"Roundabout" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shortly to be reunited family— at this very time a few of the leading creditors of the Wishwash and Longstop Railway assembled in the old office of that bankrupt undertaking, and decided to accept an offer from the Grand Roundabout Railway to buy up their undertaking at half-price, and add its few hundred miles of line ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... founder of a new democratic and modern order of poetry, greater than the old. But I do not propose to go over the whole list here; I only wish to indicate that the absorption is well commenced abroad, and that probably her poet will at last reach America by way of those far- off, roundabout channels. The old mother will first masticate and moisten the food which is still ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... directly as a stone would have fallen; but just before touching the ground she spread her wings, and alighted lightly on her feet. Then she fell to her labor of collecting what I suppose was nesting material, and in a few minutes started up again by the roundabout road to the top. Two hours or more, with gradually stiffening neck, I spent with the wren, while she worked constantly and silently, and not once during all that time did ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... As for wishing to worship, I understand that perfectly. Prayer is a sort of instinct with me, and all the reasoning in the world couldn't make me cast myself out of communion with the unknown something roundabout me that seems to answer me. But what you are doing seems, as ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... run after him and take it away. They were, in fact, rather like a kitten which knows it has a tail, and will fly round and round all day with the expectation of catching that desirable appendage. Sometimes indeed, by sheer perseverance, of which he had a great deal in a roundabout way, Ralph would achieve something, but, when this happened, something else, not foreseen by him, had always happened first, which rendered that accomplishment nugatory and left it expensive on his hands. ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... me little information about the river. The old channel had filled with silt, and the river was diverted into a roundabout course little more than a creek in width, then spread over whole delta. The widely spread water finally collected into an ancient course of the Colorado, known as the Hardy or False Colorado. As nearly as I could learn no one from Yuma had been through this new ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... boy doll again, which was promptly accepted. Allison had nothing to offer which Kitty considered equivalent to a seat in the cart, but by a roundabout transfer the trade was finally made. Allison gave Elise the amount of purple and yellow paint she needed for the Princess Pansy's ball gown, in return for which Elise gave her a piece of spangled gauze which Kitty had long had an eye upon. Allison ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Europe in spring, and are connected with a procession that appears to be an ecclesiastical adaptation of a pre-Christian lustration-rite.{12} The great name of Mannhardt lends weight to this theory, but it seems a somewhat roundabout way of accounting for the facts. Perhaps an explanation of the "horsiness" of the day might be sought in some ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... lifting of the mist, and the still happier discovery that the travellers had groped their way, though by a very roundabout direction, to within a mile or so of the part of the valley in which the farm-house was situated, restored Mr. Idle's sinking spirits and reanimated his failing strength. While the landlord ran off to get the dog-cart, Thomas was assisted by ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... Butler, shaking his head. "You see, Mrs. Hazleton is a nervous wreck, but it's about the baby, and caused, she says, by her fears for its safety. It came to us only in a roundabout way, through a servant in the house who keeps us in touch. The curious feature is that we can seem to get nothing definite from her about her fears. They ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... to lead to wholesale breakage of the Eighth Commandment. Certainly, my Baronite, reading the fascinating record of a roundabout tour, feels prompted to steal away. Mary Stuart Boyd, who pens the record, has the great advantage of the collaboration of A.S.B., whose signature is familiar in Mr. Punch's Picture Gallery.... A ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... had to say to you is something very general, and yet I prefer to choose this roundabout way. I do not know whether it is false or true delicacy, but I should find it very hard to talk with you, face to face, about friendship. And yet it is thoughts on that subject that I wish to convey to you. The application—and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... sent to Tigranes (now Clodius was the brother of the then wife of Lucullus), was at first conducted by the king's guides through the upper part of the country, by a route unnecessarily circuitous and roundabout, and one that required many days' journeying; but, as soon as the straight road was indicated to him by a freedman, a Syrian by nation, he quitted that tedious and tricky road, and, bidding his barbarian guides farewell, he crossed the ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... whereon he sat Sweep his fur, nor wince thereat; Rake his little pathways out Mid the bushes roundabout; Smooth away his talons' mark From the claw-worn pine-tree bark, Where he climbed as dusk embrowned, ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... when Iley announced to Judith that she had word from some of Pap Spiller's kin who were living in Garyville, that acquaintances of theirs from Hepzibah, coming down to the circus at the larger town, had given them roundabout and vague news of Huldah. The girl had delayed in Hepzibah but a few days. The story as it came up on the mountain was that she had married "some feller from Big Turkey Track, and gone ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... their number and proximity. Nothing like this was to be seen at home. Well knowing that in these villages he ran much more risk of detection than in the open country, he henceforth did his best to avoid them, by taking a roundabout course whenever they came in sight from a distance. This mode of travelling not only lengthened his journey, but put unlooked-for obstacles in ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... replied he, chucking her under the chin; "I must own you have always submitted to my knowledge of these matters. Why, then, depend upon it; mind what I say—depend upon it, they are certainly some of the rebel ladies, who, they say, travel with the young Chevalier; and have taken a roundabout way to escape ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... running through Dale Canyon; the other a pack-road, known as the Gridley trail, crossing the Topah Topah Hills and making a short cut from the Dunning ranch on the Crawling Stone to the Frenchman. The entire valley is, in fact, so difficult of access, save by the long and roundabout wagon-road, that the sight of a complete outfit of buildings such as that put up by Sinclair always came as a surprise to the traveller who, reaching the crest of the hills, looked suddenly down a thousand feet on his well-ordered sheds and barns ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... 20—he had himself gone into exile rather than come to open fight with him; just as Q. Metellus had done in B.C. 100, when, declining to take the oath to the agrarian law of Saturninus, rather than fight Marius, who had taken the oath, he went into exile. This seems rather a roundabout explanation; but no better has been proposed, and, of course, Quintus, who had lately read the speech, would be able better to understand ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... could, for the greater part of the way, he dropped into the road by the vicarage letter-box, and looking carefully about, to ascertain that no person was near, he restored the letter to its nook, placed the key in its hiding-place, as he had promised the postman, and again rode homewards by a roundabout way. ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... hooded, and periwigg'd, or crop-ear'd up by the immobile vulgus: while the floating street-swarmers, who have seen us pass by at one place, run with stretched-out necks, and strained eye-balls, a roundabout way, and elbow and shoulder themselves into places by which we have not passed, in order to obtain another sight of us; every street continuing to pour out its swarms of late-comers, to add to the gathering snowball; who ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... a roundabout route home, for he did not want to see Nan until he had thought out this matter to his own satisfaction. To help people poorer or weaker than himself, or to "keep straight" himself, and help others to do likewise—this ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... convenient little rez-de-chaussee apartment near the Trocadero, at the junction of the rue Roget and the avenue de l'Alma; but his way thither was so roundabout that the best part of an hour was required for what might have been less than a twenty-minute taxicab course direct from Troyon's. It was past one when he arrived, afoot, at ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... weak eyes and indolent dispositions. The book-worm wraps himself up in his web of verbal generalities, and sees only the glimmering shadows of things reflected from the minds of others. Nature puts him out. The impressions of real objects, stripped of the disguises of words and voluminous roundabout descriptions, are blows that stagger him; their variety distracts, their rapidity exhausts him; and he turns from the bustle, the noise, and glare, and whirling motion of the world about him (which he has not an ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... the longest way round that we can take. Do you think any one with an ounce of brains would send poison from a place where she—or he, if you like—was known? No. She—or he—would go a long way, and a roundabout way. Or send a trusted messenger. Tell me straight, Mr. Hilliard, has Mrs. Gaylor got in her employ ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... by accident or design that the order in which the words way and will were placed was different from the one commonly assigned to them? Had Lord Ashiel made a mistake in arranging the message? Or did the "will" refer to his will and testament? If so, why should he take so roundabout a way of designating it? Doubtless because something more important than the will was involved; indeed, if anything was clear, from the ambiguous sentence and the precaution that Ashiel had taken that though it fell into the hands of his enemies it should convey ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... to England with his cousin, William Makepeace Thackeray, for his education. He served with distinction in India, was knighted in 1841, the only occasion on which he returned to England. His cousin, Thackeray, in the 'Roundabout Papers' (Letts's Diary), paid a tribute to his chivalry and liberality. He married Marian Sophia Thompson in 1844, and died at Indore, October 28, 1861, leaving a family of three sons and six daughters."[354] A memorial-stone is raised in memory of him in the cloister ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... have come by rough seas and mighty roundabout course to your happiness, but there be some do never make this blessed ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... the untried painters an opportunity of proving what good was in them, prompted the charge to decorate with frescoes a room in the Casa Bartholdi, situated on the brow of the Pincian Hill.[6] The Prussian Consul was in a roundabout way connected with Philip Veit and Frederick Schlegel, whose mutual relationship has been already recounted; his wife was sister of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, and aunt of the illustrious musician, and sundry intermarriages had made, as it were, a ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... the ships was a Dutch one, from Java, and the other was British, bound for Ceylon—neither very desirable, as they would have compelled a long, roundabout voyage home. But Storms would have accepted the offer of one on account of his distrust of the young man, Fred Sanders, but for ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... the adventurer was at Bury St. Edmunds, "not many miles from here," that is a short way off. Now Bury is no more than about four-and-twenty miles from Ipswich, a matter of about four hours' coach travelling. Great Yarmouth is fully seventy by roundabout roads, which could not be described as being "a short way from here." It would have taken eight or nine hours—a day's journey. Mr. Pickwick left Eatanswill about one or two, for the lunch was going on, and got to Bury in time for dinner, which, had he ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... realized ultimately, of an English counterpart in the north to the Spanish empire in the south. He had already begun to equip a couple of vessels. He despatched them to America on April 27, 1584, under Captains Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlow. They took the roundabout route by the Canaries and West Indies. In July they were saluted with a most fragrant gale from the land they were seeking. Sailing into the mouth of a river they saw vines laden with grapes, climbing up tall cedars. On July 13 they proclaimed the Queen's ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... rest. He knew when the oncoming hound, who had worked out the first and simpler puzzle, struck the second and intricate one. First deathlike silence—the hound had come to the end of the trail. Probably he was whiffing the trunks of the trees roundabout, looking up eagerly into them. As if he had been in one of those trees himself, Tom could see it all, so well did he know the ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... our battle? Humph! A rather roundabout Way of so doing! P'r'aps your Masters, too, Would claim the same—there are such Bosses found about; Westminsters, Liveseys, Norwoods, and that crew, All for our good, not only Strike-Committees, But Rate-payers' Defence ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various
... be a very foolish thing for me to listen to any more of such monstrous flattery. Or perhaps you are satirical and take this roundabout way of telling me that I'm human like yourself. I'm going down to supper, for I prefer Mr. Burleigh's ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... and long continuance. Swelling up of the puffy form, and reddening ripples of the broad face heralded it, it began with a contagious cackle, it deepened into a flabby guffaw, and after all the others roundabout had finished their cachinnatory tribute it wound up with what was between a roar and the lazy drone ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... was mentioned but rarely. She became "my dear companion," "my wife," or "my partner." The building of wings and the purchase of additional beds by this time had become a permanent feature, though, as the writer admitted, it was "a roundabout way." ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... through the underwood, and swim across a pond, that would bring him by a very short cut to the old grandam's cottage, while he shrewdly guessed that the little girl would stop to gather strawberries, or to make up a posy, as she loitered along the pleasanter but more roundabout path through the wood. And sure enough the wolf, who cared neither for strawberries nor for flowers, made such good speed that he had presently reached the grandmother's cottage. Thump, thump, went the ...
— Bo-Peep Story Books • Anonymous
... are roundabout ways of expressing thought; circumlocution is the more common, periphrasis the more technical word. Constant circumlocution produces an affected and heavy style; occasionally, skilful periphrasis conduces both to beauty and to simplicity. Etymologically, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... something ought to be done to make the study of language easy, interesting, and practical. Such a work is here attempted; but it remains with the public to say whether these plain philosophical principles shall be sustained, matured, perfected, and adopted in schools, or the old roundabout course of useless and ineffectual teaching ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... A roundabout route, via the Postage and Inwards Bills Departments, took him to the swing-doors. It was here that the danger became acute. The doors were well within view of the Fixed Deposits Department, and Mr Gregory had an eye compared with which ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... rays. Heavy shutters for protection were often used, but to close them at time of service would have been to plunge the church into utter darkness. Permission was sometimes given, as in Haverhill, to "sett up a shed outside of the window to keep out the heat of the sun there,"—a very roundabout way to accomplish a very simple end. As years passed on, trees sprang up and grew apace, and too often the churches became overhung and heavily shadowed by dense, sombre spruce, cedar, and fir trees. A New England parson was preaching in a neighboring church which was thus ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... final about a logical rendering of experience. Its value is not contained in itself; its significance is that of standpoint, outlook, method. It intervenes between the more casual, tentative, and roundabout experiences of the past, and more controlled and orderly experiences of the future. It gives past experience in that net form which renders it most available and most significant, most fecund for future experience. The abstractions, generalizations, and classifications which ...
— The Child and the Curriculum • John Dewey
... what flattered his own passion, believed that Charlotte, in these words, was alluding to her previous widowed state, and, in a roundabout way, was making a suggestion for a separation; so that he answered, with a laugh, "Why not? all we want is to come to an understanding." But he found himself sorely enough undeceived, as Charlotte continued, "And we have now a choice of opportunities ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... stricken with love. For ten solid minutes the woman had talked round her subject. Intuitive, she scented danger; usually fearless, her whole being was sick with apprehension; desperate, she dug her nails into her flesh and essayed to reach her goal by a roundabout way. ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... accompanied her down-stairs to the breakfast-table, flashed out at her from the fire, and re-duplicated itself brightly from the flanks of the urn and the sturdy flutings of the Georgian teapot. It was as if, in some roundabout way, all her diffused apprehensions of the previous day, with their moment of sharp concentration about the newspaper article,—as if this dim questioning of the future, and startled return upon the past,—had between ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... a roundabout course, and went to Madockawando's lodge, near the fort. All the members of the family, except the old chief, were away at the sugar-making. The great Abenaqui's dignity would not allow him to drag in fuel to the fire, so he squatted nursing the ashes, ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... back, by a somewhat roundabout way, to the idea we started from, that of an original impetus of life, passing from one generation of germs to the following generation of germs through the developed organisms which bridge the interval between the generations. This impetus, sustained right along the lines of evolution ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... Luigia, my former attendant at the Palazzo Giustiniani, to the astonishment of my friends I suddenly left Venice. I had spent four dreary days there, and now started by train on my dull journey to Vienna, following the roundabout overland route. It was during this journey that the music of the Meistersinger first dawned on my mind, in which I still retained the libretto as I had originally conceived it. With the utmost distinctness ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... each other can possess neither more nor less virtue than one which he has struck in a moment by the friction of a lucifer match; but to the ignorant and superstitious this truth is far from apparent, and accordingly they take infinite pains to do in a roundabout way what they might have done directly with the greatest ease, and what, even when it is done, is of no use whatever for the purpose in hand. A vast proportion of the labour which mankind has expended throughout the ages has been no better spent; it has been like the stone ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... I thought it was perhaps his roundabout way of asking me to show him the plan, so I said I didn't know where it was; that I rather thought you had destroyed it; and when I said that, the poor chap looked so disappointed that I showed him what it was like, by sketching it out on the ground ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... the lands, towns, and villages which are within forty miles of it belong unto the same. They showed me the church, wherein were as many images as could hang about, or upon the walls of the church roundabout; and even the roof of the church was painted full of images. The chief image was of Our Lady, which was garnished with gold, rubies, sapphires, and other rich stones abundantly. In the midst of the church stood twelve wax tapers of two yards long, and a fathom about ...
— The Discovery of Muscovy etc. • Richard Hakluyt
... along the base of the Tayyih Ism Mountain; then the cliffs fall sheer into the sea, explaining why caravans never travel that way. Yet there was a maritime road, for we know that Ab Sufyn, on his way from Syria to fight the battle of "Bedr" (A.H. 2), passed by a roundabout path for safety, along the shore of Midian. Thus compelled, the track bends inland, and enters a Nakb, a gash conspicuous from the Gulf, an immense caon or couloir that looks as if ready to receive ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... Everything was quiet roundabout, only the night wind was soughing in the old pine-trees. Between them there was a clear view of the terrace, which the moon was now flooding with light; the space before the castle lay ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri
... his brethren the necessities of life. At this period many pious persons acted in this way when they gave their property to the Church. Church goods being unseizable, and exempt from taxation, this was a roundabout way of getting the better of fiscal extortion, whether in the shape of arbitrary confiscations, or eviction by force of arms. In any case, such souls as were tired of the world and longing for repose, found in these bequests an heroic method of saving ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... at the close of the 'Roundabout Paper' No. 23, 'De Finibus,' in which a sense of the ebb of life is very marked; the whole paper is like a soliloquy. It opens with a drawing of Mr. Punch, with unusually mild eye, retiring for the night; he is putting out his high-heeled shoes, and before disappearing gives a wistful ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... land half a dozen of you, with a supply of makeup for the blue patches. And you'd separate, and take ships that went various roundabout ways, and arrive on Weald one by one, to see what could be done there to...." He stopped. "When did you find out positively that there wasn't any plague ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... absolutely beyond Leyden's influence; free as the air, she knows everything now; Mrs. Goring is with her, and they know they are surrounded by friends too strong for Leyden to combat. Leyden is now making his way by a roundabout track to the stream where he left his steam launch, believing he has escaped my line. He intends to overtake the schooner here, lift the gold dust out of the Barang, and board his own schooner, which cleared ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... traveller will sigh for grey English skies, pattering drops and undisturbed sleep. At sea, you may escape both blinding glare and mosquito bites. A boat is also the only means of realizing the beauty of the coast. Most beautiful is the roundabout sail from Cannes to the Ile St. Marguerite: I say roundabout, because, if the wind is adverse, the boatmen have to make a circuit, going out of their course to the length of four or five miles. Every tourist knows the story of the Iron Mask; few are perhaps aware that in the horrible ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... heard of his illness in a far-off way, but had received no distinct particulars, for the news came in a roundabout way by word of mouth, country-folk never write. The distance between the two houses was less than ten miles, and might as well have been five hundred for all ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... bright and merry, now looked worried and ill at ease. Lucian—so much as he had seen of him—had always liked him better than Lydia, and was sorry to see him so downcast. Nor when he learned the reason was he better pleased. Clyne told it to him in a roundabout way. ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... is quite ordinary. The game is over, the ball is lost, and you prepare to go. But you decide to go home by a rather roundabout way that brings you by the spot that you have scoured in vain. You are not going to search for the ball. That would simply put the creature up to some new artifice. No, you are just walking round that way accidentally. ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... if they did desire it. The shrewd Roman said: "The gods will give us what is most appropriate; man is dearer to them than to himself." But the faithful Anglo-Saxon maintains that his prayer is none the less answered even if it be denied, and that it is made up to him in some roundabout way. It is inconceivable to the Anglo-Saxon that there may be a strain of sadness and melancholy in the very mind of God; he cannot understand that there can be any beauty in sorrow. To the Celt, sorrow itself is dear and beautiful, and the mournful ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... a roundabout way. I told him I'd beat his head off if he ever spoke to Miss Thackeray again as ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... passed the stable, the Rover boys stepped out of sight in the building. They saw him re-enter the Hall, and then they took a roundabout course which soon brought them to the campus, where they joined Fatty ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... matter how good it is, will only annoy the patient and send her farther on in the wrong path; but if given in some gentle roundabout way, so that she feels that she has discovered for herself what you have been trying to tell her, it will ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... the years sped on, news of Gethin came in a roundabout way to the farm, and at last a letter from some foreign port, from which it was evident that the youth, now growing up to manhood, still retained his bright sunny nature and laughter-loving ways, together with the warmth of heart ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... been effected through A's own mechanical system—A, in fact, will have been living in B. The universally admitted maxim that he who does this or that by the hand of an agent does it himself, shews that the foregoing view is only a roundabout way of stating what common sense treats as ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... had ever had for a pleasure-trip, and taking his young wife with him (proud indeed, we may be sure, at this earliest honour of his life, the precursor of so many more) he went to Massachusetts by a somewhat roundabout but very picturesque route, down the Great Lakes, through the Thousand Islands, over the St. Lawrence rapids, and on to Quebec, the only town in America which from its old- world look can lay claim to the sort of beauty which so many ancient ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... Sponge had rather a large balance against Jack for his impudence to him in the field. Nevertheless, the fair Amelia continued her attentions, and talked of hunting, occasionally diverging into observations on Lord Scamperdale's fine riding and manly character and appearance, in the roundabout way ladies send their messages and compliments ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... and a pair of heavy brogans that had been made of horse hide. These shoes were reddish in appearance and were as stiff as board according to Mr. Womble. For special wear the men were given a garment that was made into one piece by sewing the pants and shirt together. This was known as a "roundabout". The women were given one or two dresses that had been made of the same material as that of the men's pants. As the cloth that these clothes were made of was very coarse and heavy most of them lasted until the time for the next ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... over later," said her father. "Just now I am going to tell you about our auto tour. We are going, as I said, to the city of Portland. It is three hundred miles there, but the roundabout roads we will ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope
... rows of splendid gum-trees, for any distance, as it became hidden by the high sandhills. I was very reluctant to cross, on account of the frightfully boggy bed of the creek, but, rather than travel several miles roundabout, I decided to try it. We got over, certainly, but to see one's horses and loads sinking bodily in a mass of quaking quicksand is by no means an agreeable sight, and it was only by urging the animals on with stock-whips, to prevent them delaying, that ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... passage. I am going out for our government. It's a long and roundabout way they've sent me, but poor men must go where opportunity points the way. I assure you this voyage was not designed for my pleasure. However, I enjoyed a ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... that affair. He himself wasn't good enough for her. The little cat should see. Warrington's ultimatum of the night before burned and rankled, and a man of Craig's caliber never accepted the inevitable without meditating revenge, revenge of a roundabout character, such as would insure his physical safety. The man could not play fair; there was nothing either in his heart or in his mind upon which square play could find foothold. There was nothing loyal or generous or worthy in the man. There is something admirable ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... dull-headed, and modest Englishman asked for a place, because he had been born in Liverpool! and had seen the world beyond the woods and waters, too! And another fussy, talkative, pragmatical little gentleman rested his pretensions on his ability to draw and paint maps!—not projecting them in roundabout scientific processes, but in that speedy and elegant style in which young ladies copy maps at first chop boarding-schools! Nay, so transcendent seemed Mr. Merchator's claims, when his show or sample maps ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... born a cripple—born a cripple, I was—and my two sisters ever grew up to be a comfort to my poor mother. What father was, if ever he was anythin' at all, I don't know; and if I ever did know I think it was somethin' connected in some roundabout fashion, it was, with drains. But he died early, and that was an end of him. My poor mother, she was a laundress—a beautiful laundress she was, a very beautiful laundress—and she used to do for a gentleman who was a dissentin' minister—a dissentin' minister he was—and most ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... seconds the Pavilion d'Armenonville swirled round the unfortunate painter so violently that he felt as if he were on a roundabout at a fair. He feared that the siren must hear the pounding of his heart. To think that he had dreaded paying two louis! Two louis? Why, it would have been a bagatelle! Speechlessly he laid a fortune on the salver. With a culminating burst of ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... to Stephen. He leaves florry brusquely and seizes Kitty. A screaming bittern's harsh high whistle shrieks. Groangrousegurgling Toft's cumbersome whirligig turns slowly the room right roundabout the room.) ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... taps of country inns, while the big sleek brass jingling horses wait patiently outside with their waggons; he got a job with some van people who were wandering about the country with swings and a steam roundabout and remained with them for three days, until one of their dogs took a violent dislike to him and made his duties unpleasant; he talked to tramps and wayside labourers, he snoozed under hedges by day and in outhouses and hayricks at night, and once, ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... wet, but towards evening the sky cleared up, and Carmen led little Frieda home from the school-house. On her return she took a roundabout path, and slackened her usually fleet steps to enjoy the fresh, balmy spring air. She passed into a lonely lane, bordered on either side with beautiful gardens, whose hedges were unfolding their first blossoms, ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... on reaching the same place he perceived that a new route had been made, and that instead of a roundabout way of approach, as in the past, the house was now in a straight line from the point where he was looking at it, it would be possible to estimate approximately the number of minutes which he could gain on the time employed ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... advice is to go this very moment to the Emperor, if he has not gone to bed, or else the very first thing to-morrow morning. Remember, you must seem to have consulted no one. Make him read this letter; watch him as closely as you can; but, whatever happens, show that you hate these roundabout methods, and tell him again that you will never listen to anything but a ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... had not looked upon her face, but he had kept his promise, returning to her everything—everything except a withered rose-bud, which years before, when but a boy, he had twined among the heavy braids of her hair, and which she had given back to him, playfully fastening it in the button-hole of his roundabout! How well he remembered that day. She was a little romping girl, teasing him unmercifully about his flat feet and big hands, chiding him for his negro slang, as she termed his favorite expressions, and with whatever else she did, weaving her image into his heart's best and noblest affections, ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... house in which he first saw the light was an unpainted, squarish structure, only a single story high, with a big chimney in the middle. This house was removed a few years later, and a better and somewhat larger one, which still stands, was built in its place. The situation is very pleasing. Roundabout is a varied country of heights, dales, woods and pastures, and cultivated fields. The dwelling is in a wide upland hollow that falls away to the east and south into a deep valley, beyond which rise line on line of great mounding hills. These ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... Samaritan upland, and Thothmes was advised by his captains to avoid a direct attack, and march against them by a circuitous route, which was undefended. But the intrepid warrior scorned this prudent counsel. "His generals," he said, "might take the roundabout road, if they liked; he would follow the straight one." The event justified his determination. Megiddo was reached in a week without loss or difficulty, and a great battle was fought in the fertile plain to the north-west of the fortress, ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... said to make Mr Gordon fully comprehend the case. The men were dissatisfied. They had come in a roundabout way to the conclusion that some pecuniary concession, not mentioned in their bond, should come from the side of capital to that of labour. Whether wages, interest of capital, share of profits, reserve fund, they knew not nor cared. This was their stand. And being Englishmen ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood
... would soon hear of me and run me down. I hoped they would attach themselves to me, and meant to lead them a fine dance as a blind for Henriette, who, meanwhile, would have crossed to Lyons and gone south to Marseilles. The Riviera is a longer and more roundabout road to Turin, but it was open, and I hoped unimpeded. What do ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... and recklessly wasted. If a man wants reforms he goes armed with a vote to the ballot box and even to the Legislature with that power of the vote behind him; but if women want these things they are asked to take the long, questionable, roundabout route of personal influence, of petition, of indirection. Women have accomplished a great deal in this way but it has required a long time.... Take, for instance, one class of work—the establishment ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... admiration of Miss Chatterton's masterly analysis and comprehension. She had, so to speak, taken Frida Tancred to pieces and put her together again in a phrase—"Dying for love of life." Beside her luminous intuition his own more logical method seemed clumsy and roundabout, a constructive process riddled by dangerous fallacies and undermined by monstrous assumptions. At the same time he persisted in returning to one of these, the most monstrous, perhaps, of all. In spite, perhaps because, of her flat denial, he pictured ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... a cheerful meeting, nor did the King show any desire to make it better. When by roundabout and furtive ways Madame Alois at last stood drooping by his chair, he began to talk to her in English, a language unknown to Richard, though familiar enough, he saw, to his father and brother. 'It seems to be his Grace's desire ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... had been making his way down by a more roundabout way, now made his appearance. He grunted upon discovering the disheveled Chunky, and shrugged his shoulders as he observed the display of tin cans ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... Under other circumstances he should be the first to know, but I want the news kept from him for a special reason. Besides, it would be better if he found out about it from others and through roundabout channels. His son up there I don't see doing any talking himself for some time if he does live. When he is able to talk, I believe he'll decide to keep his mouth shut or just accept the explanation given that he was fishing or something of that kind. When the doctor has ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... had only one thought in his mind—to make sure he didn't die for nothing. So he took your father's papers, knowing they were as good as a death warrant, slipped away and boarded a Lhari ship that led roundabout to stars where the message hadn't reached yet. He led them a good chase. Did he die or did they track him down and kill him?" Bart bowed his head ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... weeks the cure was complete. In this case, however, we had the ingenious idea of changing her personality at the moment when we induced her to walk. The patient fancied she was somebody else, and as such, and in this roundabout manner, we satisfactorily attained the ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... the Elk and the trees and shifted his guns in their scabbards. His rifle he had left with Sam. Either Plimsoll had not passed the peaks, was in the woods, or he had come and gone. Something told Sandy this last had not occurred. Travel beyond the peaks must have been hard and slow and roundabout for Plimsoll while he had tangented fast for ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... Sam that was to get the bag of samples and take it to McGurvin's by a roundabout way?" ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish
... case all corporeal objects should have all of them, as they are all bodies. We must therefore attribute them to an extra-corporeal principle; and this we call soul. As an incorporeal thing the soul cannot be strictly defined, not being composed of genus and species; but we can describe it in a roundabout way in its relation to the body. He then gives the Aristotelian definition of the soul as "the [first] entelechy of a natural body having life potentially" (cf. above, ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... view, were the commands at Peach Orchard and Fairoaks, and to the south, a few furlongs distant, the Williamsburg and Richmond turnpike ran, parallel with the railway, toward the field of Seven Pines. The latter site, was simply the junction of the turnpike with a roundabout way to Richmond, called the "Nine Mile Road," and Fairoaks was the junction of the diverging road with the railroad. Toward the latter I proceeded, and soon came to the Irish brigade, located on both sides of the way, at ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... Mrs. Bohun, discontentedly; "and it isn't a bit like what Lord Tommy would do. It is more in Rossmoyne's line. I don't think I believe it. And the roundabout way in which you told it reminds one of a three-volume novel: the first leads up to the point, the third winds up the point, the second is the point. I confess I like the second volume best. When I grow funny over my friends ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... name ought to be, and she ruled her pros. with a rod of iron. I expect that was good for them, and I say nothing as to that, but she was a beast to the boys. We had some poor chaps in who were damnably knocked about, and one could do a lot for them in roundabout ways. Regulations are made to be broken in some cases, I think. But she was a holy terror. Sooner than call her, the boys would endure anything, but some of us knew, and once she caught ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... old fellow with a red nose and white hair, seemed utterly dejected; while the woman, a little roundabout, fat woman, with shining cheeks, looked at the agent of the authorities who had arrested ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... In a roundabout fashion Abner Balberry had heard that Nat had gone to Buffalo, and then he learned through a man who had been to New York that his nephew was in the metropolis. Abner had often longed to visit New York, and here he saw his ...
— From Farm to Fortune - or Nat Nason's Strange Experience • Horatio Alger Jr.
... the clearing; they leaped over each other as if playing leap-frog; they vied with each other in the high jump. Sometimes they gathered together in the middle of the open space and crept about close to the ground, in and out and roundabout, like a game of fox and geese. Then they rose on their hind legs and hopped slowly about in all the dignity of a minuet. Right in the midst of the solemn affair some mischievous fellow gave a squeak and a big jump; ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long |
