"Obstreperous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the reason of my obstreperous audience by standing on the menzil front and delivering a harangue in such Persian as ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... threatened a sudden and total smash to horse and man. Had any of his old comrades or friends witnessed that burst, they would certainly have said that March Marston was mad—madder, perhaps, than the most obstreperous March hare that ever marched madly through ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... humanity ranged themselves, and at the word of the starter plunged into the water with that downward plunge so incomprehensible to the uninitiated. A short, sharp struggle followed, the competitors swimming with the sidelong movement and obstreperous puffing which likens the swimmer so closely to the traditional grampus. Eventually one of the group is seen heading the others, and breasting the water with calm and equable stroke in the old-fashioned ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... believe Mac has an odd pair or so in his dunnage; in fact, I know he has. I've seen him use 'em on an obstreperous nigger." ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... of you, all the people of your sort,"—pursued the obstreperous Mikhalevitch:—"are erudite triflers. You know on what foot the German limps, you know what is bad about the English and the French,—and your knowledge comes to your assistance, justifies your shameful laziness, your disgusting inactivity. ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... after a masquerade. About me were my friends, richly costumed, on all sides young men and women, all sparkling with beauty and joy; on the right and on the left exquisite dishes, flagons, splendor, flowers; above my head was an obstreperous orchestra, and before me my loved ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... fun, for the play was just the same. The audience enjoyed it greatly. The Indians were more obstreperous, and sang a hideous song. The vocalists sang many popular songs of the day, "Old Dan Tucker," "Lucy Long," "Zip Coon," and several patriotic songs. There was more dancing than in the afternoon, and the boys enjoyed the Juba in song and dance by a "real slave darkey" who had ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... began cautiously and quietly to milk her, and the cows in few cases offered any resistance. One or two animals were, however, very obstreperous, but were speedily subdued by having their legs firmly fastened to the posts behind. In a few days all were reconciled to the process, and ere long would come in night and morning to be milked, with as much regularity as ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... by way of the winding road, measured not less than a quarter of a mile. The boys raced ahead in the frolic fashion of human colts, yelling, leaping and throwing stones. Slowly the matron and her escort followed, far in the wake of the obstreperous juveniles. ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... People began to talk with bated breath of the Jockey Club and of its doings, and strange stories were whispered of the habits of some of its distinguished members. The eccentricities of Count Demidoff and of Major Frazer, the obstreperous fooleries of Lord Henry Seymour, the studied extravagances of Comte d'Alton-Shee, created in the public mind the impression that the club was nothing less than a sort of infernal pit, peopled by wicked dandies like Balzac's De Marsay, Maxime de Trailles, Rastignac, etc. Even the box of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... we see her wobbling under conflicting cyclic impulses down to her final fall. For lack of another to take her place, she was still in many ways the foremost power; albeit here and there obstreperous satraps were always making trouble. When Lysander laid Athens low in 404, it was Persian financial backing enabled him to do it; but Cyrus might march in to her heart, and Xenophon out again, but two years later, and none to say them effectually ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... all the while she kept right on renovating the Little Girl's personal appearance, smoothing a wrinkled stocking, tucking up obstreperous white ruffles, tugging down parsimonious purple hems, loosening a pinchy hook, tightening a wobbly button. Very slowly, very complacently the Little Girl drowsed off to sleep with her weazened little iron-cased legs stretched stiffly out before her. "Poor little legs! Poor little legs! Poor little ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... the air in the ears, unless it be still and void of noise in itself, without any sound or humming, does not exactly take sounds so the philosophical judgment in disputations, if it be disturbed and obstreperous within, is hardly comprehensive of what is said without. For our familiar and inbred opinion will not allow that which disagrees with itself, as the number of sects and parties shows, of which philosophy—if ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... her shears, and peevish through want of sleep maybe, or mayhap irritated by their obstreperous behaviour, jerked the strings which bound those marionettes called humans ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... account for myself to you," but she remembered her mother's injunction. She had been on her very best behavior all Sunday, Monday, and up to now on Tuesday, but her fit of goodness was coming to an end. She was in the mood to be obstreperous, naughty, and wilful; but the thought of her mother, who was so gently following in the path ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... novelist Freytag is often compared with Charles Dickens, largely on account of the humor that so frequently breaks forth from his pages. It is a different kind of humor, not so obstreperous, not so exaggerated, but it helps to lighten the whole in much the same way. One moment it is an incongruous simile, at another a bit of sly satire; now infinitely small things are spoken of as though they were great, and ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... legs and arms. A troublesome district for a clergyman; at least to one who, like Amos Barton, understood the 'cure of souls' in something more than an official sense; for over and above the rustic stupidity furnished by the farm-labourers, the miners brought obstreperous animalism, and the weavers in an acrid Radicalism and Dissent. Indeed, Mrs. Hackit often observed that the colliers, who many of them earned better wages than Mr. Barton, 'passed their time in doing nothing but swilling ale and ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... Theories; Twentieth Century Science, Dawning at the end of the Nineteenth; Comparative Speed of Light and Electricity; Wonderful Photography; Wooden Cloth; The Phylloxera; Falling Rents; Boston Civilization; Psychic Blundering; Beecher's Mediumship; A Scientific Cataract; Obstreperous and Pragmatic Vulgarity; Hygiene; Quinine; Life and Death; Dorothea L. Dix; The Drift of Catholicism; Juggernaut The Principal Methods of Studying the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... by continually substituting something else, no less specific and no less nugatory. This world, any world, exists only by an unmerited privilege. Its glory is offensive to the spirit, like the self-sufficiency of some obstreperous nobody, who happens to have drawn the big prize in a lottery. "The world", M. Benda writes, "inspires me with a double sentiment. I feel it to be full of grandeur, because it has succeeded in asserting ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... having been a heavy rain yesterday, a nest of chimney-swallows was washed down the chimney into the fireplace of one of the front rooms. My attention was drawn to them by a most obstreperous twittering; and looking behind the fireboard, there were three young birds, clinging with their feet against one of the jambs, looking at me, open-mouthed, and all clamoring together, so as quite to fill the room with the short, eager, frightened sound. The old birds, by ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... reproved the evil; they "scattered seeds of kindness" wherever they went; they sowed the precious Word of God in all kinds of ground—good and bad; they comforted the sorrowing; they visited the sick and the prisoner; they refused to help, or, in any way to encourage, the idle; they handed the obstreperous and violent over to the police, with the hope—if not the recommendation—that the rod should not be spared; and in all cases they prayed for them. The results were considerable, but, not being ostentatiously trumpeted, were not always recognised or ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... jeopardy of Leoline and Hubert became greater than it was possible to permit; so Grace took them by the hands, and lured them home with promises of an introduction to certain white rabbits at the lodge. After their departure, their brothers became infinitely more obstreperous. Whether it were that Conrade had some slight amount of consideration for the limbs of his lesser followers, or whether the fact were—what Rachel did not remotely imagine—that he was less utterly unmanageable with her sister than with herself, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the two captives but always the men with them succeeded in beating them off. The fellows seemed utterly unafraid of the great beasts leaping and snarling about them, handling them much the same as one might handle a pack of obstreperous dogs. Along the bed of the old watercourse that once ran through the gorge they made their way, and as the first faint lightening of the eastern horizon presaged the coming dawn, they paused for a moment upon the edge of a declivity, which appeared to the girl in the strange ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... clipped and shorn to suit the French taste, which pronounced him "bizarre, incoherent, diffuse, bustling with rough modulations and wild harmonies, destitute of melody, forced in expression, noisy, and fearfully difficult," even as England at the same time frowned down his immortal works as "obstreperous roarings of modern frenzy." Berlioz's clear, stern voice would often be heard, when liberties were taken with the score, loud above the din of the instruments. "What wretch has dared to tamper with the great Beethoven?" "Who has taken upon him to revise Gluck?" This self-appointed arbiter ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... heroic things, imitate Luther, and fling his ink-pot. Even though it light upon the page, let him not be inconsolable, but remember that no blots are so bad as those made by ambitious inflation. We have not that horror of "fine writing" which leads The Saturday Review and Company to such obstreperous exclamation, and can endure the worst that Americans are guilty of in this matter quite as well as that affectation of off-hand ease and nonchalance which enhances the native clumsiness of many among the later English writers, and, to our mind, mars extremely the poetry of Browning. But if a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... said the mother, giving now and then a kick, in a kind of general way, under the table, when the movement became too obstreperous. "Can't ye be decent when white folks comes to see ye? Stop dat ar, now, will ye? Better mind yerselves, or I'll take ye down a button-hole lower, when Mas'r George ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... whole world-wide wandering, What with my search drawn out through years, my hope 20 Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope With that obstreperous joy success would bring, I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring My heart made, finding failure in its scope. As when a sick man very near to death 25 Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end The tears, and takes the farewell of each friend, And hears one bid the other ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... served while we were quiescent at the wharf. The stewardess hunted up all the females in the ship, and, preceding them down stairs, placed them at the head of the table; then, and not an instant before, were the gentlemen allowed to appear, who made a most obstreperous rush at the viands. There were about 200 people seated in a fetid and dimly-lighted apartment, at a table covered over with odoriferous viands— pork stuffed with onions, boiled legs of mutton, boiled chickens and turkeys, roast geese, beef-steaks, yams, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... first introduction to it; but on this occasion Miss Elizabeth was not arrayed in the snuff-colored satin; and when they entered, Priscilla was kneeling down upon the hearth-rug, straightening out an obstreperous ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... very significant. Calvin says: "The Prophet indirectly reproves the wickedness of the people, because, as much as lay with them, they destroyed the covenant [Pg 469] of God by their obstreperous cries.... This incredulity, therefore, the Prophet blames, and it is as if he were saying: To what are these complaints to lead? It is just as if you were trying to draw down sun and moon from heaven, and to do ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... father's cobwebs came into my head, and I composed myself to await whatever might befall. The company assembled; my acquaintance introduced me; and I could not be attentive long, without discovering that they were aiming at the mystification of a young man, who showed himself a novice by an obstreperous, assuming deportment: I therefore kept very much on my guard, so that they might not find delight in selecting me as his fellow. At table this intention became more apparent to everybody, except to himself. They drank more and more deeply: and, when a vivat in honor of sweethearts ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... impression similar to that of Mrs. Whitney's costume and accent and manner. There was the note of the fashion plate, the evidence of pains, of correctness not instinctive but studied—the marks our new-sprung obstreperous aristocracy has made familiar to us all. It would have struck upon a sense of humor like a trivial twitter from the oboe trickling through a lull in the swell of brasses and strings; but Hiram Ranger ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... handsome, heavy man, over six feet high; and having understood that the first, second, and third prerequisite in oratory was action, the boys he put in training were encouraged to most vehement and obstreperous manifestations. Let me give an example, and one that weighed heavily on my conscience for many years after the ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... and spirit—he is utterly fearless, and never cries, much as he knocks himself about! He will do anything but learn. The rogue! he once knew all his letters, but no sooner did he find they were the work of life, than he forgot every one, and was never so obstreperous as when called upon to say them. I gave up the point, but I foresee some ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... upon it. He acts in each case separately, and simply because he cannot help it; being so framed that when that particular running thing called a mouse appears in his field of vision he must pursue; that when that particular barking and obstreperous thing called a dog appears there he must retire, if at a distance, and scratch if close by; that he must withdraw his feet from water, and his ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... science, let them learn also the human side of science,—the story of Newton, withholding his great discovery for years until he could be absolutely certain that it was a law; until he could get the very commonplace but obstreperous moon into harmony with his law of falling bodies;—the story of Darwin, with his twenty-odd years of the most patient and persistent kind of toil; delving into the most unpromising materials, reading the driest books, always on the lookout for the facts that would point the ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... drowned in the louder and more obstreperous strains of Balmawhapple, now dropped the competition, but continued to hum, Lon, Lon, Laridon, and to regard the successful candidate for the attention of the company, with an eye of disdain, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... having recounted several other stages in the migration of Androgyne's soul (we shall mention them further on), the latter has to give an answer why he has 'shifted his coat in these days of reformation,' and why his 'dogmatical silence' has left him. He replies that an obstreperous 'Sir Lawyer' had induced him to do so. From this it may be concluded that Bacon had some influence on Shakspere's 'Hamlet.' Are not, in poetical manner, the same principles advocated in 'Hamlet,' which Bacon promoted ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... affair in Red Hot Gulch, Colorado, where, under pressure, he had invested sundry pieces of lead in the persons of several obstreperous citizens and then had paced the zealous and excitable sheriff ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... The drunker they grew, the louder they talked, reviling the Committee collectively and singly, bragging that they would shoot at sight Coleman, Truett, Durkee, and several others whom they named. They flourished weapons publicly, and otherwise became obstreperous. The Committee decided that their influence was bad and instructed Sterling Hopkins, with four others, to arrest the lot ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... Nature extends towards the Knowledge of Nature, by enlarging her Empire beyond the Land of Spectres, Forms, Intentional Species, Vacuum, Occult Qualities, and other Inadequate Notions; which, by their Obstreperous and Noisy Disputes, affrighting, and (till of late) deterring Men from adventuring on further Discoveries, confin'd them in a lazy Acquiescence, and to be fed with Fantasms and fruitless Speculations, which signifie nothing to the specifick Nature of Things, solid and useful ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... for the promptness and pluck of several Atlanta policemen these Negro ex-soldiers would have done serious mischief at the depot. Those who undertook to make trouble were very promptly clubbed into submission, and one fellow more obstreperous than the rest, was lodged ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... they were, I turned upon Mr. Watt, and especially upon Mr. Stewart. The latter did not appear for a length of time to have visited the lightroom. On asking the cause—did Mr. Watt and him (sic) disagree; he said no; but he had got very bad usage from the assistant, 'who was a very obstreperous man.' I could not bring Mr. Watt to put in language his objections to Miller; all I could get was that, he being your friend, and saying he was unwell, he did not like to complain or to push the man; that the man ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... excited great mirth among our wiser brotherhood. We greeted the two pilgrims with many pleasant gibes and a roar of laughter; whereupon they gazed at us with such woful and absurdly compassionate visages that our merriment grew tenfold more obstreperous. Apollyon also entered heartily into the fun, and contrived to flirt the smoke and flame of the engine, or of his own breath, into their faces, and envelop them in an atmosphere of scalding steam. These little ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... education,) Will never let you want, while there are men, And malice, to breed causes. Would I had But half the like, for all my fortune, sir! If I have any suits, as I do hope, Things being so easy and direct, I shall not, I will make bold with your obstreperous aid, Conceive me,—for your fee, sir. In mean time, You that have so much law, I know have the conscience, Not to be covetous of what is mine. Good sir, I thank you for my plate; 'twill help To set up a young man. Good faith, you look ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... When Mrs. Bull is obstreperous, go to the coffee-house and call for your glass. It is an excellent cure for her complaint, and you will get the latest news retailed in the most engaging manner, with the pleasure of knowing she is biting her lips at home ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various
... from the window, and talking about church singing from notes, whereupon the president sent a deacon to fetch his book, and the latter sang for us an anthem, the vociferation and screechings of which was so alarming, not to mention the nasal twang, that my niece had to run away to indulge in an obstreperous laugh, and her senior companion had also much difficulty in refraining from the same kind of expression of opinion. The Oriental system of church musical notation is very complicated, having no stave-lines or bars, but only certain arbitrary ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... Raep, a rope. Ragweed, ragwort. Raibles, recites by rote. Rair, to roar. Rairin, roaring. Rair't, roared. Raise, rase, rose. Raize, to excite, anger. Ramfeezl'd, exhausted. Ramgunshoch, surly. Ram-stam, headlong. Randie, lawless, obstreperous. Randie, randy, a scoundrel, a rascal. Rant, to rollick, to roister. Rants, merry meetings; rows. Rape, v. raep. Raploch, homespun. Rash, a rush. Rash-buss, a clump of rushes. Rashy, rushy. Rattan, rattoon, a ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... here and there a lofty pine on the mountain sides. All the summer birds had gone already; but a few red-headed woodpeckers were still tapping decayed tree trunks; and numerous jays made the woodland resound to their varied outcries, first shrill and obstreperous, then plaintive. Far up a hillside of poplar, a horde of crows were clamoring ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... is never noisy, obstreperous or excited. In fact, I never hardly noticed him in a fight, unless I happened to want him, or he had something to report, when he was always in the right place, and his information was always ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... the shanty are many and grievous. The door and windows have quarrelled desperately with their settings. On windy nights we get no sleep, as every one is engaged trying to fasten and wedge them into noiseless security. The door developed a most obstreperous and noxious habit of being blown into the middle of the house during the night, with much hideous clatter and clamour. We stopped that at last by nailing it up altogether, and making a new entrance through the side ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... hard task of it. Every time they would let go his arms he would throw them up with new energy, trying to get at Ralph again, until at last it was found necessary to go to the constables' desk; get out the only pair of handcuffs in Dalton, and put them on the wrists of the obstreperous official. ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose
... furtively at the entrance of the studio, assumed an arrogant air of swaggering gallantry, such as he used to have in his youth in Rome, free and obstreperous. ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... two hours. Little was said; and our chief embarrassment lay in the yelpings of the dog, who took exceeding interest in our proceedings. He, at length, became so obstreperous that we grew fearful of his giving the alarm to some stragglers in the vicinity; or, rather, this was the apprehension of Legrand; for myself, I should have rejoiced at any interruption which might have enabled ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... very dangerous degree of delirium; so that, instead of allowing himself quietly to be undressed and put to bed by his wife, he answered all her gentle admonitions and caresses with the most opprobrious invectives and obstreperous behaviour; and, though he did not tax her with infidelity to his bed, he virulently accused her of extravagance and want of economy; observed, her expensive way of living would bring him to a morsel of bread; and unfortunately recollecting the attempt of the supposed thief, started ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... speak when yer spoken to. Guess I know that yer intendin' to stick to Andy through thick an' thin. But they ain't everybody feelin' that way, understand? If Andy he's a-goin' to turn on us and be chummy with that crowd, we ain't expectin' to stand it, see?" declared Pet, still struggling with the obstreperous knot. ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... St. Eloi. It is told that a certain horse once behaved in a very obstreperous way while being shod; St. Eloi calmly cut off the animal's leg, and fixed the shoe quietly in position, and then replaced the leg, which grew into place again immediately, to the pardonable astonishment of all beholders, not to mention ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... captain, I am an unwilling prisoner in this stronghold, being an obstreperous person, who refused to obey my superiors; those set in authority over me. Consequently am I immured in this dismal dungeon of the water-rats, and thus, youthful pirate, I welcome even so red-handed ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... The obstreperous dogs thus disposed of, the cavalier advanced into the room, with the calm assurance of a man who feels perfectly at his ease; his spurs ringing against the stone floor at every step. The landlord followed ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... deferred taking any action while his right-hand man was absent; but the uproar became at last so obstreperous that he walked to the cable-covered hatchway and struck heavily ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... lungs to the pitch of extremity, through speaking tubes—the screams of women and children, and the universal combination of discord, announced the termination of the Civic Sovereign's performance in the drama; "the revelry now had began," 343 and all was obstreperous uproar, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... hall, not a great way off, there seemed to be an exhibition of a mechanical diorama; for three times during the day occurred a repetition of obstreperous music, winding up with the rattle of imitative cannon and musketry, and a huge final explosion. Then ensued the applause of the spectators, with clap of hands and thump of sticks, and the energetic pounding of their heels. All this was ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... you may hear me in civilness; if not, we must handle that rod which was laid down for the use of obstreperous. If you had come in a peaceable manner, like our brothers, the English, we would not have been against your trading with us as they do; but to come, fathers, and build houses upon our land, and to take it by force, is what we ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... simplicity of the whole design and the delicacy of its detail. It appealed to him as an exquisite bit of harmony appeals to the unlearned ear, and he recognised the difference between this fine work and the obstreperous pretentiousness of the many overloaded house-fronts which Seymour had made him notice for his instruction elsewhere on the Back Bay. Now, in the depths of his gloom, he tried to think what Italian city it was where Seymour ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... subject. Danger of dirty sheets in inns. We dined at Wooler, and I found out Dr. Douglas on the outside, son of my old acquaintance Dr. James Douglas of Kelso. This made us even lighter in mind till we came to Whittingham. Thence to Newcastle, where an obstreperous horse retarded us for an hour at least, to the great alarm of my friend the toy-woman. N.B.—She would have made a good feather-bed if the carriage had happened to fall, and her undermost. The heavy roads had ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... sign on the Arab's face, this dweller of the desert, whose forefathers in wonderment had watched the ways of wisdom with which Solomon in all his glory had ruled more than one fair and obstreperous woman among ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... fingers were numb with cold, and again and again the string slipped just at the crucial time. Finally this school girl, who was an attractive, well-dressed girl, reached over and placed her nicely gloved finger on the obstreperous knot. There was a grateful smile from the troubled woman and a hearty "Thank you." The next stop was the girl's home. As she went to the end of the car she passed a school friend who had watched the little incident. She said to her, "I see you belong to the helping hand society." "No," ...
— The Children's Six Minutes • Bruce S. Wright
... was evident from the tone in which Michael inquired after his old acquaintances in the town, and the bursts of laughter with which each answer was received. Giles Gosling himself was somewhat scandalized at the obstreperous nature of their mirth, especially as he involuntarily felt some respect for his unknown guest. He paused, therefore, at some distance from the table occupied by these noisy revellers, and began to make a sort ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... as the old Gineral himself," said Abram, "but a purty near to it. This gun is 'bout seven feet, an' yer gran'ther was seven feet two—a powerful built man. Wall, the Injuns had been mighty obstreperous 'long 'bout that time, burnin' the Widder Brown's house and her an' her baby a-hidin' in a holler tree near by, an' carryin' off critters an' bosses, an' that day yer gran'ther was after 'em with a posse o' men, an' what did ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... turned upon Mr. Watt, and especially upon Mr. Stewart. The latter did not appear for a length of time to have visited the light-room. On asking the cause—did Mr. Watt and him (sic) disagree; he said no; but he had got very bad usage from the assistant, "who was a very obstreperous man." I could not bring Mr. Watt to put in language his objections to Miller; all I could get was that, he being your friend, and saying he was unwell, he did not like to complain or to push the man; that the man seemed to have no liking to anything ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... work has been resumed in some degree. The double purpose is hereby served of letting in light on the dark spots of the town, and of giving employment to the needy blousards, who might get into obstreperous moods again if crowded too hard by poverty and want. It seems at first sight an awful destruction of property, this work of demolition, but I believe it has been proved that the rise in value of the real estate thus regenerated more than compensates for the losses sustained, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... explore the shores of the Arctic Ocean. Franklin and his companions had hardly left the river when he met near a large bay a numerous party of Esquimaux, who at first testified great delight at the rencontre, but soon became obstreperous, and tried to carry off the boat. Only by the exercise of wonderful patience and tact were the English able to avert ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... was just on the point of entering the house, with my heart full of filial piety and a contrite speech upon my lips, when I heard a burst of obstreperous laughter from my father, and a loud titter from my two ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... authority of the Heads was unquestioned in their own colleges; not only undergraduates, but Fellows also had to be submissive. No junior Fellow would then have dared to oppose his Head at college meetings. If there was by chance an obstreperous junior, he was easily silenced or requested to retire. The days had not yet come when a Master of Trinity ventured to remark that even a junior Fellow might possibly be mistaken. Colleges seemed to be the property of the ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... little Pen fell upon her. He was in a state of "deplorable grief" for his nurse, "and after all," laughed Mrs. Browning, "the place of nursery maid is more suitable to me than that of poetess (or even poet's wife) in this obstreperous London." ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... vote. Massively and stiffly, as at a word of command the "ayes" rise in their seats. There is a round of applause; the bill has been carried almost unanimously. That, however, is not always so. When there is an obstreperous mood abroad, the House will decline to proceed with the agenda, and a dozen men will rise at a time and speak from behind their desks, trying to talk each other down. The Speaker stands patiently wrestling with the problem of procedure—and often failing ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... must have been stark mad to let the anchor go! for the effect upon me of that shocking obstreperous hubbub, breaking in upon all that cemetery repose that blessed morning, and lasting it seemed a year, was most appalling; and at the sudden racket I stood excruciated, with shivering knees and flinching heart, God knows: for not less terrifically uproarious ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... hack at the impertinent solicitation of the driver, he will unquestionably curse you." "The telegraph operator grabs your message and eyes you as if you were a pickpocket." Now, Mr. PUNCHINELLO does not offer himself as an apologist for the abusive and obstreperous hackman, but he wishes to say that in the course of his active and eventful career he has had various conferences with those servants of the sidewalk, and he has never yet been unquestionably cursed by any one of the whole bad lot. Only yesterday he had occasion to intimate to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... improprieties of the earlier acts carefully smoothed away. "The Freedom of Suzanne" itself, however, did not matter very much. Sledge-hammer criticism could pulverize it. Poor little play! It did not merit any obstreperous handling, for it kept its audience in a state of unreasoning merriment, and it encased Miss Tempest like the proverbial glove. There is nothing more fascinating than perfect comedy acting. It is a tonic, the exhilarating effect of which ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... who knew how to laugh, and to whom no other recommendation was necessary than the power of striking out a jest. Among those I fixed my residence, and for a time enjoyed the felicity of disturbing the neighbours every night with the obstreperous applause which my sallies forced from the audience. The reputation of our club every day increased, and as my flights and remarks were circulated by my admirers, every day brought new solicitations for admission into ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... anything else, so a hotel room is more like a vault than anything else on Earth. Every time I go into one of the hotels on Ceres or Eros, I get the feeling that I'm either a bundle of gold certificates or a particularly obstreperous prisoner being led to a medieval solitary confinement cell. They're not pretty, ...
— A Spaceship Named McGuire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Josephine was very much concerned about Mr. Turner's accident, very happy to know how lucky he had been to come off without a scratch, except for the tear in his coat, and very solicitous indeed about any further handling of the obstreperous gray team; and, forgiving him readily under the circumstances, she renewed her engagement to drive ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... tease and torment the good man with every petty and malicious trick his malevolence could invent. He would shout opprobrious words after the other in the streets, to the entertainment of all who heard him; he would parade up and down before Colonel Belford's house singing obstreperous and unseemly songs at the top of his voice; he would even rattle the ferrule of his cane against the palings of the fence, or throw a stone at Madam Belford's cat in the wantonness of ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... who in every society are the natural guardians of the public taste and morals, seem to have deserted this important trust. Applause which ought to be measured out with scrupulous justice, correctness and precision, has been by admiring ignorance, poured forth in a torrent roar of uncouth and obstreperous glee on the buffoon, "the clown that says more than is set down for him," and on "the robustious perriwig-pated fellow, who tears a passion all to rags," while chaste merit and propriety have often gone unrewarded ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... an hour's sail of the latter place, provided you have a fair wind, and may be distinctly seen from the city. Nay, it is a well-known fact, which I can testify from my own experience, that on a clear still summer evening, you may hear, from the Battery of New York, the obstreperous peals of broad-mouthed laughter of the Dutch negroes at Communipaw, who, like most other negroes, are famous for their risible powers. This is peculiarly the case on Sunday evenings, when, it is remarked by an ingenious and observant philosopher who has made great discoveries ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... find you here," he called down to her. Having played their part, he wished now that the birds were at Jericho. Their obstreperous racket made conversation very difficult. Apparently she made him an answer, but he could catch nothing ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... had for some time been loudish round a table at the bottom of the hall; but presently came a burst of mirth so obstreperous and prolonged, that the prior sent the very sub-prior all down the hall to check it, and inflict penance on every monk at the table. And Gerard's cheek burned with shame; for in the heart of the unruly merriment ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Corporal's, by which he would have likened the dominion of Heaven to the King of Prussia's body-guard, and only admitted the elect on account of their inches, so tickled mine host's fancy, that he leaned back in his chair, and indulged in a long, dry, obstreperous cachinnation. This irreverence mightily displeased the Corporal. He looked at the little man very sourly, and said ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... writing, or drawing. This room of mine soon became a Mecca for the most irrepressible and loquacious characters in the ward. But I soon schooled myself to shut my ears to the incoherent prattle of my unwelcome visitors. Occasionally, some of them would become obstreperous—perhaps because of my lordly order to leave the room. Often did they threaten to throttle me; but I ignored the threats, and they were never carried out. Nor was I afraid that they would be. Invariably I induced ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... a little animal called a man—a bit of vitalized matter, one hundred and sixty-five pounds of meat and blood, nerve, sinew, bones, and brain,—all of it soft and tender, susceptible to hurt, fallible, and frail. I strike a light back-handed blow on the nose of an obstreperous horse, and a bone in my hand is broken. I put my head under the water for five minutes, and I am drowned. I fall twenty feet through the air, and I am smashed. I am a creature of temperature. A few degrees one way, and my fingers and ears ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... with an odd expression of half-childish curiosity, fully expecting to see an outward and visible motion corresponding with the inward hammering. But he saw nothing. Solid ribs and solid muscles kept the obstreperous machine in its place. ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... by the singer—and it is that apparently effortless performance of its duty that gives it its real importance. The diaphragm really is a most courteous and accommodating muscle when its assistance is politely invited, but most obstreperous when one tries to force ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... dieu de la machine, "You will have me as theatre-god, then, "J'arrive pour te denouement? "Swoop in, and produce the catastrophe? "Qu'aux Anglais, aux Pandours, a ce peuple insolent, "J'aille donner la discipline?— "Tame to sobriety those English, those Pandours, and obstreperous people? "Mais examinez mieux ma mine; "Examine the look of me better; "Je ne suis pas assez mechant! "I have ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... we'll land in a town of this size," declared Roy indignantly, as he helped the constables shove back an obstreperous individual who insisted on examining the ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... crowd of young men who sat and stood packed together like guillemots on a rock. These too, cheated by that rising cloud of the spectacle they had come so far to see, wanted to have a little fun, and began to be very obstreperous. By and by they found out an amusement ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... The procurator, as I look back on that deadly winter, seems to have accepted all my peculiarities without question. If I would remain content and quell obstreperous beasts when spring opened as I had until autumn ushered in winter, I might do and be anything I pleased. If I pleased to mope in my quarters, pace under the arcades of the courtyard, lie abed from early dusk till after sunrise, what mattered that to him? Such, apparently, was his ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... length came to a crisis that put them beyond sport. George, in flying backward to gain the point at which the ball was going to light, came inadvertently so rudely in contact with this obstreperous interloper that lie not only overthrew him, but also got a grievous fall over his legs; and, as he arose, the other made a spurn at him with his foot, which, if it had hit to its aim, would undoubtedly have finished the course of the young ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... merely by their greater adaptiveness that women are better linguists than men; it is by their more delicate organisation, their more subdued identity, and their less obstreperous temperaments, which are consequently less egotistical, less redolent of the one individual self. And what is it that makes the men of mark or note, the cognate signs of human algebra, but these same characteristics; not always good, ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... bright, breezy, sunlit garden contrasting with the road of ashen spiritual desolation the soul must take; the splendour of the gorgeous stiff brocade and the futility of the blank, soft, imprisoned flesh; the obstreperous heart, beating in joyous harmony with the rhythm of the swaying flowers, changed by one written word into a desert of silence. It is the sudden annihilation of purpose and significance in a body and mind vital with it; so ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... great hall, But one more pale, more pensive, most beloved of you all. I seek her from afar, I come from temples where her altars are, From groves that bear her name, Noisy with stricken victims now and sacrificial flame, And cymbals struck on high and strident faces Obstreperous in her praise They neither love nor know, A goddess of gone days, Departed long ago, Abandoning the invaded shrines and fanes Of her old sanctuary, A deity obscure and legendary, Of whom there now remains, For sages to decipher ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... walk on the neighboring roads clad in a dressing gown. More than once as I passed him he accosted me with the interrogative, "Are you Nancy Hazard's brat?"—a query that invariably prompted me to quicken my pace. Mr. Martin kept a fine herd of cattle, among which was an obstreperous bull whose stentorian tones were familiar to all the residents of the adjoining places. When the children of our household were turbulent my mother would often exclaim, "Listen to Martin's bull roaring!" This invariably had a soothing effect upon ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... Lodge official was to bring her to the Manhattan Chapter for measurement and training, no matter what the Grand Master felt about the reality of her powers of precognition. Maragon had been about as obstreperous as I had figured. We have a lot of trouble working together, probably because he resents my TK powers. He's good at it, but I'm a good deal better. That's why I'm a Thirty-third ...
— The Right Time • Walter Bupp
... desperately determined to save Gertrude from herself, if human power could do it, "you are all tired out and unstrung—and no wonder, teaching those obstreperous youngsters all day and coming home to bad war news. But just you go upstairs and lie down and I will bring you up a cup of hot tea and a bite of toast and very soon you will not want ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... she could always do anything with Wunsch, but the doctor shook his head and Spanish Johnny grinned. He said he would stay. The doctor laughed at him. "Ten fellows like you couldn't hold him, Spanish, if he got obstreperous; an Irishman would have his hands full. Guess I'd better put the soft pedal on him." He ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... latter place, provided you have a fair wind, and may be distinctly seen from the city. Nay, it is a well known fact, which I can testify from my own experience, that on a clear still summer evening you may hear from the battery of New York the obstreperous peals of broad-mouthed laughter of the Dutch negroes at Communipaw, who, like most other negroes, are famous for their risible powers. This is peculiarly the case on Sunday evenings, when, it is remarked by an ingenious and observant philosopher, who has made ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... whisperers in corners. Sometimes, it sported with the holly-boughs; and, shining on the leaves by fits and starts, made them look as if they were in the cold winter night again, and fluttering in the wind. Sometimes its genial humour grew obstreperous, and passed all bounds; and then it cast into the room, among the twinkling feet, with a loud burst, a shower of harmless little sparks, and in its exultation leaped and bounded, like a mad thing, up ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... the gentleman farmer, with his comely dame who "walked in silk attire, and siller had to spare;" instead of the quiet yet glad countenances of such hunters of pleasure and eaters of eel-pie, or the more obstreperous joy of urchins let loose from school to taste some brief and perennial recreation, and mine host's delicacies at the same time; instead of these, the little parlour presented a various and perturbed group, upon whose features neither eel-pie nor Herefordshire cider had ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... but small difference in the value of the cloths, the one being a west of England bottle-green, and the other a Manchester blue, I caused them to niffer, and hushed up the business, which, had they been obstreperous, would have made half the parish of ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir |
