"Abortive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Squire Hamley's property; that very piece for which he had had the Government grant, but which now lay neglected, and only half-drained, with stacks of mossy tiles, and lines of up-turned furrows telling of abortive plans. It was not often that the squire rode in this direction now-a-days; but the cottage of a man who had been the squire's gamekeeper in those more prosperous days when the Hamleys could afford to preserve, ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... become unfruitful. But he is a stunted, useless Christian, with all the sap and nourishment of his soul given to his worldly position, and his religion is a poor pining growth, with blanched leaves and abortive fruit. How much of Christ's field is filled with ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Juan Capistrano is naturally mentioned in this place, partly because of the abortive start made there a year before, and partly because its actual foundation constituted the next noteworthy incident in Junipero's career, this mission is, in strict chronological order, not the sixth, but the seventh ...
— The Famous Missions of California • William Henry Hudson
... end, and designed to be 2000. paces long and 100. paces broad, betwixt the River Altmull, falling into the Danube above Ratisbone, and the River Rott, passing at Nurenberg, and thence running into the Main, and so into the Rhine. But yet this also proved abortive, though there was great appearance of ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... utterly defeated, and the hopes thereby of securing himself from his just reward for the dishonest act he had committed in appropriating a large sum of his niece's property, was rendered abortive. What course did the old man pursue in this dilemma? He did that which he should have done years before, as soon as he awoke to the realization of the crime he had committed; he went to Florinda, confessed his dishonesty, and begged her to spare his gray hairs from dishonor. She ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... annals of our Union, contemplated by the founders of the constitution, by the grant to the House of Representatives of the power to impeach the President of the United States; but they are aware that the resort to that expedient might, in the present condition of public affairs, prove abortive. They see the irreconcilable difference of opinion and of action between the legislative and executive departments of the government is but sympathetic with the same discordant views and feelings among the people. To them alone the final ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... not grown much, having always a childish aspect, although the features of his face were those of a man. They were, however, hard and badly cut. He seemed incomplete, abortive, only half finished, and disquieting as a mystery. He was a close impenetrable being, in whom there seemed always to be some active, dangerous ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... experience of Dutch promises in the past was not reassuring; so, while negotiating at the Hague for a renewal of the Dutch alliance, he at the same time felt his way at Stockholm towards a commercial treaty with Sweden. His Swedish mission proved abortive, but, as he had anticipated, it effectually accelerated the negotiations at the Hague, and frightened the Dutch into unwonted liberality. In May 1673 a treaty of alliance was signed by the ambassador of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... have been made to raise the young grizzlies, but these have all been abortive, the animals proving anything but agreeable pets. As soon as grown to a considerable size, their natural ferocity displays itself, and their dangerous qualities usually lead to the ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... communicating more than the general fact of a robbery. She now related the case more circumstantially; and both were struck with it, as at this moment a very heavy misfortune. Not only might her own perilous journey, and the whole purposes of the emperor embarked upon it, be thus rendered abortive; but their common enemies would by this time be possessed of the whole information which had been so critically lost to their own party, and perhaps would have it in their power to make use of themselves as instruments for defeating their ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... deportment of the King's showed that he had accurately measured the man, for Hopper was hardly competent for the place of a chief clerk. He was unable to write clearly in any language, because incapable of a fully developed thought upon any subject. It may be supposed that nothing but an abortive policy, therefore, would be produced upon the occasion thus suddenly offered. "'Tis a devout man, that poor Master Hopper," said Granvelle, "but rather fitted for platonic researches than for affairs ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... this was conclusive evidence of the soft and yielding nature of the great creature's food. But there were signs that at some period of the development of the whale it had possessed a double row of teeth, because at the bottom of these upper sockets we found in a few cases what seemed to be an abortive tooth, not one that was growing, because they had no roots, but a survival of teeth that had once been perfect and useful, but from disuse, or lack of necessity for them, had gradually ceased to come to maturity. The interior of the mouth ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... taught. Not so Holbein. The devil want to snatch his soul, indeed! Nay, he never had a soul, but of the devil's giving. His misery to begin on his death-bed! Nay, he had never an unmiserable hour of life. The fiend is with him now,—a paltry, abortive fiend, with no breath even to blow hot with. He supplies the hell-blast with a machine. It is winter, and the rich man has his furred cloak and cap, thick and heavy; the beggar, bare-headed to beseech him, skin and rags ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... toward them was overbearing and sometimes insolent. They were regarded as members of an inferior race. And they would have been hardly human if they had not bitterly resented the conspiracy against their liberties embodied in the abortive Union Bill of 1822. There were real abuses to be remedied. Grave financial irregularities had been detected in the executive government; sinecurists, living in England, drew pay for services which they did not perform; gross favouritism existed in appointments to ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... that accompanied these words, the warder bowed and went. Jacques Collin clung wildly to this hope; but when he saw the doctor and the governor come in together, he perceived that the attempt was abortive, and coolly awaited the upshot of the visit, holding out his wrist for the doctor ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... Tourville papers, adding a list of the members of the Cassock—concluding by begging his majesty's permission to resign, unless the cabal, which had rendered his efforts for the good of the country and for his majesty's service in some points abortive, should be dismissed from his majesty's councils. In another letter to a private friend, who had access to the royal ear, Lord Oldborough named the persons, whom, if his majesty should do him the favour of consulting him, he should wish to recommend in the places of those who might be dismissed. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... If those designs abortive prove We've been so long in hatching, And cunning knaves are forced to move From home for fear of catching; The rabble soon will change their tone When our intrigues they see, And cry God save the Church and Throne, Then low, boys, ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... The day after the abortive attempt to extract a confession from the prisoners, the Governor, the consul, and I sat in council, I know not how long, with a view of prosecuting the search for the stolen goods. The sitting, considered in the light of a criminal ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... is impossible to express the abortive attempt at a bow which accompanied this salutation "I want to know if the minister 'll ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... to his originals, v. Schuster, Quomodo Plautus Attica exemplaria transtulerit; LeGrand, Daos, passim; Ostermayer, de hist. fab. in com. Pl.; Ritschl, Par. 271, etc. The efforts to distinguish Plautus from his models have so far been fragmentary and abortive and will not advance appreciably until a complete play that he adapted has been found. At any rate, the discussion has no real bearing on our subject, since we can consider only the plays as actually transmitted; their sources cannot ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... owing to their restricted area and therefore limited productivity, they were soon abandoned, or became mere bases for inland expansion. The little island of Cuttyhunk, off southern Massachusetts, was the site of Gosnold's abortive attempt at colonization in 1602, like Raleigh's attempt on Roanoke Island in 1585, and the later one of Popham on the eastern headland of Casco Bay. The Pilgrims paused at the extremity of Cape Cod, and again on ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... the Polish people and brought them to a full realizing sense of the necessity of radical political reform. But the shameful and hypocritical attitude of the neighboring sovereigns continued to render their every effort abortive. For another twenty-one years the wretched country struggled on, a victim of selfish foreign tutelage. Although both Frederick and Maria Theresa died in the interval, their successors proved themselves quite as willing to cooeperate with the implacable ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... the retinues that accompany most of the intellectuals: ushers, bearers, valets, extraneous tentacles and muscles, as it were, to replace the abortive physical powers of these hypertrophied minds. Porters almost invariably accompany them. There are also extremely swift messengers with spider-like legs and 'hands' for grasping parachutes, and attendants with vocal organs that could well nigh wake the dead. Apart from their controlling intelligence ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... that the higher powers favoured Dangerfield; and that, beside his absurd sentiment, not to say passion, which could not but be provoking, Puddock's complicity in the abortive hostilities of poor Nutter and the gallant O'Flaherty rankled in Aunt Becky's heart. She was, indeed, usually appeasable and forgiving enough; but in this case her dislike seemed inveterate and vindictive; and she ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... time, then, that Sedgwick had full possession of the town, and Gibbon and Howe had returned from their abortive attempt to turn the enemy's flanks, the sun was some two hours high. As the works could not be captured by surprise, Sedgwick was reduced to the alternative of ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... the Emperor first turned his attention in 777, when he was invited by the discontented emirs on the north of the Ebro to free them from the Caliph of Cordova. The next year saw his abortive march through the pass of Roncesvalles to the walls of Saragossa—an expedition immortalised in the Chanson de Roland, the earliest and most famous epic of the Charlemagne cycle, but fabulous from first to last, except in recording the fact that there was a certain ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. However that may be, Iyeyasu decided to persecute the Christians vigorously, if possible without losing the foreign trade. His successors were even more anti-Christian and less anxious for trade. After an abortive revolt in 1637, Christianity was stamped out, and foreign trade was prohibited in the most ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... party who had tried to sink a well had invariably been stopped by hard limestone rock in every place they had tried, and all their attempts to penetrate it by means of a cold chisel and pickaxe had proved abortive. The party which had been out with me searching for water had not seen the slightest sign which indicated its presence on the island: we had taken a spade with us, but wherever we dug had come down upon the solid rock. Under ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... Made by your own fair hands, I presume? You see, I'm quite a stranger to this quaint old town of yours, where half the houses look like churches, and all the men like the parsons and clerks belonging to them, taking a walk in their canonicals, with four-cornered hats on their heads—abortive attempts to square the circle, I conclude. Wonderful things, very. But when I get to Trinity, how am I to find the man I want, one Mr. Frank Fairlegh?" Here I took the liberty of interrupting the speaker, whom I had long since recognised ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... them, allowed them to regain their strength, and one or two victories over less powerful neighbours served to obliterate the memory of former humiliation and disaster; they flew to arms full of hope in the result, and once more drew down defeat upon their heads, being lucky indeed if their abortive rising led to nothing worse than the slaughter of their armies, the execution of their generals, and an increase in the amount of their former tribute. This was the fate that overtook Phraortes; the conqueror of the Persians, when confronted by the veteran troops of Assyria, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... of the fort was at last cleared of snow. It was now ready, waiting for the elements to render abortive in a few short hours the labour of many days. Julyman and Steve had spent the brief daylight in setting up a snow-break before the open sheds which housed the sleds and canoes. Oolak was at the quarters of the train dogs at ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... root in America, gained new vitality, and assumed an importance they had not possessed in England for many centuries. And, while for the moment the organization of the English colonies was not well suited to offensive war, as we may judge from the abortive efforts of Phips and Schuyler, this defect could be corrected. Arising, as it did arise, from a lack of unity among the colonies, it was even indicative of latent strength. From one angle, localism seems selfishness and weakness; from another, it shows the vigorous life of separate ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... patriotic spirit aroused by the military aggressions of France and the achievements of the British navy was strong, and revolutionary principles were seldom publicly professed. Some abortive projects of Irish conspirators in 1798 for co-operating with the corresponding society led to the appointment of a committee of the commons, which reported on the revolutionary societies in March, 1799. Bills were passed ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... speculations was soon seen. Deprived of Laird Lewis's personal and active superintendence, all his undertakings miscarried, and became either abortive or perilous. Without a single spark of energy to meet or repel these misfortunes, Godfrey put his faith in the activity of another. He kept neither hunters, nor hounds, nor any other southern preliminaries ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... TALL FESCUE-GRASS.—This in its wild state has been considered as a productive and nutritive grass; it grows best in moist places; but the seeds have been found in general abortive, and the grass consequently only to be propagated by planting the roots, a trouble by far too great to succeed to ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... recounted all that had passed the day before. He amused the engineer by the history of the single match, then his abortive attempt to procure ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... dear friend; I am at Besancon, while you thought I was traveling. I would not tell you anything till success should begin, and now it is dawning. Yes, my dear Leopold, after so many abortive undertakings, over which I have shed the best of my blood, have wasted so many efforts, spent so much courage, I have made up my mind to do as you have done—to start on a beaten path, on the highroad, as the longest but the safest. ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... prove insurmountable. In fine, there are few men who do not look back in secret to some period of their {p.226} youth, at which a sincere and early affection was repulsed or betrayed, or became abortive from opposing circumstances. It is these little passages of secret history, which leave a tinge of romance in every bosom, scarce permitting us, even in the most busy or the most advanced period of life, to listen with total indifference to a ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... up with ashen under-lip, to say that such a scheme, it seemed to him, must remain for ever abortive, unless ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... destructive even than the foreign, which might have defeated the whole movement. Ancient and modern history is replete with examples proceeding from conflicts between distinct orders, of revolutions attempted which proved abortive, of republics which have terminated in despotism. It is owing to the simplicity of the elements of which our system is composed that the attraction of all the parts has been to a common center, that every change has tended to cement the union, and, in short, that we have been blessed with such ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... had this enterprise been concerted, that at the very moment when it assumed a specific direction, the enemy was no longer enabled to render it abortive. As the march was now to be bent towards the Danube, notice was given for the Prussians, Palatines, and Hessians, who were stationed on the Rhine, to order their march so as to join the main body in its progress. At the same time directions were sent to accelerate ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... of the baptismal charge across the line of white posts, had been the first out of the redoubt on to the glacis in that abortive effort, living up to the bronze cross on his breast. He was one of the half dozen out of the score that had started to return alive. The psychology of war had transformed his gallantry; it had passed from simulation to reality, thanks to his established conviction that ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... of Ecuador to hold a session at the time appointed for that purpose, in January last, will probably render abortive a treaty of commerce with that Republic, which was signed at Quito on the 13th of June, 1839, and had been duly ratified on our part, but which required the approbation of that body prior to its ratification by the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... him on terra firma we both shook ourselves, sending an emerald spray flying in all directions; and then abortive attempts were made to dry Tibe with the handkerchiefs of the united party. A few hurried "Thank you's" were all I got from the Chaperon at the time, but on board "Lorelei" she had something more ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... their measures totally inadequate, and showing either ignorance of the state of the country, or want of sympathy for its sufferings. He affirmed that in the ruin which had fallen on the land, any attempt to levy rates would be abortive, and drive the people to desperation. The honourable and venerable member depicted the condition of the people with truthful eloquence, and he was no less correct in showing the shortcomings of the government schemes of relief. His speech was delivered in a faint voice, and with every ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... a man to ask the question: 'Why did my actions yesterday contradict my reason?' The reply to this question will nearly always be: 'Because at the critical moment I forgot.' The supreme explanation of the abortive results of so many efforts at self-alteration, the supreme explanation of our frequent miserable scurrying into a doctrine of fatalism, is simple forgetfulness. It is not force that we lack, but the skill to remember exactly what our reason would have us do or think at the moment itself. ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... early in May I once more went home to my own folk, in order that after this abortive first attempt at civic independence, I might finally lift the load of debt with which my efforts in Magdeburg had burdened me. An intelligent brown poodle faithfully accompanied me, and was entrusted to my family for food and entertainment as the only visible property I had acquired. ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... me with your 'Shepherds-tell-me' air and tone. Lead me to one of your garden-seats: out of hearing to Dr. Middleton, I beg. He mesmerizes me, he makes me talk Latin. I was curiously susceptible last night. I know I shall everlastingly associate him with an abortive entertainment and solos on big ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... are three horses and a mule, all four under saddle, with bridles on; these attached to the branches of a tree. There is no providence in this, but rather neglect. Since the purpose for which they were caparisoned has proved abortive, they remain so only from ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... BROOK FARM, an abortive literary community organised on Fourier's principles, 8 m. from Boston, U.S., by George Ripley in 1840; Nathaniel Hawthorne was one of the community, and wrote ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... thirteenth century, the University of Bologna was famous throughout the world, having at one time 12,000 students from all parts of Europe. These universities continued to exert a powerful influence until Catholicism triumphed over the abortive attempts at religious reform, and there settled down over the brilliant Italy of the Renaissance an unprogressive and anti-intellectual influence from which she has never ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... later a man's talents, and if not his talents, his tastes, appear through the mists of youth, and henceforth they lead him. Willy's efforts in society had resulted in abortive dinner- parties, his efforts in sport had been cut short by nerves, his efforts in dissipation had left him with a tolerably well-filled wardrobe, his efforts in love had brought him tears and a commonplace mistress, whom he kept in the necessaries of life in various lodging- houses. ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... round her, these unknown Brodricks, inaudibly stirred, with some unspoken, incomprehensible emotion in the men's gaze and in the women's touch. The big boy and girl shared it as they came forward in their shyness, with affectionate faces and clumsy, abortive encounters of the hand. ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... their leader; but little did he imagine it was of the finished nature it now proved to be. Any other than the present attempt, the vigilance and prudence of his experienced father, he felt, would have rendered abortive; but there was so much speciousness in the pleas that were to be advanced in furtherance of their assumed object, he could not but admit the almost certainty of ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... carried out. This unfortunate had repeatedly lost large sums of money, and, growing desperate, staked his all on a final chance. He lost; and, drawing his bowie-knife, in the heat of despair, rushed at the president of the table. A dozen arms arrested him, and rendered his intended assault abortive; nevertheless, the president coolly drew a revolver from under the cloth, and shot him dead. For a few minutes there was some attempt at disturbance, and some condemned, while others justified the act. But the body ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... father's house, and her very sharpness and prickly spiritualism were for the child's enduring good. Her attempts, however, to make Leam regard mamma in heaven as in any wise different from mamma on earth were utterly abortive. Leam's imagination could not compass the thaumaturgy tried to be inculcated. Mamma, if mamma at all, was mamma as she had known her; and if as she had known her, then she was unhappy and desolate, seeing what a wicked thing this was that papa had done. She clung to this point as tenaciously as she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... waving prairie grass for a long distance, and you find them not, and will be surprised when your western friend tells you that these are the voices of the prairie hens, miles away, holding their annual convention, the queer cuckooing not being loving sounds, but notes of war—abortive attempts at crowing, which the rival males set up as they prepare to do battle ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... is impossible not to be struck with the general similarity of motive, and of action, in the Boer operations from November to January in Cape Colony, from Stormberg to Dordrecht and thence to the Basuto boundary, and the dashing but militarily abortive raids to the rear of Lord Roberts' right flank while he was at Bloemfontein. As soon as the Dutch commandant in the latter instance settled upon {p.171} Wepener for the expenditure of his strength, he had not only secured that opportunity for ready retirement ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... paid a visit to the painter in his studio, an event to the honour of modern art comparable to the old stories touching Francis I. with Leonardo da Vinci and Philip IV. in the painting-room of Velazquez. This abortive miracle on canvas left on my mind, when seen in the studio, a very painful impression, and sound critics—Zahn and others—pronounce the subject as unpaintable, and the work most unfortunate. Overbeck had not the power possessed by the old masters ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... of some alleviation in no long time opened upon me; but this my usual ill fortune rendered abortive. The keeper once more made his appearance, and with his former constitutional and ambiguous humanity. He pretended to be surprised at my want of every accommodation. He reprehended in strong terms my attempt to escape, and observed, ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... instrumental in urging Macbeth to his fate for the mere love of mischief, and from a disinterested delight in deformity and cruelty. They are hags of mischief, obscene panders to iniquity, malicious from their impotence of enjoyment, enamoured of destruction, because they are themselves unreal, abortive, half-existences—who become sublime from their exemption from all human sympathies and contempt for all human affairs, as Lady Macbeth does by the force of passion! Her fault seems to have been an excess of that strong principle of self-interest and family aggrandisement, not amenable to the ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... destroy. It would take up a larger volume than this whole work is intended to be to set down all the contrivances I hatched, or rather brooded upon, in my thoughts, for the destroying these creatures, or at least frightening them so as to prevent their coming hither any more: but all this was abortive; nothing could be possible to take effect, unless I was to be there to do it myself: and what could one man do among them, when perhaps there might be twenty or thirty of them together with their darts, or their bows and arrows, with which they could shoot as true to a mark ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... father, who wrought faithfully in his behalf, his sentence was commuted, first to twenty, and then to twelve years in the gallies, or, as it is in Cuba, the chain-gang. His efforts to see Clara, in order to disabuse her mind of the belief of my death, was abortive; and she, after finishing her year as a novice, took the veil—and she is now a nun in the Ursuline Convent at Matanzas, while her noble brother is a slave, with felons, laboring with the cursed chain-gang in the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... the usual way without a nurse crop. But should the low places be such as to hold an excess of water at any time of the year under normal conditions for days in succession, even though it should not rise to the surface, the attempts to make alfalfa grow successfully on these will prove abortive. ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... to be cashiered. I suppose "he" (as Rogers calls everybody's husband) went out hunting with the idea of diverting his mind from dwelling on its loss. Abortive effort! ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... an eye-witness of what took place on the evening of the 31st of March in one of the principal meetings of the Royalists, which was held in the hotel of the Comte de Morfontaine, who acted as president on the occasion. Amidst a chaos of abortive propositions and contradictory motions M. Sosthenes de la Rochefoucauld proposed that a deputation should be immediately sent to the Emperor Alexander to express to him the wish of the meeting. This motion was immediately approved, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... aphonia, odynphagia, hemoptysis, wheezing, dyspnea, cyanosis, apnea, subjective sensation of foreign body. Croupiness in foreign body cases, as in diphtheria, usually means subglottic swelling. Obstructive foreign body may be quickly fatal by laryngeal impaction on aspiration, or on abortive bechic expulsion. Lodgement of a non-obstructive foreign body may be followed by a symptomless interval. Direct laryngoscopy for diagnosis is indicated in every child having laryngeal diphtheria without faucial membrane. (No anesthetic, general or local is needed.) In ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... and his aridity. Glantz the councillor thus saw the prize fished away before his eyes—those very eyes which he had already brought into an Accessit,[19] or inchoate state of humidity; this vexed him: and his mortification was the greater on thinking of his own pathetic exertions, and the abortive appetite for the prize which he had thus uttered in words as ineffectual as his own sermons; and at this moment he was ready to weep for spite—and 'to weep the more because he wept in vain.' As to Flacks, a protocol was immediately drawn up ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... that justice has not been rendered in its conclusions. We can only hope that really efficient commanders will be sent out with the expedition that is to be despatched in April or May next; if not, it will be abortive, as the others have been, and we shall never know what has become of Franklin. It appears that the news of Collinson's ships being on their return is unfounded. It was communicated from the United States, and has been contradicted; and for all we know to ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... infinitely wise Being make such glorious creatures for so mean a purpose? Can he delight in the production of such abortive intelligences, such short-lived reasonable beings? Would he give us talents that are not to be exerted? capacities that are never to be gratified? How can we find that wisdom which shines through all his ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... during the troublous times and who are now poor have no way of retrieving their losses, while those who are rich are unwilling to invest their money in industrial undertakings, fearing that another civil war may break out at any moment, since they take the recent abortive second revolution as their warning. In future, we shall have disquietude every few years; that is whenever the president is changed. Then our industrial and commercial condition will be in a still worse condition. If our industries are not developed, how can we expect ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... looking at myth in a more general way, as an allegory, picturing inner truths: "Alfred de Vigny has said that legend is frequently more true than history, because legend recounts not acts which are often incomplete and abortive, but the genius itself of great men and great nations. It is pre-eminently to the Gospel that this beautiful thought is applicable, for the Gospel is not merely the narration of what has been; it is the ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... for the exchange and comfortable support of prisoners, all of which have proved abortive, from the resolution of the British not to pay arrears, they have incurred, which amounts to near L300,000 sterling. Some measures, which will surprise them not a little, will be taken. I shall write particularly ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... vehemently, they hastened to calm it down by abandoning or modifying the measures through which it had been excited. The celebrated rescript of Count Beugnot,[7] on the observance of Sundays and religious festivals, ended in an abortive law which never came into operation. The offensive expressions of Count Ferrand, on introducing to the Chamber of Deputies the bill for the restitution of unsold estates to their old proprietors,[8] was loudly disavowed, not only in the speeches, but in the resolutions ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... certain of it. Of course they have been followed, but only in daylight, and then they are found to be on their ordinary business. But there is one of them who goes abroad at night; and all attempts at following him have proved abortive. He loses himself in the chapparal paths in spite of the spies. That is why I am certain he visits ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... Massachusetts to enter on such an undertaking so prolonged the discussion that the war was over before a decision was reached; but Connecticut seized the Dutch lands at Hartford, and Roger Ludlow, who had moved to Fairfield from Windsor after 1640, began an abortive military campaign of his own. The situation remained unchanged as long as the Dutch held New Netherland, and the region between Greenwich and the Bronx continued to be what it had been from the ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... was now brought up, and Carroll's brigade struck the rebels on the left, and doubled them back on the centre, capturing a great many prisoners and confusing and rendering abortive Hill's attack in front. Hill sent for his reserves to come up, and three rebel brigades were thrown against Carroll, who was supported by the remainder of French's division and a brigade from Humphrey's division ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... purpose by arms against the force which the United States brought to bear against it. Did they sustain it? Were their arms victorious? If they were, then their secession was an accomplished fact. If not, it was nothing more than an abortive attempt—a purpose unfulfilled. This, then, is simply a question of fact, and we all know what the fact is. They did not succeed. They failed to maintain their ground by force of arms—in other words, ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... for the living God. He prayed the simple prayer of trust at which the gate flies open for the believing soul to enter into the peace of God. He was born into the new life. The flower that had put forth its abortive buds for so many seasons, burst into full bloom at last. With the mighty joy in his heart, and the light of the immortal hope beaming upon him, he passed into the ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... him in the highest rank of English poets.... Enough has been quoted to show that the Essay on the Convention of Cintra was not an ephemeral production, destined to vanish with the occasion which gave it birth. If this were the case, the labour bestowed upon it was almost abortive. The author composed the work in the discharge of what he regarded a sacred duty, and for the permanent benefit of society, rather than with a view to any immediate results.'[5] The Bishop adds further these ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Statsmen and other wayes to reenter to his place, yet he was never able to effectuat it, and then he procured Mr. Wm. Ramsay his second sone to be made conjunct Clerk of Edr. Bot his death att Newcastell some few years after made the designe of this profitable place abortive. ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... conclusion with the following beautiful passage, in which the author alludes to the hopes that were raised at another great era of partial concession and liberality, that of the revolution of 1782, when, also, benefits were conferred which proved abortive because they were incomplete, and balm poured into the wound, where the envenomed shaft was yet left ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... know what to say to the public about this abortive Romance, though I know pretty well what the case will be. I shall never finish it. Yet it is not quite pleasant for an author to announce himself, or to be announced, as finally broken down as to his literary faculty. ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... little Ontario and the big Frontenac made their first trips from Kingston to York (now Toronto). The Frontenac was built at Finkles Point, Ernestown, eighteen miles from Kingston, by Henry Teabout, an American who had been employed in the shipyards of Sackett's Harbour at the time of the abortive British attack in 1813. She was about seven hundred tons, schooner rigged, engined by Boulton and Watt, and built at a total cost of $135,000. A local paper said that 'her proportions strike the eye very agreeably, and good judges have pronounced this to be the best piece of naval architecture ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... senior, died in 1831, leaving his estate so heavily encumbered, through extravagance and high living, that only the mill-farm was saved for John, the heir, an easy-going, unpractical man, with a turn for abortive devices. His brother Charles married soon afterwards, and with the help of his wife's money bought in most of Stowting Court, which, however, yielded him no income until late in life. Charles was a useful ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... inservient|, unsubservient; inept, inefficient &c. (impotent) 158; of no avail &c. (use) 644; ineffectual &c. (failure) 732; incompetent &c. (unskillful) 699; " stale, flat and unprofitable"; superfluous &c. (redundant) 641; dispensable; thrown away &c. (wasted) 638; abortive &c. (immature) 674. worthless, valueless, priceless; unsalable; not worth a straw &c. (trifling) 643 dear at any price. vain, empty, inane; gainless[obs3], profitless, fruitless; unserviceable, unprofitable; ill-spent; unproductive ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... once taken to render such an attempt abortive. Our pickets were doubled; Admiral Porter was notified, so that the river might be more closely watched; material was collected on the west bank of the river to be set on fire and light up the river if the attempt was ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... the Lords was thus rendered abortive. The books were restored to Curll, and the sale continued. But the device meanwhile had recoiled upon its author; the very danger against which he should have guarded himself had now occurred. How were the letters procured? Not till Curll was coming up for examination does it ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... afterthought. The man regarded his back for a moment, was struck with an idea, began an abortive gesture, sighed, gave it up, and went on also with ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... and the precautions of the Protector and Council had been commensurate. The projected Overton revolt in Scotland and the Wildman-Sexby plot in England having been brought to nothing, the Royalists had to act for themselves. Two abortive risings in March, 1654-5, exhausted their energy. One was in Yorkshire, where Sir Henry Slingsby and Sir Richard Malevrier appeared in arms, but were immediately suppressed. The other was in the West, and was more serious. On the night of Sunday, the 11th of March, a body ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... intellectual fireworks; but beyond the first casual remarks absolutely required of them, they had not a word to say to each other. Miss Armstrong managed cleverly enough to strike a little spark of epigram from the flinty dialogue. It flickered and went out. Knowles smiled politely at the abortive attempt; but at her first serious remark he shook his head, as much as to say, "My dear lady, this is a conundrum; I give it up," and finally turned to Katherine on his left. In fact, he monopolised her during the rest of dinner, much to the annoyance ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... receive her. However, in the drawing-rooms where she still appeared—and what were they but marriage markets?—one or two affairs did spring up—tentative approachments on the part of scions of wealth. They were destined to prove abortive. One of these youths, Pedro Ricer Marcado, a Brazilian, educated at Oxford, promised much for sincerity and feeling until he learned that Berenice was poor in her own right—and what else? Some one had whispered something in his ear. Again there was ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... sprouts or suckers to spring up since such a condition prevents the bearing of nuts. I followed his advice with my two Jones hybrids and removed all surplus sprouts. This resulted in more abundant flowers and some abortive involucres but still no nuts developed. In the spring of 1940, I systematically fertilized numerous pistillate flowers of these plants with a pollen mixture. On the branches so treated, a fairly good crop of nuts similar to those of the ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... what He once did, nor what He once suffered, but what He is now doing—and what He requires us to do. That is the pure, joyful, beautiful lesson of Christianity; and the fall from that faith, and all the corruptions of its abortive practice, may be summed briefly as the habitual contemplation of Christ's death instead of His Life, and the substitution of His past ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... of Longstreet to bring the enemy to an engagement outside of Knoxville proving abortive, the commanding General determined to close the campaign for the season, and to put his troops in as comfortable winter quarters as possible. This was found on the right or east bank of the Holston, near Morristown and the little ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... may depend that every step is taken to prevent the enemy from outflanking us and at the same time to secure our Retreat in case of need. The Enemy have made no move from Frog's Point.... I don't know how it is, but I believe their design to circumvent us this time will prove as abortive as the former ones. If we can but foil Genl Howe again, I think we knock him up for the Campaign. You ask if Genl Lee is in Health and our people feel bold? I answer both in the affirmative. His appearance among us has not contributed a little to the latter. ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... morality! 'Meagre minds,' mutters George Moore, and my gorge rises in stuttering rage to get action on them. Verily such morality as your ordinary conservative person professes has an organic basis: it has its seat in those vestiges of muscles that would still wag our abortive tails, and often do ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... the enemy, in more or less force, had been viewed practically every day, it had always been impossible to bring him to close quarters, and the policy of wearing out infantrymen's hearts, tempers, constitutions, and boots in abortive pursuits of mounted enemies was, and in the light of all that we now know still is, open to question, for a reference to the Times history of the war shows that all our wanderings and meanderings are summed up in very few sentences, the ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... the efforts do not succeed the minds of husband and wife are troubled by doubts and anxieties which are damaging to their intimate relationships. And, moreover, if this harmful restraint succeeds in preventing conception there eventuates the inevitable prevalence of sex excitement followed by abortive and half-realised satisfaction, and the enhanced risk of the man or woman yielding to outside ...
— Love—Marriage—Birth Control - Being a Speech delivered at the Church Congress at - Birmingham, October, 1921 • Bertrand Dawson
... when Charles Albert returned to Piedmont after three years' exile in consequence of the part he was suspected of having taken in the abortive revolution of 1821, one of his first acts was to obtain a nomination for young Cavour as page in the royal household. The pages were all inmates of the Military Academy, where the expense of their education was borne by the king after they received ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... be a better composer than Sir John Stevenson, to whom the prejudices of the world gave the palm; and he eagerly caught at the opportunity which the verses and vanity of Reddy afforded him, of stringing his crotchets and quavers on the same hank with the abortive fruits of Reddy's muse, and the ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... to thank the Hakim, but his heart was too full, and the indistinct sounds which accompanied his abortive attempts to reply induced the kind physician to desist from his premature endeavours at consolation. He left his new domestic, or guest, in quiet, to indulge his sorrows, and having commanded all the necessary preparations ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... of the town, it was as disorderly a square as could be found in all London. Royal suggestions, the labors of a learned committee especially appointed by James I. to decide on a proper system of architecture, and Inigo Jones's magnificent but abortive scheme had but a poor result. In Queen Anne's reign, and for twenty years later, the open space of the fields was daily crowded with beggars, mountebanks, and noisy rabble; and it was the scene of constant uproar and frequent riots. As soon as a nobleman's coach drew up before ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... influence upon human actions, and sometimes even determine them, by a process analogous to that of suggestion upon a hypnotized person, and this is so because of the tendency in every idea to resolve itself into action—an idea being simply an inchoate or abortive act. It was this notion that suggested to Fouillee his theory of idea-forces. But ordinarily ideas are forces which we accommodate to other forces, ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... undertaking my father determined if possible to surpass it. He wrote to Fiel of Paris and expected to be able to secure an objective of 4 feet diameter, exceeding that of the Lick Observatory by one foot, a hopeless and as it proved an utterly abortive design. He spent an entire year in New York after leaving Irvington examining the various possible locations for his new observatory. The requisites were nearness to the equator, an equable climate, elevation and a clear atmosphere. During this year my father heard ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... small area of about 1 inch. In this we found two pieces of the copper plug which stopped the hole in front of the bullet, together with a number of very minute fragments or flakes of lead; these proved that the extremely hollow projectile had broken up, and was rendered abortive almost immediately upon impact. ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... one from the other. But the past masters of the social art proclaim that "The Season" is dead, and we bow our heads in reverence. Yes, it is vanished, that focus of futilities, that wonderful Season, that phantasmagoria of absurdities, of abortive ambitions, over which a hundred humourists have made merry: it is dead, with its splendours and jubilations and processions—dead as the ropes of roses in St. James's street. Often have I debated the potency ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... and firmly sealed up? The explanation of this strange peculiarity is only to be found in the ancestral history of the coco-nut kind. Most nuts, indeed, start in their earlier stage as if they meant to produce two or more seeds each; but as they ripen, all the seeds except one become abortive. The almond, for example, has in the flower two seeds or kernels to each nut; but in the ripe state there is generally only one, though occasionally we find an almond with two—a philipoena, as we commonly call it—just to keep in memory the original arrangement of its earlier ancestors. The reason ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... advised not to interfere with the chief of his people, and he had (after one abortive and painful experience) obeyed his superiors, accepting the hut tax which was sent to him (and which was obviously ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... budding geniuses than by flinging all rules to the winds, and that one appears to better advantage on a spavined hack than on a trained steed. The literature of Sturm und Drang was a passing phenomenon, but the influence of Goetz did not end with its abortive life. But for Goetz Schiller's early productions would have been differently inspired; and to Goetz also was due much of the inspiration of the subsequent German Romantic School, though many of its developments were abhorrent to Goethe's nature ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... the revolution of 1830, these Templars have made public, but abortive efforts, to bring themselves into notice, by instituting some ceremonies, in which they appeared openly in ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... hopes of staying at home will be abortive, but more of this when, in the latter part of next week, you shall be troubled with ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... warfare put in practice by the invading armies as they swept over the face of the country; individual feats of prowess, too, commemorated in the romantic ballads of the time, were achieved; but no victory was gained, no important post acquired. The king in vain excused his hasty retreats and abortive enterprises by saying, "that he prized the life of one of his soldiers more than those of a thousand Mussulmans." His troops murmured at this timorous policy, and the people of the south, on whom the charges of the expeditions ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... Josephus expatiates on the terrible suffering, and again and again he denounces the iniquity of the Zealots, who continued the resistance. "No age had a generation more fruitful in wickedness; they confessed that they were the slaves, the scum, the spurious and abortive offspring of our nation." John committed the heinous sacrilege of using the oil preserved in the Temple vessels for the starving soldiers. "I suppose," says the ex-priest writing in the Roman palace, "that ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... was in the trenches during the abortive gas attack on December 19th, but was not affected by the gas, which passed just behind it. To ...
— Short History of the London Rifle Brigade • Unknown
... At first, of course, they all looked just alike; the variety comes afterwards, and they are just as distinguishable, the officers say, as so many whites. Most of them are wholly raw, but there are many who have already been for months in camp in the abortive "Hunter Regiment," yet in that loose kind of way which, like average militia-training, is a doubtful advantage. I notice that some companies, too, look darker than others, though all are purer African than I expected. This is said to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... gravely turning to his courtiers, expressed his regret that so great a man should have been thus suddenly bereft of reason, and made the circumstance the pretext for shutting him up in the madhouse of St. Anne. An abortive attempt was made to prove the attachment, about fifty years ago, by a certain Count Alberti, who published a manuscript correspondence purporting to be between Tasso and Leonora, which he discovered in the library of the ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... Civil War the great majority of legal practitioners obtained their preparation in a law office. Though the University of Pennsylvania attempted to establish a law school in 1791, and Columbia in 1797, both attempts were abortive, and it remained for Harvard to establish the first permanent law school in 1817. Even this was but a feeble affair until Justice Joseph Story became associated with it in 1830. Up to 1870 but three terms of study were required ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... Augean stables, had need of the water of a river, and the anti-German Tsar could not hope to make headway without the co-operation of his army of officials, who themselves were permeated with the Teutonic spirit. And as passive resistance was their attitude, his purging scheme was abortive. As a matter of cool calculation, the only hope of freeing Russia from the meshes of the German net was a war between the two peoples. And all radical legislation had ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... chief, Secocoeni. This tribe, it will be remembered, was the one which successfully resisted the Boers under President Burger and Commandant Paul Kruger—a successful resistance which was one of the troubles leading directly to the abortive annexation of the Transvaal. The Secocoeni tribe were afterwards conquered by British troops, and handed over to the tender mercies of the Boer Government upon the ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... that our cognition must conform to the objects; but all attempts to ascertain anything about these objects a priori, by means of conceptions, and thus to extend the range of our knowledge, have been rendered abortive by this assumption. Let us then make the experiment whether we may not be more successful in metaphysics, if we assume that the objects must conform to our cognition. This appears, at all events, to accord better with the possibility of our gaining ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... begins his policy of conquest in Normandy, forces Scotland to recognize his supremacy, and rounds off his kingdom towards the north-west. The second period is more simple in character, but its events are of greater importance. Apart from the abortive rebellion of Robert of Mowbray, which has already been narrated, William's authority is unquestioned. Flambard's machine appears to run smoothly. Monks record their groans and give voice to their horror, but the peace ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... obliged to return now to America, I much fear that all which he has acquired would be rendered abortive. It is true he could there paint very good portraits, but I should grieve to hear at any future period that, on the foundation now laid, he shall have been able to raise no higher superstructure than the fame of ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... to have caught the trick of his precursor's scolding. Volkmar had paraphrased Origen's words in a way of which his critic disapproved, and Tischendorf comments as follows: "But here again we have to do with nothing else than a completely abortive fabrication, a certificate of our said critic's poverty. For the assertion derived from the close of the work of Origen rests upon gross ignorance or upon intentional deception. The words of Origen to his patron Ambrosius, ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... they were compelled to lie in camp and attend to the sufferings of their unfortunate comrade. He had a high fever, grew delirious, and as in those days bleeding was considered a panacea for all the ills that flesh is heir to, the captain made several abortive attempts to draw the diseased blood from the poor man, but failed completely. He also dosed his victim with copious draughts of calomel, but the result was far from salutary; the man grew worse, but the party determined to remain with him until he ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... one of the duties of the mounted police force, which we saw everywhere along the line of the road, to enforce the regulations in regard to the use of fire, but, naturally and necessarily, nearly all these efforts are abortive and great destruction results. ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... French marshal, born at Paris; entered the army in 1780, and later gave enthusiastic support to the Revolution, laying aside his title; took part in the Vendean campaign, the abortive attempt on Ireland, and, under Joubert, in the conquest of Italy; was a gallant and daring commander in the Piedmontese, Austrian, and Russian campaigns of Napoleon, and by skilful generalship covered the retreat of the French at Leipzig; he was among the first to welcome Napoleon ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... following pages. His intention was to publish them anonymously, if at all. But an unauthorized annunciation of his name, in the Booksellers' Advertiser, a few weeks since, has rendered the effort as abortive as the trick of the foolish bird, and the expedient of the printer. The mask, thus torn, has therefore been ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... longed for the monastic life, that is beyond doubt—and now I am wavering. I have abortive gushes of feeling, ineffectual projects, inclinations which fail, wishes which come short—I will and I will not. Still it is needful to understand oneself; but of what use is it for me to try to sound the well of my own soul? If I go down into it, I find ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... lawyer in the White House! The country had gone mad, the stock-market trembled, the cry of "corporation control" resounded everywhere, and everywhere demagogues arose to inaugurate "reform campaigns," in an abortive attempt to "clean up politics." Down with the bosses, who were the tools of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... our important cities on the seaboard by fortifications and other defenses able to repel modern methods of attack. The time has now come when such defenses can be prepared with confidence that they will not prove abortive, and when the possible result of delay in making such preparation is seriously considered delay seems inexcusable. For the most important cities—those whose destruction or capture would be a national humiliation—adequate ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the subject, which had suffered interruption through his abortive little act of mercy. "You knew my uncle in Italy. It seems strange, Benjulia, that I should never have heard ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... thee a man, When within thy sad and sombre Cell thou sawest me, when thy life Wiled from me mine own misfortunes. As a woman next thou sawest me, Where the splendours of thy throne-room Vanished like a fleeting vision, Vain, phantasmal and abortive. The third time is now, when being Something monstrous and abnormal, In a woman's dress thou see'st me With a warrior's arms adorned. And to pity and compassion That thou may'st be moved more strongly, Listen to the sad succession Of my tragical misfortunes. In the Court of Muscovy ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... summer figs of Paris, in Provence, Italy, and Malta, have all perfect stamina, and ripen not only their fruits, but their seed; from which seed other fig-trees are raised; but that the stamina of the autumnal figs are abortive, perhaps owing to the want of due warmth. Mr. Milne, in his Botanical Dictionary (art. Caprification), says, that the cultivated fig-trees have a few male flowers placed above the female within the same covering or receptacle; ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... necessary to go around the abortive sub-planet that had always accompanied the Earth, almost once, to reduce velocity ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... in the neighboring counties, but even in Fayette, where this formality had not been thought necessary. It closes with a forcible appeal to delay the sending of troops until every conciliatory measure should have proved abortive. ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... ventricular contraction may not be of sufficient power to open the semilunar valves. Such beats will show an intermittency in the blood pressure reading as well as in the radial pulse. The succeeding heart beats after abortive beats or after a contraction of less power have increased force, and consequently give the highest blood pressure. Kilgore urges that these highest pressures should not be taken as the true systolic blood pressure, but the average of a series of these ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... dramatic, or, as they term it, stage-poetry, nothing but ribaldry, profanation, blasphemy, all license of offence to God and man is practised. I dare not deny a great part of this, and am sorry I dare not, because in some men's abortive features (and would they had never boasted the light) it is over-true; but that all are embarked in this bold adventure for hell, is a most uncharitable thought, and, uttered, a more malicious slander. For my particular, I can, and from a most clear ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... had and so should still discourage all I could, unless otherwise directed by His Majesty and their Lordships. It might be feared that they would beat us out of the trade itself by underselling us, which they were able to do.' With the exception, however, of an abortive effort by this governor, the Irish wool manufacture was in no degree impeded, and was indeed mentioned with special favour in many Acts of Parliament; and it was in a great degree on the faith of this long-continued legislative sanction that it was so greatly ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... problem—that of intensifying, perpetuating, and (to some extent at least) localizing the effects of remedies upon the brain and spinal cord. I speak of resuming these studies because, as far back as 1880 and 1882, I made some attempts—albeit rather abortive—in the ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... do, without lowering the whole tone of our characters and laying ourselves open to assaults of evil from which we would once have turned shuddering and disgusted. A partial thaw is generally followed by intenser frost. An abortive insurrection is sure to issue in a more grinding tyranny. A soul half melted and then cooled off is less easy to melt than it was before. And so, dear brethren, remember this, that if you do not swiftly and fully carry out in life and conduct whatsoever ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Sheldon's ill luck, and declared he would never forgive himself for having advised the young man to embark in the cursed speculations. But Sheldon begged him not to be unnecessarily distressed, as it was no fault of his that the schemes proved abortive; and the good doctor finally coincided, and settled down to his ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... the whole was the flayed caricature of a man done so cunningly that through the abortive hideousness of its outlines, its human ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... singular lack of appreciation of the political and philosophical achievements of Greece under Athenian leadership, a strong hostility to the Catholic Church, a curious disposition to overrate semi-barbarous, or abortive civilizations, such as those of the old Asiatic and native American communities, at the expense of Europe, and, above all, an undiscriminating admiration for everything, great or small, that has ever worn the garb of Islam or been associated with the career of the Saracens. The discovery that ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... him, but he and others were morally certain that Howard meant to desert when the very day of Paine's trip to Braska the company clerk disappeared. They counted on his court-martial and downfall when brought back to the post in "cits" by Sanders's squad. They were amazed at the abortive outcome of the affair, and then at last the gang that "had stood in with" the first sergeant as the surest means of keeping on the right side of the captain began to realize that here was a man with more "pull" than Haney, and the latter, feeling his ...
— Under Fire • Charles King |
