizard of the Sea - A Trip Under the Ocean • Roy Rockwood
... will say, Well! is not this all that we have contended for! Have you not reached the old conclusion in a roundabout way? I think not. To my mind there is a wide difference between the old statement that the higher animals living today have the original adult stages telescoped into their embryos, and the statement that the resemblance between certain ...
— A Critique of the Theory of Evolution • Thomas Hunt Morgan
... difficulty in obtaining all the men he wanted. The settlers had suffered so much from the enemy that they were eager to take their revenge. There was a fascination in the service. How stirring the thought of stealing through the woods, making roundabout marches, shooting a deer or bear, eating the nice steaks, lying down to sleep beneath the trees; up again in the morning, coming upon the French and Indians unawares, pouring in a volley, killing the savages or taking them prisoners, ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... pressure of Jack Fyfe's lips on hers left no room for anything but an amazing thrill of pure gladness. She was happy in his arms, content to rest there, to feel his heart beating against hers, to be quit of all the uncertainties, all the useless regrets. By a roundabout way she had come to her own, and it thrilled her to her finger tips. She could not quite comprehend it, or herself. But she was glad, weeping with gladness, straining her man to her, kissing his face, murmuring incoherent words ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... And when that ache became so leaden that he couldn't endure it any longer in silence, he carried it to the one person in his life who was best calculated to understand. Diffidently he broached the subject with Miss Sarah, approaching it in a roundabout fashion least likely to deceive that bright-eyed ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... that this was not so. "Ah," I said, "to know other women is not to know our Daisy. Why, she is good sense itself—so prudent and modest and thoughtful that she makes the other girls roundabout seem all hoydens or simpletons. She has read the most serious books—never anything else. Her heart is as good as her mind is rich. Never fear, Mr. Cross! not all the silks in China or velvets in Genoa could turn ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... was fairly accessible by roundabout trail with a few tire tracks to point the way for Casey. Straight across the ridges, it would not have been more than two miles to Juniper Wells. Nevertheless not one man in a year would be tempted to come this way, unless it were definitely ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... fat old fellow with a red nose and white hair, seemed utterly dejected; while the woman, a little roundabout individual with shining cheeks, looked at the official who had arrested ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... have you understand that as a community we are not moderately prosperous and contented, comfortable if not energetic and advanced. This is not a pushing town: it has never known a boom. That I'm sure will some day come, but I hope not in my time. I have faith in the mountains that fold us roundabout; they are rich with the possibilities of coal and iron, and year by year are being more and more widely opened up and developed; year by year the ranks of flaming, reeking coke ovens push farther ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... later," said her father. "Just now I am going to tell you about our auto tour. We are going, as I said, to the city of Portland. It is three hundred miles there, but the roundabout roads we will take may make ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope
... head. "You see, Mrs. Hazleton is a nervous wreck, but it's about the baby, and caused, she says, by her fears for its safety. It came to us only in a roundabout way, through a servant in the house who keeps us in touch. The curious feature is that we can seem to get nothing definite from her about her fears. ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... made a peace with the Regicides will give a stability to the Regicide system. This will not clear the discourse from the absurdity, but it will account for the conduct, which such reasoning so ill defends. What a roundabout way is this to peace,—to make war for the destruction of regicides, and then to give them peace in order to insure a stability that will enable them to observe it! I say nothing of the honor displayed in such a system. It is plain it militates with itself almost in all the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a roundabout way to tackle the question. If I were you, I'd just shoot him and let it go ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... remember him; a lad of twenty, which was about his years when I first saw him, by the sign that I was very little turned of fifteen myself. Spike was comely then, though I acknowledge he's a willian. I can see him now, with his deep blue roundabout, his bell-mouthed trowsers, both of fine cloth—too fine for such a willian—but fine it was, and much did ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... replaced by "gloom and despondency."(8) The ghosts that hovered so frequently at the back of his mind, the brooding tendencies which fed upon his melancholy and made him at times irresolute, were issuing from the shadows, trooping forward, to encompass him roundabout. ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... owe to him much of what little I have learned, for he is a wonderful linguist, being able to read Hebrew and Greek about as easily as Latin or English. He is at Oxford now—at least he was there when I last heard of him. Moreover, it was through the Hutchins' family, in a roundabout way, that your mother, Olly, came to learn to write such letters as you have got so carefully stowed away there in ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... Accordingly the Blind man took on his back the Cripple who guided him till he brought him under a tree, and he fell to plucking from it what he would and tearing at its boughs till he had despoiled it, after which they went roundabout and throughout the garden and wasted it with their hands and feet; nor did they cease from this fashion, till they had stripped all the trees of the garth. Then they returned to their place and presently ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... thinking the matter over, Claudet came to the conclusion that perhaps Julien was beginning to repent of his generosity, and that possibly this coolness was a roundabout way of manifesting his change of feeling. This seemed to be the only plausible solution of his cousin's behavior. "He is probably tired," thought he, "of keeping us here at the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... young man, dressed in a suit of blue homespun, consisting of a roundabout jacket, waistcoat, and breeches which came to within about three inches of his feet. The latter were encased in rawhide boots, into the tops of which, most of the time, his pantaloons were stuffed. He wore a soft felt hat which ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... slow men were to discover the abundance of this supply, and to trace it to its luxuriant deposits amid the rocks. While it was literally forcing itself upon their observation, it was only by a roundabout process that they discovered its richness and importance. As early as the year 1835 its presence amid the rocks was made known on the Alleghany River, a short distance above Pittsburg, by its interference with the salt wells; but no dream of its future importance seems to have forced itself upon ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... corner, he resolved to get a word or two, if possible, with the inmates of Staunton Cottage; and he accordingly sauntered off, taking a very roundabout way, as long as he thought it at all possible for his movements to be seen by the already ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... sometimes seen at the mass of Notre Dame, which remind you of a still earlier period; the faded royalist, with a countenance saddened by the recollection of former days; the ex-militaires, whose looks own no friendship with "the world or the world's law;" the old bourgeois riding in the same roundabout with his grandchildren, and enjoying the jeu de bague as cordially,—revolve in succession like the different figures in a magic lantern, while the place of Punch and Pierrot is supplied by a host of laborious drolls and gens a l'incroyable. ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... advisers, it is not {17} surprising that Sir James Craig soon took umbrage at the language and policy of Le Canadien. At first he made his displeasure felt in a somewhat roundabout way. In the summer of 1808 he dismissed from the militia five officers who were reputed to have a connection with that newspaper, on the ground that they were helping a 'seditious and defamatory journal.' One of these officers was Colonel Panet, who had fought in the defence ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... If he had not confessed, we could have proved that he helped you," added Vallington. "I have seen the six papers that were all right myself. Pearl performed the third example in a very peculiar and roundabout way; and Poodles had it in the same way, while the other did it by ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... he was enabled to carry out his process in the sister kingdom, whence it was exported to England, and admitted here on payment of the Customs' duty, which was the same as the Excise duty on its manufacture here. All this roundabout method of doing business is now done away with, and no restriction now exists to mar the ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... restrain their fury; and if any of their enemies see them, or call to them, they are preserved by that means; and such as can come so near them as to touch their garments, have not only their lives, but their fortunes secured to them; it is upon this account that all the nations roundabout consider them so much, and treat them with such reverence, that they have been often no less able to preserve their own people from the fury of their enemies, than to save their enemies from their rage; for it has sometimes fallen out, that when their armies have been in ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... and held him fast against the stile. He tried to push the dog aside, but it would not let him proceed. The strap was therefore put around its neck, and the wise creature at once led its master by a roundabout way quite out of the ordinary path. It appeared that part of the footpath which led past a stream had been entirely washed away by a flood, so that, had the gentleman continued upon the old path, he must have met with ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... between the termini of my route was a village in which lived a constable who was suspected of being in the employ of the slave-owners. It was thought advisable that I should avoid that village by taking a roundabout road. That I did, although it added an extra half to my trip. The result was that the sun was just peeping over the eastern hills, as I reached a set of bars showing an entrance into a pasture lot on one side ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... said reproachfully, "that I had no money. Do you think that if I had it I would not have given it to you at once, instead of sending it in that roundabout manner? Do you know the handwriting? that ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... we were all in all to each other. A small thing, Sylvia. But crowd your life with such small things? Spying and deceit and a game of catch-as-catch-can played by the father and son! My letters were read—I used to know, for roundabout questions would be put leading up to the elucidation of a sentence which to any one but myself would be obscure! Do you think any child could grow up straight, if his boyhood passed in that atmosphere ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... your sleep," he murmured into the darkness. One evening he went to the house where the school teacher boarded and stood in the shadow of a tree until he saw her come out and go toward Main Street. Then he went by a roundabout way and walked past her on the sidewalk before the lighted stores. He did not look at her, but in passing her dress touched his arm and he was so excited later that he could not sleep and spent half the night ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... allurements of the other sex. But, as we know, an instinctive desire will not be denied. In this case, the misguided instinct which has been given the suggestion that menstruation means illness, fits this conception into the scheme of things and obtains notice in a roundabout way by the ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... if it were not for his priestly robes and the wickedness of the act, he would know how to answer in arms such an accusation. During the night that followed, Becket secretly left Northampton, and by a roundabout way after two weeks succeeded in escaping to the continent in disguise. The next day the court held its last session. After some discussion it was resolved to allow the case to stand as it was, and not ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... couldn't pay all the rent, the agent would turn them out of their houses. This was called "evicting" them. The farm that Mr McQueen lived on, as well as the village and all the country roundabout, was owned by the Earl of Elsmore, who lived most of the year in great style in England. The agent who collected rents was Mr Conroy. Nobody liked Mr Conroy very much, but everybody was afraid of him, because he could do ...
— The Irish Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... to prolong his pleasure in this walk through the snow, and so he took her back to the Manor by long roads and roundabout ways. They did not climb up the old path over the cliff because that was so much shorter than the hair-pin road.... "I must tell her soon," he said to himself, "but before I tell her, I must feel the most of her love ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... Izumo temples; but they are most eagerly sought for. Those strips of white paper, bearing the deity's name, and a few words of promise, which are sold for a few rin, are tied to rods of bamboo, and planted in all the fields of the country roundabout. The most curious things sold are tiny packages of rice-seeds. It is alleged that whatever you desire will grow from these rice-seeds, if you plant them uttering a prayer. If you desire bamboos, cotton-plants, peas, lotus-plants, or watermelons, it matters not; only plant the seed and believe, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... making common and cheap things uncommon and pretty, by good sense and good taste, that is a practical lesson to any rank of society in a whole island we could mention. The oddest feature of these agreeable scenes is the everlasting Roundabout (we preserve an English word wherever we can, as we are writing the English language), on the wooden horses of which machine grown-up people of all ages are wound round and round with the utmost solemnity, while ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... rainy and wet, but towards evening the sky cleared up, and Carmen led little Frieda home from the school-house. On her return she took a roundabout path, and slackened her usually fleet steps to enjoy the fresh, balmy spring air. She passed into a lonely lane, bordered on either side with beautiful gardens, whose hedges were unfolding their first blossoms, filling the air with sweetest perfume. As she stooped to pick ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... the general who wrote the despatch, or by the messenger who carried it, as they falsely represented it to have been a drawn battle; but as soon as the praetor Pomponius heard the news of this second misfortune, he assembled the people in the Forum, and said, without any roundabout apologies whatever, "Romans, we have lost a great battle, the army is destroyed, and the consul Flaminius has fallen. Now, therefore, take counsel for your own safety." These words produced the same impression on ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... roundabout ways into note, While His short cut to fame is—the cut of his coat; Philip's Son thought the World was too small for his Soul, But our Regent's finds room in a laced button-hole. ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... the close of the 'Roundabout Paper' No. 23, 'De Finibus,' in which a sense of the ebb of life is very marked; the whole paper is like a soliloquy. It opens with a drawing of Mr. Punch, with unusually mild eye, retiring for the night; he is putting out his high-heeled shoes, and before disappearing ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... the new teacher had presented. Sam Wardwell's father having learned from Mr. Morton where last he had taught, went so far as to write to the wholesale merchants with whom he dealt, in New York, for the name of some customer in Mr. Morton's former town; but even by making the most of this roundabout method of inquiry he only learned that the teacher had been highly respected, although nothing was known of ...
— Harper's Young People, September 28, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... after ten o'clock when he started, in a roundabout way, for the home of Eliphalet Loop. The more direct route would have been down the street from his own house to the Boggs City pike, first turn to the left, fifty paces straight ahead, and he would have found himself at Eliphalet's ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... disengaged as mine! how know you that, Herbert?" said his cousin, with a smile, which would have deceived the most penetrating eye. "Are you not presuming too far in your inspection of my heart, seeking in rather a roundabout way, to obtain ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... le Grand, and the College of France line the same street on the next block, and have stood there for some hundreds of years; but, all the same, timid people certainly prefer to reach them by a roundabout way rather than by this section of ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... certain that Mr Toots had a filmy something in his mind, which led him to conclude that if he could aspire successfully in the fulness of time, to the hand of Florence, he would be fortunate and blest. It is certain that Mr Toots, by some remote and roundabout road, had got to that point, and that there he made a stand. His heart was wounded; he was touched; he was in love. He had made a desperate attempt, one night, and had sat up all night for the purpose, to ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... the stable, the Rover boys stepped out of sight in the building. They saw him re-enter the Hall, and then they took a roundabout course which soon brought them to the campus, where they joined Fatty ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... writer began devoting more time to his linguistic studies. Difficult as the language seems to be upon one's first introduction to it, it was not long before I was able to understand much of what was said to me, and to express myself in a vague roundabout way. In the latter operation I was much assisted by a peculiar faculty of divination which the Russian peasant possesses to a remarkably high degree. If a foreigner succeeds in expressing about one-fourth of an idea, the Russian peasant can generally fill up the remaining three-fourths ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... other hand, the present day critics are really in earnest for a constitution, then I am unable to understand why they believe that this cannot be secured under the Republic but must be obtained in a roundabout way by means of a monarchy. In my view the real hindrances to the adoption of a constitution at the present day in China are the existing conditions, viz. the attitude of the officials and the traditions and intellectual standards of the people. ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... went a roundabout way to put it before you, but you have hit the right nail clean on the head at once. We want to make their lives as sunshiny as we can, and not try to point out clouds where as likely as not ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... character and in society is a long and arduous campaign. The Bible says that a thousand years in God's sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. It certainly seems that way. It is a long and roundabout journey to the Promised Land. Generations die and fall by the way. The road is white with the bones of pilgrims who attained not the promises but saw them and greeted them from afar. Some Giordano Bruno, who gives himself to the achievement of mankind's high ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... Pierre went from the Trastevere to the Palazzo Farnese, where he was expected, he chose a roundabout route, following the Via di Pettinari and the Via dei Giubbonari, the former so dark and narrow with a great hospital wall on one side and a row of wretched houses on the other, and the latter animated by a constant stream of people and enlivened by the jewellers' ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... belly, and then his belly sowed up; then you are to thrust the spit through his mouth out at his tail; and then with four, or five, or six split sticks or very thin laths, and a convenient quantitie of tape or filiting, these laths are to be tyed roundabout the Pikes body, from his head to his tail, and the tape tied somewhat thick to prevent his breaking or falling off from the spit; let him be rosted very leisurely, and often basted with Claret wine, and Anchovis, and butter mixt together, and also with what moisture falls from him ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... put a triad at the head of an Ennead was nothing more than a roundabout way of placing a single god there: the three persons only counted as one, and the eleven names only amounted to the nine canonical divinities. Thus, the Theban Ennead of Amon-Maut-Khonsu, Shu, Tafnuit, Sibu, Nuit, Osiris, Isis, Sit, and Nephthys, is, in spite of its apparent irregularity, as correct ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... as in the case of Moses[262];—the efficacy of repentance, as in the case of Ahab[263];—the sure answer to prayer, (to forgotten prayer, it may be!) as in the case of Zacharias[264];—the seemingly roundabout methods of GOD'S providence, (as in the case of Abraham,) yet conducting inevitably to a blessed issue at the last;—the rewards of obedience[265];—the faithfulness of the Divine promises;—the boundless wealth of the Divine contrivance, which, on man's ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... ticket, a cabin passage, that he may escape the poor accommodations of excessive humility, the steerage of the ship of life. It seems incredible that our mother was mistaken in thinking her boys the brightest, best, and most creditable in all the region roundabout! Let us by our lives, marvel rather at the correctness of her vision than the blindness of ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... lads began to think of returning to camp. They did not want to go back by the same road over which they had come, however, so decided to follow the shores of the lake until they should find some other path. This was, of course, a roundabout way of getting home, but they had the better part of the afternoon before them, and were ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... and the brother threatened to shoot Gasca if he came near the place. Also, he told the border patrol some things about Gasca so that he was afraid to go over any more. Just after I met Gasca, he had heard, in a roundabout way as my people hear things, that the brother had been killed and the Indian woman had died of a sickness. Gasca wanted me to go over with him to find out if the treasure was still there—he felt sure that it was because he said the brother ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... took his seat in the middle, with Dewes upon his right and Lynes upon his left. Dewes expected him at once to press for information as to Linforth. But Luffe knew very well that certain time must first be wasted in ceremonious preliminaries. The news would only be spoken after a time and in a roundabout fashion. ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... the old backwoodsman; but neither Dick nor I would agree to this in toto. Dick argued that while we were killing time in the roundabout advance we should be leaving Margery wholly at the mercy of the baronet, and that every hour of delay was full of hideous menace to her. Hence he proposed that three of us should carry out the hunter's plan, leaving the fourth ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... rub and whisked on his coat, while Jack was picking up the various treasures which had flown out of his pockets as he caught up his roundabout. ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... house lies quite inland, with four sides to defend: the river and marsh give Rudie's but two and a fraction. Boats? Not hardly: we'd soon stop that, as you'll see, if they dare. Anyhow,—point two,—your house is all hillocks behind, and shops roundabout: here's just one low ridge, and the rest clear field. Third: the Portuguese built a well of sorts in the courtyard; water's deadly, I dare say, but your place has no well whatever. And as to four, suppose—in a sudden alarm, say, those cut ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... the Lunch Club might have been very different had it welcomed her in the majestic setting of the Plinth drawing-rooms; but not liking to reflect on the inadequacy of Mrs. Ballinger's establishment she sought a roundabout satisfaction in ...
— Xingu - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... he had gone about his probings with skill, questioning her in a roundabout way, trying to learn by means of inference. But after this, he let himself go, and put a barefaced question. The subject once broached, there was no further need of concealment, and he flung tact and prudence to the winds. He could not forget—he ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... trader found the Indians at the head waters of the Ohio,—among them the Delawares, Shawanese, Mohicans, and Iroquois,—whither they tracked the bear from their village of Logstown, seventeen miles down the river. They also employed the country roundabout as a highway for their march to battle against other tribes, and against each other. At that time France and England were disputing for the new continent. France, by right of her discovery of the Mississippi, claimed ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... stretched from the after-bridge to mattresses on the quarter-deck, down which one shot through the dizzy darkness to end in a delicious "wump" at the bottom. The after-capstan was a roundabout, with its squealing passengers suspended from capstan-bars. Each grim twelve-inch gun had a saddle strapped round the muzzle, on which one sat, thrilled and ecstatic, while the great guns rose slowly to extreme elevation and descended ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie |
