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Encumbered   /ɛnkˈəmbərd/   Listen
Encumbered

adjective
1.
Loaded to excess or impeded by a heavy load.  "A hiker encumbered with a heavy backpack" , "An encumbered estate"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Encumbered" Quotes from Famous Books



... attendant and the owner of the animal. Even with resolution incurable lameness results, and the animal is afterwards more or less a walking exhibition of the limitations of surgery, while the owner, unless the animal is valuable for the purpose of breeding, finds himself encumbered with a life that is practically useless. (See Treatment of ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks

... if it finds supporters, mounts a chair. If he is applauded, it is put into proper shape. If he is hissed, he goes away. This was the way of the Romans." Behold the veritable National Assembly! It is superior to the other semi-feudal affair, encumbered with "six hundred deputies of the clergy and nobility," who are so many intruders and who "should be sent out into the galleries."—Hence the pure Assembly rules the impure Assembly, and "the Cafe Foy lays claim to the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... in which the predecessors of the existing factory workers soled and heeled the shoes which shod our armies in the early days of the Civil War. Every city and town had its own slaughter house; New York had more than two hundred; what is now Fifth Avenue was frequently encumbered by large droves of cattle, and great stockyards occupied territory which is now used for beautiful clubs, railroad stations, hotels, and the ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick

... when it was found that one-third of the Irish landlords were bankrupt, the Encumbered Estates Court Act was passed to cope with the situation which had arisen of a country full of numerous landlords saddled with land which, owing to mortgages, debts, and incumbrances, was inalienable. ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell

... to my grandfather, who married Miss Biggs of Stockton, and, at his death, it came, considerably encumbered, to my father, in the year 1774, the year after I was born. Finding, during the life time of his father, that this was a very poor property to live upon as a gentleman, he turned his mind to business, and to the improvement of his fortune. ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt

... Buckinghamshire from 1818 to 1839, and was responsible for the "Chandos clause" in the Reform Bill of 1832. He was lord privy seal from September 1841 to January 1842, and partly owing to his opposition to the repeal of the corn laws was known as the "Farmers' Friend." He found the estates heavily encumbered when he succeeded to the dukedom in 1839, and his own generous and luxurious tastes brought matters to a climax. In 1847 his residences were seized by his creditors, and the duke left England. His personal property and many of his landed estates were sold, and returning ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... books, manuscripts, pictures, and other collections, to his third daughter, Katherine Somerset Wyttenbach, wife of the Rev. J.E.A. Fenwick, at one time vicar of Needwood, Staffordshire. This bequest was, however, encumbered with the singular condition, that neither his eldest daughter, nor her husband, nor any Roman Catholic should ever enter the house.[97] His second daughter, Maria Sophia, who married the Rev. John Walcott of Bitterley Court, Shropshire, predeceased her father. ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher

... tells us that at the appointed time he returned to the house. All the barrels and wagons that had encumbered the courtyard were cleared away, and in their place were coroneted carriages, with footmen and servants. A lackey in brilliant livery conducted the visitor to the drawing-room on the first floor. The apartments were magnificently furnished, and glittered ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris

... about in a different order; hung up draperies and sketches, and in many ways changed the character of the interior. The faded, weary-looking widow from whom I hired the place, and who took care of the rooms, carried away to her own apartment many of the most obnoxious trifles which encumbered the small tables, the etagere, and the wall spaces. She sighed a great deal as we were making the rapid changes to suit our own taste, but made no objection, and we naturally thought it was the regular custom of every new occupant to turn the ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... always praised up virginity, which is simply an abnegation of sex. Cruden shrinks from the literal sense of Christ's words, and says that the "eunuchs" he refers to are those who "upon some religious motive do abstain from marriage and the use of all carnal pleasures; that they may be less encumbered with the cares of the world, and may devote themselves more closely to the service of God." Moonshine! Origen was a better judge than Cruden. If Jesus did not mean what he said, why did he take the trouble to speak? His doctrine is ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote

... good people lived west of the tracks. East of the tracks it was different. The past tense is used with a full appreciation of the necessity for grammatical construction, for times have changed in San Pasqual, since it is no longer encumbered with the incubus that made this story possible—Harley P. Hennage, the town gambler and the worst man in ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... descent, and Ned found the path he had to follow encumbered by loose gray stones, and full of gins and traps, in the shape of narrow cracks in the rock, and bramble-like canes ever ready to trip him up. However, fortunately, the trees and bushes were pretty open on that dry hill-side, and he could ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn

... had by sunrise done their work most successfully with torch and tomahawk. The blood of forty-nine murdered men, women and children reddened the snow. Twenty-nine men, twenty-four women, and fifty-eight children were made captive, and in a few hours the spoil-encumbered enemy ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford

... are generally three stores one above another. These stores are very handsome, those of the outfitters particularly so, though the quantity of goods displayed in the streets gives them rather a barbaric appearance. The side walks are literally encumbered with bales of scarlet flannel, and every other article of an emigrant's outfit. At the outfitters' stores you can buy anything, from a cart-nail to a revolver; from a suit of oilskin to a paper of needles. The streets present an extraordinary spectacle. ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... address; his age seemed to border upon forty, his stature amounted to five feet, his visage was long, meagre, and weather-beaten, and his aspect, though not quite rueful, exhibited a certain formality, which was the result of care and conscious importance. He was very little encumbered with flesh and blood; yet what body he had was well proportioned, his limbs were elegantly turned, and by his carriage he was well entitled to that compliment which we pay to any person when we say he has very much the air of a gentleman. There was also an evident singularity in his dress, which, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... clean. The gate was a rattle-boned affair, hanging feebly between two grandfatherly old posts, which hypocritically tried to maintain an air of solidity, though perfectly aware that they were wellnigh rotted away at the base. The action of this gate was assisted—or more correctly encumbered—by the contrivance of a sliding ball and chain, creating a most dismal clatter and flap as often as it was opened. The white-washed picket fence, scaled and patched by the weather, kept the posts in excellent countenance; and inclosed a moderate ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... already acquainted with from Ternate and Gilolo. Finding no good paths I returned, and explored the lower ground eastward of the village, passing through a long range of plantain and tobacco grounds, encumbered with felled and burnt logs, on which I found quantities of beetles of the family Buprestidae of six different species, one of which was new to me. I then reached a path in the swampy forest where I hoped to find some butterflies, but was disappointed. Being now ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... these distracting doubts, however, the departure was resolved upon. Mirabeau had many interviews with the Count Fersen upon the subject. It was his great object to prevent the flight from being encumbered. But the King would not be persuaded to separate himself from the Queen and the rest of the family, and entrusted the project to too many advisers. Had he been guided by Fersen only, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... the three thousand men with whom he had begun the autumn. Barely one thousand were fit for duty. Eleven hundred lay sick and suffering in the ghastly hospital. Eight hundred and ninety lay buried out on the dreary tongue of land between the lime-pit and the fog-bound, ice-encumbered sea. ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood

... of Fan-Palms, to that precipitous cleft which you see on the summit of the mountain, and which, from its resemblance in form to the battlement of a fortress, is called the Embrasure. It is difficult to find a path along this wild portion of the enclosure, the soil of which is encumbered with fragments of rock, or worn into channels formed by torrents; yet it produces noble trees, and innumerable springs and rivulets. The other portion of land comprised the plain extending along the banks of the river of Fan-Palms, ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre

... or could see more of it than the Chateau, over which the Lilies of France and the broad white banner of the Bourbons floated in company, we found ourselves swept into the whirlpool which surrounds an army. Crowds stood at all the cross-roads, wagons and sumpter-mules encumbered the bridges; each moment a horseman passed us at a gallop, or a troop of disorderly rogues, soldiers only in name, reeled, shouting and singing, along the road. Here and there, for a warning to the latter sort, a man, dangled ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman

... the port crowded with ships of all nations, the quays encumbered with piles of barriques and mountains of Egyptian wheat discharged in bulk. What blinding dust as they shovel it up! What a suffocating heat! What smells in this hollow trough which receives the filth of all the town! How curiously names on the sterns ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... rather tumbling along one over the other pell-mell into the regions of immortality. Such is the Fiji philosophy, but the Tonga people deny it, unwilling to think that the residence of the gods should be encumbered with so much useless rubbish. The natives of Otaheite entertain similar notions respecting these things, viz. that brutes, plants, and stones exist hereafter, but it is not mentioned that they extend the idea to ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... follow me. In about a quarter of an hour he made his appearance in his new costume. As soon as he was recognised he was received with a loud burst of laughter. He sat down very coolly; but he found himself so encumbered and ill at ease in his turban and Oriental robe that he speedily threw them off, and was never tempted to a second performance of ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... have become filled with snow, while I was overhead in the drifts. Probably this was partially melted by the warmth of my head, and subsequently converted into ice by the intense frost. Large balls of ice also formed upon my cuffs, and underneath my knees, which encumbered me very much in walking, and I had continually to break them off. I tried to supply the place of my hat by tying my handkerchief over my head, but found that by no possible effort could I make a knot, and that I could only keep it on my head by holding the ...
— A Night in the Snow - or, A Struggle for Life • Rev. E. Donald Carr

... been four or five hundred yards off. Keeping the dog behind us, we hurried round by the east shore to avoid climbing the higher ledges, which rose sixty or seventy feet along the middle of the islet. These bare, flinty ledges, when not encumbered by bowlders, are grand things to run on. One can get over them at an astonishing pace. Once, as we ran on, we heard the bellow repeated, and, on coming within twenty or thirty rods of where it had seemed ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens

... left to have the little girl's trunk go to Groveton by express, and, therefore, Luke was encumbered only by a small satchel belonging to ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger

... me to Layelah. A moment more and I should have been too late. I held her head out of water, told her not to struggle, and then struck out to go back. It would have been impossible for me to do this, encumbered with such a load, had I not fortunately perceived the floating wing of the athaleb close beside me. This I seized, and by means of it drew myself with Layelah alongside; after which I succeeded in putting her on the back of the animal, ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille

... Valley, along the upper Holston, and on the Kentucky road, near Cumberland Gap. The remaining warriors were cowed by Sevier's first success, and were puzzled by the rapidity with which the troops moved; for the mounted riflemen went at speed wherever they wished, and were not encumbered by baggage, each man taking only his blanket and a ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt

... Road Stuart and his troopers followed for twelve miles the fugitive army. There was a running fight; here and there the enemy was cut off; great spoil and many prisoners were taken. Encumbered with all of these, Stuart at Sudley Church called off the chase and halted for the night. At the bridge over Cub Run Munford with a handful of the Black Horse and the Chesterfield Troop, a part of Kershaw's regiment and Kemper's battery meeting the ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... two hours of ascent, the slope of the mountain became more abrupt and decided, the ravines shallower, and the intervening ridges less elevated. The forest, too, became more open, and the trees smaller and less encumbered with vines, and between them we could catch occasional glimpses of the bay, with its waters golden under the slant rays of the declining sun. Finally we came to a kind of terrace or shelf of the mountain, with here and there little patches of ground, newly cleared, and black from the recent ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... he to go? Utterly faint and weary and sick at heart, he asked himself the question as he took his way down the encumbered street. The snow was still falling heavily, and he toiled slowly and painfully through it. Where could he go? Should he try to get to the station on foot? It would be madness to think of it. He could never reach home through the storm. With cold and weariness ...
— Stephen Grattan's Faith - A Canadian Story • Margaret M. Robertson

... English proprietaries was even bigger business. In 1821 William A. Brewer became apprenticed to a druggist in Boston. A number of the old English brands, he recalled, were still imported and sold at the time. But his apprenticeship years were heavily encumbered with duties involving the American versions. "Many, very many, days were spent," Brewer remembered, "in compounding these imitations, cleaning the vials, fitting, corking, labelling, stamping with fac-similes ...
— Old English Patent Medicines in America • George B. Griffenhagen

... Encumbered as he was with a double armful of girl and a fairly heavy sackful of papers he yet made good time to the corner of the nearest corral. The increasing riot in Main Street undoubtedly was a most ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White

... courts in many of the circuits has increased to such an extent during the past year that additional legislation is imperative to relieve and prevent the delay of justice and possible oppression to suitors which is thus occasioned. The encumbered condition of these dockets is presented anew in the report of the Attorney-General, and the remedy suggested is earnestly urged for Congressional action. The creation of additional circuit judges, as proposed, would afford a complete remedy, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Rutherford B. Hayes • Rutherford B. Hayes

... iron clamps; the quadrangle was a chaos of uncut stone, rubbish and filth, in the centre of which, where the king's statue was designed to stand, the royal architect had built himself a large mansion; a mass of mean houses encumbered the Carrousel, and the almost ruined church of St. Nicholas was a haunt of beggars. Such a grievous eyesore was the building that the provost in 1751 offered, in the name of the citizens, to repair and complete the palace if a part were assigned to them as an Hotel ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... fell; confounded Chaos roared, And felt tenfold confusion in their fall Through his wild Anarchy; so huge a rout Encumbered him with ruin. Hell at last, Yawning, received them whole, and on them ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... been, the more her nature had struggled to overcome them. But still she was a woman. Had she been left to herself in her late extremity, she would probably have used her faculties to the utmost, and with discretion, in protecting her person; but, encumbered with her inanimate friend, retreat was a thing not to be attempted. Notwithstanding the fearful aspect of her foe, the eye of Elizabeth had never shrunk from its gaze, and long after the event her thoughts would recur to her passing ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... pye being opened they began to sing," (This old song and new simile holds good), "A dainty dish to set before the King," Or Regent, who admires such kind of food;— And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing, But like a hawk encumbered with his hood,— Explaining Metaphysics to the nation— I wish he would ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... have been very simple indeed. There was no scenery, and the performance took place by daylight, so that all the producer of a new play had to do was to arrange such elementary business as was possible on a platform encumbered with an indefinite number of spectators. Like all stage-managers, then and now, he had of course to direct the actors themselves; and Hamlet's speech to the Players gives us good reason to believe that Shakspere must have been ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews

... example, climbed up on the keel, calling on his men to follow. All who could, did so. Two unfortunate marines, however, encumbered with their accoutrements, had remained under her. Their cries for help were almost immediately stifled. Owen found himself seated ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston

... Part of the Volume has an affinity to that which has now been mentioned. The western coast of Africa, lying along a great maritime and commercial route, and being heavily encumbered by rocks and shoals, has been the theatre of frequent shipwrecks; and Europeans, when cast ashore, have always experienced the most dreadful fate from the inhuman and bigotted natives. Several relations of this nature ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard

... straight-forward course, especially when the surcharged clouds do rule the horizon with sloping lines of rain! Besides, it is by no means a pleasant thing for a man with a scanty wardrobe, to find his clothes running away at a most unpleasant rate, while he can scarcely drag one clay-encumbered leg after the other. ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour

... man all power of reflection, So that he grasps things worthless and leaves what is precious behind him. Here, too, with unconsidering care they were carrying with them Pitiful trash, that only encumbered the horses and oxen; Such as old barrels and boards, the pen for the goose, and the bird-cage. Women and children, too, went ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... vengeance, darting upon him like a bolt from the shining sky. Before his slower senses even knew what was happening, before, encumbered with his prey, he could fire a pistol or draw his sword, Helene had been snatched from him into Angelot's arms. No leave asked of Ratoneau; a spring and a clutch; it might have been a tiger leaping at the horse's neck and carrying off its victim. The girl screamed again and again, as ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price

... part of the assembly seemed favourable to the poet's demand, but one man observed that "if they were to feed Homers, they would be encumbered with a multitude of useless people." "From this circumstance," says the writer, "Melesigenes acquired the name of Homer, for the Cumans call blind men Homers."(7) With a love of economy, which shows how similar the world ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... equivalent to eight lines? Impossible, I answer. There existed, on the contrary, a considerable redundancy of matter in at least the second of those two lost leaves. This is proved by the circumstance that the first column on the next ensuing leaf exhibits the unique phenomenon of being encumbered, at its summit, by two very long lines (containing together fifty-eight letters), for which evidently no room could be found on the page which immediately preceded. But why should there have been any redundancy of matter at all? ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon

... the bullets were coming in a tempest; the rooms were encumbered with the wounded, some of whom were whirling round like drunken men, and clutching at the furniture; the walls and floor were bespattered with blood; corpses lay across the doorways; the lieutenant had had ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis

... two candles, hidden by green glass shades. The green shades were reflected in the glasses of the book-cases that contained not books but guns with gleaming brown barrels and fishing-rods in green baize over-covers. There was dimly to be seen, above a mantelpiece encumbered with spurs, hooves and bronze models of horses, a dark-brown picture ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... the waters of a copious stream had cleft through the solid rock. A narrow stony path followed the upward course of the stream. The moon shone unclouded, or it would have been difficult even for the well-trained horses of the caravan to have kept their footing along the perilous way, encumbered as it was with fallen masses ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... seeing diamonds indicate wealth; clubs, that your partner in life will be exacting, and that you may have trouble in explaining your absence at times; hearts denote fidelity and cosy surroundings; spades signify that you will be a widow and encumbered ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... strong feelings and social habits, never recovered this blow. Henry Delme was barely fifteen when he was called to the baronetcy and to the possession of the Delme estates. It was found that Sir Reginald had been more generous than the world had given him credit for, and that his estates were much encumbered. The trustees were disposed to rest contented with paying off the strictly legal claims during Sir Henry's minority. This the young heir would not accede to. He waited on his most influential guardian—told him he was aware his father, from hospitality and good nature, had ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... cottage and garden; the wagon stood outside the paling. Though the little kitchen was very much encumbered with furniture, they contrived to make a fire in it; and, having eaten a sumptuous dinner, they drank each other's health, using the new tumblers ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow

... to fight, being encumbered with a train of baggage-wagons and bathorses, which with his troops made a line on the highroad twelve miles long. It being evident that the Americans intended to give battle, he encamped in a strong position near Monmouth Court-house, protected on nearly all sides by woods ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... on the trail, and within a mile discovered that the hapless wolf was Blanca. Away she went, however, at a gallop, and although encumbered by the beef-head, which weighed over fifty pounds, she speedily distanced my companion who was on foot. But we overtook her when she reached the rocks, for the horns of the cow's head became caught and held her fast. ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson

... added to the flanking wings of the Petit Chateau and cleaned up the debris which was fast becoming moss-grown, weed encumbered and altogether disgraceful. The moats were cleaned out of their miasmatic growth and certain of the grass-carpeted parterres resown and given a semblance of ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield

... after him. "Stop!" And he turns, but only to beckon imperturbably and continue evenly on his way. It is evidently the custom of this country to walk through rivers when you meet them! Easy enough for the inhabitants, who are not encumbered with shoes ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton

... of the New Testament which was thus published, had been made many years before by a certain Padre Filipe Scio, confessor of Ferdinand the Seventh, and had even been printed, but so encumbered by notes and commentaries as to be unfitted for general circulation, for which, indeed, it was never intended. In the present edition, the notes were of course omitted, and the inspired word, and that alone, offered to the public. It was brought out in a handsome ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... The road was partly encumbered with fugitives, but not wholly, as most of them sought the entrenched camp. Cynewulf accompanied him to the gate, where he stopped to give one last piece ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... stop a moment and snatch some berries from one of the vines with which many of the trees were encumbered, the Very Young Man did the same. He found the berries sweet and palatable, and he ate a quantity. Then discovering he was hungry, he took some crackers from his belt and ate them walking along. The Doctor and the Big Business Man ate also, for although they had not ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings

... Main Street was unencumbered. Kirkwood's former home, the decaying monument to his domestic tragedy, and the only other thing he owned, was free also. In this process of "smoking out" their brother it would have helped if they could have pointed to the menace of her father's encumbered property to Phil; but they had already learned more than they had expected in establishing beyond per-adventure the fact that Lois and Amzi maintained communication, and that in all likelihood he was providing for her in her exile. It was high time they scanned the top shelves ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... black with age, and heard the smothered sound of a cracked bell and the barking of an asthmatic little dog. By the way the sounds echoed from the interior he knew that the rooms were encumbered with articles which left no space for reverberation,—a characteristic feature of the homes of workmen and humble households, where space ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac

... early, riding by way of St. John's that he might inquire at Kirk Michael about the Deemster.. He found the great man's house a desolate place. The gate was padlocked, and he had to clamber over it; the acacias slashed above him going down the path, and the fallen leaves encumbered his feet At the door, which was shut, he rang, and before it was opened to him an old woman put her untidy head out of a little window at ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... became subsequently still more inevitable when his own old errors met him as the watchwords of a party within the Christian Church itself, against which he had to wage a long and relentless war. Though this conflict forced his views into the clearest expression, it encumbered them with references to feelings and beliefs which are now dead to the interest of mankind. But, in spite of these drawbacks, the Gospel of Paul remains a possession of incalculable value to the human race. Its searching investigation of the failure and the wants of human ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker

... cleared his writing-table of the books and papers by which it was encumbered, and placed a chair for Maurice. The latter, who was always carried onward by the rushing current of his friend's strong will, wrote, on the spur of the moment, a letter more calculated to impress his father than any deliberately ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... my cabin in all directions. I was anxious, with the usual gallantry of my cloth, to supply the wants of the ladies first. The only specimens of the sex that I could see moving about were coloured women, who were so little encumbered with dress that I began to think I was mistaken in the article recommended by my lady friend as being the most required out here. After waiting some time, and no one coming to bid for my ware, I was meditating putting up on the ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha

... to cover, but all in vain. "I am sorry, sir, that we are to have such a bad day, as you are a stranger here," said one gentleman to me. This was Jack O'Conor, Tom's eldest son, my bosom friend for many a year after. Poor Jack! I fear that the Encumbered Estates Court sent him ...
— The O'Conors of Castle Conor from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope

... much vigour as might have been expected. "The theory is not without its attractions," he says; "it promises a solution of some difficulties; but hitherto it has not yielded any results which would justify its acceptance." [124:2] Indeed, he proceeds to say that it "is encumbered with the most serious difficulties." Dr. Lightfoot does not think that only [Greek: logoi] ("discourses" or "sayings") could be called [Greek: logia] ("oracles"), and says that usage does not warrant the restriction. [124:3] I had contended that "however much the signification (of the expression ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels

... supposition of a progressive tax based either on product or on capital is perfectly absurd. How can we imagine the same product paying a duty of ten per cent. at the store of one dealer and a duty of but five at another's? How are estates already encumbered with mortgages and which change owners every day, how is a capital formed by joint investment or by the fortune of a single individual, to be distinguished upon the official register, and taxed, not in the ratio of their ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... should require them to take with them. Their plan of march divided itself into three stages, of which Cooper's Creek was the middle one, and about the centre of the Australian continent. At first their progress was slow, encumbered as they were by excess of baggage and equipments: then discontents arose in the little band, and Burke, too ardent and impulsive for a leader, was first grieved, and then angered, at what he deemed a want of spirit among some ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... lord, succeeding to an estate deeply encumbered, both by his father and grandfather, rushed on the turf, and involved himself still more. In vain did Horace the younger endeavour to secure for him the hand of Miss Nicholls, an heiress with L50,000, and, to that end, placed the young lady with Horace ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... such coarse, cruel fiends as Deering and Girty encumbered the earth. Even on the border, where the best men were bad, they were the worst. Deering was yet drunk, but Girty had recovered somewhat from the effects of the rum he had absorbed. The former rolled his big eyes and nodded his shaggy head. He was passing judgment, from his point of view, on ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey

... not condemn To live amid such horrors; who Italian wives didst not behold By ruffian troops embraced; Nor cities plundered, fields laid waste By hostile spear, and foreign rage; Nor works divine of genius borne away In sad captivity, beyond the Alps, The roads encumbered with the precious prey; Nor foreign rulers' insolence and pride; Nor didst insulting voices hear, Amidst the sound of chains and whips, The sacred name of Liberty deride. Who suffers not? Oh! at these wretches' hands, What have we not endured? From what unholy deed have they ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi

... and tranquil features of the Eastern landscape, and the ultimate feeling of all its accessories of form and hue; the varied resources of learning, tradition, poetry, romance, with which it is not encumbered but enriched, as a banquet table with festal crowns and sparkling wines—all these, and many other characteristics, to which our space forbids us to do justice, render these 'Nile Notes' quite distinct from all former books of Eastern ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... play a part in his life, starting him on a political career that ended only in the White House. Surely no insignificant stream has had a greater influence on the history of a famous man. It was a winding and sluggish creek, encumbered with driftwood and choked by sand-bars; but it flowed through a country already filled with ambitious settlers, where the roads were atrociously bad, becoming in rainy seasons wide seas of pasty black mud, and remaining almost impassable ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay

... the last? We do not distinguish it, like all the others created before us? The reason is, that its nature is more delicate, its body finer and more finished than ours. Our makeup is so weak, so awkwardly conceived; our body is encumbered with organs that are always tired, always being strained like locks that are too complicated; it lives like a plant and like an animal nourishing itself with difficulty on air, herbs, and flesh; it is a brute machine which is a prey to maladies, to malformations, to decay; it is broken-winded, ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant

... deep soft drift of snow at the bottom. I must have fallen at least eighteen feet, for I buried myself entirely, with the exception of my lower extremities, which, projecting above the snow, kicked a faint signal for rescue. Encumbered with heavy furs, I extricated myself with difficulty; and as I at last emerged with three pints of snow down my neck, I saw the round, leering face of my late driver grinning at me through the bushes on the edge of the bluff. "Ooma," he hailed. "Well," replied the snowy figure ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... revolution burst on Monsieur de Fontaine he was encumbered with a large family. Though it was no part of the noble gentlemen's views to solicit favors, he yielded to his wife's wish, left his country estate, of which the income barely sufficed to maintain ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac

... of the revolt of the Irish gentry. It was really the decisive moment of their failure; disorganised and futile, they went down by scores in the ruin of the Encumbered Estates Court, while their tenants were marking with their bones a road across the Atlantic. As for the landlords who were popular leaders, within a few months after that great assembly, Daniel O'Connell, who had proposed the first resolution, died in Rome, ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn

... modest mansion in a manner gave birth was just emerging into existence; part of the walls, surrounded by scaffolding, already had risen to the height of the cottage, and the courtyard in front was encumbered by masses of ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving

... which in the last half of the nineteenth century drained Ireland of nearly four million souls. The famine passed, and with it all recollection of the report of the Devon Commission. Hitherto most of the land legislation had been designed to facilitate evictions. Now came the Encumbered Estates Act of 1849, whose purpose was to facilitate the buying out of bankrupt Irish landlords, and whose effect was to perpetuate the old agrarian system under a new set of more mercenary landlords, pursuing the old policy of rack-rents and evictions. In the three years 1849-1852, 58,423 ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... people. Instead of mingling mathematics with his great theme, to such an extent as to alarm the neophyte at the very threshold of the temple of astronomy, he has with a wise judgment selected from the best works, including the latest, those parts that were least encumbered with the abstruse and the unintelligible; and the illustrations serve to make his sublime teachings still ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... The spot was fated, and narrowly escaped being the scene of a second catastrophe as frightful as the first. The entrenchments were standing as they were left, ready to be occupied. Caesar, finding himself encumbered by his heavy baggage in the pursuit of Ambiorix, decided to leave it there with Quintus Cicero and the 14th legion. He was going himself to scour Brabant and East Flanders as far as the Scheldt. In seven days he promised to ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... murderous fire, losing one of their generals with many officers and men. There still remained the most arduous task of all, to force a way for the third time along the ridge with weakened and disheartened troops encumbered by the provision train that they ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... and flaming torches of relief-boats, or occasionally the high terraced gleaming windows of the great steamboats, feeling their way along the lost channel. At times the opening of a furnace-door shot broad bars of light across the sluggish stream and into the branches of dripping and drift-encumbered trees; at times the looming smoke-stacks sent out a pent-up breath of sparks that illuminated the inky chaos for a moment, and then fell as black and dripping rain. Or perhaps a hoarse shout from some faintly outlined hulk on either side brought a quick response from the relief-boats, and the detaching ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte

... I shall creep round to the front, so that Oily Dave can see me, and then, perhaps, his courage will be equal to coming outside," she said, standing up and throwing off her thick coat, for it would not do to be encumbered with much clothing when any moment might plunge her ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant

... As trampists our femininely-encumbered party in those delicious English days considered fourteen quotidian miles not discreditable to us, particularly when taking into consideration the bleats and baas and whimpering laggardness with which we returned from three-mile excursions ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... Of course, the sailor, encumbered as he was by the half-lifeless form of the girl, would stand but little chance of making a successful defence against a shark,—more especially such a monster as the zygaena; and it was the knowledge of this that had summoned Snowball ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid

... the end of every mile. It is too much to expect in these times to see realized the writer's favourite plan of MILE-STONE and MARINE COTTAGES, among a people who have passionately mortgaged all their estates, and blindly encumbered all their industry, in paying the interest of money raised to carry on wars made for the purpose of regulating the independant ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... blustering south drove me over the endless sea; scarcely on the fourth dawn I descried Italy as I rose on the climbing wave. Little by little I swam shoreward; already I clung safe; but while, encumbered with my dripping raiment, I caught with crooked fingers at the jagged needles of mountain rock, the barbarous people attacked me in arms and ignorantly deemed me a prize. Now the wave holds me, and the winds toss ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... fowls are also eaten, but the average Japanese is satisfied with rice and vegetables, adding the inevitable cup of tea three or four times a day. Women carry their children lashed to their backs like American Indians, and thus encumbered perform field labor or domestic work, without seeming in the least to realize their double task. The elder children carry the younger ones in the same manner, going about their play with a load on their backs that would stagger a Yankee child. ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... succeeds in overcoming these obstacles which increase daily; it marks out its course among entanglements and rises from the midst of the most encumbered centers, ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi

... sudden, unchivalrous attack on him, throwing his arms round his body, and striving to hurl him from the saddle; but Edward sat firm as a rock, and, touching his horse with his spur, caused it to bound forward, dragging the Count to the ground, where he lay, encumbered with his heavy armor; and Edward, after harmlessly ringing on the steel with his sword, forced him to surrender to an archer, as one unworthy to be reckoned a knight. A fight had, in the meantime, taken place between the attendants on either side, and so ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... ancestors, those infernal huntsmen, as you have described them, to love falsehood rather than truth; and I no longer marvel that your spirits become high and exalted, and vent themselves in verse and in tunes, when you approach to the places encumbered by the haunting of evil spirits, which must excite in you that joyous feeling which others experience when approaching the land of ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... dinner a la Russe (the Russian style)—all the food being placed upon a side table, and servants do the carving and waiting. This style gives an opportunity for more profuse ornamentation of the table, which, as the meal progresses, does not become encumbered with ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young

... rapid review I have accompanied Mr. Sargent to a very recent date. If I have said that observers encumbered with a nervous temperament may at any moment have been anxious about his future, I have it on my conscience to add that the day has not yet come for a complete extinction of this anxiety. Mr. Sargent is so young, ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James

... them, and suffering, perhaps, somewhat from the cross-fire, gain the country beyond the line, where they find more abundant spoils and no resistance. But on their return, they are sure to encounter the Cossacks drawn up at the ford, or some other point convenient for disputing the passage to an enemy encumbered with booty. These Russian hirelings, however, the freemen of the mountains despise, and with superior horses ride them down. Only when the espionage which is maintained among all the tribes on the border—for everywhere there are souls which can be bought for gold—succeeds in procuring ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie

... in order that we might get our small dormitories put to rights before the rest of the passengers came on board; but, though it could have made no earthly difference to the people employed, we met with a refusal, and the whole was deposited in the grand saloon, already encumbered with luggage, every quarter of an hour adding to the heap and the confusion, and the difficulty of each person recognizing the identical carpet-bag or portmanteau that he might claim as ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts

... despatch generally hostile to the object and unfriendly to the character of the subscribers, whom he described as men habitually factious, and who attributed their difficulties to any cause but the right. He asserted that their colonial property was trifling, and that they were encumbered with debt. He ascribed their discontent to insolvency, and their embarrassment to extravagance and speculation. He disputed most of their statements—distinguished between them and the more respectable majority against them—and stated that ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... look wider, things are all alike; laws and letters and creeds and modes of living seem a travesty of truth. Our society is encumbered by ponderous machinery, which resembles the endless aqueducts which the Romans built over hill and dale and which are superseded by the discovery of the law that water rises to the level of its source. It is a Chinese ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... away swept troop after troop, with sword-belt braced and carabine in hand, to plunge into the mad uproar of the streets of Paris, risen, stones and all, in revolution. The Garde Royale did their duty in those three terrible days, and if their gallant charges through the encumbered streets, or their patient endurance amid the merciless showers of indescribable missiles, were all in vain, it was because their foe was animated by an enthusiasm of which they knew nothing, save in the endurance of ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... by porcelain tiling, and the neat, simple furniture of the parlors by huge mirrors; rosewood and brocatelle sofas and lounges; velvet tapestry carpets, in which one's feet sank almost out of sight; and immense paintings, whose aggregate cost might have paid off one half of the mortgage that encumbered the plantation. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... and the coach was out of sight round a bend. Without pausing to consider the chances of overtaking it, I leapt rather than ran forward, soon outstripping the dog, which had done his best, poor beast, but was now well-nigh exhausted. I flung away my staff, that encumbered me, and tore headlong down the hill, till, coming to the bend, where the road sloped upwards, I caught sight once more of the coach, no more than half a mile ahead of me. This surprised me, for neither the ascent ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... to protect itself, is bound to con- tinue advancing until it is drawn completely into the net and finds itself encumbered with a lot of unsaleable and useless property. To stave off the evil day when all things must be disclosed to the trusting member, "financing" is restored to, money raised on direct deposit, and advances obtained from banks. The money thus raised tides the society over their difficulties for a ...
— Everybody's Guide to Money Matters • William Cotton, F.S.A.

... swim like a fish, but encumbered with her clothes and weary with an unusually hard day's work, she soon found that she did not gain as rapidly as she expected upon the receding boat. She did not lose courage, but a thrill of anxiety shot ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott

... the ruins of the empire of Sassacus, resolved to prosecute the war to the utter extermination of the Pequots. The despairing fugitives had retired into the wilderness toward the west. The Indians, encumbered with their women and children, and destitute of food, could move but slowly. They were compelled to keep near the shore, that they might dig clams, which food was almost their ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... question. And no sharper proof of the failure of the old social order to provide for human instincts and needs could be found than the conviction they gave of new and vitalizing forces released in them. The timidities with which their sex is supposedly encumbered had disappeared, and even the possibility of a disaster at sea held no terrors for them. When the sun fell down into the warm waters of the Gulf Stream and the cabins below were sealed—and thus become insupportable—they settled themselves for the night in their steamer-chairs ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... with wild briers, seemed abandoned; not a single border, not a bed; a cluster of elms, five or six large trees, some acacias and alders, a yellow grass-plot, walks encumbered with brambles, and bounded by a high wall. Such was the sad aspect of the ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... easily without a guide. Besides, I do not mean to enter the capital. I will merely guide you to within sight of it and then leave you. Fortunately you require no assistance from natives, not being encumbered with this ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne

... for empty petrol tins; down in the valley, Mon Plaisir, an enormous country house was being prepared for the Headquarters of the 7th Corps; in the orchards were parked two batteries of long French 155's. The roads were encumbered with the impedimenta of two armies. We were starting on another stage of the great adventure, and felt again to a lesser degree the uncertainty of essaying ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell

... fine thing for self-satisfaction to get an opinion without telling the whole of the facts of the case, and Gillian went home in high spirits, considerably encumbered with parcels, and surprising Mrs. Mount by insisting that two separate packages should be made of ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... blindfold for a couple of miles, and there was a regular circus when he removed the bandage; but evidently it never occurred to him that the animal was hardly a comfortable riding-horse for a man going out hunting and encumbered with a spear, ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt

... Providence for the means of marrying the others; nor in the higher, to find a young man, whose estates have, during a long minority, under the careful management of Government officers, been freed from very heavy debts, with which an improvident father had left them encumbered, the moment he attains his majority and enters upon the management, borrowing three times their annual rent, at an exorbitant interest, to marry a couple of sisters, at the same rate of outlay in feasts and fireworks that his grandmother ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... much encumbered by modern pews and galleries, and it is only by careful examination that much of the beautiful work that they contain can be seen. The arch opening from the south aisle into the transept is Early English, and the skilful junction of Early English and Norman work at ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins

... "nobility." It is enough to make the monarchs and nobles themselves laugh—and in private they do; there can be no question about that. I think there is only one funnier thing, and that is the spectacle of these bastard Americans—these Hamersleys and Huntingtons and such—offering cash, encumbered by themselves, for rotten carcases and stolen titles. When our great brethren the disenslaved Brazilians frame their Declaration of Independence, I hope they will insert this missing link: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all monarchs are usurpers, and descendants of usurpers; for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... sorry to report that we are so encumbered with engagements in the way of visitors coming here that we cannot see our way to ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens

... painter was thus fluctuating between hope and disappointment, several lads with naked arms, or but slightly encumbered with clothing, were giving the spectators a foretaste of the approaching conflict; and, encouraged by the applause which was liberally vouchsafed them, making violent efforts to drive one another off the bridge. At times the spirit of partizanship would induce some of the bystanders ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... stormy with wind and rain. It was strange to see from my window the whirlpool of ice-encumbered waters. The rain fell in slanting, hissing sheets upon the ice, and the ice, in lumps and sheets and blocks, tossed and heaved and spun. At times it was as though all the ice was driven by some strong movement in one direction, then it was like the whole pavement ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... to a room in my house, where I conducted much of my own official business. A large useless reflecting telescope (Ramage's), on the plan and nearly of the size of Sir W. Herschel's principal telescope, encumbered the centre ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... Far away amid the forest, Miles away among the mountains, Heard that sudden cry of anguish, Heard the voice of Minnehaha Calling to him in the darkness, "Hiawatha! Hiawatha!" Over snow-fields waste and pathless, Under snow-encumbered branches, Homeward hurried ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head

... resolution which their previous conduct had given us no reason whatever to expect, obstinately contesting with us every inch of the deck, and, if they yielded for a moment, renewing the defence more actively than ever; cutlasses and pikes were used with savage freedom; and the dead and wounded encumbered the decks ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... comparative equanimity the chaos that reigned in the schoolroom. To Diana it was delightful; she preferred a floor littered with shavings, a table spread with paints, plasticine modelling-clay, and other descriptions of mess, and chairs encumbered with books and papers, to the neatest, tidiest room where everything you want is put away ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... is its end. It doesn't keep parents together; more often it tears them apart. The wife or the mistress, so soon as she is encumbered with children, becomes all too manifestly ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... on the bare rocks. A huge fissure, opening in the mountain ridge, encumbered at the bottom with broken rocks, with precipitous banks, scarcely affording a foothold for the wild goats—- such is the spot where, upon a cleft on the steep precipice, still remain the foundations of the 'hold', ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge

... observer might have given a different verdict. A young man less well favoured by nature would have gazed at Stonor's long-limbed ease with helpless envy. He had that rare type of figure that never becomes encumbered with fat. The grace of youth and the strength of maturity met there. He would make a pattern colonel if he lived. Under the simple lines of his uniform one apprehended the ripple and play ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner

... was resolved that their investigations should commence with it. It was situated about a mile distant from the spot occupied by the Flying Fish, and their first intention had been to move the ship somewhat nearer; but an inspection of the intervening ground had shown it to be so encumbered with ruins that it was soon apparent that she must be left ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... petticoats, feminine softness, and the general homage paid to beauty, all stand in the way of success. These things may perhaps some day be got rid of, and possibly with advantage; but while young ladies are still encumbered with them a male companion will always be found to be a comfort. I don't quite know whether your cousin George is the best possible knight you might have chosen. I should consider myself to be infinitely preferable, had my going been upon the cards. Were you in danger of meeting Paynim ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... with an inferior force, chastised the temerity and insolence of Tarleton, General Davidson was actively engaged in assembling the militia of his district to aid General Greene in impeding the advance of the British army in pursuit of General Morgan, encumbered with more than five hundred prisoners, on his way to Virginia. General Greene, accompanied by two or three attendants, left his camp near the Cheraws, rode rapidly through the country, and met General Morgan at Sherrill's Ford, on the eastern bank of the ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter

... career of this able and unprincipled man thus opened—and of course the opening was not made in a day—Ernest Maltravers was ascending by a rough, thorny, and encumbered path, to that eminence on which the monuments of men are built. His success in public life was not brilliant nor sudden. For, though he had eloquence and knowledge, he disdained all oratorical devices; ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... "Casa santa d'Italia," as if borne through the air here in the North. The walls within are painted in the Pompeian style, but heavy: there is nothing genial. Round about stand large marble figures by Bystroem, which have not, however, the soul of antiquity. Madonna is encumbered by her heavy marble drapery, the girl with the flower-garland is an ugly young thing, and on seeing Hero with the weeping Cupid, one thinks of a pose ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen

... these debts; his interest was in arrears, and he could raise no money for lack of another indorser. Ruin stared him in the face, unless I again put my shoulder to the wheel, and pried him out of the mire. The turpentine business was not paying as well as formerly, but the new plantation was encumbered with only the original mortgage—less than six thousand dollars—and was then worth, owing to an advance in the value of land, fully twenty thousand. He would secure me by a mortgage on that property, but I must allow the present indebtedness to stand, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... the battle on foot, in order the more effectually to stimulate the emulation of his men, so that when, in the end, his forces were defeated, and fled, he himself, being encumbered by his armor, could not save himself, but was overtaken by his ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... visited about two of the Clock, by some friends just risen with a severe headache and empty pockets (who had left him losing at four or five in the morning), he was found in a sound sleep, without a night-cap, and not particularly encumbered with bed-cloathes: a Chamber-pot stood by his bed-side, brim-full of—-'Bank Notes!', all won, God knows how, and crammed, Scrope knew not where; but THERE they were, all good legitimate notes, and to the amount ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... tried how small a beam of light would act; as this bears on light serving as a guide to seedlings whilst they emerge through fissured or encumbered ground. A pot with seedlings of Phalaris ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin

... ended in a mighty shout, which awoke Virginia and the terrified Vivian. Before the shout was fairly completed, the cot in the living-room was groaning beneath an added weight, and Virginia, striving to rise, was encumbered by ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase

... and in the elegant private carriage drawn by post-horses, and driven by postilions in the tightest possible deerskin breeches, the smallest red coats, and the hugest jack-boots. The streets about the doors of the hotels resound with the crackling of whips and the stamping of horses, and are encumbered with carriages, heaps of baggage, porters, postilions, couriers, and travelers. Night at length arrives—the time of spectacles and funerals. The carriages rattle toward the opera-houses. Trains of people, sometimes in white robes and sometimes in black, carrying ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various

... envious malice of his enemies, who durst not contradict the approbation of so profound a master in theology. None of those self-sufficient creatures, who have either trifled with philosophy, by attempting to ridicule it, or have encumbered it with novel terms and burdensome explanations, understood its real weight and purity half so well as Mr. Smith. He was too discerning to allow of the character of unprofitable, rugged, and abstruse, which some superficial sciolists, (so very smooth and polite, as to admit of ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... more the hirelings, purchased near and far, Crowd to the ranks of mercenary war. The idle merchant on the useless quay Droops o'er the bales no bark may bear away; Or, back returning, sees rejected stores Rot piecemeal on his own encumbered shores: 270 The starved mechanic breaks his rusting loom, And desperate mans him 'gainst the coming doom. Then in the Senates of your sinking state Show me the man whose counsels may have weight. Vain is each voice where ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... they occur. The Rights of Man are the rights of all generations of men, and cannot be monopolised by any. That which is worth following, will be followed for the sake of its worth, and it is in this that its security lies, and not in any conditions with which it may be encumbered. When a man leaves property to his heirs, he does not connect it with an obligation that they shall accept it. Why, then, should we do otherwise with respect to constitutions? The best constitution that could now be devised, consistent with the condition of the present moment, may be far ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... been written by an American. Of slavery Mr. Kingsley spoke in calm and moderate words. I told him his introductory chapter to Two Years Ago showed that he appreciated the difficulties with which the question was encumbered. He said it would be strange if he did not see these difficulties, considering that he was of West Indian descent (his grandfather had married a West Indian heiress). He admitted that the result of emancipation in the West Indies was not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... men, one wounded, fleeing for life, expecting every moment to be pursued by five hundred savages. It was a long, dark, dismal winter's night, for in that changing clime a freezing night succeeded a sunny day. Like spectres they fled over the open prairie. That their flight might not be encumbered they had taken nothing with them but their guns ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott

... from Colonel Hardin. The redoubtable old Indian fighter who was saved to die in the service of his country, has pushed on and captured the two villages observed from High Gap, and is encumbered with many prisoners. He now discovers a stronger village farther to the left, and proceeds to attack. This latter village is probably in the neighborhood of the present site of Granville, and opposite the point where the Riviere De Bois Rouge, or Indian creek, enters ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce

... fascination of the reflection. Whether he had overwalked himself lately, or what he had done, he knew not; but never had he seemed so aged by a score of years as he was represented in the glass in that cold grey morning light. While his soul was what it was, why should he have been encumbered with that withering carcase, without the ability to shift it off for another, as his ideal Beloved had so ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy

... disposed it, Heaven knows how, so as to be mildly portable, and then proceeded to steer Modestine through the village. She tried, as was indeed her invariable habit, to enter every house and every courtyard in the whole length; and, encumbered as I was, without a hand to help myself, no words can render an idea of my difficulties. A priest, with six or seven others, was examining a church in process of repair, and he and his acolytes laughed loudly as they saw my plight. I remembered having laughed myself when I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... had such a clear common sense-like view of the evils and misery of the system, that he declared he had as a matter of principle refrained from marrying, in order that he might have no reason to grieve over having added to the woes of slaves. Nor did he wish to be encumbered, if the opportunity offered to escape. According to law he was entitled to his freedom ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... he had vacated, the lady of the house was huddled under a coverlid about as large as a postage stamp, and did not appear encumbered with much clothing. Three or four others had waked and made some attempt to cover themselves. At least a dozen remained asleep and lay in a charming condition of nudity. The Goldee houses are heated to a high degree, and their inmates sleep without clothing. The delay in admitting us was to permit ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... act was to sweep the entire visible surface of the country with their glasses; but nothing more interesting than a few bunches of deer and antelope were to be seen. This, however, was not to be very greatly wondered at, for the ground was so heavily encumbered with bush that comparatively little of it was to be seen. It was perfectly clear that if they wished to find game, they must go and look for it. And there were two ways of doing this. One was to sally forth on foot; ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... often been and is still grossly abused. It has often been encumbered and entangled with error and superstition; and therefore there have not been wanting radical purists who have not only set it aside, but cried it down as Romish and heathenish. The more sober and conservative churches have been content to purge it of its error and superstition. ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding

... aware that his literary position was of a dilettante kind, and that he had done nothing to justify the hope that success in literature was within his reach. He pleaded that the service of the State was encumbered by a mass of unnecessary detail, in the usefulness of which he did not believe. The Secretary said that of course there was a good deal of drudgery, but that the same applied to most lives of practical usefulness; and ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... like it, mister!" the woman shuddered, closing the wide V at her bosom, the flaring garment clutched in her great ring-encumbered hand. ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... the workmen, as they left, removed the supports, and the portcullises fell into place, cutting off all communication with the outside. The vestibule was flanked on the east by a flat-roofed serdab (F) divided into three niches, and encumbered with chips of stone swept hastily in by the workmen when they cleared the chambers to receive the mummy. The pyramid of Unas has all three niches preserved; but in the pyramids of Teti and of Merenra, the separating walls have been neatly cut away in ancient times, ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero

... said the old man. "You should never have encumbered yourselves with such a burden as I am. I can neither fight nor run. Is ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... its mouth, and the extreme rapidity of the current. After flowing on in one prodigious sheet of water, varying in depth from one hundred to thirty fathoms, the Mississippi, previous to its joining the Mexican Gulf, divides into four or five mouths, the most considerable of which is encumbered by a sandbank continually liable to shift. Over this bank no vessel drawing above seventeen feet water can pass; when once across, however, there is no longer a difficulty in being floated; but to anchor ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig

... I know? I have no crystal ball to show me tomorrow. Anyway, even if it works on the miscellaneous growth here I havent the remotest idea how the Grass will react to it. This is only a remote preliminary, as I told you before, and why you encumbered us with your inquisitiveness is ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... self-condemned because it is silent, nor an anomaly in nature because inharmonious with human life. The fish's heartlessness is his virtue; the male bee's lasciviousness is his vocation; and if these functions were retrenched or encumbered in order to assimilate them to human excellence they would be merely dislocated. We should not produce virtue where there was vice, but defeat a possible arrangement which would have had its own vitality ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... by references, because I have never read any author on political economy, except Adam Smith, twenty years ago. Whenever I have taken up any modern book upon this subject, I have usually found it encumbered with inquiries into accidental or minor commercial results, for the pursuit of which an ordinary reader could have no leisure, and by the complication of which, it seemed to me, the authors themselves had been not unfrequently ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin



Words linked to "Encumbered" :   loaded down, involved, mortgaged, heavy-laden, burdened, mired, unencumbered, clogged



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