"Pother" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... such hard lines, just when I had succeeded in getting into favor, to go and spoil it all in that unhappy way. Now that I had become acquainted with their style of singing, the supposed fib, about which there had been such a pother, seemed a very venial offense compared with my attempt to lead the singing. Nevertheless, when the concert was over, not a word was said on the subject by any one, though I had quite expected to be taken at once to the magisterial chamber to hear some dreadful sentence passed on me; and when, ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... out on the floor of the hall, which reverberated like a drum. Mme. Janouschoffsky, an exceedingly capable artist, was the Santuzza, Mrs. Pemberton Hincks the Lola, Mrs. Jennie Bohner the Lucia, Payne Clarke the Turiddu, and Herman Gerold the Alfio. While all this pother was making, "Cavalleria Rusticana" was already three weeks old in Philadelphia, where Mr. Gustav Hinrichs had brought it forward with his American company at the Grand Opera House; Minnie Hauk, with a company of her own, had given it in Chicago the night before ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... her hands airily. "What a pother!" she cried. "What does it matter whether poor little Alice Adams goes to a ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... comfortable; naked but unashamed, the woods were smiling; southward, a long flash spoke of the sunlit peaks and the dead march of snow; and there, a league away, grey Pau was basking contentedly, her decent crinoline of villas billowing about her sides, lazily looking down on such a fuss and pother as might have bubbled out of the pot of Revolution, but was, in fact, the hospitable rite daily observed on the arrival ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... Quakeress, wrathful and sullen, had scarce understood what the whole pother was about. She was hard of hearing, and Petty Constable Pyot was at great pains to explain to her that by the major-general's orders the body of the murdered man should be laid decently under shelter, until such time as proper burial could ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... over which eugenists raise such a pother, are surely not the worst curses that mankind has to bear. Some of the greatest men in history have had them; whole nations have had them and survived. The truth about them is that, save in relatively rare cases, they do very little ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... so, and membership is ranked as the highest honor of the college. But in God's name, what is all this pother? Are there not already enough jealousies without this one added? Does not college society already fall into enough locked coteries without this one? No matter how keen is the pride of membership, it does not atone for the disappointments and the heart-burnings ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... so far as it went. Now for the gas-bags, the sausages; for these observation balloons were the real object of all this nocturnal pother. ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... very little either in inn charges or in the pother of State by the device. And if I remember correctly, I made no pretence at wine-selling on these occasions. Honestly now, what the devil does the Comte de Montaiglon do here—and ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... a severe and dangerous confinement, gave birth to a dead child. Immediately after the intelligence had been made known, a servant, having upon some business passed outside the gate of the castle-yard, was met by Jacque, who, contrary to his wont, accosted him, observing, 'So, after all the pother, the son and heir is still-born.' This remark was accompanied by a chuckling laugh, the only approach to merriment which he was ever known to exhibit. The servant, who was really disappointed, having hoped for holiday times, feasting and debauchery with impunity during the ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... somewhat spent itself, she retreated to her brothers, to whom she poured out a full and animated account of the night's happenings. They all agreed that Mademoiselle must have rats in the upper story to make such a pother over the adventure, though Maxwell, who held himself to be approaching years of discretion, gave it as his opinion that the whole thing was a piece of bad luck and an experiment ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... our part. 'Tis extraordinary how clever the greatest fool may show himself sometimes. Only, with their lubberly Spanish seamanship, they would expect us, probably, to make a whole ceremony of your landing: ship hove to for hours close in shore, a boat going off to land and returning, and all such pother. 'We are sure to see their little show,' they think to themselves. Eh? What? Whereas we shall keep well clear of the land when the time comes, and drop you in the dark without as much check on our ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... guardian friend, or mother Tell the woes of wilful waste; Scorn their counsel, scorn their pother, You can ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... or mother Tell the woes of wilful waste; Scorn their counsel, scorn their pother,— You can hang or drown ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... at the mouth of Superior Bay, where conflicting currents make a pother of waters. This spirit sat on the bottom of the lake, gazing upward, and if any boatman ventured to cross his domain without dropping a pipe or beads or hatchet into it, woe betide him, for his boat would be caught in a current and smashed against a rocky shore. Perhaps ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... sad strains o' Toby Farr's music, jus' as though he knowed he wasn't able t' rede the riddles of his life, jus' yet awhile, but would be able t' rede them, by an' by, when he growed up, an' expected t' find hisself in a pother o' trouble when he mastered the answers. I didn't know his name, then, t' be sure; had I knowed it, as know it I did, afore the night was over, I might have put down my flute, in amazement, an' stared an' said, ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... saying, "Master Merry, you're fetched!" Time was annihilated, and memory dumbfounded!—The entertainment that had been looked forward to for days, counted by the hours, and put so many mammas in a pother, is gone!—The hands of the hall-clock are almost perpendicular—it wants but half-an-hour of midnight!—Several anxious mammas have sent several times for their several little ones; and the several servants have been sent away with several evasive answers—for "the ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... after the Wind sallied forth, And, in anger or merriment, out of the North Coming on with a terrible pother, From the peak of the crag blew the Giant away. And what did these School-boys?—The very next day They went and ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... and a very great pother he made, insisting that the whole company should instantly hasten back to town, as if they remained there the pale death would speedily overtake them, and it would therefore boot them little to have escaped from the red death. And indeed the plague was raging fearfully ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... servant to fetch Mr. Butler, the prime cause of all this pother—for all of it can be traced to Mr. Butler's invasion of the Tavora nunnery—and with him went to bear the incredible tidings of their joint absolution to the three who waited so anxiously in ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... very word etiquette is an irritant. It implies a great pother about trifles, these conscientious objectors assure us, and trifles are unimportant. Trifles are unimportant, it is true, but then life is made up of trifles. To those who dislike the word, it suggests all that is finical and superfluous. It means a garish embroidery on the big ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... when a bridge has to be made, there is an infinite pother and worry about building the piers, coffer-dams, and heaven knows what else. Some swing their bridges to avoid this trouble, and some try to throw an arch of one span from side to side. There are a thousand different tricks. In Belfort they simply wait until the water has run away. Then a great ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... Or find gall Hid in the hanging chalice of the rose: Which think you better? If my mood offend, We'll turn to business,—to the empty cares That make such pother in our feverish life. When at Ravenna, did you ever hear Of any romance in Francesca's life? A love-tilt, gallantry, or anything That might ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... be next to feel the refreshing torrent. We let slip the garment of timorous covering very easily when nudity is commonplace. Vait-hua was to teach me to be modest without pother, to chat with those about me during my ablutions without concern for the false vanities of screens or even the shelter of rocks as in the river in Atuona. In such scenes one perceives that immodesty is in the false shame that makes ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... man by habit," he began after a long gaze upwards at the rooks now settling to roost and making a mighty pother of it. "But I'm afraid there's no getting round the fact that this afternoon I acted a lie. And yet, on the whole, my ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the middle of the night, and Rozenoffski, rocking in his berth, cursed his encounter with the red-haired romanticist who had stirred up such a pother in his brain that he had not been able to fall asleep while the water was still calm. Not that he suffered physically from the sea; he was merely afraid of it. The shuddering and groaning of the ship found an echo in his soul. He could not shake off the conviction that he was doomed to drown. At ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... crack-brained spirit is not to be laid until a shower fall of blows—a shower of blows, kicks and cudgel-thwacks, to smother the angry conflagration. God knows how it all came about?" He smiles again, reflectively, over the recollection of the lovely quiet evening it was, the terrific discordant pother that arose,—the lovely and hushed night that presently resumed her reign. The incident looks fantastic now. "An imp must have had a hand in it!" is the poet's fanciful induction; "A glow-worm could not ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... plunged and bumped along, extricating his boat-bonnet now from a bower of raspberry-bushes, now from the branches of a brotherly birch-tree,—"better," thought he, "were I seated in what I bear, and bounding gayly over the billow. Peril is better than pother." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... a deal of pother about a capuchin who had stared at the Madonnino of Anguissola! The matter was out of all proportion to the stir it made, and I conveyed in my next words some notion of ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... beyond me to express my gratification. 'Twas a mysterious business altogether—this whim to make the Shining Light ready for sea. I could make nothing of it at all. And why, thinks I, should the old craft all at once be troubled by all this pother of block and tackle and hammer and saw? 'Twas beyond me to fathom; but I was glad to discover, whatever the puzzle, that my uncle's faith in the lad he had nourished was got real and large. 'Twas not for that he bred me; but 'twas the only reward—and that a mean, poor one—he might have. And ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... stream of vehicles had rumbled into the courtyard, setting down the servants and effects of his Highness of Wirtemberg, and of the lady who ruled his destiny. Frisoni was in a mighty pother; he ran round the room excitedly, moving a chair, smoothing out a fold in the curtains, drawing a table to another position. He hopped hither and thither like some gay little monkey. Suddenly a tremendous shout went up from the three thousand Italian workmen who had been permitted to assemble near ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... room. Mademoiselle Leblanc tried to throw herself in front of the door; I pushed her aside so roughly that she fell, and, I believe, hurt herself slightly. She immediately filled the house with her cries; and later, in the trial, made a great pother about what she was pleased to call an attempt to murder her. I at once entered Edmee's room; there I found the abbe and the doctor. I listened in silence to what the latter was saying. I learnt that the wounds in themselves were not mortal, that they would not even be very serious, had ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... Dunstable they crawled upon their bellies. I thought the landlady would have kissed me; such a flutter of cordiality, such smiles, such affectionate attentions were called forth, and the good lady bustled on my service in such a pother of ringlets and with such a jingling of keys. 'You're probably expected, sir, at the Place? I do trust you may 'ave better accounts of his lordship's 'elth, sir. We understood that his lordship, Mosha de Carwell, was main bad. Ha, sir, we shall all feel his loss, poor, dear, noble ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my father sent I was not told; but two days later, a little before sundown, I saw a plain, honest-looking man ride slowly up the road in a great pother of dust. He was clad in homespun, with a broad straw hat; wore a patriarchal beard; and had an air of a simple rustic farmer, that was, in my eyes, very reassuring. He was, indeed, a very honest man and pious Mormon; with no liking for his errand, though neither he nor any one in Utah dared ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... Gordon: wrote to a friend the ship he was coming home in—Morning Star. It was the same; price on G.G.'s head to this day: shouldn't mind getting it. Needn't pother over it, sir; 'twas Gordon: but he'd never ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... over-rode the waves, and, beating them down, maintained an unvarying, stubborn poise. But although she refused to vacillate or shuffle to the wooing efforts of the uneasy waters, she progressed not without noise and pother; foamed and fumed mightily at the bow and left behind her a wake, receding almost as far as the eyes might reach. Captain Macpherson looked after the bubbles, cast his glance aloft at the bulging patches of white, and then condescended ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... the difference! In Adolphe a coal from the altar of true passion has touched lips in themselves polluted enough, and the result is what it always is in such, alas! rare cases, whether the lips were polluted or not. In Delphine there is a desperate pother to strike some sort of light and get some sort of heat; but the steel is naught, the flint is clay, the tinder is mouldy, and the wood is damp and rotten. No glow of brand or charcoal follows, and the lips, untouched by it, utter nothing ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury |
