"Irregular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... A battalion of waiters slid among the throng, carrying trays of beer glasses and making change from the inexhaustible vaults of their trousers pockets. Little boys, in the costumes of French chefs, paraded up and down the irregular aisles vending fancy cakes. There was a low rumble of conversation and a subdued clinking of glasses. Clouds of tobacco smoke rolled and wavered high in air about the ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... a development of his inner life, as a working out in wood and stone of favorite fancies and cherished ideas, the building has to me a deep interest. The gentle-hearted poet delighted himself in it; this house was his stone and wood poem, as irregular, perhaps, and as contrary to any established rule, as his Lay of the Last Minstrel, but still wild and poetic. The building has this interest, that it was throughout his own conception, thought, and choice; that he expressed himself in every stone that ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... knowledge of classical literature must have made them familiar with it; the Irish epic form is Romance. They had, besides the prose and what may be called the "regular" verse, a third form, that of rose, or as it is sometimes called rhetoric, which is a very irregular form of verse. Sometimes it rhymes, but more often not; the lines are of varying lengths, and to scan them is often very difficult, an alliteration taking the place of scansion in many cases. The rhetoric does not in general develop the story nor take the ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... he had hitherto done. There was another tone in his voice, warmer, more confidential. It attracted Beatrice Cary's attention, and she looked curiously from Lois to the man beside her. About thirty-five, with a passably good figure, irregular, if honest, features, and an expression usually somewhat grave, he made no pretensions to any exterior advantage. He could apparently be gay, as now, but his gaiety did not conceal the fact that it was unusual. Altogether, he had nothing about him which appealed to her, but Beatrice ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... and times more than in others. And since, generally, they are granted to faith and prayer, therefore in a country in which faith and prayer abound, they will be more likely to occur, than where and when faith and prayer are not; so that their occurrence is irregular. And further, as faith and prayer obtain miracles, so still more commonly do they gain from above the ordinary interventions of Providence; and, as it is often very difficult to distinguish between a providence and a miracle, and there will be more providences than miracles, hence it will happen ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... envelope addressed correctly to Mister Eugene Coristine, in the hand of a domestic, Tryphosa probably, and contained some half dried flowers, among which a blue Lobelia and a Pentstemon were recognizable, along with a scrap of a letter in large irregular characters. ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... watched the whirling squalls gliding over the water, lifting great lumps of spray, that shot like snow over the surface and disappeared in the misty distance. Rain rattled in showers on the roof; everywhere was a hissing, rushing, thundering; the surf broke in violent, irregular shocks like the trampling of an excited horse; the wind roared in the forest till the strongest trees trembled and the palms bent over with inverted crowns. In a moment the creeks swelled to torrents, and in every ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... shortened and the stress goes back; and that words ending in -entary, such as 'elementary' and 'testamentary', stress the antepenultima. Examples are 'antiquary', 'honorary', 'voluntary', 'emissary'. It is difficult to see a reason for an irregular quantity in the antepenultima of some trisyllables. The general rule makes it short, as in 'granary', 'salary', but in 'library' and 'notary' it has been lengthened. The N.E.D. gives 'pl[e]nary', but our grandfathers said 'pl[)e]nary'. Of course 'diary' gives ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... Department at Richmond. By order of these officials, all commissary supplies, even gathered in sight of the camps, had to be first sent to Richmond and issued out only on requisitions to the head of the departments. The railroad facilities were bad, irregular, and blocked, while our wagons and teams were limited to one for each one hundred men for all purposes. General Beauregard, now second in command, and directly in command of the First Army Corps of the Army ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... and suitable measures to carry it into effect; and as it was in their power to take possession whenever they might think that circumstances authorized and required it, it would be the more to be regretted if possession should be effected by any means irregular in themselves and subjecting the Government of the United States ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 1: James Madison • Edited by James D. Richardson
... forbade; and general sharp resentment against imposed regulations and military drill. On several occasions the six hundred were sent in defense of the walls only by sheer force of their leader's will-power. And there they fell in at once with the irregular methods of the Idumeans and fanatics that fought each after his own liking, and the careful instruction of the Maccabee was disregarded. Only so long as he cowed them, they obeyed him; and he seemed to feel, as they seemed to indicate, that when that thing happened which all Jerusalem ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... speak. I counted the irregular pulse-beats, then listened to the action of his heart, with my ear to his breast. There lay his physical trouble. I poured out a dose of digitalis, and, handing it to him, asked him to sit down. As he sat and drank the medicine, I rapidly studied him. The chin was firm, and the eyes had a dogged, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... DEWEY, D.D., we learn from the correspondence of the Christian Inquirer, is living upon the farm where he was born, in Sheffield, Massachusetts, having, in the successive improvements of many years, converted the original house into an irregular but most comfortable and pleasant dwelling. The view from the back piazza is as fine as can be commanded anywhere in Berkshire, and should the shifting channel of the Housatonic only be accommodating enough to wind a ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... thoughts came to me through a hole in the tower-door. For the door was far in a shadowy retreat, and in the irregular lozenge-shaped hole in it, there was a piece of coarse thick glass of a deep yellow. And through this yellow glass the sun shone. And the cold shine of the winter sun was changed into the warm glory of summer by the magic ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... composition of "The Cenci" had cost him a fresh seizure. Yet though his sufferings were indubitably real, the eminent physician, Vacca, could discover no organic disease; and possibly Trelawny came near the truth when he attributed Shelley's spasms to insufficient and irregular diet, and to a continual over-taxing ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... matches were of no use, and I was obliged to seek a sheltered corner before I could light a candle; and, when lighted, the candle was with difficulty kept from being blown out. No ice was visible, nor any signs of such a thing,—nothing but a very irregular narrow cave, with darkness at the farther end. As we advanced, we found that the floor of the cave came to a sudden end, and the darkness developed into a strange narrow fissure, which reached out ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... reader, if such there be, who believes in the absolute independence and self-determination of the will, and the consequent total responsibility of every human being for every irregular nervous action and ill-governed muscular contraction, may as well lay down this narrative, or he may lose all faith in poor Myrtle Hazard, and all patience with the writer who ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... costume, or lack of costume,—men, women, children clothed in bright wraps or embroidered skins, scantily covered with dirty rags, or rejoicing in the freedom of undress. The several roofs of the large house, rising in successive terraces three stories high, form an irregular amphitheatre filled with humanity of all sizes, shapes, ages, clothing, in glaring contrast with one another. In the arena formed by the court-yard, form and colour intermingle with more order and regularity; and at the same time ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... are of irregular shape, and of such extent as to merit the title of "inland seas." When such are to be crossed, the sun has to be consulted by the canoe or galatea gliding near their centre; and when he is not visible,—by no means a rare phenomenon in the Gapo,—then is ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... morning! I take this as really friendly. . . . You find me wooing the Muses as usual; up and early. Some authors, sir,—not that I dare claim that title,—have found their best inspirations by the midnight oil, even in the small hours. Edgar Allan Poe—an irregular genius—you are ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the plain of Athens. All the city seems to adjust itself to the base of its holy citadel. It lifts itself as tawny limestone rock rising about 190 feet above the adjacent level of the town.[*] In form it is an irregular oval with its axis west and east. It is about 950 feet long and 450 feet at its greatest breadth. On every side but the west the precipice falls away sheer and defiant, rendering a feeble garrison able to battle with myriads.[] To the westward, however, the gradual slope makes a natural ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... in uniform masses like the swift, still rush of a deep river. The airman, in Mr. Grahame-White's phrase, can go to sleep on it. But over the land, and for thousands of feet up into the sky, the air is more irregular than a torrent among rocks; it is—if only we could see it—a waving, whirling, eddying, flamboyant confusion. A slight hill, a ploughed field, the streets of a town, create riotous, rolling, invisible streams and cataracts ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... River Street, with the cheerful and optimistic poise of one who has lunched well. A well-set-up man, a well-groomed man, as-it-is-done; plainly worshipful; worthy the highest degree of that most irregular of adjectives, respectable; comparative, smart; ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... Blue, 1 in. broad or less, irregular, grouped at end of stem, and upheld by long leaf-like bracts. Calyx of 3 unequal sepals; 3 petals, 1 inconspicuous, 2 showy, rounded. Perfect stamens 3; the anther of 1 incurved stamen largest; 3 insignificant and sterile stamens; 1 pistil. Stem: Fleshy, smooth, branched, mucilaginous. ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... pounds a year. And, indeed, the doctor himself had not much money in spite of his good practice. He played cards every night at the club, and always lost. Moreover, he bought mortgaged houses through a building society, and let them. The tenants were irregular in paying the rent, but he was convinced that such speculations were profitable. He had mortgaged his own house in which he and his daughter were living, and with the money so raised had bought a piece of waste ground, and had already begun to build ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of grain there came that constant hail of fire, and there fell upon our ranks a doggedness, a quiet anger, which grew into a grisly patience. The only pleasure we had in two long hours was in watching our two brass six-pounders play upon the irregular ranks of our foes, making confusion, and Townsend drive back a detachment of cavalry from Cap Rouge, which sought to break our left flank ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... deposit obtained in electroplating, characterized by irregular thickness; due to too ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... Barriere and started at a brisk walk down the long stretch of the Chemin de Pantin. The night was dark. The rolling clouds overhead hid the face of the moon and presaged the storm. On the right, the irregular heights of the Buttes Chaumont loomed out dense and dark against the heavy sky, whilst to the left, on ahead, a faintly glimmering, greyish streak of reflected light revealed the proximity of ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... or insult seems to gall and shame That he doth thirst for vengeance, and such needs Must doat on other's evil. Here beneath This threefold love is mourn'd. Of th' other sort Be now instructed, that which follows good But with disorder'd and irregular course. "All indistinctly apprehend a bliss On which the soul may rest, the hearts of all Yearn after it, and to that wished bourn All therefore strive to tend. If ye behold Or seek it with a love remiss and lax, This cornice after just repenting lays Its penal torment on ye. Other ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... trader's house, fine open deer plains, several beaver dams, "an encampment said to have been Lord Fitzgerald's when on his march to Detroit, Michilimackinac and the Mississippi," a cedar grove; crossed a small branch of the La Tranche, and the main branch soon afterwards; "went between an irregular fence of stakes made by the Indians to intimidate and impede the deer, and facilitate their hunting;" again they crossed the main branch of the Thames,[18] and "halted to observe a beautiful situation, formed by a bend of the river—a grove of hemlock and pine, and a large creek. ...
— The Country of the Neutrals - (As Far As Comprised in the County of Elgin), From Champlain to Talbot • James H. Coyne
... were slothful and effete. Their training was imperfect; their discipline was lax; their courage was low. Nor was even this all the weakness and peril of their position; for while the regular troops were thus demoralised, there existed a powerful local irregular force of Bazingers (Soudanese riflemen), as well armed as the soldiers, more numerous, more courageous, and who regarded the alien garrisons with fear that continually diminished and hate that continually grew. And behind regulars and irregulars alike the wild Arab tribes of ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... the chapel they must pass at once to the gallows. Now it so happened that the direct path from the chapel to the gallows was blocked up by some repairs that were going on in the prison, so the condemned were obliged to make a long circuit. It was one of the largest of our old prisons, a huge, irregular building, constructed with no simplicity of design, and one set of officers did not always know at once what was going on in a distant department. Hence it befell that in a certain passage of the jail the condemned and their attendants came suddenly upon ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... — N. irregularity, uncertainty, unpunctuality; fitfulness &c. adj.; capriciousness, ecrhythmus|. Adj. irregular, uncertain, unpunctual, capricious, desultory, fitful, flickering; rambling, rhapsodical; spasmodic; immethodical[obs3], unmethodical, variable. Adv. irregularly &c. adj.; by fits and starts &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... of a small niche from the rocky wall. This niche occupies about the same position in this room that it does in the ordinary pueblo house. It is remarkable that the pueblo builders did not to a greater extent utilize their skill in working stone in the preparation of some of the irregular rocky sites that they have at times occupied for the more convenient reception of their wall foundations; but in nearly all such cases the buildings have been modified to suit the ground. An example of this practice is illustrated in Pl. ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... angles suggesting the interior of a ship's cabin during a storm, or a party of revellers, returning homeward, after the night before, gravely hilarious. Behind the platform a blackboard, cracked into irregular spaces, preserved the mental processes of the pupils during their working hours, and in sharp contrast to these the terribly depressing perfection of the teacher's exemplar in penmanship, which reminded the self-complacent slacker that ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... promote circulation by rubbing the legs upward, so as to drive the venous blood to the heart and thus try to start its action. Almost ten minutes elapsed before the doctor's patience was rewarded with the faint throb of a heart-beat, then another. It was soft and irregular at first, but gradually the blood began to move through the arteries and in a few minutes a pulse could be felt. The lips lost a little of their blue color ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... "ASTEURE" for "A CETTE HEURE," has made shining acquisitions on the literary side. However, in the long-run it becomes clear, his intellect, roving on devious courses, or plodding along the prescribed tram-roads, had been wide awake; and busy all the while, bringing in abundant pabulum of an irregular nature. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... lodges and acquiring authentic charters. He gave money for the erection of temples and supplemented as far as he could the collection of alms, in regard to which the majority of members were stingy and irregular. He supported almost singlehanded a poorhouse the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... people are the only censors of their governors; and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people, is to give them full information of their affairs through the channel of the public papers, and to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... the species yield an exudation in the spring and summer months, which coagulates and drops from the leaves to the ground in small irregular shaped snow white particles, often as large as an almond [?]. They are sweet and very pleasant to the taste, and are greedily devoured by the birds, ants, and other animals, and used to be carefully picked up and eaten by the aborigines. This is ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... wrote with unconscious humour: "The Utopist needs no knowledge of facts. Indeed such a knowledge is a hindrance. For him the laws of social evolution do not exist. He is a law unto himself; and his men are not the wayward, spasmodic, irregular organisms of daily life, but automata obeying the strings he pulls. In a word, he creates, he does not construct. He makes alike his materials and the laws within which they work, adapting them all to an ideal end. In describing a new Jerusalem the only limits to its perfection ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... tailor is not said even once to have seen a customer who was not dying; yet he writes, 'I was accustomed to work all night frequently.' The tailor thinks he was asleep, because he had been making irregular stitches, and perhaps he was. But, out of all his vigils and all his customers, association only formed one hallucination, and that was of a dying client whom he supposed to be perfectly well. Why on ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... they were not the eyes of a deer. Their peculiar scintillation, their lesser size, the wide space between them all convinced me they were not deer's eyes. Moreover, they moved at times, as if the head of the animal was carried about in irregular circles. This is never the case with the eyes of the deer, which either pass hurriedly from point to point, or remain with a fixed and ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... less regal, even to the kind eye of his younger son; when his hat was not all one might wish; the boots less than excellent; the priceless watch-chain absent, or moored to a mere bunch of aimless keys, though the bounty from his pockets was an irregular and minute trickle of copper exclusively, the little boy strutted as proudly by his side, worshipping him as loyally, as when these outer affairs were quite the reverse. Yet he could not avoid ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... Principal parts of irregular verbs are given in parenthesis in the following order: Present, Future, Past Absolute, Past Participle. All radical-changing verbs have the vowel change indicated in parenthesis. Any other forms are specially marked. Adjectives, adverbs, prepositions are indicated only in ...
— A First Spanish Reader • Erwin W. Roessler and Alfred Remy
... was a chance, of killing or capturing any of these most troublesome foes, and Harvey and Harold knew that a report of their presence at the Jacksons' would suffice to bring a party of horsemen from the American lines. Their visits, therefore, were always made after dark, and at irregular intervals, and, in spite of their inclination to the contrary they made a point of returning at night to ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... your government, and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite, not only that you steadily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the constitution, alterations which will impair the energy of ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... these criticisms and additions that were truly improvements, and touched upon points overlooked by Cuvier. Blainville, especially, took up the element of form among animals,—whether divided on two sides, whether radiated, whether irregular, etc. He, however, made the mistake of giving very elaborate names to animals already known under simpler ones. Why, for instance, call all animals with parts radiating in every direction Actinomorpha or Actinozoaria, when they had received ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... front; the line thus formed preserves the original intervals as nearly as practicable; when this line has advanced a suitable distance (generally from 100 to 250 yards, depending upon the terrain and the character of the hostile fire), a second is sent forward by similar commands, and so on at irregular distances, until the whole line has advanced, Upon arriving at the indicated position, the first line is halted. Successive lines, upon arriving, halt on line with the first and the men take their proper places in ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... that he was the object of our attention, the man alluded to stopped, and turned just then a face grotesquely hideous in our direction, and, seeing me, smiled, and nodded feebly—disclosing, as he did so, long, fang-like teeth, yellow, as if cut from lemon-rind, and fantastically irregular. ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... his feet touched the ground and headed by Omar, we all rushed towards him. He was a very tall, loosely-built man, his complexion almost white with just a yellowish tinge, colourless lips, colourless drab hair; vague irregular features, with an entire absence of expression. He wore an Arab haick upon his head bound with many yards of brown camel's hair, a long white garment, something like a burnouse, only embroidered at the edge with crimson thread and confined at the waist by a girdle ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... God, The ruler of men below! How arrayed in terrors is God, With many things irregular in his ordinations. Heaven gave birth to the multitudes of the people, But the nature it confers is not to be depended on. All are (good) at first, But few prove themselves to be ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... flat for an irregular patch, with a trail of broken stalks out of the heart of the plain. At one side was a buzzing, seething mass of glitter-winged insects which Travis already knew as carrion eaters. They arose reluctantly from their ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... small circular building, open to wind, sky and sea, formed the unnatural apex of a natural stairway which led steeply, almost vertically, down to a deep land-locked cove below. The irregular steps carved by nature out of the chalk had been strengthened, and a rough protection added by means of knotted ropes fixed on either side ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... attracted the notice of all the passengers; for after it had spread itself to a great bulk, it suddenly became more limited in circumference, grew more compact, dark, and consolidated. And now the successive flashes of chain lightning caused the whole cloud to appear like a sort of irregular network, and displayed a thousand fantastic images. The driver bespoke my attention to a remarkable configuration in the cloud; he said every flash of lightning near its centre discovered to him distinctly the form of a man sitting in an open carriage ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... a series of violent explosions as huge blocks of ice were shivered and shot into the air by that Titanic force. Nothing on earth could live in that wild maelstrom. It was one vast, pulsating, churning mass, and as the sun caught its irregular, crystal-like crest, a lawn-like mist, that glowed with every colour of the rainbow, hovered over it. It was indeed a wondrously ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... who spent their nights in scrutinising the faces of the moon and planets rather than in timing their transits, or devoted daylight energies, not to reductions and computations, but to counting and measuring spots on the sun. They were regarded as irregular practitioners, to be tolerated ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... is written in the heroic pentameter; it is divided into "laisses," or stanzas, of irregular length, and contains about three thousand seven hundred and eight lines. It is written in the assonant, or vowel rhyme, that was universal among European nations in the ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... truth of the world. But universal truth and universal law are the same; and therefore that which arises without having any root in eternal verity is lawless in the deepest possible sense,—lawless not merely as being irregular in its action, but in the deeper and more terrible sense of being in the universe without belonging there. To believe, however, that any product of universal dimensions can be generated, not by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... maple-wood is taken from this tree. It is known as 'curled maple' and 'bird's-eye maple,' and the common variety looks like satin-wood. In the curled maple the fibres are in waves instead of in straight lines, and the surface seems to change with alternate light and shade; in the bird's-eye, irregular snarls of fibres look like roundish projections rising from hollow places, each one resembling the eye of a bird. Buckets, tubs and many useful things are made of the straight variety, and for lasts it is considered better than any other kind of wood. The ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... His large irregular features are not in keeping with the proportions we call classic, nor is the sallow complexion any improvement; but despite these facts, there is indeed much that is attractive in Mr. Lawson's face. His gray eyes have a tender sympathetic look—tender as that ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... of this and other letters was partly due to the state of his health; the continual anxiety and work of his life at Frankfort, joined to irregular hours and careless habits, had told upon his constitution. He fell seriously ill in St. Petersburg with a gastric and rheumatic affection; an injury to the leg received while shooting in Sweden, became painful; ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... a lovely smile, and an arch twinkle of her eye towards me, and then launched forth in full tide, accompanying her sweet and mellow voice on that too much neglected instrument, the guitar. It was a wild, irregular sort of ditty, with one or two startling arabesque bursts in it. As near as may be, the following conveys the meaning, but not ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... that Mr. Ashley should tell his story here and now," he said. "It's unusual and irregular, but the circumstances are unusual and irregular. I request your appreciation of this courtesy, my Lord Farquhart, and as for you, my son, a gentleman's house may serve strange purposes, but it's no place for a tavern brawler. So take heed of ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... investigations bear in mind that any person who haw been detected in one dishonest act may probably have been guilty of other dishonest acts, and that your enquiry should therefore cover, not only the particular case under investigation, but other irregular or fraudulent proceedings, which it is possible may have been committed by the party suspected. This point should be particularly remembered in regard to offices transacting Money Order and Savings ...
— General Instructions For The Guidance Of Post Office Inspectors In The Dominion Of Canada • Alexander Campbell
... is it that a lump a few inches in diameter may be raised to redness in a gas flame at one spot, and kept hot for some minutes, while the rest of the mass remains sufficiently cool to be held comfortably in the fingers. In the second place, commercial carbide exists in masses of highly irregular shape, so that when they are packed into any vessel they only touch at their angles and edges; and accordingly, even if the material were a fairly good heat conductor of itself, the air or gas present between each lump ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... orphans]—Probably during the latter portion of Caracalla's reign, as also under Commodus, the funds for food had been available either not at all or at irregular intervals, and therefore the restitution of district ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... the majorities by which the President and Vice-President had been elected; and the other, that the result of the election had not been declared by the presiding officer conformably to the constitution and the law, and therefore the whole proceedings had been irregular and illegal. This motion, after a very disorderly debate, was disposed of by adjournment. Mr. Randolph was for bringing Missouri into the Union by storm, and by bullying a majority of the House into a minority. The only result was ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... nothing. My mind mounts with my fortunes. We are above the clouds. They form beneath us a vast and snowy region, dim and irregular, as I have sometimes seen them clustering upon the horizon's ridge at sunset, like a raging sea stilled by some sudden supernatural frost and frozen into form! How bright the air above us, and how delicate its fragrant breath! I scarcely breathe, and yet my pulses beat like my first youth. ...
— Ixion In Heaven • Benjamin Disraeli
... her learning lightly and can discuss "the quadrations of curvilinear spaces" without ceasing to be "a bouncing, dear, delightful girl," and adroit in the preparation of toast and chocolate. The style of the book is very careless and irregular, but rises in its best pages ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... hour when the Ionian captains were hurrying towards their boats, Pausanias was pacing his decks alone, with irregular strides, and through the cordage and the masts the starshine came fitfully on his troubled features. Long undecided he paused, as the waves sparkled to the stroke of oars, and beheld the boats of the feasters ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... admire the far-stretching, soft shadow of the sea, with its gentle, irregular line of white where it met the shore, she asked him if he wouldn't like to be rowing just then with a girl on a lovely lake. She wanted him to say—yes, if the girl were she. But he did not say it, and he had no idea ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... English readers complained of the difficulty caused by his Scotch, and now many make his I "dialect" an excuse for not reading books which their taste, debauched by third-rate fiction, is incapable of enjoying. But Scott has never disappeared in one of those irregular changes of public opinion remarked on by his friend Lady Louisa Stuart. In 1821 she informed him that she had tried the experiment of reading Mackenzie's "Man of Feeling" aloud: "Nobody cried, and at some of the touches I used to think so exquisite, they laughed."—[Abbotsford ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... valley sharp summits and irregular ridges printed their bold outlines on the sky. Nearer were farms, groves, and hills, with now and then a placid lake which caught the color of the sky and mirrored it back to us. But our eyes were fastened upon the grand summits and pinnacles ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... a thin seam of yellow, lying in the angle of sides and bottom! And breaking it, was a small irregular particle, of blackish hue tinted with the yellow in spots. Charley's eyes bulged. Gold! Was this the ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... know that a horse shies from skittishness if he flies one day snorting from what he meets the next with indifference; dark stables also produce this irregular shying. ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... the excavation the exact width of the foundation wall, but they felt this was poor economy, for the work was uncertain and rough, and the extra labor caused by trying to fit the forms to the sloping ground would more than offset the little saving; besides, it took more cement to fill in irregular trenches than it did ones of exact size. They had taken the forms they used for the dairy house foundation, together with some new sections, and set them up on the new footing, using wooden spreaders for holding them the right distance apart and placing ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... Mongol hordes still grazing their herds and their flocks on the grassy plains of high Asia, as they have done for countless centuries, are divided up into Banners, or military divisions, showing the enormous strength in irregular cavalry they possessed two hundred and fifty years ago. Round the Forbidden City are the Six Boards and the Nine Ministries, the outward signs of those bonds of etiquette and procedure which bind the Manchu Throne to the eighteen provinces. The walls of the Tartar city heave ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... by the Northern Arabs and shown in old prints. In modern Egypt the term is applied to the tall sugar-loaf caps of felt affected mostly by regular Dervishes. Burckhardt (Proverbs 194 and 398) makes it the high cap of felt or fur proper to the irregular cavalry called Dely or Delaty. In Dar For (Darfour) "Tartur" is a conical cap adorned with beads and cowries worn by the Manghwah or buffoon who corresponds with the Egyptian "Khalbus" or "Maskharah" and the Turkish ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... the delta of the river, and sailed about among the sand-banks, naming one of them Sturgeon Bank; while the Spanish explorers, who were there about the same time, recognized the fact of its existence far out at sea, in the irregular currents, the sand-banks, the drift of trees and logs, and also in the depression in the Cascade ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... is an irregular strip, of from ten to thirty miles in width, and extends along the whole base of the Himalayas, from the Sutledge River, on the west, to Upper Assam. Its character is peculiar. It differs both from the plains of India and from ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... freak. The main building—if it is the main building—is generally two stories in height, with irregular wings forming three sides of a square which opens in the water. It is, in brief, a cluster of whimsical extensions that look as if they had been built at different periods, which I believe was not ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... canals and ditches to irrigate large tracts of land which would be otherwise worthless. By means of irrigation, the farmer has control of his water supply and is able to get larger returns than are possible where he depends upon the irregular and uncertain rainfall. It is estimated that in the arid regions of western United States there are 150,000 square miles of land which may be made available for agriculture by irrigation. Perhaps in the future the valley of the lower Colorado may ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... that they weren't really going to endanger their clothes by rolling on park grass. Instead, she led him to a tea-room behind a candy-shop on Tottenham Court Road, a low room with white wicker chairs, colored tiles set in the wall, and green Sedji-ware jugs with irregular bunches of white roses. A waitress with wild-rose cheeks and a busy step brought Orange Pekoe and lemon for her, Ceylon and Russian Caravan tea and a jug of clotted cream for him, with ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... broad oval shape, more or less pointed towards one end, of a delicate greenish-white ground, pretty thickly blotched and spotted with various shades of brown and purple markings, which, always most numerous towards the large end, exhibit a strong tendency to form there an ill-defined zone or irregular mottled cap. The variations, however, in shape, size, colour, extent, and intensity of markings are very great; and yet, in the huge series before me, there is not one that an oologist would not at once unhesitatingly set down as a Shrike's. In some the ground-colour is a delicate pale sea-green. ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... authority. To a man of his temperament it must have been inexpressibly galling. Then he painfully straightened himself. He had in all probability never been beaten yet, and he had once, so his sister afterward told me, tamed a native levy of irregular cavalry and commanded them for two years in spite of the fact that a number of the dusky troopers had sworn to murder him ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... the surgeon replied, relieved that his irregular confidence had resulted in the conventional decision, and that he had not brought on himself a responsibility shared with her. "You had best step into the office. You ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... day. Towards tea-time, just before Cyril was due from school, Mr. Critchlow came surprisingly in. That is to say, his arrival was less of a surprise to Miss Insull and the rest of the staff than to Constance. For he had lately formed an irregular habit of popping in at tea-time, to chat with Miss Insull. Mr. Critchlow was still defying time. He kept his long, thin figure perfectly erect. His features had not altered. His hair and heard could not have been whiter than they had been for years past. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... the way to the point, and in front, stretching for six or seven miles until it joins the hills of Montauk, is the marshy beach of Neapeague, the "Water Land." As we descend, the sea is hidden by the irregular dunes that lie along the shore, and the dreary expanse extends far before us and off toward the north. Every step leads us to realize more fully the dismal character of the sterile flat. The wagon-wheels alternately grind through the sand and bump into deep puddles in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... successive joints, and the stones chiselled to the same slope. But this becomes sufficiently troublesome when the joints are numerous, so that the pillar is like a pile of cheeses; or when it is to be built of small and irregular stones. We should be naturally led, in the one case, to cut all the cheeses to the same diameter; in the other to build by the plumb-line; and in both to ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the purpose of observation, but at the same time it renders the balloon a steadier target for hostile fire. On the other hand, the swaying of a spherical balloon with the wind materially contributes to its safety. A moving object, particularly when its oscillations are irregular and incalculable, is an extremely difficult object at which to ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... second group, Ascomycetes, or "Spore sac fungi," the spores are produced in delicate sacs called asci. The fruit-bearing part is often cup-shaped, disc-like, or club-shaped, thicker at the top or covered with irregular swellings and ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... should not have heard myself doing it; but I hadn't. By an effort which absorbed all my faculties I managed to keep my jaw still. It required much attention, and while thus engaged I became bothered by curious, irregular sounds of faint tapping on the deck. They could be heard single, in pairs, in groups. While I wondered at this mysterious devilry, I received a slight blow under the left eye and felt an enormous tear run down my cheek. ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... thirds of the Senators present in executive session. He appoints all ambassadors and other public officers—but subject to the confirmation of the Senate. He can convene either or both Houses of Congress at irregular times, and under certain circumstances can adjourn them, his executive power is, in fact, almost unlimited; and this power is solely in his own hands, as the Constitution knows nothing of the President's ministers. According to the Constitution these officers are ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... spirit-tubs slung upon the chest and back, after stumbling with the burden of them for several miles inland over a rough country and in darkness. He said that though years of his youth and young manhood were spent in this irregular business, his profits from the same, taken all together, did not average the wages he might have earned in a steady employment, whilst the fatigues and risks ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... the time when the twin banks of the river, in their raiment of bright green, seemed to open their beautiful arms to receive us, we came to anchor opposite the mean, shabby, irregular town of Paknam, or Sumuttra P'hra-kan ("Ocean Affairs"). Here the captain went ashore to report himself to the Governor, and the officials of the custom-house, and the mail-boat came out to us. My boy became impatient for couay (cake); Moonshee, my Persian teacher, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... another, only a boy, with nothing remarkable but his stupidity; while the fourth was a scrubby, stunted, fellow, about sixteen or seventeen years of age, with a long pale face, deeply pitted with the small-pox, and an irregular crop of light hair, most unscientifically cut ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... somewhat irregular responder, but it was a pleasure to sit near him, because his deep, rapid voice gave a new quality to the words. He seemed happy in church, and prayed with great absorption, though I noticed that his ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was concealed under a "pale peruke;" but, is said to have been red, or, according to most of his portraits, of a sandy hue. As he rode, with extreme grace, upon a fine bay gelding presented to him by the Duke of Perth, the bystanders remarked that an "irregular smile," as one of them has expressed it, lighted up, by fits, a countenance which told but too plainly every emotion of the heart. An anxious, watchful look was, at times, directed to those around and near him; and, in particular, rested ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... State of Maine is rugged and hilly. The primitive rocks of which its geological structure is chiefly composed are broken into ridges which run parallel to the great streams, and therefore in a direction from north to south. These ridges terminate in an irregular line, which to the east of the Penobscot may be identified nearly with the military road to Houlton. From the northern summit of these ridges an extensive view of the disputed territory can in many places be obtained. This is the case at the military post at ...
— 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
... glossy, and slightly undulating dark hair, growing closely round his low forehead, helped to make him almost romantically handsome, although his features were rather irregular. His white ears were abnormally small, ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... They only sing when the mood takes them; never with a view to please others, but always simply to give vent to their emotions. Their love-songs generally open with a sentimental recitative, and then change into actual singing, with frequent modulations from one key into another. The time is irregular, and though certain rhythmical peculiarities recur constantly, yet each performer gives to what he sings so strong a personality of execution as to make it almost an individual composition. Any one hearing Shokas sing for the first time would imagine that each singer was improvising as he ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor |
