"Roundabout" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Joseph Zimmer had had a long and roundabout journey. A fortnight before he had worn the uniform of a British major-general. As such he had been the inmate of an expensive Paris hotel, till one morning, in grey tweed clothes and with a limp, he had taken the Paris-Mediterranean Express with a ticket ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... under the strictest law of cause and effect. The first effect of losing one's fortune, for instance, is humiliation; and the effect of humiliation, as we have just seen, is to make one humble; and the effect of being humble is to produce Rest. It is a roundabout way, apparently, of producing Rest; but Nature generally works by circular processes; and it is not certain that there is any other way of becoming humble, or of finding Rest. IF a man could make himself humble to order, ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... the mine by daylight. Every care had to be taken to satisfy the shareholders that no stranger was in sight, and the last boy was compelled to keep a vigilant look-out while the others were descending, and then to make his way to the opening by a roundabout route, exercising a vigilance that would have puzzled an army ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... Widower,' is 'a very clever sketch, but as a novel is rather drawn out.' 'The Roundabout Papers' make very pleasant reading. In one 'he compares himself to a pagan conqueror driving in his chariot up the Hill of Coru, with a slave behind him to remind him that he is only mortal.' In 1863, suddenly, Thackeray ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... it!" said The Chobb. "I hate roundabout stories. I am a gentleman. Was it a joke or not? Will you pay me a good ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... armour, his youthful agility, and his indomitable pluck. By a deft movement of his legs he caused Bill to come down on his back, and fell upon him with all his weight plus that of the Crusader. Annoyed at this, and desperately anxious to escape before the house should be alarmed, Bill delivered a roundabout blow with his practised fist that ought to have driven in the skull of his opponent, but it only scarified the man's knuckles on the Crusader's helmet. He tried another on the ribs, but the folds of chain-mail rendered that abortive. Then the ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... a passage at the close of the 'Roundabout Paper' No. 23, 'De Finibus,' in which a sense of the ebb of life is very marked; the whole paper is like a soliloquy. It opens with a drawing of Mr. Punch, with unusually mild eye, retiring for the night; he is putting out his high-heeled ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... she liked and gave a pleasant picture of his party's ruin, the critical condition of public affairs: he was as yet clearly closed to contrition or shame. The pilgrim from Paris, before Miriam's entrance, had not, in shaking hands with him, made even a roundabout allusion to his odd "game"; he felt he must somehow show good taste—so English people often feel—at the cost of good manners. But he winced on seeing how his scruples had been wasted, and was struck with the fine, jocose, direct turn of his kinsman's conversation with the young actress. ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... could give me little information about the river. The old channel had filled with silt, and the river was diverted into a roundabout course little more than a creek in width, then spread over whole delta. The widely spread water finally collected into an ancient course of the Colorado, known as the Hardy or False Colorado. As nearly as I could learn no one from Yuma had been through this new channel beyond ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... this to his friend in a rather roundabout fashion, for he had not found Peters on the shore, as he had expected, and where he could have stated his errand in a few words. He had found instead that all the village was astir with the news of a tea-meeting, that was to take place that afternoon in the chapel, and that Peters, ...
— A Sailor's Lass • Emma Leslie
... first morning, was rather a roundabout one, by way of Lindhoek, taken, as explained by our guide, because it was less exposed to enemy observation than a much shorter road which we used when moving at night. When a short distance out from town, we passed in front of one of ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... wasted. If a man wants reforms he goes armed with a vote to the ballot box and even to the Legislature with that power of the vote behind him; but if women want these things they are asked to take the long, questionable, roundabout route of personal influence, of petition, of indirection. Women have accomplished a great deal in this way but it has required a long time.... Take, for instance, one class of work—the establishment ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... how thin his face was and what a bony frame spread out under the roundabout jacket that he appeared already to have outgrown. And he concluded this must be the new operator, Bucks, who for some days had been expected ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... of one of the stalled automobiles and there were noted down and, whenever possible, translated by two soldier- operators, who perched on wooden stools among batteries and things, for which I know not the technical names. The spitty snarl of the apparatus filled the air for rods roundabout. It made you think of a million gritty slate pencils squeaking over a million slates all together. We were permitted to take up the receivers and listen to a faint scratching sound which must have come ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... as mine! how know you that, Herbert?" said his cousin, with a smile, which would have deceived the most penetrating eye. "Are you not presuming too far in your inspection of my heart, seeking in rather a roundabout way, to ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... silent for a moment, and then by a common instinct turned together into a narrow trail, scarce wide enough for two, that diverged from the straight practical path before them. It was indeed a roundabout way home, so roundabout, in fact, that as they wandered on it seemed even to double on its track, occasionally lingering long and becoming indistinct under the shadow of madrono and willow; at one time stopping blindly before ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... your wife to write to me when you have anything to ask. It is a roundabout wheedling sort of thing which I should not have credited you with. I never choose to write to a woman on matters of business. As to my supplying you with a thousand pounds, or only half that sum, I can do nothing of the sort. My own family drains me to ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... whimsical and roundabout Mr. Jaffry knew everything about everybody in Whitewater. She was further aware that he had, undoubtedly, reasons of his own for questioning her. He was always asking questions, anyway. Worse than a Chinaman. And for some reason—perhaps ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... hotel very slowly, and having taken a somewhat roundabout course it was not until an hour after I had left the restaurant that I arrived there. I went into all the public rooms, and looked for my friend. But he was nowhere visible. Then, feeling somewhat uneasy, I went to his bedroom door, and was much relieved at hearing ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... very apt in looking out the trains, and eventually it was Agnes who discovered the changes that would have to be made. She would have to go first to Victoria, and then she would have to drive from Victoria to Waterloo, and this seemed so complicated and roundabout that she decided to drive all the way in a hansom. Dulwich and Wimbledon could not be more than ten ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... the Pavilion d'Armenonville swirled round the unfortunate painter so violently that he felt as if he were on a roundabout at a fair. He feared that the siren must hear the pounding of his heart. To think that he had dreaded paying two louis! Two louis? Why, it would have been a bagatelle! Speechlessly he laid a fortune on the salver. With a culminating burst of recklessness he waved four francs towards Jules, and remarked ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... it is said, that the first awakening thought of those who die is of the tremendous happening that has come upon them. So it was with Sandy. For a while he lay quite still, with his hands folded, and a strange awful brooding, almost as though of fear, breathlessly wrapping his heart roundabout. But it was not for a long time that he lay thus, for suddenly, like a second flash of lightning in the gathering darkness of a cloud, the thought shot through him that no friends had come to meet and to greet him as they had come to meet and greet these others. Why had his wife not come ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... might be dead, and curiosity, if no stronger motive, induced him to inquire into his condition; but he took the precaution to reach the path by a roundabout way, and approach the chasm as though he had just come from his house. When he reached the abyss, he found Mr. Fairfield had risen, and was trying to climb up the rocks. He was groaning and taking on as though he had ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... failure, because the rival town had certain foreshore rights, and had employed those to lay a tramway from their hustling centre; and as the rival town was on the main line, the majority of visitors preferred going by the foreshore route in preference to the roundabout branch line route, which was somewhat handicapped by the fact that this, too, connected with the branch line at Tolness, a little town which had done great work in the War, but which did not attract the tourist ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... that the place was to be attacked that night and that we were there to defend it. Selecting a strong position on a hill, a camp was started, but no fires were allowed after dark. Vigilance was not relaxed, but no enemy appeared, and on the following day we went on a scout through all the region roundabout without encountering a single armed confederate. The air was full of rumors. Nobody could tell their origin. Fitzhugh Lee was a few miles away, coming with a big force. "Stonewall" Jackson had started on another raid, and ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... she had taken such a roundabout way to communicate! It was to this end she had purposely led the conversation by adroit stages, studying him gaily, impatiently or maliciously, as she marked the effect of her words upon him. All alive, she stepped back laughing; elate, she put her arms about a branch of the rose-bush and ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... contrary, on reaching the same place he perceived that a new route had been made, and that instead of a roundabout way of approach, as in the past, the house was now in a straight line from the point where he was looking at it, it would be possible to estimate approximately the number of minutes which he could gain on the time employed in the past, by ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... silly little dancer who could not get out of the plastic block; but I am moving forward little by little, even if I have to take three steps roundabout ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... out, however, I had gone to work in a roundabout way. Taking O'Sullivan into my confidence, I told him it had not been my parents that I had been anxious about (God forgive me!), but somebody else whom he had seen and ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... all, the mountain sheep had vanished into the unknown, taking his little tracks with him, so we had to go back in a roundabout way, without sheep, without ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... up the word, and spoke:—"It appears wonderful to me, that ye make such a long roundabout in coming to a resolution; and probably ye are frightened for him. We are here five kings, and none of less high birth than Olaf. We gave him the strength to fight with Earl Svein, and with our forces he has brought the country under his power. But if he grudges each ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... temperature did not matter. He was bound for the old claim on the left fork of Henderson Creek, where the boys were already. They had come over across the divide from the Indian Creek country, while he had come the roundabout way to take a look at the possibilities of getting out logs in the spring from the islands in the Yukon. He would be in to camp by six o'clock; a bit after dark, it was true, but the boys would be there, a fire ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... and discovered him at Nairobi! A young assistant district superintendent of police, who will rise in the service, I hope, before long, discovered a woman—who was jealous of a man—who was just then making love to the dusky damsel particularly favored by Hassan; and in that roundabout way we discovered that Hassan intended to take a trip very soon toward Mount Elgon, where, if you please, he was to take part in Professor Schillingschen's ethnological studies. On condition that he held his tongue until I gave him leave to talk, I promised ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... and patiner in French, mean propelling oneself on iron runners over ice, and nothing else; whereas in German there is only the clumsy compound-word Schlittschuh-laufen, which means "to run on sledge shoes," and in Russian it is called in equally roundabout fashion Katatsa-na-konkach, or literally "to roll on little horses," hardly a felicitous expression. As a rule people have no word for expressing a thing which does not come within their own range of experience; for ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... female. Yet in this historical study, the eighteenth century setting relieves the effect and one does not feel that the author is speaking with that direct earnestness one encounters in "Pendennis" and "The Newcomes." The many essays, of which the "Roundabout Papers" are a type, exhibit almost exclusively the sunnier and more attractive side of Thackeray's genius. Here and there, in the minor fiction of this experimental period, there are premonitions of he more ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... going to follow it. It is good. When Carnival is over I will go away, and perhaps get to Saracinesca by a roundabout way, so that no one will know where I am. Will ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... great enemy, the principal war-chief of the Apaches. But the truth was, the camps of the scout and the redskins were not so widely separated as Mickey and Fred believed. He had selected the best site possible, and took a roundabout course in going to or from it, as he had more means given him of concealing his trail. There were places where the soil was so rocky and stony that the foot left not the slightest imprint of ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... intensely grateful, there was no mistake about that, and already the little girl felt rewarded for the sacrifice she had made. Bob was evidently anxious too to get off, as he was still carrying the packages he had been to fetch, having come by this very roundabout way from the town, and he was anxious, too, to get 'miss' home, for fear of her being 'scolded' through what she had so kindly ...
— Miss Mouse and Her Boys • Mrs. Molesworth
... eighteen years, with dead calms and head winds, with storms and back-puttings, with pirates and mutinies, with food and water lacking, with only God and my purpose for friend! I have touched at the court of Portugal and at the court of Spain, and, roundabout way, at the court of England, and at the houses of the Doges of Venice and of Genoa. They all kept me swinging long at anchor, but they have never given me a furthering wind. Eighteen years going to India! But why do I say eighteen? The Lord put me forth from landside ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... same kind that we are inflicting Affectedly gentle and unusually roundabout opening Carry a scene through in virtue's name and vice's mask Cordiality of an extreme relief in leaving Dark-eyed Renee was not beauty but attraction Decline to practise hypocrisy Fine eye for celestially directed consequences is ever haunted Fretted by his relatives he cannot be much ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... at length, almost in a whisper, "this is like a dream I once had, of going down and down a long roundabout road, inside the earth, down and down, to the heart of a place full of the dead—the ground black with death, and ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... drollest things, and takes the most amusing, roundabout way of intimating whatever he does not care to say openly. For example, when he wished the King to understand that the Count de Marsan, brother of M. Legrand, had attached himself to M. Chamillard, the then Minister, he took the following ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... the new week, Agnes left London on her way to Ireland. As the event proved, this was not destined to be the end of her journey. The way to Ireland was only the first stage on a roundabout road—the road that led to ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... the big-riffle crossing was this way"—it is the dying Bledsoe, of course, who is being quoted. "The man they sent to the mill with the message did a lot of loose talking on his way back after he gave in the message, and in this roundabout way the word got to me at my house on the Eden's Swamp road soon after dinnertime. Now I had always got along fine with both of the Stackpoles, and had only friendly feelings toward them; but maybe there's ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... mines, but the natives did not know the English or Greek names for the metals found there. Even after considerable questioning by the roundabout "Hanlon to Geck to the Guddus back to Geck back to Hanlon" method, he still ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... in the one-eyed butler: "our minister is a good minister, an' speaks roundabout as such: but the short is, that my master is dead, ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... with the method which leads to such results, and threatens to destroy all our missionary zeal. Hence I proceed to test the value of the method itself, even though it is commonly called "the historical method" by those who adopt it. If we can bear a somewhat roundabout way of treating the subject, we shall gain a new and valuable light upon our ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... forth in a spontaneous manner to see who I am and look at the bicycle, he pays me a ceremonious visit at the chapar-khana half an hour later. In this visit he is preceded by his farrash, and he walks with a magnificent peacock strut that causes the skirts of his faultless roundabout to flop up and down, up and down, in rhythmic accompaniment to his steps. Apart from his insufferable conceit, however, he tries to make himself as agreeable as possible, and after tea and cigarettes, I give him and the people a tomasha, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... beats anything we have to grumble about in England. At night the temperature went down to 65 deg., and the brilliant summer weather broke up suddenly in a fierce thunderstorm. For a time every object roundabout would be blotted out by inky blackness, and for the next two or three minutes the lowering angry clouds would pulsate with dazzling light that leaped upward like life-blood from the throbbing heart of the storm. Each thundering peal was followed by a momentary lull, and ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... that winter was by roundabout methods. I occasionally wrote my brother that I was wallowing in wealth, always inclosing a letter to Gertrude Edwards with instructions to remail, conveying the idea to her family that I was spending the winter ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... sweetheart entered the castle, which was now theirs, and held their wedding; and all the kings roundabout, who had been in the troll's debt, and were now out of it, came to the wedding, and saluted the youth as their emperor, and he ruled over them all, and kept peace between them, and lived in his castle with his beautiful empress in great joy and magnificence. ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... me down. I hoped they would attach themselves to me, and meant to lead them a fine dance as a blind for Henriette, who, meanwhile, would have crossed to Lyons and gone south to Marseilles. The Riviera is a longer and more roundabout road to Turin, but it was open, and I hoped unimpeded. What do ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... roundabout way which threatened long detention. In a minute or two Buckland had gathered enough to interrupt her with ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... rows of splendid gum-trees, for any distance, as it became hidden by the high sandhills. I was very reluctant to cross, on account of the frightfully boggy bed of the creek, but, rather than travel several miles roundabout, I decided to try it. We got over, certainly, but to see one's horses and loads sinking bodily in a mass of quaking quicksand is by no means an agreeable sight, and it was only by urging the animals on with stock-whips, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... be committed to their hands. With a small force, complete in itself, at the disposal of such men, more could be effected at the moment for the honour and interests of the country than by long and roundabout despatches, passing through so many hands that one fool in authority nullifies all, as a bad link in an otherwise good chain renders the whole useless. Omitting the other portions of the correspondence, the following letter from Major-general D'Aguilar, dated Hong-Kong, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... possible that the young man had just arrived and was fatigued by the trials and perils of his trip, for he must have come by some roundabout way; and very likely he felt nervous and uneasy in the midst of people who were loyal to the government and the Union. Captain Passford decided to say nothing more to his nephew at present as to the occasion and the manner of his ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... formal health-drinking ceremony over, from within Paulina's house and from shacks roundabout, women appeared with pots and pails, from which, without undue haste, but without undue delay, men filled tin cups and tin pans with stews rich, luscious, and garlic flavoured. The feast was on; the Slav's hour ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... beginning to grizzle at the temples. He was an extremely quiet fellow, and the people of the inn remarked that he gave very little trouble, though he had been at Weissenstein nearly a week. He had told the landlord that he was going to Switzerland, but that he liked roundabout ways, and was loitering along the road, as the season was not yet far enough advanced for a certain ascent which he meditated. He had nothing with him but a knapsack, a coil of rope, and a weather-beaten ice-axe, besides one small book, which he read whenever ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... writing my weekly story: one of those things with a He and a She in it. He was Reginald, a fine figure of a man. She was Dorothy, rather a dear. I was beginning in a roundabout sort of way with the weather, and the scenery, and the birds, and how Reginald was thinking of the spring, and how his young fancy was lightly turning to thoughts of love, ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... better to be caught at once, than to have our gills torn by wriggling off the hook the twenty times, to be caught at last. It is better to walk straight into the net than to fatigue ourselves by coming to it in a roundabout way. A Nova-Scotian once rallied a Down-Easter on the famous wooden hams. 'Yaas,' was the reply, 'and they say that one of you actilly ate one and didn't know the difference.' Well, it is better to swallow our ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... building castles in the air, and was rather glad to get rid of me. It was a dark night when I bade her good-bye, and taking with me, as aides-de-camp, the three creditors who had given me so much trouble, we carried the balloon, with the car and accoutrements, by a roundabout way, to the station where the other articles were deposited. We there found them all unmolested, and I proceeded ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... easily enough happen in some roundabout way," said Estelle, "as long as Italo and Clotilde both knew it. They might let the cat out of the bag without intending to. He talks so much. Never knew such a talker. But what I want to know is how he knew ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... man, usually so bright and merry, now looked worried and ill at ease. Lucian—so much as he had seen of him—had always liked him better than Lydia, and was sorry to see him so downcast. Nor when he learned the reason was he better pleased. Clyne told it to him in a roundabout way. ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... to see you. A strange report was brought here this morning and I determined to mention it to you. You know what an old-fashioned, direct way I have of doing things; never choosing a roundabout road if I can take a straight one. This note was a line asking you to call upon me," she added, taking it from her lap, where it had been lying, and tossing it on to the table, whilst her hearer, his conscience rising up, ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... been deliberating how to begin. He felt that he could not show his bundle of clothes to so fair and fine a creature as this, whose manners were so soft and whose smile so pleasant. He would do anything first. He would try a roundabout way of making known his wishes, trusting to his own powers and the intelligence of the lady for a full and complete understanding. Just as he had come to this conclusion there was a timid ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee
... that roundabout, jovial friend of Burns, was Richmond Herald for many years, but he resigned his appointment in 1763, to become Adjutant and Paymaster of the Hampshire Militia. Grose was the son of a Swiss jeweller, who had settled in London. His "Views of Antiquities in England and Wales" helped to restore a taste ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... ass you have been! But I don't suppose you are worse than I was at Doncaster. I will have nothing to do with such people as Comfort and Criball. That is the sure way to the D——! As for telling Moreton, that is only a polite and roundabout way of telling the governor. He would immediately ask the governor what was to be done. You will see what I have done. Of course I must tell the governor before the end of February, as I cannot get the money in any other way. But that I will do. It does ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... at once. He found himself obliged to take a roundabout course which brought him there ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... the leisurely transports, but the writer, as a representative of the Smithsonian Institution, was furnished passage on the government vessel. With Manila as headquarters, collecting trips were made to various regions roundabout. Some of these places are described ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese
... by a roundabout, shaded way to the beach. By reason of long practice he gauged his stroll so accurately that by the time he arrived on the sandy shore the boat of the customs officials was rowing back from the steamer, which had been boarded and inspected according ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... a roundabout course, now across broad meadows, now treading green cart-tracks, now climbing some grassy upland, anon plunging into the shadow of lonely wood or coppice until the moon was down, until was a glimmer of dawn ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... or more and no cross lines of railroad existed to facilitate our passage, so it would be impossible for any one to have made the trip. The shortest rail lines are roundabout, via St. Joseph and Kansas City, so it will be apparent that I could not have been at the ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... pupils. The advancement will unquestionably be rapid, for it proceeds step by step, and one thing is founded upon another; the pupil learns every thing quietly, thoughtfully, and surely, without going roundabout, without any hindrances and mistakes to be unlearned. I never try to teach too much or too little; and, in teaching each thing, I try to prepare and lay the foundation for other things to be afterwards learned. I consider it very important not ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... induced to accept the seat of honor at the head of the table, impressed the squire considerably; and it was then he thought the time ripe for the introduction of a story about this matter of seats. The Duchess told him by all means to let them hear it, and he began, telling it in the most roundabout way, with twists and curves, and expeditions here and there to places and matters that had as much to do with the story as had the proverbs that he stuffed ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... it is not {17} surprising that Sir James Craig soon took umbrage at the language and policy of Le Canadien. At first he made his displeasure felt in a somewhat roundabout way. In the summer of 1808 he dismissed from the militia five officers who were reputed to have a connection with that newspaper, on the ground that they were helping a 'seditious and defamatory journal.' One of these officers ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... galling, you know," he added, "when a girl has a lot of things she wants to write to you and can't send a letter except by some roundabout, underhand way." ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... King's army who had made themselves notorious by their cruelty to Americans, seized Augusta. Brown had been tarred and feathered in Augusta just before the breaking-out of the Revolution, and he made the patriots of that town and of the country roundabout pay dearly for the indignities that had been heaped upon him on account of his loyalty to the Crown. He confiscated the property of the patriots, and issued an order banishing all Whig families beyond the ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... does not matter at all which road you follow. All highways, as the saying is, lead roundabout to Koshchei. The one thing needful is not to stand still. This much I will tell you also for your song's sake, because that was an excellent song, and nobody ever made a song in praise ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... rainy and wet, but towards evening the sky cleared up, and Carmen led little Frieda home from the school-house. On her return she took a roundabout path, and slackened her usually fleet steps to enjoy the fresh, balmy spring air. She passed into a lonely lane, bordered on either side with beautiful gardens, whose hedges were unfolding their first blossoms, filling the air with sweetest perfume. As she stooped ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... It wobbled a good deal, and the Kid came near falling sidewise off the last step before he could balance his burden. But he managed it, being the child of his parents and having a good deal of persistence in his makeup; and he went, by a roundabout way, to the stable with the grub-sack bending him double. Still it was not so very heavy; it was made bulky by about two dozen fresh-made doughnuts and a loaf of bread and a jar of honey and a glass of wild-currant jelly and a pound or so of raw, dried prunes which the Kid called ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... and made a wide circuit to avoid even approaching the table on her way to the kitchen. Not long afterward she was followed by her sister, who took a similar roundabout path, for Phoebe was quite as much in horror of drink ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... and eroded plain. The desert, a buff yellow where blue distance and black shadow and the purple of volcano spill have not stained it. The mountains, bronze and lavender, lifting scarred peaks to a quiet sky; a sky of turquoise blue. The Rio del Norte, a brown streak, forcing a difficult and roundabout course through ranges ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... the silent cypress aisles came shapes even me to scout, Mocking the lean flanks of my mare, my boy's patched roundabout, And saying: 'Have these starveling boors, thy congregation, souls, That on their dull heads Heaven and thou pour ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... in his pocket and drew out a handful of salt, which he kept for just such times as this. He held it out toward Nanni and carefully and slowly backed away from the edge of the cliff, coaxing her to follow him. As she stepped forward, he stepped back, and in this way led her by a roundabout path down the farther side of the rocks to the place where the other goats wore ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... homogeneous (in its way), and dignified, and enjoyed an exceptional measure of quietude. Perhaps it was too quiet, after some years of a balcony on a boulevard. And it is true that some of the big houses were vacant, and that some of the families roundabout went away too often and stayed away too long. An empty house is a dead house, and when doors and windows are boarded up you may say the dead house is laid out. Things were sometimes triste—the French for final condemnation. The exodus so long ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... Bengal Civil Service. He came to England with his cousin, William Makepeace Thackeray, for his education. He served with distinction in India, was knighted in 1841, the only occasion on which he returned to England. His cousin, Thackeray, in the 'Roundabout Papers' (Letts's Diary), paid a tribute to his chivalry and liberality. He married Marian Sophia Thompson in 1844, and died at Indore, October 28, 1861, leaving a family of three sons and six daughters."[354] A memorial-stone is raised in memory of him in the cloister ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... the date of that day. She said she had written before and torn the confession up ... it was so difficult to be just to him and true to herself.... It was a roundabout, involved, youthfully grandiloquent epistle in which Mildred announced that her love for Owen was dead, that nothing could ever resuscitate it; that she could not, would not, ever marry him, and that she had returned ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... had been said to make Mr Gordon fully comprehend the case. The men were dissatisfied. They had come in a roundabout way to the conclusion that some pecuniary concession, not mentioned in their bond, should come from the side of capital to that of labour. Whether wages, interest of capital, share of profits, reserve fund, they knew not ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood
... had on no spectacles. He was dressed in a green baize roundabout and faded blue overalls, worn sadly at the knee. But I saw at once that he was of my height, five feet four and a half. He had black hair, worn off by his hat. So have and have not I. He stooped in walking. So do I. His hands were large, ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... place with a will, and thought, this is the life for me. Emboldened by his question I opened my mind in a roundabout way as to helping him all summer on the farm. He saw my drift at once and told me he could not hire me, nor any other boy; he must have a man if anybody, and that I must ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... found in various parts of Europe in spring, and are connected with a procession that appears to be an ecclesiastical adaptation of a pre-Christian lustration-rite.{12} The great name of Mannhardt lends weight to this theory, but it seems a somewhat roundabout way of accounting for the facts. Perhaps an explanation of the "horsiness" of the day might be sought in some pre-Christian ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... told that French is the language the thieves talk, and I solemnly believe it. That's one thing. Now, here's another. You'll excuse me, my dear fellow. In course you know more than I do, but I must say that you have got sometimes a very roundabout way of coming to the pint. I mean no offence, and I don't blame you. It's all along of the company you have kept. You are—it's the only fault you have got—you are oudaciously fond of hard words. Don't let the young uns larn 'em. That's all I have to say, and we'll talk of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... called), you are fully competent to detect for yourselves. GOD'S strictness in punishing sin, as in the case of Moses[262];—the efficacy of repentance, as in the case of Ahab[263];—the sure answer to prayer, (to forgotten prayer, it may be!) as in the case of Zacharias[264];—the seemingly roundabout methods of GOD'S providence, (as in the case of Abraham,) yet conducting inevitably to a blessed issue at the last;—the rewards of obedience[265];—the faithfulness of the Divine promises;—the boundless ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... the Wanderer," answered the boy, "and I have come, through many travels and by roundabout ways, from my former home in a far corner of the ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... went on, examining the tint of the powder, "for it isn't the 'Rachel' shade that brunettes use. Now up to that point everything had been going nicely, but then and there I spoiled it. Moved by I know not what folly, I wrote her a yet more roundabout letter, which, however, was very pressing. In attempting to fan her flame I kindled myself—for a spectre—and at once I ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... conservative," sceptic, and philosopher, deeply lamented on his death alike by the people of CHENG, and by his friend or correspondent Confucius of Lu state. The Chinese diplomats then, as now, had the most roundabout ways of pointing a moral or delicately insinuating an innuendo. On arrival at the outskirts of the capital, instead of building the usual dais for formalities and sacrifices, Tsz-ch'an threw up a mean hut for the accommodation of his mission, ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... way. But presently, in creeping over the big crags, they found a path at their feet which wound in and out among the masses of rock and was quite smooth and easy to walk upon. As the path gradually ascended the mountain, although in a roundabout way, ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... foolish thing for me to listen to any more of such monstrous flattery. Or perhaps you are satirical and take this roundabout way of telling me that I'm human like yourself. I'm going down to supper, for I prefer Mr. Burleigh's toast to ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... managed well to have got hold of these passes, and they certainly put the matter on safer ground. However, I should find some difficulty in explaining how I came to show hospitality to two persons who, by a strangely roundabout course, had made their way from Arthenay. It is a little unfortunate that your sister kept her own name. Had it been otherwise, I might have said that her husband was captain of one of my ships. But he is unfortunately not unknown here. After Martin's flight from Nantes, a claim was ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... military police made us take a roundabout road, and the driver lost his way. Of course a limber is not quite the vehicle you would select for comfort, especially over roads that are stony or pave. The German flare lights could be clearly seen all the way, and they seemed to be on three sides of us. A most brilliant and interesting ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... the other hand, the present day critics are really in earnest for a constitution, then I am unable to understand why they believe that this cannot be secured under the Republic but must be obtained in a roundabout way by means of a monarchy. In my view the real hindrances to the adoption of a constitution at the present day in China are the existing conditions, viz. the attitude of the officials and the traditions and intellectual standards of the people. But these hindrances ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... overwhelmed by the flood of applicants that poured in on him day and night. Their captains and colonels waylaid him on the streets to urge the immediate acceptance of their services, and he was obliged to seek his office by roundabout ways to avoid the flood of importunities. It is said that before the Confederate government left Montgomery for Richmond, about three hundred and sixty thousand volunteers, very many of them from the best element of the Southern population, had offered ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... vegetables to a wholesaler, who perhaps buys from other farmers and then sells small quantities of them to the grocer for sale to the consumer. This plan, as will readily be seen, is more involved than either No. 1 or No. 2, but a still more roundabout route is that of plan No. 4. In this case, for instance, the farmer sells his vegetables to a canning factory, where they are canned and then sold to the grocer, who sells them in this form to the consumer. ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... won't make a thoroughfare of the run, at any price. For instance, when Baxter and Donovan delivered that well-timber in the Quondong Paddock, the other day, they were n't five mile from the main road—and a gate to go through—but he made them come right back by the station; thirty mile of a roundabout; and their cheques were n't forthcoming till they did it. No, Priestley; to ask Montgomery is simply to get a refusal; and to argue with him is ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... riding back, though not directly in front of the spectators. They preferred making a roundabout thing of it, so that their fallen faces might not be too ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... go," Mrs. Brook answered with one of her roundabout approaches to decision. "He IS too great an idiot. She was here an hour ago, and if ever a woman ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... revenge on the spy by making his task as difficult as she could. If she detected him in time lying in wait in the bushes by the front of the Pavilion, she would slip out at the back, and reach her favourite haunts by a roundabout path screened by yew hedges, while he imagined her to be still indoors. He was really such an unsuspicious spy that there was hardly any fun in baffling him. She had done so with the usual success one hot afternoon, and was making for a tree under which she often sat. It had great ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... roundabout, roly-poly of humanity was to settle the servant question finally, within a day or two. "Larrikin" had been visiting foreign parts at Wandin, towards the west, and returning with a new wife, stolen from one "Jacky Big-Foot," presented her ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... of accord in our conclusions," said Miss Leonora; "as for Dora, she comes to the same end by a roundabout way. After what my brother has ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... any promise of decency and comfort, and stayed off Central Avenue and away from its loitering groups of range dwellers who might know him. That is why he hired a horse and rode early and alone to the fair grounds on the opening day, and avoided, by a roundabout trail a certain splotch of gray-white against the brown of the prairie, which he knew instinctively to be the camp of the Flying U outfit, which had made good time and were located to their liking near the river. Andy felt a tightening of the chest when ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... By various roundabout means, I have recently received letters from him. His last, dated in April, and brought to a neutral port by a shipmaster whom he implicitly trusts, has reached me since the previous chapters were written. It covers six pages of foolscap, and is written in defiance of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... be able to do you some service. It occurred to him that he might learn where my grave was and let you know. Nothing further was in his thoughts then—or until he happened to draw out a piece of unexpected information in a roundabout way. ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... old. But I do not propose to go over the whole list here; I only wish to indicate that the absorption is well commenced abroad, and that probably her poet will at last reach America by way of those far- off, roundabout channels. The old mother will first masticate and moisten the food which is still ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... he did not count much on what information might come from the head clerk. Blossom, in the mind of Dr. Lambert, was a person of not much strength of character. There had been certain episodes in his life, information as to which had come to the physician in a roundabout way, that did not reflect on him very well; though, in truth, he felt that the man was weak rather ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... and obliterated every human impulse seeking expression. Man's existence is proof enough that nature was not altogether unpropitious, but offered, in an unlooked-for direction, some thoroughfare to the soul. Roundabout imperfect methods were discovered by which something at least of what was craved might be secured. The individual perished, yet not without having segregated and detached a certain portion of himself capable of developing ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... eloquent in her favorite's praise before they reached home. Nan thought her first Dunport acquaintance very pleasant, and frankly said so. This seemed to be very gratifying to her aunt, and they walked toward home together by a roundabout way and in excellent spirits. It seemed more and more absurd to Nan that the long feud and almost tragic state of family affairs should have come to so prosaic a conclusion, and that she who had been the skeleton of her aunt's ancestral ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Switzerland," continued the young girl. "We went to Geneva. We were almost dead when we arrived, because we had to go a very roundabout way to avoid Paris; we could not go to Paris, because we were afraid of seeing the Republic. It was very hot in Geneva. No place ever was so hot before. We lay on the sofa for three days, and then we were strong enough ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... broadly speaking, have sold the ships to Germany. You see, according to the charter of the shipbuilding company, these vessels cannot be sold to any foreign government without the consent of Downing Street. That is the reason why the affair had to be conducted in such a roundabout manner." ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... on the bolt which kept them from entering the passage from the corridor of the Chateau Larouge and thus forcing them to take a long, roundabout journey to "The Twisted Arm," had not counted on their shortening that journey by entering the passage from Fouchard's tavern, doing, in fact, the very thing which he had declared to Margot he himself had done. And lo! here they were, howling ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... all the virtues, and most of the faults, of England. Any one who reads and understands him understands England. This method of studying Shakespeare by reading him has perhaps gone somewhat out of vogue in favour of more roundabout ways of approach, but it is the best method for all that. Shakespeare tells us more about himself and his mind than we could learn even from those who knew him in his habit as he lived, if they were all alive and all talking. To learn what he ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... don't see how you can do it, unless Gray comes down, and I think I have now in my pocket something that will make him come down." And Jack's face brightened at the thought of the slip of paper in the pocket of his roundabout. ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... with Sam. Either Plimsoll had not passed the peaks, was in the woods, or he had come and gone. Something told Sandy this last had not occurred. Travel beyond the peaks must have been hard and slow and roundabout for Plimsoll while he had tangented fast for ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... companion. Indeed, I owe to him much of what little I have learned, for he is a wonderful linguist, being able to read Hebrew and Greek about as easily as Latin or English. He is at Oxford now—at least he was there when I last heard of him. Moreover, it was through the Hutchins' family, in a roundabout way, that your mother, Olly, came to learn to write such letters as you have got so carefully stowed away there in ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne |
