"Exasperating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the pleasant smile and the hearty grasp of hand remained. There was the same eagerness to hear from the world of politics, and the same frank willingness to answer all questions propounded. The slow, exasperating drawl and the unique accent that the New Yorker feels he must use when visiting a less blessed portion of civilization have disappeared, and in their place is a nervous, energetic manner of talking with the flat accent of the West. Roosevelt is changed from the New York club man to the thorough ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... historical incidents connected with it are of the most sad and mournful character. There is buried under it an ancestor of almost every family descended from the early settlers of the West. But this ground is limited in extent. If we are to plunge this country into civil war—if we are to go on exasperating the sections until they take up arms against each other, then shall we make a dark and bloody ground of all the Border States. We shall desolate all their fields, and carry sorrow and mourning into every family ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... Most exasperating, however, from the red man's point of view was the insatiable demand of the newcomers for land. In the years 1803, 1804, and 1805 Harrison made treaties with the remnants of the Miami, Eel River, Piankeshaw, and Delaware tribes—characterized by him as "a body of the most depraved wretches on ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... pretty dance at the mouth of Patapedia. He came to the fly just at dusk, rising very softly and quietly, as if he did not really care for it but only wanted to see what it was like. He went down at once into deep water, and began the most dangerous and exasperating of all salmon-tactics, moving around in slow circles and shaking his head from side to side, with sullen pertinacity. This is called "jigging," and unless it can be stopped, ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... for euer, to hold with them solaciously agreeing, the assembly of all my other captiued sences, that from her and no other, I did seeke the mittegation and quenching of my amorous flames. And in this sort we came, whilst I was thus cruelly wounded by exasperating Loue, somewhat vppon the right side of ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... for four days—four days of concentrated horror. During the first twenty-four hours the fear of Ascham's alienist dogged him; and as that subsided, it was replaced by the exasperating sense that his avowal had made no impression on the District Attorney. Evidently, if he had been going to look into the case, Allonby would have been heard from before now. ... And that mocking invitation ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... Ma has been doing," interposed Lavvy, over the maternal shoulder, "ever since we got up this morning. It's all very well to laugh, Bella, but anything more exasperating it ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... the signal was given, and had to be brought back with the whip, the other dogs looking disgusted meanwhile, like honourable gentlemen at a cad who won't play fair. Angelica, shouting and laughing, made as much noise in her way as the dogs did in theirs, and the din was deafening; an exasperating kind of din too, not incessant, but intermittent, now swelling to a climax, now lulling, until there seemed some hope that it would cease altogether, then bursting out again, whip cracking, dogs howling and barking, feet scampering, Angelica shrieking ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... upon all personal matters became exasperating. At the end of the first month she demanded and received her salary. Moreover, refusing our escort, she tramped three dusty miles to the village post-office, and returned penniless but jubilant. ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... through his great map of the heavens. To tease him I enumerated a few of her qualities and habits, all to be thoroughly accounted for in my estimation, by her strange environment and bringing up; but far from exasperating him further, as I had supposed it would, this recital appeared to please him mightily. Shaking his finger reprovingly, he advised me no longer to mock myself of him, for unknown to myself I had exposed my own deceit: was I so utterly unversed in ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... declared to be in order, you receive a new "pass" for the Army Corps in which you have been arrested. The moment you venture into another Army Corps, even if you return into that from which you were first released, arrest follows and the whole exasperating rigmarole has to be repeated. The Army Corps are as arbitrarily defined as anything to be found in ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... same response to my demand upon their solace and their cheer. My sister, Miss Susan, has often inveighed against this practice of mine, and it was only yesterday that she informed me that I was the most exasperating ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... prevented her seeing the road. Dusk, and the discovery of how much light there was after all, once she remembered to take off her glasses. The worst quarter-hour when, though the roads were an amethyst rich to the artist, they were also a murkiness exasperating to the driver, yet still too light to be thrown into relief by the lamps. The mystic moment when night clicked tight, and the lamps made a fan of gold, and Claire and her father settled down to plodding content—and no longer had ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... are sleeping on a bed in the open air, foretells that you will have delightful experiences, and opportunity for improving your fortune. For you to see negroes passing by your bed, denotes exasperating circumstances arising, which will interfere with ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... an exasperating subject. The FIRST man had original thoughts, anyway; there was nobody to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... cannot bear a man's nails to seem japanned. And certainly he was too self-possessed and cold. There was none of the fire of youth, none of the swiftness of the soldier, in this young officer. His kindness was cold, and cruel cold; his deliberation exasperating. And perhaps it was from this character, which is very much the opposite of my own, that even in these days, when he was of service to me, I approached him with suspicion ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said with the sole purpose of exasperating the warrior, who would thus have been placed at a slight disadvantage; but he was already like a concentrated volcano—calm outwardly, but surcharged with fire and death within. The taunt did not move his nerves an iota, and he replied in words which ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... don't believe in affection, do you?" rejoined Mr. Perkins. His countenance wore an exasperating smile. ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... things more trying to the patience than the long wasted days of waiting. Exasperating as it is to see the tons of coal melting away with the smallest mileage to our credit, one has at least the satisfaction of active fighting and the hope of better fortune. To wait idly is the worst of conditions. ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... is exasperating!" complained Thure, staring indignantly at the blank walls of rock. "To be held up like this, when almost at the entrance to the Cave of Gold! But we have got to find it," and the heat of his excitement having cooled down a little, he began a more careful and systematic ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... went on without any diminution of his exasperating slowness. "What I want to tell you is that I'm after you. Not now, when the strike's on, but some time later I'm goin' to get you an' give you the beatin' of ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... of minor morals there is no more important topic. Unselfishness is too often only the most exasperating form of selfishness. Here ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... those who drew it up might justly have been blamed for the unfair and ill natured manner in which they had discharged their functions; but they could not have been accused of usurping functions which did not belong to them for the purpose of insulting the Sovereign and exasperating the nation. But these men well knew in what way and for what purpose they might safely venture to exceed their commission. The Act of Parliament from which they derived their powers authorised them to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of all these thousands of articles, to seize the opportunity, when no one is looking, to pocket a few extra spares and dainty little tools, not, of course, for one's own personal benefit, but simply because such things are always being lost or stolen, and it is exasperating, to say the least, to find one's self, at a critical moment, without some article which it is impossible to duplicate ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... so exasperating at last, that I should have kicked him to wake him up if I had not been prevented by my blanket, which was twisted so tightly round my legs that they would ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... you out on the hat question," he said, evading the real issue and laying stress upon the small matter of obedience, as is the exasperating habit of parents. "You don't see any of the bunch going around bareheaded. Only women ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... with her and saw the boy. In the early heat of her Tennyson- worship Mrs. Amyot had christened him Lancelot, and he looked it. Perhaps, however, it was his black velvet dress and the exasperating length of his yellow curls, together with the fact of his having been taught to recite Browning to visitors, that raised to fever-heat the itching of my palms in his Infant-Samuel-like presence. I have since had reason to think that he would have preferred to be called Billy, ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... agreed. That was the exasperating thing. Always hard to believe, perhaps, until after all the cries of wolf the wolf came; until after nineteen harmless flares the twentieth revealed to the watching enemy the figure of a man above ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... them rightly, but they hate discipline. To the Saxon again it seems hard that he should be called upon to waste time in coaxing a mere hewer of wood and drawer of water, who, moreover, hews wood very badly, and draws water with exasperating deliberation. But a peremptory tone will not answer ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... been born into the world, almost more hateful than heresy, because it had the manners of good society and contented itself with a smile, a shrug, an almost imperceptible lift of the eyebrow,—a kind of reasoning especially exasperating to disputants of the old school, who still cared about victory, even when they did not about the principles involved in ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... been an eventless journey from New York to Miami, from Miami to Fort Coquina; but from there through an absolutely pathless wilderness as far as I could make out, the journey had been exasperating. ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... well-bred courtesy carried him successfully through the difficulty; his companion Bonner was not so fortunate. Bonner's tongue was insolent, and under bad control. He replied to menace by impertinence; and on one occasion was so exasperating, that Clement threatened to burn him alive, or boil him in a caldron of lead.[610] When fairly roused, the old man was dangerous; and the future Bishop of London wrote to England in extremity of alarm. His letter has not been found, but the character ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... The exasperating little brats of twins began to quarrel again and Jacky threw the ball out towards the sea and they both ran after it. Little monkeys common as ditchwater. Someone ought to take them and give them a good hiding for themselves ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the acute English critic, has made an analytic study of Emerson's style, which may reconcile the reader to some of its exasperating peculiarities. ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... be natural to suppose that by this time Bacon had done enough to satisfy his vengeance upon Coke. But no! He must needs worry him yet further by an exasperating letter, from which some extracts shall be given. It opens with a good deal of scriptural quotation as to the wholesomeness of affliction. Then Bacon proceeds to say:[10] "Afflictions level the mole-hills of pride, plough the heart and make ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... it to its former quiet. It happened that, as some Indians had not been at mass on either the eve or day of the nativity, the prior meeting one of them afterward who was most esteemed for his bravery, chid him for his fault, although with demonstrations of paternal charity. He had no intentions of exasperating him, for he knew quite well that the Indian was inducing his countrymen to swell the number of the insurgents by persuasion and threat. But the Indian would not suffer the mild rebuke for that sin, which in other circumstances would have made him experience the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... had gone for the deer with his gun slung over his back, so he could easily fire a return signal if he wished. Eagerly the brothers listened, but the exasperating silence continued. ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... wealth in such a sooty atmosphere lost all attraction for Mary. Yet he quoted Limeton, and, what the Limetonians did, thought, and intended to do, and the effect of their intentions on the coming election for President, which was exasperating to Mary, who, like all loyal Mapletonians, was quite sure their own city was the brain of the State, even if Limeton did represent its wealth; so that what the former said and thought was of far more importance to the country, and she would ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... a jewel worth 250l. to induce her 'to make the Bishop,' that is to say, to appoint to the see of Salisbury, now vacant, a man who would consent to the alienation of such rich Church lands as the manors of Sherborne and Yetminster. John Meeres, afterwards so determined and exasperating an enemy of Raleigh's, was now[5] appointed his bailiff, and Adrian Gilbert a sort of general ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... losing it all in the event of a tear. The same principle was fundamental in Count Zeppelin's airships. In 1904 he brought a dirigible to the United States expecting to compete for a prize at the St. Louis Exposition. But while suffering exasperating delay from the red-tape which enveloped the exposition authorities, he discovered one morning that his craft had been mutilated almost beyond repair in its storage place. In high dudgeon he left at once for Paris. The explanation of the malicious ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... every other hour to make the rounds of the various instruments. On a fine night this was no great hardship, but in stormy weather the task was not coveted by anyone. On such occasions it was necessary to be prepared to resist the wind and snowdrift, and the round itself was often full of exasperating annoyances. In fact the trials and tribulations of the meteorological observers were numerous, and it was arranged that throughout the winter each officer should take it in turn to make the night observations from 10 P.M. to 6 A.M. Wilson nobly offered always ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... they had no right to complain. But he, even while he could not deny himself the gratification of a little cruel reproach, knew that they were not to be blamed, that they had been as much the victims of a fatality as himself, and that this was one of those peculiarly exasperating wrongs which do not leave the sufferer even the satisfaction of being angry. Soon he got up and walked across the room, stretched himself, drew his hand over his ...
— Two Days' Solitary Imprisonment - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... had been covered when the breeze began to die away. This was exasperating, but could not be helped, so the boys made the best of it. As the sloop drifted along they got out some fishing tackle, and it was not long before Sam brought up a fair-sized fish, of which he felt ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... with exasperating slowness that night. The plodding ascent of the fat white mare and creaking buggy was nerve-rackingly deliberate. Young Denny shifted the shaft of his pike-pole to the other hand to wipe his damp palm against the checkered coat as the rig loomed up ahead of him in the darkness. Old Jerry was ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... should the common people be more fully trusted? Twelve years of conservative ascendency under Washington and Adams; then a complete and lasting triumph for the popular party led by Jefferson. Mixed with and succeeding this came an exasperating and perplexing struggle for commercial rights, invaded equally by England and France in their gigantic grapple; an ineffectual defense by Jefferson, who in executive office proved an unskillful pilot; a half-hearted war under Madison, a closet statesman out of place ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... really "devils" after all and bore a charmed life. As I have said before, tracking them through the jungle was a hopeless task; but as something had to be done to keep up the men's spirits, I spent many a weary day crawling on my hands and knees through the dense undergrowth of the exasperating wilderness around us. As a matter of fact, if I had come up with the lions on any of these expeditions, it was much more likely that they would have added me to their list of victims than that I should have succeeded in killing either of them, as everything would have been in their favour. About ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... was what he liked about her. She had not revenged herself on Nature by making hideous caricatures of Nature's face; she did not draw in milk-and-water colors, and she did not strum. She had none of the exasperating talents, the ludicrous ambitions of the amateur; she was altogether innocent ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... against threats and thirst and hunger. He knew what he wanted of Gregor—the fiddler on his knees begging for mercy. And always Gregor faced him with that silent calm which reminded him of the sea, aloof, impervious, exasperating. Only once since the day he had been locked in this room had Gregor offered speech. He, Karlov, had roared at him, threatened, baited, but his reward generally had been ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... visible, the window into the ticket office being closed, while from somewhere within the little inclosure, a telegraphic instrument clicked with a cheerful pertinacity that to Rutherford seemed simply exasperating. ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... occurred which have not improved his temper, and in more in stances than one he has not been allowed to have his own way. To be thwarted in this reasonable desire was always very injurious to the old gentleman; and resistance became doubly exasperating when gout, age, loneliness, and the force of many disappointments combined to weigh him down. His stiff black hair began to grow quite white soon after his son's death; his-face grew redder; his hands trembled more and more as he poured out his glass of port wine. He led his clerks ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... lamp-black she was cooking upon it some savory dish to tempt the palate of her marine monster. Naturally of a hopeful temperament, she went about her work singing softly to herself at times, and would have been very happy that first week if Mr. O'Rourke had known a sober moment. But Mr. O'Rourke showed an exasperating disposition to keep up festivities. At the end of ten days, however, he toned down, and at Margaret's suggestion that he had better be looking about for some employment he rigged up a fishing-pole, and set out with an injured air for the wharf at the foot of ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... likely to be such as Mr. Browning would readily make intimates of. And I think I see in memory's magic glass that the men used to be rather afraid of him. Not that I ever saw him rough or uncourteous with the most exasperating fool that ever rubbed a man's nervous system the wrong way; but there was a quiet, lurking smile which, supported by very few words, used to seem to have the singular property of making the utterers of platitudes and ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... so unyieldingly cheerful and artistic that it makes the ordinary person long for a dingy old-fashioned room in which he can play solitaire and chew gum without being rebuked with exasperating patience by the wall stencils and clever etchings and polished brasses. It is adjectiferous. The common room (which is uncommon for hotel parlor) is all in superlatives ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... state, in different places, in demonstrating the fact that they not only refuse to enforce the prohibition law, but screen and protect the violators thereof, and arrest any citizen who attempts to perform the duty which they were sworn to perform. This state of affairs is most exasperating to every lover of country. I contend that Mrs. Nation's hatchet has been the means of bringing about the most critical period of the prohibition reform movement in its history. It has laid open before the world the fact that prohibition does not prohibit in ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... said with his exasperating pertinacity, "it is of course interesting to know the truth. It would perhaps be still more interesting to know what Herr Renwick has to say in ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... little pink-and-silver butterfly, who seemed so much like a baby yet in many ways? Oh, what a horrible danger she had escaped! If she had escaped. Perhaps the boy did not know. Oh, if they would but come! It seemed hours since they had left. The midnight train was just pulling into the station! How exasperating that the telephone did not respond! Something must be out of order with it. Hark! Was that ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... by a sudden consciousness of bitter disappointment, mingled with an exasperating conviction that she had been somehow duped. The tone was thick in ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... public interest was supposed to be involved. Nor did he much scruple to boast his influence; for when, upon some attempts to regulate the coin, Archbishop Boulter, then one of the justices, accused him of exasperating the people, he exculpated himself by saying, "If I had lifted up my finger, they would have torn you to pieces." But the pleasure of popularity was soon interrupted by domestic misery. Mrs. Johnson, whose conversation was to him the great softener of the ills of life, ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... for a general exodus were the first things to strike Scott as he came out of the cabin. It was exasperating, but what could you expect? There was no knowing what rosy tale Pachuca had told them; more than likely that the American army had crossed the border and that they were striking for their altars and their fires. He saw women, babies, ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... unkind, but still you must admit that the whole situation was exasperating. Here was five-foot-five of exquisite, blooming, twenty-year-old American girlhood sending away the man she confessed to care for, because, forsooth, she would not marry before her elder sister! I always thought it was beautiful of Freddy (she was named Frederica, you know) to be ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... established in the bosom of a small nation, it is more galling than elsewhere, because, as it acts within a narrow circle, every point of that circle is subject to its direct influence. It supplies the place of those great designs which it cannot entertain, by a violent or an exasperating interference in a multitude of minute details; and it leaves the political world to which it properly belongs, to meddle with the arrangements of domestic life. Tastes as well as actions are to be regulated ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... move and nothing more. Just dump a little outfit into a canoe and then paddle away from all your tiresome environment, and travel wherever your heart dictates, and then settle down where not even an exasperating neighbour could find you. What would you give to live such ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... after maintaining an exasperating silence until supper was finished, casually handed the package ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... therefore, only the chairman of an executive board, and presents a complete contrast to the President of the United States, who is virtually a monarch, elected for a short reign. Sir Henry Maine says in his book on "Popular Government," that somewhat exasperating but always instructive arraignment of democracy: "On the face of the Constitution of the United States, the resemblance of the President of the United States to the European king, and especially to the King of Great Britain, is too obvious to mistake. The President has, in various degrees, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... at a disadvantage, and he knew it. Breathing hard, his face red, his little eyes darting about the room, he took it all in—the members of the committee; the boss, figuring at the table, with an air of exasperating coolness about his lean back; and last of all, James, standing in the shadow. It was the sight of the new man that checked the storm of words that was pressing on Grady's tongue. But he finally gathered himself and stepped forward, pushing ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... had no colored officers in that campaign, and this thing of white officers for colored troops is exasperating, and I join with The Age in saying our motto for the future must be: ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... is heard throughout the hours of light and darkness in May, so that one wonders whether this bird ever sleeps. The second call is usually reserved for dawn, when the bird is most vociferous. This cry is particularly exasperating to Europeans, since it often awakens them rudely from the only refreshing sleep they have enjoyed, namely, that obtained at the time when the temperature is comparatively low. The koel extends into the Punjab and is ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... cool way, so exasperating always to her, and lifting one hand, began to tell off the months ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... Brown" until one of the party "thinks he has a nibble" and begs for silence, which at once supervenes out of respect for the momentous interests hanging in the balance. When the excitement is over the frivolous Bagby takes advantage of the relief from suspense to make an exasperating pun, after the manner of a newspaper man, and "Billy Ivins swears he will kill ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... clothes should be removed, stockings and underwear kept on. The hair should be arranged simply, but not allowed to hang in a loose braid, unless you are very sure you will not see any but the patient, and even then it may be unwise, as a braid of hair has an exasperating way of slipping from its proper place (hanging down the back) and dipping into whatever you are stooping over. Dressed thus, with night shoes to protect the feet, one can lie down on a lounge and sleep very comfortably, being freed from tight clothes, and yet being entirely presentable, ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... college chapel on the personality of God, which he sent with a friendly note to Mr. Emerson. The gay and Skimpolesque reply of the sage is an illustration of that flippancy with which he chose to toy in a literary way with momentous questions, and which was so exasperating to the earnest men of positive religious convictions with whom he had been associated ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... rounded bow of the wretched riverine steamer Honda, Padre Jose de Rincon gazed with vacant eyes upon the scenery on either hand. The boat had arrived from Barranquilla that morning, and was now experiencing the usual exasperating delay in embarking from Calamar. He had just returned to it, after wandering for hours through the forlorn little town, tormented physically by the myriad mosquitoes, and mentally by a surprising eagerness to reach his destination. He could account for the latter only on the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... one or two letters to the Press on the subject—suggesting, arguing, hinting at possibilities and probabilities, adducing proofs which other amateur detectives were equally ready to refute. The attitude of that timid man in the corner, therefore, was peculiarly exasperating, and she retorted with sarcasm destined to completely annihilate her ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... indeed if you feel prepared, and are able at the right time to call to your standard thoughts that will aid you in that supreme effort. It happens too often that your trumpet call is unheeded. It is most perplexing and exasperating that just at the moment when you need your memory and a nice sense of discrimination, these faculties take to themselves wings and fly away. The facts you have garnered with such infinite trouble invariably fail you ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... have seen by this time a tremendous alteration in the condition, and the relations, of all classes of society. There might still be differences, but they would be on a higher plane, and less grievous and exasperating. As the case stands, all the best of the clergy can do is to preach harmless platitudes once a week. One Bishop has been actually harangueing the miners, and only provoking contemptuous remarks about his salary. The truth is, that ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... into the vehicle, and it drove away, much to the relief of the landlord, who now had only Sue and her luggage remaining on his hands, which he hoped to be also clear of later on in the day, and so to have freed his house from the exasperating notoriety it had acquired during the week through his wife's unlucky admission of these strangers. In the afternoon he privately consulted with the owner of the house, and they agreed that if any objection to it arose from the tragedy which had occurred there ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... Frankish in origin, hopelessly tangled by feudal customs, provincial privileges, ecclesiastical rights, and the later undergrowth of royal decrees; and no part of the legislation of the revolutionists met with so little resistance as their root and branch destruction of this exasperating jungle. Their difficulties only began when they endeavoured to apply the principles of the Rights of Man to political, civil, and criminal affairs. The chief of these principles relating to criminal law were that law can only forbid actions that are harmful to society, and must only impose ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... nothing more exasperating to the mind of a man than to find all his kindness and favour slighted; neither is the Lord Jesus so provoked with anything, as when sinners abuse his means of grace; if it be barren and fruitless ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and interest, in such a case, are to try to see the interior beauty and essential kindness of his fate, to adorn it and embrace it, fomenting his resignation with the sweet lotions of faith and peace, not exasperating his wounds with the angry pungents of suspicion, alarm, and complaint. At the worst, amidst all our personal disappointments, losses, and decay, "the view of the great universal whole of nature," as Humboldt says, "is reassuring and consolatory." If the boon of a future immortality be not ours, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... clergy to the law-courts of the State, abolishing the right of sanctuary in monasteries, and limiting the power of corporations to acquire landed property. If the Papacy would have met Victor Emmanuel in a fair spirit his Government would gladly have avoided a dangerous and exasperating struggle; but all the forces and the passions of Ultramontanism were brought to bear against the proposed reforms. The result was that the Minister, abandoned by a section of the Conservative party on whom he had relied, sought the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... all the nondescripts, and all the boys pulled at it with ropes from six A.M. to four P.M. Every now and then the ropes broke, and they all fell down in the shingle. The obstinate way in which the beastly thing wouldn't move was so exasperating that I wondered they didn't shoot it, or burn it. Whenever it moved an inch they all cheered; whenever it wouldn't move they all swore. Finally, when it was quite given over, some one tumbled against it accidentally (as it appeared ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... insurrection? It is a mere announcement of the disease,—visible now even to Sons of Night. Insurrection usually 'gains' little; usually wastes how much! One of its worst kinds of waste, to say nothing of the rest, is that of irritating and exasperating men against each other, by violence done; which is always sure to be injustice done, for violence does even ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... a slow and steady march, straight toward the confederate capital, all the time in position to accept battle should Stuart offer it. If he should not, to hold to the unyielding tenor of his purpose, and with exasperating persistence continue to invite it. Stuart had turned off toward the east and was making a forced march with Fitzhugh Lee's division, consisting of the brigades of Lomax and Wickham, Gordan's brigade still hanging on to the rear of Sheridan's ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... rivalries would have been of little moment, if they had not been mixed up with the conflict of political parties, if the opposition had not supplanted the senatorial general by Marius, and if the party of the government had not, with the deliberate intention of exasperating, praised Metellus and still more Sulla as the military celebrities and preferred them to the nominal victor. We shall have to return to the fatal consequences of these animosities ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... manner and bearing when engaged in pacifying dispute or difficulty among the children, and particularly in dealing with the half-deformed spoilt infant of which I have spoken. This evening that little brat was more than usually exasperating, and having exhausted the patience or repelled the company of all the rest, found itself alone, and set up a fretful, continuous scream, disagreeable even to me, and torturing to Martial ears, which, adapted to hear ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... The period was that exasperating one known as "the first two weeks," when coaches are continually upon the border of insanity and players wonder dumbly if the game is worth the candle. To-day Joel, one of a squad of unfortunates, was relearning the ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... flippant fun-loving irresponsible six-year-old freshmen—they waited ready to meet the warden with an impudent burst of revelry, and thus to dash her official dignity from its exasperating estate. When they saw Robbie Belle's face they simply stared. They listened in silence to the few rapid words that stung and burned and smarted. They watched her depart, her head still held at its angle of wrathful justice. Then they looked at ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... overcome by the fatigue of this sleep in a hot bath, and for an hour or two I walk about before a white canvas, with the intention to draw something. But mind, eye, and hand are all empty. I am no longer a painter! This futile effort to work is exasperating. I summon my models; I place them, and they give me poses, movements, and expressions that I have painted to satiety. I make them dress again and let them go. Indeed, I can no longer see anything new, and I suffer from this as if I were blind. What ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... one has had in a dream the exasperating, profitless experience of seeking something urgently desired at the moment, and the aching, weary sensation that follows each failure to track the thing to its hiding-place. Sometimes with a singing dizziness in my head I climb ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... suspicion that LEONIDAS W. Smiley is a myth; that my friend never knew such a personage; and that he only conjectured that if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would remind him of his infamous JIM Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me to death with some exasperating reminiscence of him as long and as tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... question of all questions to me is whether slavery or freedom is to rule this Republic,'' and, having taken a Republican ticket, I went up-stairs to the polls. On my arrival at the ballot-box came a most exasperating thing. A drunken Irish Democrat standing there challenged my vote. He had, perhaps, not been in the country six months; I had lived in that very ward since my childhood, knew and was known by every other person present; and such was my disgust ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... to play now that I'm here," he said, with the most exasperating complacency. "My daughter plays some, and she is as crazy about it as the rest of them. I don't see where the fascination comes in. I called the other day on a man who was once in the Cabinet. He is rich and famous, and can have ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... he said, "it will stick on this time. These delays are most exasperating when one's in a hurry. We shall have to buck up now, O'Donoghue, ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... which were expected to unite in the undertaking, never came. The squadron when collected was detained by contrary winds. Ralegh boasted to Cecil that he was indifferent to good fortune or adversity. But in another letter he confessed: 'This wind breaks my heart.' The delay was the more exasperating that other ships had run out, 'bound to the wars, a multitude going for the Indies.' He was afraid the chiefest places of his enterprise might be attempted, and he should be undone. Others would reap no advantage; for he knew 'they would be ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... believe what your Lordship says in your letter in regard to the efforts made to get hold of the protest, and that your Lordship does not have it. But it is an exasperating and serious thing that Father Collado, or whoever else has it, should display this tenacious obstinacy; and that so many efforts, so many mediators, and so much argument are not sufficient to get it. It is certain, sir, that so great obstinacy in a subordinate ought not to be overlooked; ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... letter which had not been sealed, with exasperating deliberation, "we shall see—what ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... incipient quarrel might sway these men and bring them back to their allegiance to himself. He had been so sure of their support; the banquet this night had been destined to set the seal to their fealty and to cement their friendship: it was more than exasperating that the suggestion of a young fool should have caused them to ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... natives, who were especially suspicious about my writing in my note-book, taking it as a proof of my design to take their land away from them. Still, I accomplished a good deal and made interesting observations, though the difficulties under which I had to labour were quite exasperating. ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... topics were pounced upon by the late Ministers and their supporters, with eager and desperate determination to make the most of them. To give effect to their operations, they secured an immediate and ample interval for exasperating popular feeling against Ministers and their abominable proposition! But it was all in vain. There was a bluff English frankness about the Minister that mightily pleased the country, exciting a sympathy in every ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... led to Jerusalem. This expression, let me hasten to add, is merely figurative. The exasperating fact was, that all roads did not lead to Jerusalem; most of them led nowhere except over a precipice; and they were but glorified goat-tracks at best. You needed the agility of a monkey, the leaping powers ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... is an agreeable one and has made him famous. As he loses his song in the summer months, he is inclined to make good use of it when he finds it again. English boys are so skillful in imitating the Cuckoo's song, which they do to an exasperating extent, that the bird himself may often wish for that of the Nightingale, ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... have an argument. He would bring up each case and confront her with it; and how very unloving a procedure was that—and how exasperating was his manner as he ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... Redwood, "doesn't know anything. That was his most exasperating quality as a student. Nothing. He passed all his examinations, he had all his facts—and he had just as much knowledge—as a rotating bookshelf containing the Times Encyclopedia. And he doesn't know anything now. He's Winkles, and incapable of really assimilating anything not immediately ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... down, her mouth pursed up—the image of a most villanous little precocious she-hypocrite. The second, a "Mariee," with a long white veil, kneeling at a prie-dieu in her chamber, holding her hands plastered together, finger to finger, and showing the whites of her eyes in a most exasperating manner. The third, a "Jeune Mere," hanging disconsolate over a clayey and puffy baby with a face like an unwholesome full moon. The fourth, a "Veuve," being a black woman, holding by the hand a black little girl, and the twain studiously surveying an elegant French monument, set up in a corner of ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... the young girl confirmed her good impressions. As a result, sufficient work was found or made to give Mildred steady employment. Mr. Jocelyn was comparatively quiet and much at home. Often he was excessively irritable and exasperating in words and manner, but no longer violent from bestial excess. He put off the project of going to a curative institution, with the true opium inertia and procrastination, and all efforts to lead him to definite ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... had Tilly learned to strike out like that, all at once? Tilly! The uplifted arm that had partially hidden the player's face was lowered. What—what—it was not Tilly, but—but—that girl! How did she come there? A glance at Will's face drawn up into a most exasperating grin, at Will's eyes darting forth gleams of fun, ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... used to laugh and say that it was her respect for food. Then it worked on our tempers and grew anything but funny. It got to be exasperating, ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... more than one," drawled the duck man with exasperating slowness. "Foster was down in the first, but that was burned. I don't think he ever saw the others, but he knew he wasn't a favorite ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... rucking of Connie's coat about her broad hips irritated Harriett. She had a way of staring over her fat cheeks at Harriett's old suits, mistaking them for new ones, and saying the same exasperating thing. "You're lucky to be able to ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... out in her narrative, link by link, the gentle delicious complacency of the first period, the chill airs that soon ruffled it, the glowing hopes, the misgivings that dashed them; then the diminution of confidence, more complexing and exasperating than its utter loss; the alternations of joy and doubt, the fever and the ague of the wounded spirit; then the gusts of hatred followed by deeper love; later still, the periodical irritation at hopes long deferred, and still gleams of bliss between the ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... the placid surface of the river, thousands of logs lay quietly "in boom" until the "turning out" process, on the last day of the drive, should release them and give them their chance of display, their brief moment of notoriety, their opportunity of interesting, amusing, exciting, and exasperating ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a comin', ma, I'm a comin'." And wonderful indeed, I thought must have been the tale, which, even under these exasperating circumstances, kept Grandpa's face a-grin as he ran ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... grumble and mutter between their extremes—each of them is roused by an intense desire to throw off the shackles of a dying age, in which they have taught themselves chiefly to see affectation, pomposity, a virtuosity more technical than emotional, and an exasperating monotony of effect. ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... dictatorship of man, permitting herself to be torn, and wounded, and furrowed, and harrowed at his pleasure, yielding her substance and her life to sustain the produce of his choosing, her body and her soul abandoned supine to his caprice. The sight had an exasperating effect upon Hadria. Its symbolism haunted her. The calm, sweet English landscape affected her at times with a sort of disgust. It was, perhaps, the same in kind as the far stronger sensation of disgust that she felt when she first saw Lady Engleton with her new-born child, full of pride ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... they were the more reserved and discourteous. They most "severely let me alone." They never associated, nor did they speak, except officially, and then they always spoke in a haughty and insolent manner that was to me most exasperating. And in one case in particular was this so. One of those so appointed was the son of the colored Congressman who sent him there, and from him at least good treatment was reasonably expected. There have been only two ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... is this, I wonder?" Joe took this out and looked at it suspiciously. "Can he be going to give her all his money before he dies? Is he going to make her inherit it at once?" The thought was so exasperating that he slipped the roll into his pocket. "At all events," he said, "she sha'n't have them until I have read them first. I dare say they won't be missed for a ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... multiplication of the family: the sons have it, and the sons' sons after them, so much so that even to bear the name is sufficient to stamp the owner as a miserable helpless being. All human wretchedness is, of course, to be deeply commiserated, and yet it is exasperating to see one man still doing his best under real trouble, and another eating contentedly the bread of idleness when there seems nothing wrong except a total lack of energy. The old men go to the workhouse, the young men go, the ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... upon the long volcanic ridge, with divinest outlook over Procida and Miseno toward Vesuvius. Then once more we had to dive into brown sandstone gullies, extremely steep, where the horses almost burst their girths in scrambling, and the grooms screamed, exasperating their confusion with encouragement and curses. Straight or bending like a willow wand, Giuseppe kept in front. I could have imagined he had stepped to life from one of ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... distinguishing them from any other armed horse-stealers and "bush-whackers." We were, however, made unpleasantly certain of the fact that in every neighborhood where secession sentiments were rife, our messengers were waylaid and killed, small parties were ambushed, and all the exasperating forms of guerilla warfare were abundant. Besides all this, the Confederate authorities assumed to call out the militia of counties into which they were intending to make an expedition, so that they might have the temporary co-operation of local troops. They claimed the ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... of bargains picked up from day to day at the present time are plentiful, and (except for the fortunate finder) exasperating enough. But if we go back to a period when there were no auctions, no organised book depots, no newspapers, no railways and other such facilities, and men lived practically in separate communities, there can be no feeling ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... but, then, he was unfailingly bound to come back to him. We had only to wait and catch the solid grains that now and then fell in the winnowing of that unending stream of chaff. It was a tedious and exasperating process, but it had its compensations. At times Leavitt could be as uncannily brilliant as he was dull and boresome. The conviction grew upon me that he had become a little demented, as if his brain had been tainted by the sulphurous ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... the selfish interests and prejudices of the whites, at the expense of the coloured population; and in many cases, it was assumed that the conductors of this association were aware of this, and accessory to it. And the style in which the thing was done was at once offensive, inflammatory, and exasperating. Denunciation, sneers, and public rebuke, were bestowed indiscriminately upon the conductors of the enterprise, and of course they fell upon many sincere, upright, and conscientious men, whose feelings were harrowed by a sense ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... Her face had taken upon itself that appalling and exasperating calmness of very good people who never get angry, but drive others to frenzy by the simple occlusion of an adamantine veil between their own feelings and their opponents'. "I'll tell you all about it after I've put up the horse," he said hurriedly, glad to escape until the veil was lifted ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... judge," he replied, with exasperating carelessness; "but a little too pale, I should say. I wish George hadn't introduced ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... difficult for him just then, Drake's hacking cough ceased, and the Indian could not make out where he lay. Either his malady was departing or he had fallen into a temporary slumber! That the latter was the case became apparent from his suddenly recommencing the cough. This, however, had the effect of exasperating ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... at the close of the next Sabbath. The day had been dreary, painful and exasperating beyond all endurance, and he felt that he could never stand the strain of another. And so, having detained his mother in the sitting room after the rest of the family had retired, he paced the floor for a few moments, and after ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... swish bang! a big shell comes in unexpectedly, and shopkeepers and clients hurry, at a decent tempo, to the cellar. There, in the earthy obscurity, one sits down on empty herring-boxes and vegetable cases to wait calmly for the exasperating Boches to finish their nonsense. There is a smell of kerosene oil and onions in the air. A lantern, always on hand for just such an emergency, burns in a corner. "Have you had a bad time in the trenches this week, ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... soul. Her glorious ash-gold hair, whose habit of crinkling from the roots was so exasperating to contemporaries of her own sex, swept loose over the pillows, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... stand by the window, drowsy and feverish. And in the afternoon, when he was not there, she would sit in a swing, and dream, with a book on her knees, her eyes half closed, sleepy and lazily happy, mind and body hovering in the spring air. She would spend hours at the piano, with a patience exasperating to others, going over and over again scales and passages which made her turn pale and cold with emotion. She would weep when she heard Schumann's music. She felt full of pity and kindness for all creatures, and so did ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... the exasperating, sneering words from the bandit. "Take it easy or it will be all the worse for you. Now where ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... past night more than he could well afford to part with; while, to add to all other vexations, the comedian Bassus had not only increased the loss by selecting the most valuable slave, but had performed the action in a cool and calculating manner, which was particularly exasperating. ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... assured Beardsley, men learned to value law and order in art, as in the state, at their worth; and, more and more inspired by his theme, as was his way, he grew preposterously wise and irritating, and he talked himself so successfully into every exasperating virtue of age that I could not wonder at the fierceness with which Beardsley turned upon him and denounced him roundly as conventional and academic and prejudiced and old-fashioned and all that to youth is most odious and that to Bob, when not playing a part, was most impossible. ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... sacrifice of his own pleasure. Midwinter declared that he was too completely worn out to care for anything but the two great blessings, unattainable at the theater, of quiet and fresh air. Armadale said—with an Englishman's exasperating pride in his own stupidity wherever a matter of art is concerned—that he couldn't make head or tail of the performance. The principal disappointment, he was good enough to add, was mine, for I evidently understood foreign music, and enjoyed it. Ladies generally did. ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... now, and what does he or she wear? Are the trees still green in Madison Square, or have they grown brown and dusty? Does the chaste Diana on the Garden Theatre still keep her vestal vows through all the exasperating changes of weather? Who has your brother's old studio now, and what misguided aspirants practice their scales in the rookeries about Carnegie Hall? What do people go to see at the theaters, and what do they eat and drink there ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... tant de larmes. C'etait a se demander si d'un coup de foudre, il n'aurait pas mieux valu balayer cette fourmiliere gatee et miserable. And it is true! Any one who will read those volumes comes to the conclusion that life is a blindly mechanical and exasperating process, in which one must take part because one cannot avoid it. There is more mud in it than green grass, more corruption than wholesomeness, more odor of corpses than perfume of flowers, more illness, more madness, and more crime ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... aware of the trend of feeling in the ranks of an order in whose deliberations he took part as the representative of a nobleman, was not at all surprised by what he heard. M. de Vilmorin found it exasperating that his friend should apparently decline to ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... more ardent lovers of Charles Lamb. They seem to want him all to themselves, look askance upon any fellow-being who ventures to assert a modest preference for their idol, and brighten visibly when some ponderous critic declares the Letters to be sad stuff and not worth half the exasperating nonsense talked about them. Yet Lamb flung his good things to the wind with characteristic prodigality, little recking by whom or in what spirit they were received. How many witticisms, I wonder, were ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... a little impatient:—"Haul away, men! Lay back on that rope!" And we did lay back on the rope with great alacrity. As if nothing had happened, the chief mate went on trimming the yards with his usual and exasperating fastidiousness. We didn't at the time see anything of Donkin, and did not care. Had the chief officer thrown him overboard, no man would have said as much as "Hallo! he's gone!" But, in truth, no great harm was done—even if Donkin did lose one of his front teeth. ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... Senor Parker?" Pablo laughed briefly, lightly, mirthlessly, his cacchination carefully designed to convey the impression that he considered the question extremely superfluous. With exasperating deliberation he drew forth his little bag of tobacco and a brown cigarette paper; he smiled as he dusted into the cigarette paper the requisite amount of tobacco. With one hand he rolled the cigarette; while wetting the flap with his garrulous tongue, he gazed out upon the San Gregorio as ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... agreed upon a common standard for customs duties, and a few years later they were joined by Brunswick, Hanover, and the Mecklenburgs. German industry and commerce had their beginnings in these agreements. The hundreds of different customs duties became so exasperating that even jealous little governments agreed to conform to simpler laws, and probably this commercial necessity did more to bring about the unity of Germany than the King, or politics, ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... of cooking breakfast bacon, as Bud well knew. Cash then took down the little square baking pan, greased from the last baking of bread, and in that he fried his hot cakes. As if that were not sufficiently exasperating, he gave absolutely no sign of being conscious of the frying pan any more than he was conscious of Bud. He did not overdo it by whistling, or even humming a tune—which would have given Bud an excuse to say something almost ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower |
