"Irregular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... resemblance to a calf's head, meek to unmeaningness, and but little brightened by divergent bloodless eyes, divided by a straight flat nose, surmounted by a flat forehead, flanked by enormous ears, flabby and graceless. His thin, weak hair showed the baldness through various irregular partings. ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... What grand irregular thunder, thought I, standing on my hearth-stone among the Acroceraunian hills, as the scattered bolts boomed overhead, and crashed down among the valleys, every bolt followed by zigzag irradiations, and ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... something—just the faintest irregular beating on the ground—so faint indeed that he would not have believed it anything except for what the ...
— The Story of Red Feather - A Tale of the American Frontier • Edward S. (Edward Sylvester) Ellis
... all pieces of ordnance which are of unusual or irregular proportions: the government bastard-cannon had a 7-inch bore, and sent a 40-lb. shot. Also, a fair-weather square sail in some Mediterranean craft, and occasionally ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... I have said, no one dare call the street "bad." Let us say it is "irregular," "free," "above scandal," or "superior to criticism;" but let us not venture to term it "bad," as its neighbors Greene and Mercer are "bad." I cannot say it would be shocked by such a charge, for Bleecker street is never shocked at anything. ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... sore does he labour to lash himself into inspiration as he apostrophizes them; but in vain—the result is little else than furious feebleness and stilted bombast. But when he returns to the element, the impatient, irregular, changeful, treacherous, terrible ocean—and watches the night, winged with black storm and red lightning, sinking down over the Mediterranean, and the devoted bark which is helplessly struggling with its billows, then his blood rises, his verse heaves, and ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... always be eaten sparingly. Their chief use is in seasoning and garnitures. In short, a professor has said, "Meats with truffles are the most distinguished dishes that opulence can offer to the epicure." The Truffle grows in clusters, some inches below the surface of the soil, and is of an irregular globular form. Those which grow wild in England are about the size of a hen's egg, and have no roots. As there is nothing to indicate the places where they are, dogs have been trained to discriminate their scent, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... schoolmaster and a most true saint, and that to his influence and warnings many a man can, in the long retrospect, trace his escape from moral ruin. Mr. Gordon is now a decorous Dean; at Lyonness he was the most brilliant, the most irregular, and the most fascinating of teachers. He spoilt me for a whole quarter. I loved him for it then, and ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... irregular, and this one is not a pleasant exception. To-day, to create aggravation, it is at least one good half-hour later than usual. When at length, however, it does come, it brings the expected ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... subsequently quarrels, and elder cousin to the two young sons of Hrothgar and Wealhtheow, — their natural guardian in the event of the king's death. There is something finely feminine in this speech of Wealhtheow's, apart from its somewhat irregular and irrelevant sequence of topics. Both she and her lord probably distrust Hrothulf; but she bids the king to be of good cheer, and, turning to the suspect, heaps affectionate assurances on his probity. ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... to show that they can stand in no necessary connection with morals, as it is well known that wherever tolerably well-ordered political and social conditions exist, the moral precepts in their essential principles are the same, whilst when such conditions are wanting, a wild and irregular confusion, or even an entire deficiency of moral notions is met with.* History also shows incontrovertibly that religion and morality have by no means gone hand in hand in strength and development, but that even contrariwise the most religious times and countries have produced the greatest number ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... of Boston harbor somewhat resembles a very irregular letter C, with its open side facing to the north-east. The upper horn terminates with Point Shirley, in the town of Winthrop. The lower horn is a narrow ridge of land of varying width, extending four miles from the mainland, then abruptly turning to the westward for ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... no sooner said than done. Like a wave the people rushed in a black irregular mass at the front rank of the guard. The soldiers of the Duke were swept away like chaff; I could see one here and another there struggling in the vortices of the ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the letters, and, selecting a few at random, showed the addresses, and opened them to read. Nearly all of them were letters from illiterate persons, with the superscription, "To Our Lady of Lourdes," scrawled on the envelopes in big, irregular handwriting. Many of them contained requests or thanks, incorrectly worded and wondrously spelt; and nothing was more affecting than the nature of some of the petitions: a little brother to be saved, a lawsuit to be gained, a lover to ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... breaking on the far-off horizon line, half the year presenting a dry and dusty shore, from which the vernal sea had ebbed, to the low sky that seemed to mock it with a visionary sea beyond. A row of rough, irregular, and severely practical sheds and buildings housed the machinery and the fifty or sixty men employed in the cultivation of the soil, but neither residential mansion nor farmhouse offered any nucleus of rural comfort or civilization in the midst of this wild expanse of ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... said Mr. Swancourt after breakfast. He began to find it necessary to act the part of a fly-wheel towards the somewhat irregular ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... work. I did struggle—not to do the work, for there was nothing which was not easy without any struggling—but to show that I was willing to do it. My bad character nevertheless stuck to me, and was not to be got rid of by any efforts within my power. I do admit that I was irregular. It was not considered to be much in my favour that I could write letters—which was mainly the work of our office—rapidly, correctly, and to the purpose. The man who came at ten, and who was always still at his desk at half-past four, was preferred before ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... flesh-and-blood girl with whom he was fit to associate, and for a time after her return her manner increased this impression. He explained the recognized fact that she shunned his society by thinking that she knew his evil tendencies, and that to her believing and Christian spirit his faithless and irregular life was utterly uncongenial. For a short time he had tried to ignore her opinion and society in reckless indifference; but the loveliness of her person and character daily grew more fascinating, and his evil habits lost in power as she gained. For some little ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... the struggle by land and sea the fortunes of war may, with the single exception of Plattsburg, be most conveniently followed territorially, from one point to the next, along the enormous irregular curve of five thousand miles which was the scene of operations. This curve begins at Prairie du Chien, where the Wisconsin joins the Mississippi, and ends at New Orleans, where the Mississippi is about to join the sea. It runs easterly along the Wisconsin, across ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... sinners! Ribald jest and blasphemous curse (Bunyan never vented worse), With all those weeds, not flowers, of speech Which the Seven Dialecticians teach; Filthy Conjunctions, and Dissolute Nouns, And Particles picked from the kennels of towns, With Irregular Verbs for irregular jobs, Chiefly active in rows and mobs, Picking Possessive Pronouns' fobs, And Interjections as bad as a blight, Or an Eastern blast, to the blood and the sight: Fanciful phrases for crime and sin, And smacking of vulgar lips where ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... Thames. The north side of the Strand was also a long line of houses, behind which, as in Saint Martin's Lane, and other points, buildings, were rapidly arising; but Covent Garden was still a garden, in the literal sense of the word, or at least but beginning to be studded with irregular buildings. All that was passing around, however, marked the rapid increase of a capital which had long enjoyed peace, wealth, and a regular government. Houses were rising in every direction; and the shrewd eye of our citizen already ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... full year, the first five months in its original force, the remainder of the period with less violence. Sometimes the motion of the earth was like the pitching of a large vessel dragging heavily at its anchors; at others, it was hurried and irregular, creating sudden, and occasionally very violent jerks, but in general it was merely tremulous. During all that time, men lived in constant dread of immediate death, and actually withered away from fear. The Lent was spent by the Sisters in redoubled austerities, ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... surgeon replied, relieved that his irregular confidence had resulted in the conventional decision, and that he had not brought on himself a responsibility shared with her. "You had best step into the office. You ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... on his stage representations of some especial kind of doctor, I have only a grim smile to give, remembering Mr. Reade's grewsome medico in "Hard Cash,"—a personation meant, I suppose, to present to the public a certain irregular London doctor, but which, to the minds of most physicians, reads like an elaborate advertisement of ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... irregular," said Wilton Barnstable, frowning, and not half convinced. "And, in the name of Heaven, why imperil your life needlessly? Why expose yourself again to the power of this ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... people could be said to possess self-government in actuality. Immediately after the Civil War, Charles Francis Adams, an acute student of transportation, declared that it was scarcely an exaggeration to say that the state legislatures were becoming a species of irregular boards of railroad direction. The evils of the alliance between the roads and politics were not, of course, due entirely to the former. The receiver of a pass shared with the giver the evil of the system. ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... days we continued the same work; and afterwards, when we got out of the lanes, and the ice was found broken, or so irregular that it was impossible to walk over it, we had to carry out ice-claws, or what may be called ice-kedges, to warp the ship ahead. The ice-claws grappled hold of the ice, and the warp being then carried round the capstan, or windlass, we hove in on it, ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... together persistently in groups that move as units, or else they separate. Their changes are abrupt or discontinuous; and their kinds resemble or differ; and, as they do so, they fall into either even or irregular series. ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... in order outside the chromosphere, and is, so far as we know, the outermost of the accompaniments of the sun. This halo of pearly-white light is irregular in outline, and fades away into the surrounding sky. It extends outwards from the sun to several millions of miles. As has been stated, we can never see the corona unless, when during a total solar eclipse, the moon has, for the time being, ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... feature which convinced me at once that the river could not be very distant. In the bank there was a thin stratum of shelly limestone bearing a resemblance to some of the oolitic limestones of England; and in the bed were irregular concretions of ironstone containing grains of quartz, some of the concretions having externally a glazed appearance arising from a thin coating of ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... traversed by the light; for the magneto-optic effect is present only in material media. Long previously Lord Kelvin himself came nearer this view, in offering the opinion that magnetism consisted, in some way, in the angular momentum of the material molecules, of which the energy of irregular translations constitutes heat; but the essential idea of moving electric ions of both kinds, positive and negative, in the molecules had still ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... becomes a little forest of "fairy-cups and elf needles." And who else would have thought of saying that "the fields look rough with hoary dew"?[78] In the Easter-Day vision he sees the sky as a network of black serrated ridges. He loves the intricate play of light and shade, and the irregular, contorted, honeycombed surface which produces it; craggy, scarred, indented mountains, "like an old lion's cheek-teeth";[79] old towns with huddled roofs and towers picked out "black and crooked," like "fretwork," or "Turkish verse along a scimitar"; old walls, creviced ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... stones?' Oh, we of course do not use finely colored ones. They are too valuable. But those that we employ must be genuine sapphires and rubies, sound and without flaws. Here are some. You see they look like only irregular lumps of muddy-tinted broken glass. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... two or three praeterites, to retain only one of them, and that invariably the weak one. Though many of us no doubt are familiar with the terms 'strong' and 'weak' praeterites, which in all our better grammars have put out of use the wholly misleading terms, 'irregular' and 'regular', I may perhaps as well remind you of the exact meaning of the terms. A strong praeterite is one formed by an internal vowel change; for instance the verb 'to drive' forms the praeterite 'drove' by an internal ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... little answer, finished her apple, and followed to the schoolroom, where an irregular verb, some geography, and ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... service among the lower classes instead of the orderly chicanery of modern justice;—these are the things, and a hundred others besides, concrete and spiritual, things too magnificent, too sordid, too irregular, too nauseous, too beautiful, and, above all, too utterly unpractical and old-fashioned for our times, which I call the rags of the Renaissance, and with which Italy still ekes out her scanty apparel of modern thoughts ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... peels off in thin horizontal layers—the color, thinness, and toughness differing in the different species; the Ashes have bark which opens in many irregular, netted cracks moderately near each other; the bark of the Chestnut opens in large longitudinal cracks quite distant from one another. The color of the bark and the character of the scales are quite different in the White ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar
... which they labour. It may be pointed out that the allegation that Edgar assaulted the police was emphatically denied by his wife and others, and that the trial was conducted in a way that would be considered quite irregular in this country, the witnesses for the defence being called by the prosecution, ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... sparkling lights did not shine alone for Gerald and Dolores. There were multitudes on the cliffs and the beach, and Sir Ferdinand and Lady Travis Underwood with their party had come to an irregular sort of dinner-supper at St. Andrew's Rock. With them, or rather before them, came Mr. Bramshaw, the engineer, who sent in his card to Mr. Clement Underwood, and entered with a leathern bag, ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... preservation; its stately monuments of warriors and worthies of the olden time, ancestors of the present lords of the soil; its tombstones, recording successive generations of sturdy yeomanry, whose progeny still plough the same fields, and kneel at the same altar;—the parsonage, a quaint irregular pile, partly antiquated, but repaired and altered in the tastes of various ages and occupants;—the stile and foot-path leading from the churchyard, across pleasant fields, and along shady hedgerows, according ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... you, sir, that I have been in the habit of spending nearly all my Sundays in one or two such irregular homes— ...
— Ghosts • Henrik Ibsen
... after they have developed latent buds into active form. The pruning probably removed all the buds of recent growth. After starting they will make irregular growth, starting too many shoots in the wrong places, etc., and considerable effort will be necessary to get well-shaped trees by selection of shoots in the right places and thinning out those which ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... a healthy Parsee lady, eighteen years of age, who menstruated regularly from thirteen to fifteen and a half years; the catamenia then became irregular and she suffered occasional hemorrhages from the gums and nose, together with attacks of hematemesis. The menstruation returned, but she never became pregnant, and, later, blood issued from the healthy skin of the left breast and right forearm, recurring every month ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... field ornamented the walls of the kitchen. Its ceiling was irregular and grimy, and a beam ran across it; in this beam were two hooks; from these hooks had once depended the ropes of a swing, much used by Constance and Sophia in the old days before they were grown up. A large range stood out from the wall between the stairs and the window. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... declines to be active, whereas the body is seized by a spirit of restlessness to which delay and tranquillity are loathsome. The advertisements on the walls are examined, the map of some new Eden is studied some Eden in which an irregular pond and a church are surrounded by a multiplicity of regular villas and shrubs till the student feels that no consideration of health or economy would induce him to live there. Then the porters come in and out, till each ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... very quiet and deserted as Molly and Sylvia entered the dark, irregular Bridge Street, and the market-place was as empty of people as before. But the skeps and baskets and three-legged stools ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... pleasant dining-room. A red-and-white heifer browsing at a little distance looked up from her meal and surveyed the intruders with mild attention, but apparently satisfied that they contemplated no invasion of her rights, resumed her agreeable employment. Over an irregular stone wall our travelers looked into a thrifty apple-orchard laden with fruit. They halted beneath a spreading chestnut-tree which towered above its neighbors, and offered them a grateful ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... his right arm and they start up the center aisle, with the six other women following in irregular order, and the five other ushers scattered among the women. The leading usher is tortured damnably by doubts as to where the party should go. If they are aunts, to which house do they belong, and on which side are the members of that house to be seated? ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... said combinations, proceeding in a manner subversive equally of the just authority of government and of the rights of individuals, have hitherto effected their dangerous and criminal purpose by the influence of certain irregular meetings whose proceedings have tended to encourage and uphold the spirit of opposition by misrepresentations of the laws calculated to render them odious; by endeavors to deter those who might be so disposed from accepting offices under them ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... made an island of the town. From the end of the west wall, where it touched the hawthorn hedge, one could see the town itself. The manse and the kirk could be distinguished, but not very clearly. Seen from the hill the place looked only an irregular group of little grey houses, for the green of the narrow gardens behind was mostly hidden, and even the trees along the lanes seemed small in the distance. But Marjorie liked to look down over it now and then, to make sure that all was safe ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... schoolmasters who definitely discourage or even forbid the asking of questions by the class. "Little boys should be seen and not heard"—that worst of all educational maxims—makes a larger contribution to the buttressing up of the present system than is usually supposed. A lowering diet of irregular verbs keeps the boy mind "docile," to use a word of ironically perverted meaning, and prevents it from impinging embarrassingly upon the lightly guarded regions of the master's intellectual entrenchments. In fact, political education set up a new intellectual standard. ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... England was settled by church congregations.] When people from England first came to dwell in the wilderness of Massachusetts Bay, they settled in groups upon small irregular-shaped patches of land, which soon came to be known as townships. There were several reasons why they settled thus in small groups, instead of scattering about over the country and carving out broad estates for ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... conference in the recess of a window. We three remained seated round the table from which the dark maid was removing the cups and the plates with brusque movements. I gazed frankly at Dona Rita's profile, irregular, animated, and fascinating in an undefinable way, at her well-shaped head with the hair twisted high up and apparently held in its place by a gold arrow with a jewelled shaft. We couldn't hear what she said, but the movement of her ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... by the feet of man and beast; and showing some ugly abrupt turns. The absolute height of the ascent is about 450 feet (aner. 26.70—26.25) and the length half a mile. The ground, composed mostly of irregular rock-steps, has little difficulty for horses and mules; but camels laden with boards (the mess-table) and long tent-poles must have had a queer time—I should almost expect after this to see an oyster walking up stairs. Of course, they took their leisure, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... are carried now. In 1867, to the perils of the snow and wind and of mountain travel, were added dangers from desperadoes, white as well as red, so that mail deliveries were few and far between, and very irregular, while too often both the carriers and their packs were lost. Slow as the old way was, however, the snow sometimes makes the new way even slower. In spite of miles and miles of snow-sheds and snow-fences, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... Otaha is hilly, broken, and irregular, except on the sea-coast, yet the hills look green and pleasant, and are in many places clothed with wood. The several particulars in which these islands and their inhabitants differ from what we had observed at Otaheite, have been mentioned in the course ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... civil engineer has no struggle with his material. He need only avail himself dexterously of the original contour of his ground. Manhattan Island is a low outcrop of gneiss and mica-schist, sloping from an irregular, but practically continuous crest, to the Hudson and East Rivers, with a nearly uniform southerly incline from its precipitous north face on the Haarlem and Spuyten Duyvil to high-water mark at the foot ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... the night was too cold for the child to be carried around. She was a nurse. The child was not hers, but belonged to a wealthy family of the south, who were to have arrived that day, but had not. The thing seemed so irregular that I at once consented, thinking to scan the papers the next day for an account of a lost or stolen child. She also carried a box which contained, she said, the child's identity. Now, as I am a living man, ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... pronouns and words to be rendered in every case by like words in English (e.g. action, affection) are omitted in this vocabulary. Irregularly formed plurals and the feminine endings of adjectives are noted. Irregular verbal forms are entered ...
— Bataille De Dames • Eugene Scribe and Ernest Legouve
... acquisitions on the literary side. However, in the long-run it becomes clear, his intellect, roving on devious courses, or plodding along the prescribed tram-roads, had been wide awake; and busy all the while, bringing in abundant pabulum of an irregular nature. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... that the primary planets all move nearly in one plane, and "show a progressive increase of bulk and diminution of density, from the one nearest to the sun to that which is most distant." But he passes over other characteristics of these bodies, equally important, which are quite irregular, and cannot be traced to the operation of one law. Compare the periods of rotation on their respective axes, and we find no correspondence, no indication that the revolving motion was imparted to all by one inflexible law. The first four planets, counting from the sun, perform ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... low in the dark sky: one hardly noted the stars. The vast sweep of water was as calm as a lake, dark and metallic like the sky, barely reflecting the silver light between. But although calm it was not quiet. It greeted the forbidding rocks beyond the shore, the long irregular line of stark, storm-beaten cliffs, with ominous mutter, now and again throwing a cloud of spray high in the air, as if in derisive proof that even in sleep it was sensible of its power. Occasionally it moaned, as if sounding a dirge along the mass ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... been unable to do anything, and always hoping to get better, he had sent different gentlemen to take the services, first one and then another, or had asked the masters at Ragglesford to help him; but it was all very irregular, and no one had settled down long enough to know the people or do much good in visiting them. My Lady, as they all called Lady Jane, was as sorry as any one could be, and she tried what she could do by paying a very good school- master and mistress, and giving ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... slightly. "This is irregular," he said. "You should wait for that petition until the plaintiff's counsel has closed his case, you know." He looked ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... shewed a very acute penetration. My wife paid him the most assiduous and respectful attention, while he was our guest; so that I wonder how he discovered her wishing for his departure. The truth is, that his irregular hours and uncouth habits, such as turning the candles with their heads downwards, when they did not burn bright enough, and letting the wax drop upon the carpet, could not but be disagreeable to a lady. Besides, she had not that high admiration ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Astaroth travelled over the world, carrying on her back a wallet which contained everything, even good women in their houses. A pell-mell of sheds thrown from her devil's bag would give an idea of that irregular Weymouth—the good women in the sheds included. The Music Hall remains as a specimen of those buildings. A confusion of wooden dens, carved and eaten by worms (which carve in another fashion)—shapeless, overhanging buildings, some with pillars, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Akabah. Under command of Djemel Pasha, Turkish Minister of Marine, there were gathered some 50,000 troops consisting mostly of first line troops of the best quality, reenforced by about 10,000 more or less irregular Arab Bedouins. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... to the north of the town on a height which commands all the surrounding country. Its walls, defended at intervals by square towers, are built among and on the top of enormous granite boulders, and enclose an irregular space in which stands the keep. The inhabited part of the castle ran along the north-western wall where it stood highest above the land below, but it has mostly perished, leaving only a few windows which are too large to date from the beginning of the twelfth century. The square keep stands ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... to apprise you of this fact, in order that you may not be frightened if such a thing transpires. Madame, being a mother, ought to be less astonished at it than any one else; she has experienced, at the fourth month of pregnancy, the effect of those irregular movements which will, possibly, soon be presented to us on a larger scale. I am quite hopeful, however, that the first spontaneous contractions will take place in the fibres of the heart. Such is the case in the embryo, where the rhythmic ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... interior which did not differ in bareness and tawdriness from most other country churches of the Latin south, though it had a facade so satisfyingly Spanish, because I suppose it was so perfectly Portuguese, that heart could ask no more. Not all the people were at prayer within; irregular files of them attended our progress to give us the opportunity of doing charity. The beggars were of every sort, sex, and age, and some, from the hands they held out, with fingers reduced to their last joints, looked as if they might be lepers, but I do ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... lyrical quality and highly involved and irregular metre of many of Ingemann's hymns make them extremely difficult to translate, and their English translations fail on the whole to do justice. The translation given below is perhaps one of the best. It is the work of the ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... formed in this way, early in the thirteenth century. Plans like this, in which the chapels grow out of the central space, instead of being planned from the first in relation to it, are imperfectly cruciform; but are highly characteristic of the irregular methods of development pursued by the ...
— The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church • A. Hamilton Thompson
... the evening at sunset; we were mounted upon donkeys, while our Turkish attendants rode upon excellent dromedaries that belonged to their regiment of irregular cavalry. As usual, when ready to start, Mahomet was the last; he had piled a huge mass of bags and various luggage upon his donkey, that almost obscured the animal, and he sat mounted upon this pinnacle dressed in gorgeous ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... "That he should come to the ball? No doubt. I will be perfectly frank with you, as I expect you to be with me. It is perhaps not quite seemly to discuss my brother's failings at this time, but we want to get at the truth about his death. He had, I fear, rather irregular methods in his treatment of women. One can hardly blame him, poor fellow. His was a fascinating personality, at any rate so far as women were concerned. They ran after him, and one can scarcely blame him if he acquired a derogatory ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... fair to say that Doctor Perkins, a former resident of the village, was a quack; he may be described in milder phrase as an irregular practitioner. He belonged to none of the accepted schools, but treated his patients in accordance with certain theories of his own. The doctor had a habit of relating remarkable stories of his own achievements, and the most ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... forests. The pines were tall and picturesque in their forms, and the grassy meadows between them, entirely clear of snow, were wonderfully green for the season. During the first stage we passed some inlets of the Baltic, highly picturesque with their irregular wooded shores. They had all been frozen over during the night. We were surprised to see, on a southern hill-side, four peasants at work ploughing. How they got their shares through the frozen sod, unless the soil was remarkably dry and sandy, ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... bland-smiling, and beneficent, he absolutely would have no trade with. Their very sugar-cake was unavailing. He said with emphasis, as clearly as barking could say it, "Acrid-quack, avaunt!"' But once when 'a tall, irregular, busy-looking man came halting by,' that wise, nervous little dog ran towards him, and began 'fawning, frisking, licking at the feet' of Sir Walter Scott. No reader of reviews could have done better, says Carlyle; ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Diane. It is still the fashion, as at Lisbon, to look somewhat boudeuse when abroad, by way of hint that man must not expect too much; yet these cross faces at home or with intimates are those of bonnes enfants. Lastly, the dark complexions and the irregular features do not contrast well with the charming faces and figures of Tenerife, who mingle the beauty of Guanchedom with ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... and action of the poem. Note the march-like and irregular movement of the verse: does it fit the theme? Why do they carry the Grammarian up from the plain? What was his work? What was his aim? What is the value of such work (1) in presenting an ideal of life, (2) in the history of culture? What circumstances in his life enhance ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... these blunders I would state that roosters seem to keep awake most of the night in Southern California, and can be heard crowing at most irregular hours. Considering ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... which is really capable of illumination, and into which every earnest mind is permitted and commanded to go with a light. We cry mystery long before the region of mystery comes. True mystery casts no shadows around. It is a sudden and awful gulf yawning across the field of knowledge; its form is irregular, but its lips are clean cut and sharp, and the mind can go to the very verge and look down the precipice into ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... sienna colour over the back and sides, and white underneath, with a list of black upon the outside of the legs, and some black stripes upon the face, as regularly defined as if laid on by the brush of a painter. They had horns of very irregular shape, roughly knotted—each curved into something of the shape of a reaping-hook, and rising directly from the top of one of the straightest and longest heads ever carried by an animal. These animals were far from being gracefully formed. They had drooping hind-quarters like the giraffe, ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... my head from the stand, for I felt sure that this was not all I was to behold; and in a few moments there was again a faint scintillation. In time the light was strong enough for me to perceive the irregular flames of a huge bonfire burning in an old square of some mediaeval city. It was evening, and yet a throng of men and women and children made an oval about the fire and about a slim girl who had spread Persian carpet on the rough stones of ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... number of vessels at anchor in the vast harbour; numerous white forts, backed by picturesque hills rising above them, covered with the richest verdure, and villages peeping forth here and there in beautiful little bays; while higher up the bay the vast city appeared, extending for miles along its irregular shore, and running back almost to the foot of the Tijuca Mountains, with hills and heights in every direction. In the midst of this scene we dropped our anchor under the frowning fortress of Villegagnon, the first castle erected by Europeans ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... brilliant scene. The gardens were lighted with myriads of lamps. The sheet of ice was of a very irregular shape and broken by several islets, upon which grew trees. From their branches hung numbers of lanterns, while the bank round the ice was studded with lamps. The crowds walking about by the edge of the lake were all wrapped up in furs. A large proportion of those on skates wore uniforms, ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... monotony [Footnote: i.e., a power of tone the degree of which remains unchanged.] (if I may risk such an apparently senseless expression for a difficult phenomenon) together with the unusually varied and ever irregular movement of intervals in the ascending figure entering on the prolonged G flat to be sung with such infinite delicacy, to which the G natural answers with equal delicacy, initiated me as by magic to the incomparable mystery of the spirit. ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... chosen. Whoever it was, he needed no more matches to guide his footsteps. They heard him advancing a few paces; then he halted again. After a marked interval, punctuated by a soft, whirring noise hard to interpret, there were irregular scrapings and ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... towers and brought out golden Diana. It flashed against the statue of the Republic, and kept it for a full minute resplendent as though carved from a block of flame and then flickered away, leaving the great figure in twilight uncertainty. After a time three irregular splashes of light were playing hide-and-seek along the basin and up the fronts of the big building. The lights changed their colors. Sometimes they were green and again they ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... startled to see a certain abruptness in the transition from one subject to another,—it is a characteristic of the squinting brain wherever you find it. Another curious mark rarely wanting in the subjects of mental strabismus is an irregular and often sprawling and deformed handwriting. Many and many a time I have said, after glancing at the back of a letter, "This comes from an insane asylum, or from an eccentric who might well be a candidate for such an institution." Number Seven's ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and whitish tinge, I looked back with a deep and boding sigh towards the walls which contained Diana Vernon, under the despondent impression that we had probably parted to meet no more. It was impossible, among the long and irregular lines of Gothic casements, which now looked ghastly white in the moonlight, to distinguish that of the apartment which she inhabited. "She is lost to me already," thought I, as my eye wandered over the dim and indistinguishable intricacies of architecture offered by the ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... sensation. His appearance was impressive. The youthful face was white and almost rigid in its lines. "Scared to death," was the mental note of a good many who saw him. But his step was firm. As Elizabeth looked at him, she felt proud that such a man loved her. He was not handsome. His features were irregular, but his eyes were clear and fearless. If a certain cowardice had held him back from this ordeal, it was surely not because he trembled for himself. The life he had lived and the battles he had fought had given a compression to his lips that corrected a natural tendency to weakness in ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... Very often they went to watch the trains. Cecil is particularly interested in them, and wanted to know how long was the time between. He said three minutes, I guessed nine, but we found they were irregular. In the intervals while waiting for a train to pass, we played a 'listening' game, listening to what sounds we could hear. A thrush came and sang right over our heads, so the listening was concentrated on his song, ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... weeks before the time fixed by the constitution. Shober was sent to Baltimore as delegate, and took a prominent part in drawing up the "Planentwurf," the tentative constitution for the organization of a General Synod. This irregular meeting of the North Carolina Synod was later on known as the "Untimely Synod." It provoked much ill feeling and led to the organization of the Tennessee Synod in 1820. (Tenn. Rep. 1820, 49.) At this "Untimely Synod" David Henkel was charged with teaching ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... me less than a couple of minutes, and then I returned to the poop and took a good look round. But I could see nothing except four dim glimmers of light spaced at irregular intervals, which I took to be the lights of the becalmed craft which we had seen inshore of us earlier in the evening. And as for sound, there was nothing to be heard save an occasional faint gurgle of water under the counter when the ship lifted ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... lovely smile, and an arch twinkle of her eye towards me, and then launched forth in full tide, accompanying her sweet and mellow voice on that too much neglected instrument, the guitar. It was a wild, irregular sort of ditty, with one or two startling arabesque bursts in it. As near as may be, the following conveys the meaning, but not ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... unusually fine beast, and had been one of the greatest points in the guide's favour when he had brought it for her inspection. He was enthusiastic in its praise, but volubly vague as to its antecedents, which left Diana with the conviction that the animal had either been stolen or acquired in some irregular manner and that it would be tactless to pursue further inquiries. After all it was no business of hers. It was enough that her trip was to be conducted on the back of a horse that it was a pleasure to ride and whose vagaries promised to give interest to what otherwise might ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... many followers. One of the Kellers and the Marquis d'Esgrignon made fools of themselves over her. Eugene de Rastignac, at that time minister, invited her to his home, and insisted upon her singing the celebrated cavatina from "La Muette." Irregular in her habits, whimisical, covetous, intelligent, and at times good-natured, Josepha Mirah gave some proof of generosity when she helped the unfortunate Hector Hulot, for whom she went so far as to get Olympe Grenouville. She finally told Madame Adeline Hulot of the baron's ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... creased rather than wrinkled, and the skin was like loose leather over his neck band—he wore a brass collar button but no collar. His hair was cropped close; iron-gray bristles on a bullet-like head. His eyes were always suffused and bloodshot. He had a coarse, scornful mouth, and irregular, yellow teeth, much worn at the edges. His hands were square and red, seldom clean, but always alive, ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... had been cut down, and fences enclosed cultivated fields where forests had stood when she went away. At a sudden bend in the narrow, irregular road when she held her breath and leaned forward to see the old house where she was born and reared, a sharp cry of pain escaped her. Not a vestige of the homestead remained, save the rocky chimney, standing in memoriam in the centre of a cornfield. She leaned against the low ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... My instruments will warn me when we approach any of the heavenly bodies, and we can steer clear of them. The only things we have to fear will be comets, and their orbits are so irregular that there is no telling when we may get ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood
... two-humped camels. Observed one man shooting with a gun, another riding with bow and arrows slung on his back. The houses, or wigwams, were square in shape with arching roofs, and looked to be constructed of wicker-work and skins. In many places noticed irregular, flat stones set up on edge and varying in height from three to six feet, forming circles about twenty feet in diameter, ...
— Through Siberia and Manchuria By Rail • Oliver George Ready
... Asia; acute encephalitis can progress to paralysis, coma, and death; fatality rates 30%. African Trypanosomiasis - caused by the parasitic protozoa Trypanosoma; transmitted to humans via the bite of bloodsucking Tsetse flies; infection leads to malaise and irregular fevers and, in advanced cases when the parasites invade the central nervous system, coma and death; endemic in 36 countries of sub-Saharan Africa; cattle and wild animals act as reservoir hosts for the parasites. ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... the difficult problems which face the new administration is that of the slow, irregular decline of farm prices. This decline, which has been going on for almost 2 years, has occurred at a time when most nonfarm prices and farm costs of production ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower
... such is the magic of method, when directed by a master-mind, that the whole went on with the regularity and precision of machinery. More than two thousand armed men, all of whom had been accustomed to an irregular, some to a lawless, life, were as docile as children; animated, in general, by what they deemed a sacred cause, and led by a chief whom they universally alike ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... ready for something extraordinary, but now, when it came, she was taken aback by it. It gave her a start, that toss of black hair, that long, irregular, pale face whose scintillant, sardonic smile was mercilessly upon the poor, inadequate picture-face fronting him. His stoop above the rail was so abrupt that his long, lean back was almost horizontal, yet even thus there was something elegant in the swing of him—in the careless twist ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... some time about the garden, they happened to go into the summer-house, at the foot of which grew the stump of a vine, which twisted wildly, and extended its naked branches in a rude and irregular manner. As soon as little Junius saw this tree, he exclaimed sadly against the ugly appearance it made, and began to exert all his strength to pull it up, but he found his efforts in vain, it being too well rooted to yield to his weak arm. He begged his papa ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... mile northeast of the village is Lake Henderson, a very irregular and picturesque sheet of water surrounded by dark evergreen forests, and abutted by two or three bold promontories with mottled white and gray rocks. Its greatest extent in any one direction is perhaps less than a mile. Its waters are perfectly clear and abound in lake trout. A considerable ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... and with much of that air of negligence that one is apt to see in grounds where art is made to assume the character of nature. The trees, with very few exceptions, were what is called the "burr- oak," a small variety of a very extensive genus; and the spaces between them, always irregular, and often of singular beauty, have obtained the name of "openings"; the two terms combined giving their appellation to this particular species of native forest, under the name of ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... from meeting a companion in adversity, to find that at Westminster Hall, "In fermedon the tenant having demanded a view after a general imparlance, the demandant issued a writ of petit cape—held irregular." ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... shirk her part. With that tall, erect figure, delicate in outline but strong with the freedom of an open-air life, that proud head which was nevertheless carried meekly, and that straightforward gaze, she gave the impression of being ready to meet anything. The face might be irregular, lacking in many of the tender prettinesses as natural to other girls, even at twenty-seven, as flowers to a field; but no one could deny ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... margin of the Codex, the note where he is to leave off, (in order the more effectually to arrest his progress,) is as a rule introduced into the body of the text.(415) In uncial MSS., however, all such symbols are not only rare, but (what is much to be noted) they are exceedingly irregular in their occurrence. Thus in Codex {GREEK CAPITAL LETTER GAMMA}, in the Bodleian Library, (a recently acquired uncial MS. of the Gospels, written A.D. 844), there occurs no indication of the "end" of a single lection in S. ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... therefore they were not going to leave Newhaven for another hour and a half. Aunt Anne gazed in indignation upon their informant, and declared it was scandalous that a boat, timed to leave at a certain hour, should be so irregular and unpunctual; whereupon the captain, shrugging his shoulders, said that the lady should complain to the moon about the tides rather ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... noted from the experiments that 1 gram of nitre kept up on the average 4 grams of lead; the range being from 3.2 with acid slags to 5.3 with very basic ones. These facts serve to explain some apparently irregular ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... cantoned; and the money required for the Resident's Treasury—a great portion of which passes through the Seetapoor cantonments—is escorted by our infantry regiments of the line, stationed at Lucknow, merely because a General Order exists that no irregular corps shall be employed on such duties while any regular corps near has a relief of guards present. The corps of regular infantry at Shajehanpoor escorts the treasure six marches to Seetapoor, where it is relieved by a detachment ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... man with relief, for the drumming had tortured him. But his breathing was shallow and irregular now, and from time to time they could hear a rattle in his throat. His eyes, when he opened them, were looking far off. He was turning restlessly and muttering again. She took his hands and found them ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... little oath, as it seems in pretty good taste. I take this liberty only in his absence, please to observe, for you may understand that in his presence—but, in truth, monsieur, this cider is abominable; do you not think so? And besides, the pot is of such an irregular shape it will not stand on ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... is in animation. There seem to be some characters who are not made for history, as there are some who are not made for old age. A Cavalier is always young. The buoyant life arises before us, rich in hope, strong in vigor, irregular in action; men young and ardent, "framed in the prodigality of nature"; open to every enjoyment, alive to every passion, eager, impulsive; brave without discipline, noble without principle; prizing luxury, despising ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... Lincoln as the officer who was to receive the submission of the garrison. By him they were conducted into a field where they were to ground their arms. In passing through the line formed by the allied army, their march was careless and irregular, and their aspect sullen. The order to "ground arms" was given by their platoon officers with a tone of deep chagrin, and many of the soldiers threw down their muskets with a violence sufficient to break them. This irregularity ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... Charles II. a certain worthy divine at Whitehall thus addressed himself to the auditory at the conclusion of his sermon: "In short, if you don't live up to the precepts of the Gospel, but abandon yourselves to your irregular appetites, you must expect to receive your reward in a certain place which 't is not good ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... half witted child sat close beside the body, which was perfectly inanimate. Now he looked up at the bright stars for an instant, now at the still features of the guardsman, and then at the spot where the slave had disappeared over the wall. His movements were nervous and irregular, and he seemed to be trying to understand something or to make up his mind upon some thought that had stolen into ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... six months, all the resources of his courage, and the energy of his will in a situation which had been imprudently imposed upon him by peremptory orders. He led back an army inured to fatigue and privations, but disorganized by an existence at once idle and irregular, directed by chiefs soured and discontented. The consequences of this state of things were not long in bursting forth; scarcely had the troops taken a few days' rest in Spain, when Marshal Massena conceived the idea of assuming ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... eyes: with a largish nose and wide nostrils, thin cheeks, a heavy chin, strong coloring, she had a fine profile showing much energy and alertness: full face, her expression was more changing, uncertain, complex: her eyes and her cheeks were irregular. She seemed to give revelation of a strong race, and in the mold of that race, roughly thrown together, were manifold incongruous elements, of doubtful and unequal quality, beautiful and vulgar at the same time. Her beauty ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... the idea, and he half forgot the weird mystery gathering about him. He stepped nearer the sphere. It was curiously like a miniature world. The irregular bluish areas would be seas; the green and the brown spaces land. In some parts, the surface appeared mistily ...
— The Pygmy Planet • John Stewart Williamson |
