"Balked" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we used up in that way, but I know the business of getting rid of those chickens seemed interminable. We tried working them off on William and Lena, but even they balked before the end was reached. I have heard it stated that no one can eat thirty quails in thirty days. I don't know about that, but I know that when we tried to put over a dozen chickens on Lena and William in six weeks it ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... but a short story, Fabien, and instructive. I will give it you in very few words. My friend was very young and enthusiastic. He was on his way through the galleries of Italy, brush in hand, his heart full of the ceaseless song of youth in holiday. The world never had played him false, nor balked him. He made the future bend to the fancy of his dreams. He seldom descended among common men from those loftier realms where the contemplation of endless masterpieces kept his spirit as on wings. He admired, copied, filled his soul with the glowing beauty of Italian landscape ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... their desire, settled down on the outside, and while we enjoyed our dinner in peace and comfort, Cheon hovered about, like a huge bloated buzz fly himself, chuckling around the outside among the swarms of balked flies, or coming inside to see if ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... conquests. His talk showed that he had the heart of a stone. It made me hate him and the more because he had told of meeting Sally on the street in Albany and that he was in love with her. It was while he was telling me how he had once fooled a country girl that I balked. He thought it a fine joke, for his father had cut his allowance two hundred a year so that the sum they had had to pay in damages had kept his nose "on the grindstone" for two years. Then I stopped my horse with an exclamation which would have astonished Lord Chesterfield, ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... The mouth of the cave was small, and no sooner did the invaders rush in than they were cut down by those inside; in vain were more men thrust in to take the place of those slain; the advantages of position were too great, and they were obliged at length to desist. But Genghis was not to be balked of his victims, and his devilish cunning suggested the expedient of lighting straw at the mouth of the cave to suffocate those inside, but the size of the place prevented his plan from taking effect; so he at last commanded a large fragment of rock to be rolled ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... its door. A miserable horse, whose ribs were as articulate as the bars of a gridiron, stalked about a field where a thin carpet of moss, scarcely covering the ragged beds of pudding-stone, tantalized and balked his hunger; and sometimes he would lean his head over the fence, looked piteously at the passer-by, and seem to petition deliverance ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... be said to have become almost a monomaniac upon this point, and so bitter was her ire at thus being balked in her plans, so keen her hatred of the innocent girl who had been the cause of it, that she abandoned herself to the wildest schemes, casting all honor and womanliness to the winds, and bending all her energies toward the destruction of the happiness ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... where the horses were grazing and up the canyon on the side toward Skyline Meadow, that lay on a shoulder of Bear Top, the dog nosed unfalteringly along the trail. Now and then he was balked when the hoofprints led him to the bank of Granite Creek, but not for long. Jack appeared to understand why his trailing was interrupted and sniffed the bank until he picked ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... distressing point. The Chancellor stormed and threatened; but in vain. On the twenty-fifth of December the result was known. Nine for death, thirteen for banishment. Saved! "I am so glad," Sevigne wrote to Simon Arnauld, "that I am beside myself." She exulted too soon. The King was not to be balked of his vengeance. He refused to abide by the verdict of the Commission he himself had packed, and arbitrarily changed the decree of banishment to imprisonment for life in the Castle of Pignerol,—to solitary confinement,—wife, family, friends, not to be permitted to see ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... the cliff, in order to make sure that the vessel I saw was indeed the pirate schooner. I looked long and anxiously at her, and giving vent to a deep sigh of relief, said aloud, "Yes, there she goes; the villains have been balked of their prey this ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... front seat holding his little brother and Charley Wagner's violin. It was not solicitude for the safety of the instrument that prompted him to persuade Wagner to permit him to hold it. He figured that if Wagner balked when Lin got in the sled at the top of the hill he would be better entrenched to argue with the obstinate leader with the violin ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... receiving these possessions not from others, but from themselves, did not let slip what their labour had acquired, but delivered them safe to you; and in this respect at least you must prove yourselves their equals, remembering that to lose what one has got is more disgraceful than to be balked in getting, and you must confront your enemies not merely with spirit but with disdain. Confidence indeed a blissful ignorance can impart, ay, even to a coward's breast, but disdain is the privilege of those who, like us, have been ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... have been yielded to as pleasing fiction, is repelled as revolting falsehood. The effect produced in this latter case by the solemn belief of the reader, is in a less degree brought about in the instances, to which I have been objecting, by the balked attempts of the author to make ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the election. You don't seem to see, my poor fellow, that in going to live in the other quarter you have lost, electorally speaking, an immense amount of ground. You are no longer the man of the place, and your election could be balked by the cry of what the English call 'absenteeism.' This makes your game very ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... a reporter with his sanctimonious airs and impeccable morals, has put you against me you want to sack me. You can't do it. Last night you were ready to go any lengths with me. You know it. Do you think I am going to be balked by a miserable circus brat—a mere nobody? Not so long as I am Alan Massey. ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... his attention to Crown. He was certain that the man, balked by Sloane's refusal to "talk," would welcome an ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... round here. He'd naterly put fer the lowlands as soon as he found he was balked in takin' his man. I move we call on Whiskey Bob, and see if a man's rode that ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... to a place where a fallen tree blocked the trail. All of the rest of the pack-train had jumped the log. But Nack-yal balked. Shefford dismounted, pulled the bridle over the mustang's head, and tried to lead him. Nack-yal, however, refused to budge. Whereupon Shefford got a stick and, remounting, he gave the balky mustang a cut across the flank. Then something violent happened. Shefford ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... And gravely walked and talked. He read her no more verses, and he stayed Only until their conversation, balked Of every natural channel, fled dismayed. Again the next day she would meet him, trying To give her tone some healthy sprightliness, But his uneager dignity soon chilled Her well-prepared address. Thus Summer waned, and in the mornings, crying Of wild geese ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... to be balked without physical encounter, consequently he was permitted to advance some paces from the lilac bushes, where he delivered himself, in an earnest and plaintive tenor, of the following morbid instructions, to which the violin played an obligato in tremulo, so execrable, ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... answer?" asked the major. Balked ambition is an ugly horse to ride. He had tried for a command but ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... fiddler, and the advanced thinker, who had been active in the survey, balked of the expected excitement attendant upon the ousting of Grinnell, and some sensational culmination of the ancient feud, were not in sympathy with the pacific result, and spoke as if they had given themselves to ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... insisted loudly. "I demand it, I tell you, Moorehouse. This settles nothing, and I will not be balked just because you don't know ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... his certainly uncalled for exclamation. "Women's eyes for women's matters! I am greatly indebted to you, ma'am. You have solved a very important problem for us. A hat-pin! humph!" he muttered to himself. "The devil in a man is not easily balked; even such an innocent article as that can be made to serve, when ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... Bickford, balked of his prey, was compelled to get into his wagon and start for home, he felt uncommonly cross. To begin with, he was half famished, having harnessed up and set out on what turned out to be a wild goose chase without breaking his fast. Yet he could have borne this ...
— The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus • Horatio Alger Jr.
... your courage, but you are mistaken. I am the quietest man breathing, and never harm a human being; in proof of which, only look at your rascal of a postilion, whom any one of my friends would have sent post-haste to the devil for half the trouble he gave me. Easy as I am, I never choose to be balked in my humors. I must have the fifty and the buss, and then I'm off, as soon as you like; and I may as well have the kiss while the old lady signs the check, and then we shall have the seal as well as the signature. Poh—poh—no ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... not to be balked of his prey. With a staggering rush to where several horses were standing ready bridled, he caught hold of the tail of a meek-looking animal, and scrambled by means of that appendage on to its back. Seizing the bridle, he uttered a wild though tiny shout, ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... he added, "in other respects I should not be sorry to hear the hour strike, for curiosity of the unknown is very strong in me. Opportunity may have been narrow, and one may have been balked of high endeavour and rich experience, by lack of talent and by adverse circumstances; but in the supreme, the crowning experience, that of death and all which, for joy or sorrow, lies beyond it, even the most obscure, the most ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... I became willing something should happen, anything, to vary it? I asked myself why, if some of the more exciting incidents of the hunting-field which I had read of must befall; I should not see them. Several of the horses had balked at the barriers, and almost thrown their riders across them over their necks, but not quite done it; several had carried away the green-tufted top rail with their heels; when suddenly there came a loud clatter from the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... chose its own time for the war; delivered its blow fiercely and suddenly; stopped at no barrier either of law or of mercy; swept a whole continent within the tide of blood—not the blood of soldiers only, but the blood of innocent women and children also, and of the helpless poor; and now stands balked but not defeated, the enemy of four-fifths of the world. This power is not the German people. It is the ruthless master of the German people. It is no business of ours how that great people came under its control or submitted with temporary zest to the domination of its purpose; ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson
... observation—had doubtless been schooled to a perfect indifference to it, for the slow, almost indolent, grace of her movements was that of a woman coldly unmindful of the gazes lingering upon her. She could not have been more than twenty-six or -seven, but I got an unmistakable impression of weariness or balked purpose emanating from her in spite of her youth and glorious physique. I looked up to see her crossing the veranda to join her uncle and aunt—correct, well-to-do English people that one placed instantly—and ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... any way," was Victor's mental comment, as, balked of his intention to see Grace Atherton squirm, he bade her good morning, and bowed himself from the garden, having first received her message that she would come up in the course of the day, and ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... his first cigar, and settled himself for his watch. His irritation was still sullenly fermenting; for not only was he going to spend a disagreeable night, but he had been most inconsiderately balked of a ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... I tried to recall the location of the nearest rural territory. San Fernando valley, probably—a long, tiresome trip. And expensive, unless I wished to demean myself by thumbing rides—a difficult thing to do, burdened as I was by the pump. If she hadnt balked unreasonably about putting the stuff on lawns, I'd have prospects right ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... blatantly unskilfully, with riotous puffs and spinning of wheels, the great car started,—faltered,—balked a bit,—then dragged crushingly across the Senior Surgeon's flattened body, and with a great wanton burst of speed tore down the sloping meadow into the brook—rods away. Clamping down the brakes with a wrench and a racket ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... poet, a dramatist, philosopher, his fame to-day would still be world-wide. Had he confined his genius into this one channel of literary expression, as was his original intention, with his mental equipment, and a Napoleonic ambition that balked at nothing, the product would have been as original and extraordinary, we may be sure, as is his art-product in music. Wagner, the musician, is so commanding a figure that the literary man is obscured; but when we consider the magnitude ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... a hand, and cleared the square of matted hair from his forehead, which now was beaded. Red, florid, full-blooded, balked in his eagerness, he looked as savage as some denizen of the ancient forest, in pursuit as reckless, as ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... the Navy Department be granted wide latitude in deciding the number of Negroes to be accepted as well as their rate of enlistment and the method of recruiting, training, and assignment.[3-23] The President agreed to the plan, but balked at the board's last request. "I think this is a matter," he told Secretary Knox, "to be determined by you ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... was otherwise engaged. His marriage to the Lady Barbara had been solemnized quite simply down at Gordon's Court, and Lord and Lady Farquhart were enjoying a honeymoon on the continent. Harry Ashley was balked not only of his lady but also of his revenge, and his own black looks seemed to encounter naught save black looks in others, so he had taken himself out of the way. No ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... bring John Riviere with you," said Olive after they had exchanged greetings. A strong desire had sprung up to see this mysterious relation of Clifford's, and to be balked of any passing whim ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... returns it in time," Val said; "otherwise I can prophesy that you are going to spend the rest of the morning crawling around under hedges and things hunting for him and it. Ricky will not be balked. If she says that we are going to play badminton—well, we ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... this sordid tragedy together from the ends of the earth for a reckoning? And what was this reckoning to be? McGuire had already fallen a victim to the man's devilish skill and audacity. And Beth——? What match was she for a clever desperate rogue who balked at nothing? How had he learned of Beth's existence and how, knowing of it, had he managed to beguile her away from the village? Peter was beginning to believe with McGuire that Hawk Kennedy was indeed ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... in court had ever seen this man before; no one but the Under Sheriff learnt his name during the week; but by the third day his identity was a subject of discussion, both by the professional students of the human countenance, who sat behind him (balked of their study by the prisoner's veil), and among the various functionaries who had already found him as free with a sovereign as most gentlemen are with a piece of silver. So every day he was ushered with ceremony to ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... desire that he should marry the splendid Julia, whom she had often inhabited also, that she might one day be a child of his by such a mother, and go through her earthly incarnation in the happiest conceivable circumstances; but herein she was balked by Barty's instinctive preference for Leah, and again gave him ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... through the brain of the wretch, but something like a shadow flitted through the lamplight while Jack was in the act of turning and, before he could secure any aim, the scoundrel had vanished. Determined not to be balked the young man let fly, and then, bounding across the room, snapped back the door, meaning to repeat the shot at the first glimpse of Mustad. But the latter was familiar with all the turnings of the house, while Jack knew ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... the fall to climb, alternately soft and slippery, now a slope of glass and now a treacherous drift of yielding feathers; it was a road set on end. But Pichou flattened his back and strained his loins and dug his toes into the snow and would not give back an inch. When the rest of the team balked the long whip slashed across their backs and recalled them to their duty. At last their leader topped the ridge, and the others struggled after him. Before them stretched the great dead-water of the river, ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... remember our own feelings during the years of darkness, and the contentment of those who remain as we were surpasses our power of comprehension. It is really comforting to my own sense of impatience and balked zeal to find how many of my pupils are dreadfully concerned about other people's children. This one's heart burns over the little boy next door who is shamefully mismanaged and who already begins to show the ill effects of his treatment. That one has a ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... contemplated paying ten thousand crowns for his surreptitious release, making herself criminally liable, and that he was expected to catch a night train across the border, it is only just to his manhood to say that he should have balked, even though the act were to cost him years of prison servitude—which, of course, was unlikely in the face of the explanation that would be made in proper time by the real Medcroft. It thus may be seen that Brock not only ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... Ammidons', were futile; it was too late. He could expect nothing from life but the unspeakable monotony of his father's dwelling, the bare office. He had worked hard, been as full of splendid early resolutions as anyone, and he wasn't blamable if chance balked his ambition. A soul was nothing more than a twisting leaf in the wind of fate. There remained only to take what escape was offered—golden visions, ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... it!" was Robin's response, growing somewhat excited. "To think how our ways get balked! I had swore to be revenged—as you know, sir—and now the power of revenge is took from me! He's gone where my revenge can't reach him. It's of no good—I see it—for us to plan. Our plans'll never be carried out, ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... that place to the Wabash with his Virginia militia, had appeared at Fort Vincennes and compelled Hamilton to surrender. The blow was a severe one and robbed the western tribes of their courage; they were so discomfited, indeed, that they would not venture into the country of the enemy. Balked in his purpose, Brant was forced to ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... captain on board this craft. That means that he's sole judge of everything here when this boat is cruising. If you were here by the orders of both owners, Jack Benson would fire you ashore for good, just the same, after you've balked ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies • Victor G. Durham
... man had neither wife, child, nephew, or niece. He bullied his servant-of-all-work too much to make her a victim; for she escaped all contact with her master by doing her work and keeping out of his way. His appetite for tyranny was thus balked; and to satisfy it in some way he patiently studied the laws relating to rentals and party-walls; he fathomed the jurisprudence which regulates the dwellings of Paris in an infinite number of petty questions as to tenants, abutters, liabilities, taxes, ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... an evening Peer came down from the hills just in time to see a gentleman in a carriole turn off from the highway and take the by-road down towards Troen. The horse balked suddenly at a small bridge, and when the driver reined him in and gave him a cut with his whip, the beast reared, swung about, and sent the cart fairly dancing round on its high wheels. "Oh, well, then, I'll have to walk," cried the gentleman angrily, and, flinging the reins to the lad ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... director insisted that the person speaking, being an Englishman of studious disposition, would not say anything so inaccurate. "He would use much more correct language," said the director. "He ought to say 'I purpose to send.'" We balked mildly at this. "All right," said our mentor. "The trouble with you is you don't know any English. I'll send you a copy of the ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... for Nelly's buying pearlins and pinners, and sacques and mantles, and all a young matron's bravery, or for decorating a guest chamber for the ceremony. But Lady Carnegie was not to be balked for trifles. Nanny Swinton stitched night and day, with salt tears from aged eyes moistening her thread; and Nelly did not swerve from her compact, but acted mechanically with the others as she was told. With a strange pallor on the olive of her ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... without a will, I was, of course, proclaimed his sole heir without any opposition, and consequently, all those who had aspired to be sharers of his property, balked by my unexpected appearance, immediately withdrew to vent their disappointment in abusing me. They represented me as a wretch, devoid of all respect for my parents, as one without religion, an adventurer in the world, and the companion of ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... of engineering. A tunnel about ten miles long ran underneath the whole of the Hindenburg Line. It was about thirty or forty feet down, and had been dug, we heard, by Russian prisoners. The tunnel was about six feet wide and about five feet high. It had been roughly balked in with timber, and at every twenty yards, a shaft led out of the tunnel up into the trench. Borwick found a large mirror which he felt could not be wasted under the circumstances. He could not resist its charm, so he started lugging it back the six miles ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... laugh. "He balked when it came to me," he said soberly. "And it hurt. Afterward—I kinda got it into my head that none of ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... to the brook; but it was acknowledged afterwards that Larry was over it the first. Glomax got into it,—as he always does into brooks, and young Runce hurt his horse's shoulder at the opposite bank. Lord Rufford's horse balked it, to the Lord's disgust; but took it afterwards, not losing very much ground. Tony went in and out, the crafty old dog knowing the one bit of hard ground. Then they crossed Purbeck field, as it is still called—which twenty years ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... yacht came—though I didn't know it was yours until today—and that afternoon I'd been up in the Prado with Echochee doing a lot of shopping. We always bought every conceivable thing on those semi-yearly trips. Well, when we got back on board my father rather balked about taking me off again to dinner, but I held him to it because he'd previously promised. I think that he had grown so sensate to dangers that he felt one then, ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... hard work and harder thinking. Mason sent word by a migratory cowboy, who had stopped all night at the ranch and whom he had hired and sent on to camp, that he would not return to the round-up, and that Ford was to go ahead as they had planned. That balked Ford's determination to turn the work over to Mason and leave the country, and, after the first day of inner rebellion, he settled down insensibly to the task before him and let his own peculiar moral problem wait upon his leisure. He did not dream that the cowboy had witnessed ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... of the old man. Covering his evil doings with witty sayings, he obtained indulgence for them, in a land where wit is always applauded,—especially when addressed to obvious self-interest. In those words the notary read the concentrated hatred of a man whose calculations had been balked by Nature herself, and who revenged himself upon the innocent object of an impotent love. This opinion was confirmed to some extent by the obstinate resolution of the doctor to leave nothing to the Rabouilleuse, saying with a bitter smile, when the notary again ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... compelled Blount to demand payment on the notes; and then, by some process which still remained a mystery, he had raised the full amount to meet the payment. And so once more, after going to all the trouble of bringing a deputy sheriff along, Blount found himself balked and his dreams of judgment and lien permanently banished to the limbo of ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... reply. So often she did not take his meaning, but left him alone with his sense of tragedy. She had no idea how his life was wrenched from its roots, and when he tried to tell her, she balked him, ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... breadth of shoulder and depth of chest entered; he was smooth shaven and salient of jaw and wore the air of one who was not easily balked in anything that ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... a frightful struggle; two thousand Sepoys held the garden, and these, caught like rats in a trap, fought with the energy of despair. Nothing, however, could withstand the troops, mad with the long-balked thirst for vengeance, and attacked with the cry—which in very truth was the death-knell of the enemy—"Remember Cawnpore!" on their lips. No quarter was asked or given. It was a stubborn, furious, desperate strife, man to man—desperate Sepoy against ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... the son of a noble, and very distant, house after an afternoon when the perambulator, ill-trained to cross-country work, balked at the first stone wall on the way to the old ladies' house. It was then dragged backward for a judicious distance and faced at the obstacle at a mad gallop. Umbrella down, handle up, wheels madly whirring, it ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... could not yet comprehend. But this life was not for him,—he remembered that; the girl was nothing to him now: he was not fool enough to taunt himself with false hopes. She came there out of pity: any woman would do as much for a wounded man. He would never fool himself to be so balked again. The loss cut too deep. So he forced his face to be cool and critical, while poor Dode waited, innocently wondering that he did not welcome her, pity her now that her father was dead, forgetting that he knew nothing of that. For him, he looked at the fire, wondering if the Rebel scouts ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... did their best, and half filled the car. Then some other impulse seized the bewildered rudimentary brains; the cattle balked. J.B. did it again, and yet again, until the ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... absorbing desire to get away from her husband,—to search for her child, to know if it had lived or died. For four nights more that journey was pursued at the height of their horse's speed; every day they stopped to rest, and every day Hitty's half-delirious brain laid plans of escape, only to be balked by Abner Dimock's vigilance; for if he slept, it was with both arms round her, and the slightest stir awoke him,—and while he woke, not one propitious moment freed her from his watch. Her brain began to reel with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... and brain move there, his feet stay here. So is the man perplext with impulses Sudden to start off crosswise, not straight on, Proclaiming what is right and wrong across, And not along, this black thread through the blaze— "It should be" balked by "here it cannot be." And oft the man's soul springs into his face As if he saw again and heard again His sage that bade him "Rise" and he did rise. Something, a word, a tick o' the blood within Admonishes: then back he sinks at once To ashes, who was very fire ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... sometimes not. And then, oh horrors! It was her turn again! Her turn had never before come more than twice during a mental arithmetic lesson. She was so startled by the swiftness with which the question went around that she balked on 6 x 6, which she knew perfectly. And before she could recover Ralph had answered and had rattled out a 108 in answer to 9 x 12; and then Ellen slapped down an 84 on top of 7 x 12. Good gracious! Who could have guessed, ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... a hickory stick five feet long with a lash twelve feet in length attached to one end. I gave the word to let them go, but the little bronchos thought different and balked. The number of times they bucked and threw themselves, started and bucked again, would be impossible to say. Finally the contractor accused the drover of being in collusion with his cowpuncher in order to win the wager ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... your haunted end. Oh! why does Umbelazi lean over your shoulder, Saduko, and look at me so strangely? Farewell, Panda the Shadow. Now let loose your slayers. Oh! let them loose swiftly, lest they should be balked of my blood!" ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... space. At first it was rather bewildering. Then it grew into something touched with grandeur. Then it took on an aspect of awfulness. And from that it grew into a sort of ghastliness, until the machinery of the mind choked and balked and stopped working altogether, like an overloaded motor. I had to reach out in the cold air and catch hold of Gershom's arm. I felt a hunger to cling to ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... all matters, advanced one son's interests and balked another's aims, prospects and ambitions. In short she played her cards with such consummate skill that she captured everything she cared ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... went to Los Robles later and brought her by force. He was looking for me and bumped into her by chance. His idea was to marry her as soon as they reached camp. But Pasquale balked. He took a ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... until the supper was ready and eaten and all did feel much the better for it, as Ree had predicted. The ordinary noises of the forest, the howling of wolves, in pursuit of some poor deer, perhaps, the far-away shriek of a panther balked of its prey, it may have been, gave them little concern. Though the darkness was intense and enemies might draw very near without being observed, the boys believed they had made peace with the Indians and the presence of four-footed ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... inconvenience the hunters caused me was the delay, for they have a nasty habit of keeping one treed for an hour or more if balked in their designs; but at last we came in sight of a line of cliffs running east and west across our path as far as the eye could see in either direction, and I knew that we reached the natural boundary ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... when most silent. He listens while he speaks, and is a hearer along with his audience. Who has not hearkened to Her infinite din? She is Truth's speaking-trumpet, the sole oracle, the true Delphi and Dodona, which kings and courtiers would do well to consult, nor will they be balked by an ambiguous answer. For through Her all revelations have been made, and just in proportion as men have consulted her oracle within, they have obtained a clear insight, and their age has been marked as an enlightened one. But as often as they have gone ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... supposed, Alice had somehow given him the slip. It was a mere flash of brain-light, so to call it, struck out by the surprise of this curious discovery. He felt his bellicose temper leap up furiously at being balked in a way so unexpected and withal so inexplicable. Of course he did not stand there reasoning it all out. The rush of impressions came, and at the same time he acted with promptness. Changing the rapier, which he held in his right hand, over into his left, he drew a small ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... bananas, their foliage wet with the rain that had fallen gently all night. The stream was edged with trees and ferns and was clear and rippling. At that early hour there was no sensation of chill for me, though the men of native blood balked at entering the water until the sun had warmed it. A Chinese vegetablegrower sat on the bank with his Chinese wife and cleaned heads of lettuce and bunches of carrots. She watched me apathetically, as if I were a ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... was meant to destroy this self, but that discipline having been evaded—and we all to some extent have opportunities, and too often exercise them, of taking the narrow path by the shortest cuts—its purpose is balked. But the soul is the loser. In seeking to gain its life it has really lost it. This is what Christ meant when He said: "He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... practicable," Bernadine replied, "unless you decide to listen to reason. Believe me, my dear friend, I shall miss you and our small encounters exceedingly, but, unfortunately, you stand in the way of my career. You are the only man who has persistently balked me. You have driven me to use against you means which I had grown to look upon as absolutely extinct in the upper circles of ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... there were beavers below. He knew something about beavers. His powerful forearms and mighty claws got him to the bottom of the snow in a few seconds. Other hungry marauders had done the same thing before, to find themselves as far off as ever from their aim. But the wolverene was not to be balked so easily. His cunning nose found the minute openings of the air-holes; and by digging his claws into these little apertures he was able to put forth his great strength and tear up some tiny fragments ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... concerned is the forgery of the clauses in the documents, which Meschini had undertaken to accomplish and actually finished in less than three weeks. It was indeed an easy task for a man so highly skilled in the manufacture of chirograhic antiquities, but he had found himself unexpectedly balked at the outset, and the ingenuity he displayed in overcoming the difficulties he met with ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... than I can say," answered Sam. "I know that I did not tell him; he heard it by some means, and that was the reason he bought you of the old Sheik, and paid such a high price for you too. So you see he is not likely to be balked, and I'd advise you to come with a good grace. I am very sorry that you should have to do what you do not like, but you see you have no choice in the matter; when he asked me I had to confess that it ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... matrimonial purposes; but after this little talk it appeared as if something had risen up between them,—a sort of mist, a medium, in which their intimacy was not increased; for the flow and interchange of sentiment was balked, and they took only one or two turns in silence along Septimius's trodden path. I don't know exactly what it was; but there are cases in which it is inscrutably revealed to persons that they have made ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... my heart seemed to turn to lead, and all the glory and pleasure of the day was gone. It seemed to me of such vast importance, of such endless duration, this penance that I was to undergo. O lovers! Foolish, foolish men and women! I was like a child balked of its holiday; I wanted to cry—I longed to get away by myself. I did not dare to ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... very good. I wish I could return the compliment, but his chestnut balked shamefully, ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... succeeded in making them succulent in a month or so. It was exasperating, though, to have them go away just as they were beginning to pay for fattening. The case was analogous to that of an ogress balked of her meal, after going to no end of expense in humanised ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... were not to be balked. In a few minutes they arranged a pool, each putting in a thousand, and ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... of honour, a longing desire to possess this young beauty, and call her his own, or a fierce and profound dislike to being balked in any object of his wishes, which actuated the young lord? Certainly he had borne, very philosophically, delay after delay which had taken place in the devised union; and being quite sure of his mistress, had ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his thoroughly organized factory. He dominated his surroundings. Where he willed to lead—whether in business circles, in the vestry, in his own home—the strength of his intellect, the force of his purpose and his quiet but tangible assertiveness were felt. He had never been balked in ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... ladies in the cabin who begged that the Laureate would only step down among them. But the height of that small place of refuge, Tennyson declared, would render the proposed exhibition impossible. Might he not be kindly excused? The good women, however, were not to be balked; and one after another presented her half-length above the little hatchway before us, gazed, smiled, and retreated." It was well for Tennyson that he had overcome some of his early shyness, or the ordeal might ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... puss all day, The wind had blown her scent away, And balked the dogs, so there she lay, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... men have some plan for life, into which all the strength and the keen, fine feeling of their nature enter; but generally they try to make it real in early youth, and, balked then, laugh ever afterwards at their own folly. This poor old Knowles had begun to block out his dream when he was a gaunt, gray-haired man of sixty. I have known men so build their heart's blood and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... transversely the myriad foot-paths and sled roads which led down into the town. It was a mid-December day, clear and cold; and the hesitant high-noon sun, having laboriously dragged its pale orb up from behind the southern land-rim, balked at the great climb to the zenith, and began its shamefaced slide back beneath the earth. Its oblique rays refracted from the floating frost particles till the air was filled with glittering jewel-dust—resplendent, blazing, flashing light ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... the gate, and John, too, knew it was time to go. His errand was not done, and he balked at it. ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... it sooner, Jimmy, me boy," said Mike. "But we had that protest from Springfield to buck against, and the governor nearly balked. Feeling all right?" ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... was seen working up under all sail. She approached; her anchor was dropped, and her boats, being lowered, pulled in towards the wreck. As they got near, the people on shore, balked in their first project, opened a hot fire of musketry on them. The boats had not come unarmed. The larger ones were immediately anchored, and, each having a gun of some weight, opened a hot fire on the beach. ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... furniture and belongings—the smaller and the more precious portion; or he may find some one else to lend him the money, and so get off clear and save his sticks. It is, as the modern Shylock declares, a most wicked and iniquitous Act, by which the shark may be balked, and many an honest tradesman, who would otherwise have been most justly ruined, is enabled to save his stock, and left to worry along until the times become more prosperous. To a man like Mr. David Chalker, such an Act of ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... a chuckle and, closely followed by Jim and Pen, he mounted the stile. He was balked by the red-headed woman who towered high above him. Sara reached up and touched ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... men balked. To fight the King's troops was to defy the might of England. So they asked to be permitted to remain neutral. Deeply disappointed, Bacon reproved them as the worst of sinners who were willing to be saved by others but would not do their part. Then he dismissed them. When he ...
— Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 • Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker
... his way on any occasion, had arranged to call at his office on his way to the country to sign the dispatches; but as those addressed to Howe had not been faircopied, and he was not disposed to be balked of his projected visit to Kent, they were not signed then and were forgotten on his return home." These were the dispatches instructing Sir William Howe, who was in New York, to effect a junction at Albany with Burgoyne, who had marched ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... speaking of examinations, probably I didn't get one. He kept looking at me like he wanted to place me, but I give him the 'Ee! Ah!' till everybody began to laugh. They tried me with a pencil and paper, but I balked, laid my ears back, and buck-jumped. That made the old man sore, and he says: 'Lock him up! Lock him up; I'll make him talk if I have to skin him.' So I was dragged to the 'skookum-house,' where I spent the night ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... right in one particular: von Staden had the situation very well in hand, but he did not have Terence Reardon under lock and key. Murphy had been balked in making connections with the unsuspecting Terence for the reason that a little ball of cotton waste had very carefully been tucked into the engine-room howler a few inches at the back of the whistle at the chief's end of the ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... this at all, and now made many objections to my accepting the situation; in which my sister warmly supported her: but, unwilling to be balked again, I overruled them all; and, having first obtained the consent of my father (who had, a short time previously, been apprised of these transactions), I wrote a most obliging epistle to my unknown correspondent, and, finally, ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... off with unruffled breast when he came to the surface, doing all the work with his webbed feet beneath. His usual note was this demoniac laughter, yet somewhat like that of a waterfowl; but occasionally when he had balked me most successfully and come up a long way off, he uttered a long-drawn unearthly howl, probably more like that of a wolf than any bird; as when a beast puts his muzzle to the ground and deliberately howls. This was his looning,—perhaps ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... deserter had balked his pursuers, was undoubtedly the cellar drain; though, to Somers, it appeared to be a Virginia notion to have it long enough to admit the form of a man. Tom Rigney was a larger person than himself; and ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... of each day's sitting, you were able to recite perfectly the stanza learned that day. On "speaking day" you started out bravely and recited the first stanza without mishap. When you started to think of the second one, however, it would not come. The memory balked. Now what was the matter? How can we explain this distressing blank? In psychological terms, we ascribe the difficulty to the failure to make proper associations between stanzas. Association was made effectively between the lines of the single stanzas, ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... me, I knew it was useless to trail after Kennedy and when he announced that he was going back to the laboratory, I balked and, in spite of my interest in the case, went home to our apartment to bed, while Kennedy made a night ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... smell was full of promise. It even induced Tom to abandon his leisurely attitude and "rustle" the good things out of the basket. They made a royal meal and feasted so full and long that, when at last old Nature simply balked at more, they had no desire to do anything but lie back lazily and revel in the sheer ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... raising a purple wheal under the eye almost instantly. Pete's composure forsook him at the first set back, and uttering a furious oath he rushed in again, swinging both fists; but that shooting left hand met him full in the mouth, and balked him again, his own sledge-hammer blows falling short of his opponent. He pushed in recklessly, punching right and left, but Jim dodged smartly, slipped under his arm, and jumped to the other end of the ring. ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... however, was any such placid acceptance of defeat. Balked of her expected prey, she turned fiercely against her wheel-mate, whom she rightly considered responsible for her inability to bolt; and after one or two efforts, she fastened her teeth in his ear, leaving a small wound from which the blood ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... forts in his own hand, the gentry, who wanted but the prospect of something to encourage them, had come in at first, and the Parliament, being unprovided, would have been presently reduced to reason. But this was it that balked the gentry of Yorkshire, who went home again, giving the king good promises, but never appeared for him, till by raising a good army in Shropshire and Wales, he marched towards London, and they saw there was a prospect of ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... The bull, thus balked of his revenge, seemed to become more furious than ever. He rushed to and fro, uttering savage grunts, and at intervals dashing his horns against the rocks, as if he hoped to break them to pieces, and open a passage to his intended victim. Once he charged with such fury that his head entered ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... later years he was always emphatic in denying that the rebellion of 1837 had been primarily his handiwork. 'I was,' he said in 1847, 'neither more nor less guilty, nor more nor less deserving, than a great number of my colleagues.' The truth seems to be that Papineau always balked a little at the idea of armed rebellion, and that he was carried off his feet at the end of 1837 by his younger associates, whose enthusiasm he himself had inspired. He had raised the wind, but he ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... Lizzy,—always white flowers; and the old grandfather yonder, with the pretty, chubby-faced girls. The girl's thought now was earnest and healthful, as everybody's grows, who succeeds in discovering his real work. They encored her song: when she began, she looked up and balked suddenly, her very neck turning crimson. She had seen Doctor Blecker. "A tawdry actress!" She could have torn her stage-dress in rags from her. Then her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Fleda, who had stood busily thinking,—"I am going to send Philetus down to the post-office for the paper, and when it comes I am not to be balked of reading it—I've made up my mind! We'll go right off into the woods and get some pine knots, Hugh—come! They make a lovely light. You get us a couple of baskets and the hatchet—I wish we had two—and I'll be ready in no ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... shriek from the whistle the train started. Sinclair and Sam saw the men quietly returning the firearms to their places as it gathered way. Then they walked back to their quarters. The men on the mesa, balked of their purpose, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... Republican masses, who could not understand why loyal slaveholders in Kentucky should be offended because the slaves of rebels in Missouri were declared free. From this revocation of the new war policy, dated the pro- slavery reaction which at once followed. It balked the popular enthusiasm which was drawing along with it multitudes of conservative men. It caused timid and halting men to become cowards outright. It gave new life to slavery, and encouraged fiercer assaults upon "abolitionism." It revived and stimulated Democratic ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... freedom of the intellectual faculties can be balked, which appears contradictory to the conception of an autonomous power. For a power which only receives the matter of its activity from without can only be hindered in its action by the privation of this matter, and consequently ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... backed by the enthusiasm of Northern Germans. Yet the Florentine preacher boldly continued his attacks on all hypocritical religion, and on the vices of Rome, not as incidental to the system, but extraneous,—the faults of a man or age. The Pope became furious, to be thus balked by a Dominican monk, and in one of the cities of Italy,—a city that had not rebelled against his authority. He complained bitterly to the Florentine ambassador, of the haughty friar who rebuked and defied him. He ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... defence of his brethren as well as of himself, and he craves it for their sake as well as his own; feels indeed that wrongs are offered to them in him, and to him in them. Antonio has scorned his religion, balked him of usurious gains, insulted his person: therefore he hates him as a Christian, himself a Jew; hates him as a lender of money gratis, himself a griping usurer; hates him as Antonio, himself Shylock. Moreover, who but a Christian, one of Antonio's faith and fellowship, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... easily toss them as high and as savagely as they did the yeasty fragments of spindrift, which circled up into the air like snowflakes—flung off from the tops of the breakers after each unsuccessful onslaught on the rocky barrier that balked their endeavours ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson |
