"Pother" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 not ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... handsome prince," said Giulietta; "and there is the great sin you are breaking your little heart about. Well, now, it's all of that dry, sour old Father Francesco. I never could abide him,—he made such dismal pother about sin; old Father Girolamo was worth a dozen of him. If you would just see our good Father Stefano, now, he would set your mind at ease about your vows in a twinkling; and you must needs get them loosed, for our captain is born to command, and when princes stoop to us peasant-girls ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... turned the letter over. Mahon fretted. He could see on its face the Division headquarters stamp—Lethbridge—but why all this ceremony and pother about an official note that came almost every day? He recalled suddenly that his wife would be holding lunch for him—with fresh fish he had seen unloaded little more than an hour ago from the through train from Vancouver. He could ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... 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
... I told you that, at first sight, she is an odd piece; but as soon as you know her, in very truth, there's not a better sort in the whole world. Say good-morrow to her without making any pother about it." ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... was only a chance that I happened to be touching elbows with the child, and naturally I only did what anyone would have done in the same circumstances, but the whole family were tremendously grateful and made a great pother over it. By the way, speaking of rescues, have you heard about the thing that happened to the two Van Norden girls at Bailey's Beach last week? I must tell ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... witchcraft. I became a scholar, wrote essays, systems of philosophy, poems: those who could not read were sure I was blaspheming God and Christianity, and that was too bad. After many long years I betook myself to the man who was making such a pother in the world, Pietro Apone, and became his familiar, next a hermit, and what not? The best is that in every state of life I have made money and hoarded it up; so that I can now lay down my grey head free from want and care. And now, ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... then seems to me so infinitely small, and I could almost pity my enemies for giving themselves such trouble about so very little. What would become of us without philosophy, without this reasonable contempt of things frivolous, transient and fugitive, about which the greedy and ambitious make such a pother, fancying them to be solid! This is to become wise by stripes, you will tell me; well, if one do become wise, what matters it how?—I read a great deal; I devour my Books, and that brings me useful alleviation. But for my Books, I think hypochondria would have had me in bedlam before now. In fine, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... setting four men to hold the machine in place, he started the Gnome motor and ran it up to two thousand revolutions a minute, creating a draught which bowed the fluttered wheat for many yards behind and blew hats off. And in the middle of this pother he continued to offer lucid and surprising explanations to deafened ears until his superior officer, excessively smart and looking like a cross between a cavalryman and a yachtsman, arrived on ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... bother, smash! You'll have it all in a crash. Jabber, smash, bother! You'll have the worst of the pother. Smash, ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... Master Cupid; They stood a moment, as though stupid, Until they recognised each other. They complimented with some pother, When Time overtook them in his walk, And then all three fell into talk Of what each one had done for man. ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... thing I shall do on the dawn will be to scan the sea. Something unusual must have occurred to put the pirates to all this pother." ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... Majesty that he was delighted to see his courtiers wearing the French fashions outside their heads, provided they didn't carry the French ideas within. You are too young, doubtless, cavaliere, to have heard of the philosophers who are raising such a pother north of the Alps: a set of madmen that, because their birth doesn't give them the entree of Versailles, are preaching that men should return to a state of nature, great ladies suckle their young like animals, and the peasantry ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... But what a pother about a simple act of charity! In order to repeat it habitually I shall have to rely on the fortuitous attendance of a boy and a policeman, or have a policeman and a boy permanently attached to my person, which would be as agreeable as the continuous ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... striven to attract the notice of in Hyde Park, were one and the same beautiful woman, and that that beautiful woman was neither more nor less than the sister of the present owner of Yatton—the marvellous discovery created a mighty pother in his little feelings. The blaze of Kate Aubrey's beauty in an instant consumed the images both of Tabitha Tag-rag and Dora Quirk. It even for a while outshone the splendors of ten thousand a-year: such is the inexpressible and incalculable ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... wait on, always holding himself discreetly aloof from the middle breadth of the picture, until the officiating clergyman had done with his sacred offices; would wait until the white-faced wretch on whose account the government was making all this pother and taking all this trouble, had mumbled his farewell words this side of eternity; would continue to wait, very patiently, indeed, until the warden nodded to him. Then, with his trussing harness tucked under his arm, and the black cap neatly folded ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... 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, ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... 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
... a terrific pother. Stephen wakened violently, and in a moment all three were staring ineffectually at the thousand ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... me little better than idle, restless vanity. O my friend, what a fuss and a pother we are all making, we little flies who are going round on the great wheel of time! To-day we are flickering and buzzing about, our little bits of wings glittering in the sunshine, and to-morrow we are safe enough in the little crevice at the back of the fireplace, or hid in ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... 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 ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... bubbl'd nation disabuse, While they their own felicities refuse? Who at the wars have made such mighty pother, And now are falling out with one another: With needless fears the jealous nations fill, And always have been sav'd against their will: Who fifty millions sterling have disburs'd To be with peace, and too much plenty, curs'd; Who their old monarch eagerly undo, And yet uneasily obey the new. Search, ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... officer, the military were suspect; Dreyfus was a Jew, the Jews were suspect. People began talking about militarism, about the Jews. Such utterly disreputable people as Drumont held up their heads; little by little they stirred up a regular pother on a substratum of anti-semitism, on a substratum that smelt of the shambles. When something is wrong with us we look for the causes outside ourselves, and readily find them. "It's the Frenchman's nastiness, ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... literary labor was performed after he left there. A few miles farther up the valley is Capel-y-Ffyn, where Father Ignatius within a few years has erected his Anglican monastery. He was Rev. Mr. Lyne, and came from Norwich, where he was in frequent collision with the bishop. After much pother and notoriety he took his Protestant monastic settlement to this nook in the heart of the Black Mountains, where he and his monks perform ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... or 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 ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... petty pother arose since Niecks' comprehensive biography appeared. So sure was he of his facts that he disposed of the pseudo-date in one footnote. Perhaps the composer was to blame; artists, male as well as female, have been known to make themselves younger in ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... and free poets didn't trouble Mary Virginia very much. Although she sensed that something was wrong with somebody somewhere—hence these lyrical lamentations—she could not, to save her, tell what all the pother was about, for as yet she saw the world couleur de rose. Some one or two of the French and Germans pleased her; she fell into long reveries over the Gael, who has the sound of the sea in his voice and whose eyes are full of a haunting light, as of sunsets ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... omnium gatherum[Lat], medley; mere mixture &c. 41; fortuitous concourse of atoms, disjecta membra[Lat], rudis indigestaque moles [Lat][Ovid]. complexity &c. 59a. turmoil; ferment &c. (agitation) 315; to-do, trouble, pudder[obs3], pother, row, rumble, disturbance, hubbub, convulsion, tumult, uproar, revolution, riot, rumpus, stour[obs3], scramble, brawl, fracas, rhubarb [baseball], fight, free-for-all, row, ruction, rumpus, embroilment, melee, spill and ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... at both of these, And styl'd of War as well as Peace. So some rats of amphibious nature Are either for the land or water. But here our authors make a doubt, Whether he were more wise, or stout. Some hold the one, and some the other; But howsoe'er they make a pother, The diff'rence was so small, his brain Outweigh'd his rage but half a grain; Which made some take him for a tool That knaves do work with, call'd a Fool; And offer'd to lay wagers that As Montaigne, playing ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... have nothing now to do but set my house in order, and live the hours between this and sunrise with what quiet I may. I am ready for either freedom or death. Life is not so incomparable a thing that I can not give it up without pother." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Madame," I said, "why such pother over such a trifle? If your name be, no longer, Madeline Spencer, tell me what it is. I shall be profoundly glad to call you by it—or any name than Spencer," ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... "Oh pother! It's not that I'm not a man, or a laggard in love; but I'd like to know what you'd do to a girl dumb with grief over the recent loss of her mother, who was her only relative worth counting, sick from God knows what ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... gatherum [Lat.], medley; mere mixture &c 41; fortuitous concourse of atoms, disjecta membra [Lat.], rudis indigestaque moles [Lat.] [Ovid]. complexity &c 59.1. turmoil; ferment &c (agitation) 315; to-do, trouble, pudder^, pother, row, rumble, disturbance, hubbub, convulsion, tumult, uproar, revolution, riot, rumpus, stour^, scramble, brawl, fracas, rhubarb, fight, free-for-all, row, ruction, rumpus, embroilment, melee, spill ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... 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 of ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... 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 ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... own first utterance of the word. Why wasn't the world full of love, when love made happiness? Why did people hide their natural kindliness as if it were something shameful? Why shouldn't people say what they thought and act as they were inclined? Why all this pother about what one's neighbour thought, when this pother was not energized by any good will? Why was truth avoided as the plague? Why did this young man have one name on the hotel register and another on his lips? Why was she bothering about him at all? Why ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... great gods, That keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads, Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch, That hast within thee undivulged crimes Unwhipp'd of justice: hide thee, thou bloody hand; Thou perjur'd, and thou simular man of virtue That art incestuous: caitiff, ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... think, the pretty toy we got for Peg, A priest has hooked, the cursed plague I— The thing came under the eye of the mother, And caused her a dreadful internal pother: The woman's scent is fine and strong; Snuffles over her prayer-book all day long, And knows, by the smell of an article, plain, Whether the thing is holy or profane; And as to the box she was soon aware There could not be much blessing there. "My child," she cried, "unrighteous gains Ensnare ...
— Faust • Goethe
... pettifogging chicanery; I passed over in state to our territories in Ireland, where I entertained the gentry in a style the Lord Lieutenant himself could not equal; gave the fashion to Dublin (to be sure it was a beggarly savage city in those days; and, since the time there has been a pother about the Union, and the misfortunes attending it, I have been at a loss to account for the mad praises of the old order of things, which the fond Irish patriots have invented); I say I set the fashion to Dublin; and small praise to me, for ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... devilish dear To one that was, or would have been a peer. Let me extol a cat, on oysters fed, I'll have a party at the Bedford-head; Or even to crack live crawfish recommend; I'd never doubt at Court to make a friend. 'Tis yet in vain, I own, to keep a pother About one vice, and fall into the other: Between excess and famine lies a mean; Plain, but not sordid; though not splendid, clean. Avidien, or his wife (no matter which, For him you'll call a dog, and her a bitch) ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... it round?—and thick?—and had it letters and devices graved upon it?—yes? Oh, NOW I know what this Great Seal is that there's been such worry and pother about. An' ye had described it to me, ye could have had it three weeks ago. Right well I know where it lies; but it was not I that put ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and Barnes, is a Banter on Criticks, and Genealogists, who make such a Pother about the Orthography of Names and Things, that many Times, three Parts in four of a Folio Treatise, is taken up in ascertaining the Propriety of a Syllable, by which Means the Reader is left undetermined; ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... this a sacred rule we find Among the nicest of mankind, Which never might exception brook From Hobbes even down to Bolingbroke, To doubt of facts, however true, Unless they know the causes too. 360 Trifle, of whom 'twas hard to tell When he intended ill or well; Who, to prevent all further pother, Probably meant nor one, nor t'other; Who to be silent always loth, Would speak on either side, or both; Who, led away by love of fame, If any new idea came, Whate'er it made for, always said it, Not with ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... pother about nothing. She's all right. They're in a very healthy place; a little seaside village, where it has been quite cool, they say, so far. And they will return before long, because they mean to spend the autumn in Scotland. Yes, they say it is 'quite cool' at present. ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... enough 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
... in my chair and gazed steadily at Chord; but his eyes would not bring themselves to meet mine, and so he made some pother about filling up his cup again, with the neck of the bottle trembling on the edge, as if its teeth ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... with the pretence of warming his hands and fidgeted restlessly by the fire. Barbara had lost her expression of amusement and was honestly puzzled that he should make so great a pother about a piece of ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... La Signorina, her brows drawing together in a frown. "But I know her so well; she is not in the habit of making misstatements. To the point at once. What has happened to bring about all this pother?" ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... 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 but rhetoric and fustian and, as the Sydneian ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... despised himself acutely. Of course, he had hours and moods when he felt that he must lift up his voice and shout aloud to all men—What? That he did not know exactly what he did believe? For, in reality, that was all the whole pother was amounting to. What was the use in starting the alarm, when the whole great crisis might be merely a matter of imagination, of indigestion, even, as Doctor Keltridge had diagnosed it? In that case, the best, the ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... 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 find his mate, it was he responsible for all the damage done! ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... ones, who make up this pother; Who gape and stare, just like stuck pigs at each other, As mirrors, wherein, at full length do appear, Your follies reflected so apish and ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... in stating their business, but as they both spoke at once and shrilly, the unfortunate Commissary learnt little of the matter at issue between them. Not until the united efforts of all the men present had silenced feminine vociferation was it possible to understand what in the world the pother was about. The old gentleman, to whom in courtesy priority of speech was accorded, made the ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West
... judicious scholarship. After much hair-splitting he solemnly pronounces it "psychologically possible."[171] LeGrand points out[172] that his change of heart is not a conversion, but merely a professed reconciliation to the loss. But there is no need for all this pother. The simple truth is that Plautus was through with his humorous complication and was ready to top it off with a happy ending. It is the forerunner of modern musical comedy, where the grouchy millionaire papa is propitiated at the last moment (perhaps by the pleadings ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... serpent Apollyon blest: His plea in apology, blindfold Fool. A fool surcharged, propelled, unwarned; Not viler, you hear him protest: Of a popular countenance not incorrect. But deeds are the picture in essence, deeds Paint him the hooved and homed, Despite the poor pother he pleads, And his look of a nation's elect. We have him, our quarry confessed! And scan him: the features inspect Of that bestial multiform: cry, Corroborate I, O Samian Sage! The book of thy wisdom, proved On me, its last hieroglyph page, Alive ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... time the Master asked of Buffalmacco that which he had before asked of Bruno. Whereat Buffalmacco feigned to be not a little agitated, and turning angrily to Bruno, made a great pother about his ears, saying:—"By the Most High God of Pasignano I vow I can scarce forbear to give thee that over the head that should make thy nose fall about thy heels, traitor that thou art, for 'tis thou alone that ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... almost too vivid, of the wretched elder woman, tortured in mind and body, morbidly aware of the contrast between her own decay and the vitality of her rival. As to Inglebury and Mary, the causes of all the pother, they struck me as conspicuously unworth so much fussing over; and, when their final flight together landed them—well, where it did, I could only feel that the neighbourhood was to be congratulated. But, as you see, I had by this time become unwillingly interested. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... her hands airily. "What a pother!" she cried. "What does it matter whether poor little Alice Adams goes to a ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... every square sail tugging hard at her sturdy masts, she smote and 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
... week after, the wind sallied forth, And, in anger or merriment, out of the north, Coming on with a terrible pother, 15 From the peak of the crag blew the giant away. And what did these school-boys?—The very next day They went and they ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... vntyes the Poke, Which out of it sent such a smoke, 650 As ready was them all to choke, So greeuous was the pother; So that the Knights each other lost, And stood as still as any post, Tom Thum, nor Tomalin could boast Themselues of ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... the outlook grand, the heavens near. Our companions are the familiar earth by day or the mysterious stars by night, and these are good if only to recall the silent splendor of God's universe amid the pother of human inventions. There also the very spirit of liberty, which seems to have its dwelling among the hills, enters into us and makes us sympathize with ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... when the crows perceive you; for the owl is sure to take a look around for the cause of their sudden alarm. If he sees nothing suspicious he will return to his shelter to eat his crow, or just to rest his sensitive ears after all the pother. A quarter-mile away the crows sit silent, ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... the Jew came to that house because he had noticed his servant's absence, so he repaired thither to see concerning the business of the meat offering wherewith he had charged him. He found his home in a state of pother and up-take and down-set and he asked the folk, "What is the matter?" They related the whole to him and said, "Thou sentest to demand such-and-such," and when he heard this case he beat his face with his brogue[FN310]—And Shahrazad was surprised ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... alone with Bobby, me heart that heavy," and the like, which served merely to increase Orde's bewilderment and anxiety. At this moment Bobby himself appeared from the direction of the kitchen. Orde, frantic with alarm, fell upon his son. Bobby, much bewildered by all this pother, could only mumble something about "smallpox," and "took ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... 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
... highest person came in: Baby Carlos (more power to him!) got the Duchies, and we hope there was an end. No young gentleman ever had such a pother to make among his fellow-creatures about a little heritable property. If Baby Carlos's performance in it be anything in proportion, he will be a ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... funny old eye. He grasps by the top an immense fool's cap, Which he calls a philosophaster-trap: And rightly enough, for while these little men Croak loud as a concert of frogs in a fen, He first singles out one, and then another, Down goes the cap—lo! a moment's pother, A spirit like that which a rushlight utters As just at the last it kicks and gutters: When the cruel smotherer is raised again Only snuff, and but little ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... pedigree bulls and his pedigree mares. "It's money clean wasted," said the old farmers, "for a calf's a calf no odds what begets it, and a horse that can work in chains and take its turn on the road is horse enough for any man, without sinking money in dumb beasts, and a' this sire-and-dam pother." It would anger the old man that talk, ay, even when he was the old frail frame of what once he was,—like a dead and withered ash-tree, dourly awaiting the death gale to send it crashing down, to lie where once its shade fell in the hot summer days of ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... memory, and would have done so even had I not had that tangible memento of them. Who were they, those two of whom that one strange glimpse had befallen me? What, I wondered, was the previous history of each? What, in particular, had all that tragic pother been about? Mlle. Ange'lique I guessed to be thirty years old, her friend perhaps fifty-five. Each of their faces was as clear to me as in the moment of actual vision—the man's fat shiny bewildered face; the taut white face ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... they were talking together, some black clouds gathered about the giant's middle, and burst into a tremendous storm of thunder and lightning, causing such a pother that Hercules found it impossible to distinguish a word. Only the giant's immeasurable legs were to be seen, standing up into the obscurity of the tempest; and, now and then, a momentary glimpse of his whole figure, mantled in a volume of mist. He seemed to be ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... Their plunder couldn't then be bagg'd; Should it in forward paws be taken, Or roll'd along, or dragg'd? Each method seem'd impossible, And each was then of danger full. Necessity, ingenious mother, Brought forth what help'd them from their pother. As still there was a chance to save their prey,— The spunger yet some hundred yards away,— One seized the egg, and turn'd upon his back, And then, in spite of many a thump and thwack, That would have torn, perhaps, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... ready to oppose them if some effective method could only be thought out. He even hinted to those about him at Headquarters that this seeming garrulity was serving a good end, claiming it to be harmless pother to "cover" more immediate trails on which ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... 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 ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... abundance of necessaries, but not to lay a finger on one of them themselves. So these states regard it as the duty of a ruler to provide them with all the good things imaginable, but to keep his own hands off them all the while. (12) So then, for my part, if anybody desires to have a heap of pother himself, (13) and be a nuisance to the rest of the world, I will educate him in the manner suggested, and he shall take his place among those who are fit to rule; but for myself, I beg to be enrolled ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... captain, "I know nothing about him. But he came to your factor and wanted to take the first ship that cleared, and seemed in such a mortal pother that Mr. Horsley suspicioned something, and gave me a slant to look out for him. And all the time we lay off Bristol, my fine fellow kept himself ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... Sarkantyus, 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 ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... were Pic-nic to-day, my dear mother, How happy and gay I should be! How joyful without any studies to pother, Away in ...
— Our Gift • Teachers of the School Street Universalist Sunday School, Boston
... earnestness to see him: seld-shown flamens Do press among the popular throng, and puff To win a vulgar station: our veil'd dames Commit the war of white and damask, in Their nicely-gawded cheeks to the wanton spoil Of Phoebus' burning kisses: such a pother, As if that whatsoever god, who leads him, Were slyly crept into his human powers, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon |
