"Cross-grained" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... days were lengthening quickly and London was beginning to show its better side to the cross-grained people who abuse its climate, the gas was lighted again in the dingy rooms in Hare Court. No one but the old woman who came to sweep had visited them since Mr. Van Torp had gone into the country in March, after Lady Maud had been to see him on the ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... Witwoud might deceive all but the elect. No familiarity—direct or indirect—with a particular mode of life and speech is necessary to the appreciation of Love for Love. Sir Sampson Legend is your unmistakable heavy father, cross-grained and bullying. Valentine is no ironical, fine gentleman like Mirabell, but a young rake from Cambridge, all debts and high spirits. Scandal is a plain railer at things, especially women; Ben Legend a sea-dog who cannot speak without a nautical metaphor; Jeremy an idealised ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... AZRAEL spake—"On the Stygian lake I floated a half-sinned sin On the crest of a cross-grained stickleback, that is caught with a crooked pin; For a year and a day I watched it whirl, but never that sin could be One-half so base as your gruesome face, O Soul of a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 23, 1892 • Various
... generally chastise some quiet, timid boy who is equally afraid of acorns and canes, while the principal performers get dexterously out of the way. And so calling-over rolls on somehow, much like the big world, punishments lighting on wrong shoulders, and matters going generally in a queer, cross-grained way, but the end coming somehow, which is, after all, the great point. And now the master of the week has finished, and locked up the big school; and the prepostors of the week come out, sweeping the last remnant of the school fags, who had been loafing about the corners by the fives court, ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... always coming home for his tea; b always giving his wife new dresses; c cross-grained; d good; e hanging up his hat on the gas-jet; h kept in proper order; k methodical. ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll
... do. As for us, I'll venture to say two men more disposed to go pleasantly down the current of life it were hard to meet with; and yet, such was the consequence of these confounded four months' sequestration from all other society, we became sour and cross-grained, everlastingly disputing about trifles, and continually arguing about matters which neither were interested in, nor, indeed, knew anything about. There were, it is true, few topics to discuss; newspapers we never saw; sporting there was none,—but then, the drill, the return of duty, the ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... fellow-clerks during those two days I was the most cross-grained and obnoxious comrade conceivable. My only relief seemed to be in quarrelling with somebody, and as they all laid themselves out to bait and tease me one way or another I had a ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... was always cross-grained, but its volume betrayed a quite unwonted geniality to-night. And half a mile farther, where the dark river bent around Wiseman's Stone, he so far relaxed as to rest on his oars and challenge the famous echo from the wooded cliffs. ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... had not yet taken his decision. Indeed, indecision was one of his chief characteristics. Pelissier, who was cross-grained and gruff, used to say, "Judge men by their names, indeed! I am christened Amable, Randon ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... surrounded him; they had driven him to centre; he was at bay, bristling with a sullen rage that was excusable, if viewed from the standpoint of an earnest town officer. Viewed from the standpoint of the populace, he was a selfish, cross-grained old obstructionist. ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... said Mr. Bunn, as they went away; "but he's a good mixer and never gets cross-grained. I will now take you to call upon some of my own relatives." They visited the Sugar Bunns, the Currant Bunns and the Spanish Bunns, the latter having a decidedly foreign appearance. Then they saw the French ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... subject, containing the life of Pericles, and that of Fabius Maximus, who carried on the war against Hannibal, men alike, as in their other virtues and good parts, so especially in their mild and upright temper and demeanor, and in that capacity to bear the cross-grained humors of their fellow-citizens and colleagues in office which made them both most useful and serviceable to the interests of their countries. Whether we take a right aim at our intended purpose, it is left to the reader to judge by what ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... Although cross-grained, Mr. Ede was not always an unpleasant man, and often in sudden flashes of affection the kind heart of his mother was recognizable ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... about Estelle?" she said. "I never think about Estelle—no more than I do about the sunshine, or my comfortable bed, or my tea. She's just one of the precious things I take for granted. I love her. She is a great deal to me, and the hours she spends with a rather old-fashioned and cross-grained woman are the happiest ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... I have done my best; but what living being could succeed in pacifying such a cross-grained, ill-tempered old fellow? However, I managed to mollify him ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... reason to know before I was done with her—was a very safe boat for a person of my height and weight, both buoyant and clever in a seaway; but she was the most cross-grained, lop-sided craft to manage. Do as you pleased, she always made more leeway than anything else, and turning round and round was the manoeuvre she was best at. Even Ben Gunn himself has admitted that she was "queer to handle ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... prevalent thirty or forty years ago than now, imagined that whereas the household had formerly been ruled by duty, it now might be so by love. Of course, confusion dire was the consequence, chiefly with the younger boys, the scientific, cross-grained Maurice, and the high-spirited, turbulent Reginald, all the mischief being fomented by Jane's pertness and curiosity, and only mitigated by the honest simplicity and dutifulness of eight years old Phyllis. The remedy ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... different tastes. There was then a sound from the old oak, like an "ah" or a "whew," or, perhaps, it was only the wind amongst its resisting branches; and the gaunt creature said that it had had ugly winds from without and cross-grained impulses from within; that it knew it had thrown out awkwardly a branch here and a branch there, which would never come quite right again it feared; that men worked it up, sometimes for good and sometimes for evil—but that at any rate it had not lived for nothing. The poplar ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... are made separately; when you sew them together care must be taken, for the edges of the ends are cut cross-grained, and will stretch very much more than the cloth of the sides (roof). About as good a seam as you can make, in sewing together the sides and ends, is to place the two edges together, and fold them outwards (or what ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould
... attempts to break away from himself—from the man that heredity, and circumstance, and the divine gift of genius had made him. He naturally "haunts the mouldering lodges of the past"; but when he came to England (where such lodges are abundant), he was ill-pleased and cross-grained. He knew that a long past, with mysteries, dark places, malisons, curses, historic wrongs, was the proper atmosphere of his art. But a kind of conscientious desire to be something other than himself—something more ordinary and popular—make him thank Heaven that his chosen atmosphere was ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... any one of his little encounter with the crippled boy, but those plaintive words often rang in his ears. He had even wondered sometimes whether it would do any good if he should seek an interview with the crabbed, cross-grained old man, and try to persuade him to change his belief that he was doing right in sheltering the cripple from a rude world. But up to the present Jack had not been able to make up his mind to attempt such ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... Tai-y smiled. "Yes," she observed, "your servant-girls must, I fancy, have been too lazy to budge, grumpy and in a cross-grained mood; this is ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... winter coats. The leaves had no winter coats. They took great offence at this and were not content until they had vexed themselves into a jaundice. Then they died. One by one, they fell to the ground and at last they lay in a great heap over the old, cross-grained root. ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... not be at all like each other in shape. The amount of wood left standing to be of a width averaging never less than half the length of the average-sized hole. This is necessary for securing sufficient strength of material in the cross-grained pieces, which would be liable to split if made too long and narrow. The pattern should be formal in character, not necessarily symmetrical, but it should be well balanced. You may have one part of your design composed of large holes and another of small ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... tender as a child, but he had a way of spluttering and growling that made him seem grouty and cross-grained. He seemed to take real satisfaction in picking a quarrel with ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... herself, poked her own fires, carved her own meat, lit her own candles, opened and shut the doors for herself, wrote her own letters,—and did not even like to have books read to her. She simply chose to have some one sitting with her to whom she could speak and make little cross-grained, sarcastic, and ill-natured remarks. There was no company at the house in Brook Street, and when the countess herself went out, she went out alone. Even when she had a cab to go shopping, or to make calls, she rarely ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... with me from Sydney a white carpenter—one of the most obstinate, cross-grained old fellows that ever trod a deck, but an excellent workman if humoured a little. At his own request he lived on board the wrecked barque, instead of taking up his quarters on shore in the native village with the rest of the wrecking party. One evening as I ...
— John Corwell, Sailor And Miner; and, Poisonous Fish - 1901 • Louis Becke
... against the grain, and then smoothing him down again; for the old fellow is as ready to bristle up his back as a porcupine. He rides a venerable hunter called Pepper, which is a counterpart of himself, a heady, cross-grained animal, that frets the flesh off its bones; bites, kicks, and plays all manner of villanous tricks. He is as tough, and nearly as old as his rider, who has ridden him time out of mind, and is, indeed, the only one that can do anything with him. Sometimes, however, ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... The old cross-grained, whiggish, ugly, slanderous Miss ——, with all the poisonous spleen of a disappointed, ancient maid, stops me very unseasonably to ease her bursting breast, by falling abusively foul on the Miss Lindsays, particularly on my Dulcinea;—I hardly refrain ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... yet, Lisbeth; but, my dear, I'll tell you something I have never mentioned to a living soul but you; if I had acted forty years ago as you did to-day, I should have been a very different creature to the cross-grained old woman you think me. There—there's a kiss, but as for forgiving you—that is quite another matter; I must have time to think it all over. Good-bye, my dear; and, Richard, fill her life with happiness, to make up for mine, if you can. Children, ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... about him is that he's a cross-grained, old curmudgeon, living about a mile out of Farnham, who scrapes money together by lending small sums upon notes-of-hand at short dates, and at a thundering interest. Flint Jackson folk about ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... his self-respect with it. The two maids are greatly impressed by him, and both set their caps for him. Stini, the elder, is very ugly and cross-grained, but a good worker and very thrifty. Yrsi, on the other hand, is pretty and sweet-tempered, but lazy and heedless, and wants a husband so as to avoid working. Jealously the two watch each other's attempts to catch Uli, who is drawn now to Yrsi's prettiness, now to Stini's thrift. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... bee-keepers three times in the year at a village called Feucht, and to lend an ear to their complaints; and albeit he had fulfilled his office without blame, he had dwelt in strife with his wife, and being given to rioting, he was wont rather to go to the tavern than sit at table with his cross-grained wife. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Fig. 17, No. 2.) This is a common form of failure where the beam has diagonal, spiral or other form of cross grain on its lower side. Since the tensile strength of wood across the grain is only a small fraction of that with the grain it is easy to see why a cross-grained timber ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record
... Ratcliffe, "you're a good-looking wench, and should not be cross-grained. I was going to be an honest man—but the devil has this very day flung first a lawyer, and then a woman, in my gate. I'll tell you what, Jeanie, they are out on the hill-side—if you'll be guided by me, I'll carry you to a wee bit corner in the Pleasance, that I ken ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... not with tillage as with the other arts, where the learner must be well-nigh crushed [9] beneath a load of study before his prentice-hand can turn out work of worth sufficient merely to support him. [10] The art of husbandry, I say, is not so ill to learn and cross-grained; but by watching labourers in the field, by listening to what they say, you will have straightway knowledge enough to teach another, should the humour take you. I imagine, Socrates (he added), that you yourself, albeit quite unconscious of the fact, already know a ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... anything new on board, but received a reply in the negative. When he came on board, followed by Snarleyyow, the eyes of the crew were directed towards the dog, to see how he looked; but he appeared just as lively and as cross-grained as ever, and they all shook ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... She brooded constantly in a corner, weeping silent tears, utterly absorbed in her grief. They considerately left her alone. Since she had become the affianced wife of a man of McKay's rank and position, both the termagant aunt and cross-grained uncle had treated her with unbounded respect. They would not allow her to be vexed or worried by any one, least of all by Benito, who, as soon as the English officer was out of the way, again began to ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... Sir W. Pen dined with me and we were merry. Again to church and so home, and all alone read till bedtime, and so to prayers and to bed. I have been troubled this day about a difference between my wife and her maid Nell, who is a simple slut, and I am afeard we shall find her a cross-grained wench. I am now full of study about writing something about our making of strangers strike to us at sea; and so am altogether reading Selden and Grotius, and such other authors ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... read these words, and Jack was touched. He had been cross-grained, he knew, but nevertheless he would gladly have got the Squire at that moment in his hands and thrashed him ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... and chatter, but there were some who enjoyed them the more in consequence; and Mervyn, who had been loudest in vituperation of his first, found the present perfectly delightful, although the chief of his time was spent in preventing Mrs. Holmby's cross-grained donkey from lying down to roll, and administering to the lady the chocolate drops that he carried for Bertha's sustenance; Cecily, meantime, being far before with his sisters, where Mrs. Holmby would gladly have sent him if bodily terror ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... England," said Harry Trevor suddenly. "Is it dances now, Norah? No more quick things over the grass after a cross-grained bullock? Don't say you've forgotten how to ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... wife: an allusion to our common mother Eve, made out of Adam's rib. A crooked rib: a cross-grained wife. ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... disposed to insist on, to which, however, I was singularly averse. In the destitution of Mrs. Clifford, her diminished and still diminishing resources, not to speak of her loneliness, she thought that I ought to tender her a home with us. Had she been any other than the captious, cross-grained creature that she was—bad her misfortunes produced only in part their legitimate and desirable effects of subduing her perversity—I should have had no sort of objection. But I knew her imperious and unreasonable nature; and I may here add, that, by this time, I knew something ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... come back, dearie—and I won't ask you any more questions. I'm a cross-grained, cantankerous old thing, but you'll stop along of me ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... secretary to himself; the town of Antwerp invited him to become head of their school. He might easily have accepted. He was not altogether happy at Groningen. His countrymen had done him honour, but they had no real appreciation for learning, and some of them were boorish and cross-grained. It was the old story of Pegasus in harness; the practical men of business and the scholar impatient of restraint. His parents, too, were now both dead—in 1480, within a few months of each other—and such homes ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... could you be glad to take a minor part to help on the whole, or would you be huffy and cross-grained because your powers were not brought to the front? In the Wagner music at Baireuth, the singers take the good parts in turn, and the best prima donna, as Kundry in "Parzival," in one whole act has only ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... understanding the ways of the world, and in adapting himself to its pursuits; if he at once knows how to deal with men, and enters upon life, as it were, fully prepared. It argues a vulgar nature. On the other hand, to be surprised and astonished at the way people act, and to be clumsy and cross-grained in having to do with them, indicates a ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... was not now against the woman before him; his instinct prevented that. Nor against Mrs. Morrell nor his wife; reluctant justice prevented that. Nor against himself—where it really belonged. Things were out of joint; he felt cross-grained and ugly. ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... Cross-grained and trying, Rebecca Miller was unlike the majority of the plain, unpretentious people of that rural community. In all her years she had failed to appreciate the futility of fuss, the sin of useless worry, and had never learned the invaluable lesson of minding her own business. "She means well," ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... approached to take his leave, but in doing so, had nearly met with a fatal accident. It had been the pleasure of Raoul, who was in his own disposition cross-grained, and in person rheumatic, to accommodate himself with an old Arab horse, which had been kept for the sake of the breed, as lean, and almost as lame as himself, and with a temper as vicious as that of a fiend. Betwixt ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... cross-grained," he informed her, "and I have grown old in ignorance of woman's ways. Love has never come to me until now. What manner of lover, think ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... sperrets," and the old codger drank; then giving his lips a wipe with the back of his hand, and drawing out a long, deep "ah-h-h-h!" he again took his seat, observing, as he partially aroused his ugly and cross-grained mongrel— ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... exclaimed to her own reflection. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself! YOU, who are supposed to be of amiable disposition, YOU whom people call 'Sunshine,' because of your good nature, YOU who have every joy and every blessing that heart can wish, you look like a sour-faced, cross-grained, disgruntled old maid! So there now! And, Miss, do you want to know what I think of you?" She picked up her hair brush, and shook it at the flushed, angry face in the mirror. "Well, I think you're a monster of selfishness! You're ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... of abusing Alfred's hospitality in such a manner, and feeling incapable of being anything else than irritable, cross-grained and intractable, I returned to Richeport, to be as gloomy ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... obtuse Doctor, blundering in at morning, would find his adopted son with pallid cheeks and glittering eyes, but ever ready with a smile and pleasant greeting, obedience and help. Hiero Glyphic, however wayward and cross-grained, never had cause to censure this creature of his,—to remind him that he might have been ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... the steaming Guinea jungles to the east of us, across its lower half two narrow black bars sinister. It looked as if it had blood in its eye, while the still, heavy, brooding air felt to be ominous of evil, harboring devilment of some sort. All the mess were cross-grained, silent, or irritable, raw-edged for the first time, for a better lot of fellows one could not ask to ship with. Nor throughout the day did weather conditions or tempers improve. All day long the sky was heavily overcast with dense, low-hanging, dark gray clouds, which, while wholly ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... was a fat farmer in a long blouse, with a jovial, red face, framed in white whiskers. The other was younger, was dressed in corduroy and had lean, yellow, cross-grained features. Each of them carried a gun slung over his shoulder. Between them was a short, slender young woman, in a brown cloak and a fur cap, whose rather thin and extremely pale face ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... you speak so hard agin Mr. Barry, my lord," began Martin. "May-be he mayn't be so bad. Not but that he's a cross-grained piece of timber ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... You arrive in a bad moment. He is peevish and cross-grained, poor man, since he came here. These soft surroundings are all so strange to him. He wearies himself away from his beloved Gavrillac, his hunting and tillage, and the truth is that in his mind he very largely blames ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... it. It's in my overcoat pocket now. I thought one spell I wasn't goin' to get it, for the old feller was mad about some one of his cranberry buyers failin' up on him and he was as cross-grained as a scrub oak root. He and I had a regular row over the matter of politics I went there to see him about 'special. I told him what he was and he told me where I could go. That's how we ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... and then, with swift pounding of hoofs, he plunged and veered and danced in the sage. Lucy kept her temper, which was what most riders did not do, and by patience and firmness pulled Sage King out of his prancing back into the trail. He was not the least cross-grained, and, having had his little spurt, he ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... well it suits me to carry my head high, and what a pitiful mien I shall have while scenting the dust of your carpets! Oh! sire, I regret sincerely, and you will regret as I do, the old days when the king of France saw in every vestibule those insolent gentlemen, lean, always swearing—cross-grained mastiffs, who could bite mortally in the hour of danger or of battle. These men were the best of courtiers to the hand which fed them—they would lick it; but for the hand that struck them, oh! the bite that followed! A little ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... could not touch a stable bit of footing as far around him as he could reach. He had counted a good deal on drawing something along in the early hundreds; and as the day wore along to his disappointment in that hope he thought that he might come tagging in at the end, in the mean way that his cross-grained luck had of humiliating him and of forcing the fact that he was more or less a failure ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... departed on this errand, Vallombreuse began pacing slowly to and fro in his chamber, glancing into the mirror each time he passed it with a self-satisfied smile. "That proud little minx must be deucedly cross-grained and unappreciative," said he, "if she does not perceive how much more worthy I am of her admiration than that shabby de Sigognac. Oh, yes! she'll be sure to come round, in spite of her obstinate affectation of such ferocious virtue, and ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... are we but smugglers'!" retorted Spink; "an' as to bein' cross-grained, you've naethin' to boast o' in that way. Na, na, Swankie, ye may do't yersel, I'll hae nae hand in't. I'll no objec' to tak a bit keg o' Auchmithie water [Footnote] noo and then, or to pick up what comes to me by the wund and sea, but I'll steal ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... accession of income: if this boy were what he seemed, he would make a more than valuable servant; and nothing could clear her judgment of him better, she thought, than putting him to the test of a brief subjection to the cross-grained, exacting Scotchman. By that she would soon know whether to dismiss him, or venture ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... the sympathies of the poor and ignorant. Substantially I think that he was perfectly right not only in the conclusion but in the grounds upon which it was based. He was a lawyer by nature, and would have been a most awkward and cross-grained piece of timber to convert into a priest. He points himself to such cases as Swift, Warburton, and Sydney Smith to show the disadvantage of a secular man in a ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... my biceps, if my back is crooked and my legs queer," she declared. "Then, when any of those Miss Nancy Seniors make fun of me behind my back, I can punch 'em!" for there were times when Mercy's old, cross-grained moods came upon her, and she was not so ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... has led to the opinion, that there are few more disagreeable beings in creation than ill-nurtured bears,—bears that have been ill-licked,—those great, fierce, sullen, cross-grained and ill-tempered beasts, that are, unhappily, to be found in every part of this various world; but when all these unhandsome qualities are found in one individual of the species, and that one happens to have a sore head into the ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... herself to wonder why, she had been only too pleased to accept the arrangement without comment. Apart from the self-chosen confinement, the life had been hard enough; the work was hard, the service hard and ill-paid, and both the other inmates of the house cross-grained, and difficult to please. These things, however, Julia did not mind; discomfort never mattered much to her when she had an end in view; in this case, too, the end should more than repay the worst of her two task-masters. Which was agreeable, and almost made his unpleasantness ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... beast, cowardly and cross-grained, as pet-dogs usually are, looked up at him sharply, shrank away from his outstretched hand, whined, shivered, and hid itself under a sofa. It was scarcely possible that he could have been put out by such a trifle as a dog's reception of him, but I observed, ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... existence, they astounded her by leaving her a handsome legacy; which, with the consent of another party concerned—one who greatly relished the mere name of the bequest, as a proof that nobody could ever resist Lady Betty—she shared with a cross-grained grand-nephew whom the autocratic pair had ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... and I shan't then!" returned Wealthy. "I'm not such a fool as all that. Maine, indeed!" Then, her heart melting at the distress in Eyebright's face, she swooped upon her, squeezed her hard, and said: "What a cross-grained piece I be! Yes, Eyebright dear, I'll go along. I'll go, no matter where it is. You shan't be trusted to that Pa of yours if I can help it; and that's my last ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... to Huysmans' two "mystical" novels, En Route and La Cathedrale. The naked Fetishism of the latter book almost passes belief. We have a Madonna who is good-natured at Lourdes and cross-grained at La Salette; who likes "pretty speeches and little coaxing ways" in "paying court" to her, and who at the end is apostrophised as "our Lady of the Pillar," "our Lady of the Crypt." It may perhaps be excusable ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... not bear with one another's infirmities; they are as eagle sighted as may be in the espial of others' faults, while they wink upon themselves, and never mind the beam in their own eyes. In short, man being by nature so prone to frailties, so humoursome and cross-grained, and guilty of so many slips and miscarriages, there could be no firm friendship contracted, except there be such an allowance made for each other's defaults, which the Greeks term 'Eunoeia, and we may construe good nature, which is but another ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... fingers twisted together; and his chief difficulty appeared to be to reduce his own stride to the parrot march of the captain. His features were sharp and lean as was his body, and wore every appearance of a cross-grained temper. ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... or another home, and had very rarely slept under another roof. He had married the daughter of a neighbouring farmer, and had had some twelve or fourteen children. There were at this time six still living. He himself had ever been a hardworking, sober, honest man. But he was cross-grained, litigious, moody, and tyrannical. He held his mill and about a hundred acres of adjoining meadow land at a rent in which no account was taken either of the building or of the mill privileges attached to it. He paid simply for the land at a rate per acre, which, as both he and his ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... himself quite a man, yielded to his mother's wishes and attended the school, which was presided over by a cross-grained Dominie that used the birch with right good earnest ...
— Beadle's Boy's Library of Sport, Story and Adventure, Vol. I, No. 1. - Adventures of Buffalo Bill from Boyhood to Manhood • Prentiss Ingraham
... her age was to dance and to flirt, to lose their hearts and to find husbands, to gossip, to listen to the music, to show themselves in the Squares and Circus and on the Parades, or, sometimes, when they were seriously inclined, to drink the waters. Mary's was to cater to the caprices of a cross-grained, peevish woman. There was little sunshine in the morning of her life. She was destined always to see the darkest side of human nature. Mrs. Dawson's temper was bad, and her companions, of whom there seem ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... to the emperor obliges me to tear out the very roots of treason at the first suggestion of its presence in our midst. I have long suspected Sextus, who was a cross-grained, obstinate, quick-witted, proud young man—a lot too critical. I am convinced now that he and Norbanus were hatching some kind of plot between them—possibly against the sacred person of our emperor—a frightful sacrilege!—the suggestion ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... to bring in his train a hanger-on called worship, who can do nothing but mischief here. It is a short step from a passage like that quoted above to a glorification of the existing system of society, to a defence of all manner of indefensible things; and a cross-grained attitude towards all projects of reform. It is a short step; but it is one which it is quite unjustifiable to take. For the evils of our economic system are too plain to be ignored; too many people have harsh personal experience of the wastefulness of its production, ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... replied Mrs. Norton, who had no great devotion for that cross-grained Mr. Palsey as she called him "you can ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... "A cross-grained old camel!" remarked Afy, in allusion to the qualities, social and amiable, of the revered justice. "I don't defend Dick Hare—I hate him too much for that—but if his father had treated him differently, Dick might have been different. Well, let's talk of ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... was staying at the house of a friendly cowman, whom I will call Judge Yancy Stump. Judge Yancy Stump was a Democrat who, as he phrased it, had fought for his Democracy; that is, he had been in the Confederate Army. He was at daggers drawn with his nearest neighbor, a cross-grained mountain farmer, who may be known as old man Prindle. Old man Prindle had been in the Union Army, and his Republicanism was of the blackest and most uncompromising type. There was one point, however, on which the two came together. They were exceedingly fond of hunting with ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... here by these old beeches, when you broke The bow and arrows of Damon; for you chafed When first you saw them given to the boy, Cross-grained Menalcas, ay, and had you not Done him some mischief, ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... said nothing. Jules had been quite cross-grained since the twenty-fifth of January, when he had met the gnome, and they had learned to pay but little attention ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... a cross-grained censor; we need not mind his maundering, Gods. We have it from the admirable Demosthenes: imputations, blame, criticism, these are easy things; they tax no one's capacity: what calls for a statesman is the suggesting of a better course; and ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... living in a bad dream. She does not love him—perhaps has never loved him. I do not know; I do not wish to judge. She has given him up. I will not trust myself to say anything about that. From beginning to end it all seems so unnecessary, such a needless, cross-grained muddle. I write this line to tell you how things really are, and to beg you, if you have a moment to spare, to look in at George's club this evening and let me know if he is there and how he seems. There is no one else that I could possibly ask ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... time a cross-grained reviewer should treat thy cherished book with scorn, and presume to ridicule thy sentiment and scoff at thy style (which Heaven forfend!), console thyself that thou livest in peaceable and enlightened times, and needest fear that no greater evil can ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... depths of the sullen pool spanned by the graceful erection. The best of men are not universally popular, and it must be said that there are those who cast on Geordie the aspersion of being "some thrawn," for which the equivalent in south-country language is perhaps "a trifle cross-grained." These, however, are envious people, who are jealous of Geordie's habitual association with lords and dukes, and who resent the trivial stiffness which is no doubt apparent in his manner to ordinary ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... softening of heart and manner visible in Aunt Hepsy at the time of Tom's departure disappeared before the lapse of many days. You see, she had gone on in the old, sour, cross-grained way so long, she felt most at home in it. She did not feel unkindly towards gentle, patient Lucy; but her manner was so ungracious, and her words so sharp, you will not wonder that Lucy could not read beneath the surface. She was very quiet, ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan
... have now no child saving yourself, who, if you behave well, will be my only heir. Sometimes I wish you were here, for it's lonesome living alone, but, I suppose you're better off where you are. Do you know any thing of that girl Sarah? Her cross-grained uncle has never written me a word since he left England. If I live three years longer I shall come to America, and until that time, adieu. ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... so he really called it, and so we suppose must we, in our extreme ignorance of the precise category of nomenclature to which the feelings that actuated him belonged. Honest man! bigoted and selfish as he was, he was neither cruel by nature nor cross-grained; and he was even moved by the pathetic and frank avowal which Barbara made to him on the state of her heart. But, though touched by her tears, he understood them not, treated them but as the natural mawkishness ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... many witnesses were again examined, twenty-four on one side, and twenty-seven on the other. The King then carefully examined the ship himself: "the planks, the tree-nails, the workmanship, and the cross-grained timber." "The cross-grain," he concluded, "was in the men and not in the timber." After all the measurements had been made and found correct, "his Majesty," says Pett, "with a loud voice commanded the measurers to declare ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... Old Hickory, almost workin' up a blush. "Mr. Piddie, I am a fat, cross-grained old man, about as attractive personally as a hippopotamus. Great stuttering tadpoles! Can't you think of anything but sappy romance? More ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... orders; and when he is ugly, he is a perfect tiger. I wonder what Mr. Lowington is going to do with him. There is no such thing as expelling a fellow in this institution now. If he means to be cross-grained, he can keep us in hot water ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... part of all the other hard work of the farm quite naturally fell on me. I had to split rails for long lines of zigzag fences. The trees that were tall enough and straight enough to afford one or two logs ten feet long were used for rails, the others, too knotty or cross-grained, were disposed of in log and cordwood fences. Making rails was hard work and required no little skill. I used to cut and split a hundred a day from our short, knotty oak timber, swinging the axe and heavy mallet, often with sore hands, from early ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... her neck like an untamed colt, she caught hold of the girl's dress to detain her, and the sharpness passed out of her eyes. "Now, don't go away and believe that I think any worse of you for telling me this. I am a cross-grained body, and contradiction makes me worse. I don't know how I shall act: I must have time to consider this extraordinary bit of news. But all the same, whatever I do, whether I know you or do not know you, I shall always think you the very ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... "Stupid, solemn, cross-grained old critic as he is!" thought Matty; "I knew that he and I would never agree together. I paper my walls to please my own taste, and ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... I had ample reason to know before I was done with her—was a very safe boat for a person of my height and weight, both buoyant and clever in a sea-way; but she was the most cross-grained, lopsided craft to manage. Do as you pleased, she always made more leeway than anything else, and turning round and round was the maneuver she was best at. Even Ben Gunn himself has admitted that she was "queer to handle ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Goose did not turn such a graceless varlet out of doors; but Teunis Van Gieson was an easy-tempered man, and, having no child of his own, looked upon his nephew with almost parental indulgence. His patience and good-nature were doomed to be tried by another inmate of his mansion. This was a cross-grained curmudgeon of a negro, named Pluto, who was a kind of enigma in Communipaw. Where he came from, nobody knew. He was found one morning, after a storm, cast like a sea-monster on the strand, in front of the Wild Goose, and lay there, more dead than ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... a stuck-up, cross-grained, meddlin', bumble-bee-backed old hag of a soup-slopper; to come stickin' yer big nose into other people's kitchens! If there was a rale misthress to the house instead of the little gal upstairs, you'd be rowled down the front ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... cross-grained spinster, with real likes and dislikes, put a bony hand quietly before her eyes. At the last, she made three strides, as a soldier marches, and fell all of a piece, like a wooden mannequin, on the singer's neck. "Take my piano," she sobbed, "for you have taken the ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... I'm doin'," replied O'Riley with a bland smile, which he eclipsed in a cloud of smoke. "Haven't I bin workin' like a naagur for two hours to git out of that hole, and ain't I playin' a tune on me pipe now? But I won't be cross-grained. I'll lind ye a hand av ye behave yerself. It's a bad thing to be cross-grained," he continued, pocketing his pipe and assisting to arrange the sledge; "me owld grandmother always towld me that, and she wos wise, she wos, beyand ordn'r. More ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... lucklessly was chained The tenor; these two hated with a hate Found only on the stage, and each more pained With this his tuneful neighbour than his fate; Sad strife arose, for they were so cross-grained, Instead of bearing up without debate, That each pulled different ways with many an oath, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... said Sir Otho, gravely, "you can't tell me anything about my daughter Catharine that I don't already know. And she is, indeed, contrary-minded, on occasion. As you so justly observed, she inherits my obstinate and cross-grained disposition." ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... not at all usual in those days for two school-house boys to have a fight. Of course there were exceptions, when some cross-grained, hard-headed fellow came up, who would never be happy unless he was quarreling with his nearest neighbors, or when there was some class-dispute between the fifth-form and the fags, for instance, which required blood-letting; and a champion was picked out on each side ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... thief!" I snarled like any cross-grained mongrel. "The King shall hear of this, you knave! By God, ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... mahogany-coloured wine as this." "Sir, I blush like rose wood at your impertinence." "Ay, sir, and you'll soon be as red as logwood, or as black as ebony, if you will but do justice to the bottle," was the reply. "There is no being cross-grained with you," said the timber-merchant. "Not unless you cut me," retorted Blackstrap, "and you are not sap enough for that." "Gentlemen," continued the facetious wine-merchant, "if we do not get a little fruit, I shall think ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... gallant and airy body of horsemen known as the "Brooklyn Dutch Light Cavalry," are much indebted to the projectors of the Knightly meeting which took place recently at Prospect Park, for an opportunity to display those equestrian graces which a few cross-grained critics have been disposed to deny them. The general public never had any doubts upon the subject, but it is well enough to silence those who took much credit to themselves in detecting faults where others could not discover them. The result shows how completely ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... forth for a walk to the Park, the irrelevant idea of going round to see his sister kept coming into his mind. He seated himself and fastened his attention upon the paper,—but off it slipped again to the old book-shop, and to that curious, cross-grained figure, its mistress. He abandoned himself to thinking about her—and discovered that a certain unique quality in her challenged his admiration. She was the only absolutely disinterested person he knew—the only creature in the world, apparently, who did not desire to make something ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... know that it was my father's own fault that he was not the son of Henry IV. The king would by all means have acknowledged him for his son, but the traitor would never consent to it. See what the Grammonts would have been now, but for this cross-grained fellow! They would have had precedence of the Caesars de Vendome. You may laugh if you like, yet it is as true as the gospel: but let us come ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... also used playfully monkey. Telling you, a good thing for you. Thir, these. Thrawn, cross-grained. Toon, town. Two-names, local soubriquets in addition to patronymic. ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... right!' I muttered, confronting on my way the still stronger odour of the sickening steam. My intention was to have a political discussion with the cook (Fourney by name) and say a thing or two to the General; for I had got a sort of cross-grained notion into my head that he was compounding a grand stew for the black pig with the horns. Meanwhile my stomach said it would have no objection to join the General over a good breakfast. Presently I scented the frying of fish, which betold that I was on the right track. But ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... Florence, I hoped to find my dear father, and knocking at the door, a hump-backed woman in a fury showed her face at the window; she drove me off with a torrent of abuse, screaming that the sight of me was a consumption to her. To this misshapen hag I shouted: "Ho! tell me, cross-grained hunchback, is there no other face to see here but your ugly visage?" "No, and bad luck to you." Whereto I answered in a loud voice: "In less than two hours may it [5] never vex us more!" Attracted by this dispute, a neighbour put her head out, from whom I learned ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... cross-grained, sons of a cock-eyed tinker,' exclaimed Bill, boiling with rage. 'If punching parrots on the beak wasn't too painful for pleasure, I'd land you a sockdolager on the muzzle that 'ud lay you out till Christmas. Come on, mates,' he added, 'it's no use ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... of 1861 the people of the North presented the appearance of a great political unit. All alleged emphatically that the question was simply of the Union, and upon this issue no Northerner could safely differ from his neighbors. Only a few of the more cross-grained ones among the Abolitionists were contemptuously allowed to publish the selfishness of their morality, and to declare that they were content to see the establishment of a great slave empire, provided they themselves were free from the taint of connection with it. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... "Now he'd think as much of the waste of a penny as another man would of a hundred pounds, and yet he would give a hundred pounds easier than another would give a penny, when he's in the humour. But his humour is very odd, and there's no knowing where to have him; he's cross-grained, and more positiver-like than a mule; and his deafness made him worse in this, because he never heard what nobody said, but would say on his own way—he was very odd, but not cracked—no, he was as clear-headed, when ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... followed the usual rule the next morning but when he returned, Joanna had no breakfast ready for him. There was a cold lunch set out on the table but there was no fire in the kitchen stove and no tea made. He was a rather cross-grained man but he knew it was never safe to antagonise his daughter and so he called rather mildly up-stairs, "Hi, there Joan, you ain't sick are you?" but Joanna did not answer and he mounted the stairs slowly grumbling about the young ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... Miss Lucy a ward, but instead of appointing Mr. Allardyce to be her guardian, it had given that office to Sir Richard Cludde, her paternal uncle. Mr. Allardyce spoke of the judge with the most bitter obloquy; he was a cross-grained, dried-up old mummy, said the squire, without a drop of good ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... articled clerk. Because he could put down three hundred guineas and keep himself for five years Philip had the chance of a career; while he, with his experience and ability, had no possibility of ever being more than a clerk at thirty-five shillings a week. He was a cross-grained man, oppressed by a large family, and he resented the superciliousness which he fancied he saw in Philip. He sneered at Philip because he was better educated than himself, and he mocked at Philip's pronunciation; he could not forgive him because he spoke without a ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... earliest recollections was of taking tea at the Gilpin house in company with Genevieve and Allan Whittredge. Mild, fair-faced Miss Anne and her grim-visaged, cross-grained brother were a strangely assorted pair. Celia's childish soul had been filled with awe on these occasions. She had difficulty in keeping her seat in the stiff old haircloth chairs, or in crossing the polished floor of ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... would be to find the right way," Jim retorted. "He's such a cross-grained beggar—you never know when you're going to offend him; and of course he's perfectly idiotic about the horses. Wonder if he thinks we LIKE horses with sore backs and mouths! He'll have to give poor old Betty a spell, ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... been t' queen! A'se ta'en Donkin on t' reet side, an' he'll coom in to-morrow, just permiskus, an' ax for work, like as if 't were a favour; t' oud felley were a bit cross-grained at startin', for he were workin' at farmer Crosskey's up at t' other side o' t' town, wheer they puts a strike an' a half of maut intil t' beer, when most folk put nobbut a strike, an t' made him ill to convince: ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... of the home chimney. Something of this was in Father. He had to make himself go. He was always unhappy when leaving home and home ties. He made many new friends on this trip—John Muir, whom he liked immensely in spite of the fact that he sometimes called him a "cross-grained Scotchman"; Fuertes, the nature artist; Dallenbaugh, one of those who made the trip through the Grand Canyon with Major Powell and who wrote "A Canyon Voyage"; Charles Keeler, ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... Mrs Lynch in the matters of kindly soft-heartedness and sympathy was Mrs Welsh—a poor, gentle, delicate Englishwoman, the wife of a great hulking cross-grained fellow named Abel, who was a carpenter by trade and an idler by preference. Mrs Welsh was particularly good as a sick-nurse and a cook, in which capacities ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... at her best, you had to see her doing the dutiful to her old father. If ever there was a peevish, cross-grained, crabbed, unreasonable old sinner in this world, that sinner was Duncan McKay, senior. He was a widower. Perhaps that accounted to some extent for his condition. That he should have a younger son—also named ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... put up with you when the doctor told him to let me have my way. His temper gets worse, too, all the time. I declare, he sometimes makes me wish he were dead and buried." "Oh, he'll live long enough yet, never fear—those wiry, cross-grained people are as tough as lightwood knots. It's a pity, though, he wants to bully you like that—it would kill me in a day." A flush mounted to Will's forehead. "I knew you'd think so," he said, "and it's what I tell him ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow |
