"Pestered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... general anxiety upon this occasion, for the Marquis's visit is an honour, and should be received as such; but I am worn out by these miserable minutiae of the buttery, and the larder, and the very hencoop—they drive me beyond my patience; I would rather endure the poverty of Wolf's Crag than be pestered with ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... by, He called them—untaught knaves, unmannerly, To bring a slovenly unhandsome corse Betwixt the wind and his nobility. With many holiday and lady terms He questioned me; among the rest, demanded My prisoners, in your majesty's behalf. I then, all smarting, with my wounds being cold, To be so pestered with a popinjay, Out of my grief and my impatience, Answered neglectingly, I know not what; He should, or he should not;—for he made me mad. To see him shine so brisk, and smell so sweet, And talk so like a waiting-gentlewoman, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... desperately hard work. The moss is ankle deep, the underbrush thick; fallen logs lie across each other in hopeless confusion, through and under and over which one must make his laborious way, stung and pestered by hordes of black flies and mosquitoes. So that, unless you have a strong instinct of direction, it is almost impossible to hold your course without a compass, or a bright ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... chirps Alex. "He'll not only get sore, he'll get curious and then again I'm figurin' on him bein' human, besides bein' general manager and havin' a sense of humor! He's probably been pestered with auto salesmen all day—if I wrote my real business on that card he'd send word he was out. As it is, he'll read it and he won't be able to resist the, now, temptation to get one look at a feller which would want to know from a man in his position the price of petrified noodles in Siberia. No ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... damage I was said to have done to the trees; those upon which I left my mark had generally to come down—young trees—trees with plenty of life in them I took immensely to. But I have since thought they needn't have pestered my father as much as they did. I had many a narrow "squeak" in my boyish days. When I was about an octave of years old, I remember very feelingly an escapade which I was engaged in, as a wind-up to one of my devastating expeditions to Peace Close Wood. The steward dogged my ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... a timid man, but since the event of his clarification, he had shown a stronger dislike than ever to being pestered, and was abnormally quick to detect and resist any advances of that kind. So his movements on these occasions were marked by an angry deliberation, though the old sea-captain never failed in the end, to arise and "hand ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... very good-natured he gets much pestered—a discovery which I daresay you have made, or anyhow will soon make; for I do want very much to know whether you have sown seed of any moss-roses, and whether the seedlings were moss-roses. (196/2. Moss-roses can be raised from seed ("Variation under ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... lighted on rather earlier in the season. Having occasion to change his abode, he sent on his window-plants, calceolarias and geraniums, to that which he intended to occupy several days before he went himself, and immediately found that he was pestered with flies, whereas previously he had enjoyed perfect immunity from the nuisance. A more agreeable remedy cannot be conceived. Next autumn let our windows be a blaze of brilliancy, so that all visitors ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... there are private book clubs and societies that have won places of enviable distinction both here and abroad, and naturally among the foremost of these are the ones which have been pestered by "imitators." The following significant remarks are taken from the president's annual address to the members of an old ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... on the Casino terrace this evening caught my eye, looked at me queerly, and passed on. His face, though unfamiliar, stirred some dormant association. What was it? The profitless question pestered me for hours. At last, during the performance at the theatre, I slapped my ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... about Johnny Jewel. She had been sure that he had come to Los Angeles, and she had pestered her dad into bringing her here in the firm belief that she would find him at once and "have it out with him" once and for all. (Just as though Mary V could ever settle a quarrel once and for all!) But though she ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... XXI. Penelop[^e] is pestered by suitors. To excuse herself, Penelop[^e] tells her suitors he only shall be her husband who can bend Odysseus's bow. None can do so but the stranger, who bends it with ease. Concealment is no longer possible ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... of that age could obtain from the public was so small, that they were under the necessity of eking out their incomes by levying contributions on the great. Every rich and goodnatured lord was pestered by authors with a mendicancy so importunate, and a flattery so abject, as may in our time seem incredible. The patron to whom a work was inscribed was expected to reward the writer with a purse of gold. The fee paid for the dedication of a book was often much larger than the sum ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... disgusted With Britain's mechanical din; Where I'm much too well known to be trusted, And plaguily pestered for tin; Where love has two eyes for your banker, And one chilly glance for yourself; Where souls can afford to be franker, But when they're ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... give the best idea to modern readers of the place of Rhazes in the history of medicine is that Vesalius considered it worth his while to make a translation of his principal work. Unfortunately that translation has not come down to us. When Vesalius, pestered by the controversies that had come upon him because of his venturing to make his observations for himself, accepted the post of physician to the Emperor Charles V, he burnt a number of his manuscripts. Among these ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... dinner, and again he spent the long drowsy afternoon upon his front gallery. In all the sky there were now no buzzards visible, belled or unbelled—they had settled to earth somewhere; and this served somewhat to soothe the squire's pestered mind. This does not mean, though, that he was by any means easy in his thoughts. Outwardly he was calm enough, with the ruminative judicial air befitting the oldest justice of the peace in the county; but, within him, a little something ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... one of Those incessant questioners, who seem to have a craving, unhealthy appetite in conversation. He never seemed satisfied with the whole of a story; never laughed when others laughed; but always put the joke to the question. He could never enjoy the kernel of the nut, but pestered himself to get more out ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... favor of military training, and with an experience of actual warfare such as only a score or so of German officers of my generation have had; but I am bound to say I found this pounding in of patriotism on every side distinctly nauseating. Boys and girls, and men and women, ought not to need to be pestered with patriotism. We had a controversy in America some ten years before the Franco-German War, where in one battle more men were killed and wounded than in all the battles Prussia, and later Germany, has fought ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... hogs wallowing before every door, and they grunted at us with a kind of courtesy and affability as if the town were theirs, and it was their part to be hospitable to strangers. Many donkeys likewise accosted us with braying; children, growing more uncleanly every day they lived, pestered us with begging; men stared askance at us as they lounged in corners, and women endangered us with slops which they were flinging from doorways into the street. No decent words can describe, no admissible image can give an idea of this noisome place. And yet, I remember, the donkeys came up the ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... you git into a tight corner, 'Lection day er Valley Fair, like's not, daown-taown, when you're all het an' lathery, an' pestered with flies, an' thirsty, an' sick o' bein' worked in an aout 'tween buggies. Then somethin' whispers inside o' your winkers, bringin' up all that talk abaout servitood an' inalienable truck an' sech like, an' jest then a Militia gun goes off; er your wheels ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... Aunt Lucy, "but the very things he wanted—his father and mother, his playmates, kind old Fritz, and his horse and dog—not to speak of a very important thing in a boy's eyes, liberty to play without being pestered with continual lectures." ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... in her studies without being pestered by society to any extent. I sometimes think this helped old Scroggs to hate us. She was his only child, and he had taken all the affection and interest that most people distribute over their entire acquaintanceship and concentrated it ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... appetites of the people. There were always simpletons enough to believe that they could be cured of consumption by taking such nostrums as cod liver oil and Wistar's Balsam; so also would the world always be pestered with men simple enough to believe that every man must square his inclinations to the measure of their own. But one point now remained to be deliberated upon, and that was how the doctor should atone to the parson for his damaged face. I, however, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... is unworthy of you. You know perfectly well why I distinguished you. Others pestered me with their attachments and nonsense, and you spared me that annoyance. In return, I did all in my power to show you the grateful friendship I thought you worthy of. But you have broken faith; you have violated the clear, ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... I don't think you'll ever take a fortune out of Ophir. I bought a claim there the other day. The man pestered me, so I gave him five thousand for it, just to get rid ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... justice in the most important cases, to the most important personages? If we allow every pitiful patriot thus to insult us with ridiculous accusations, without making him pay forfeit for his temerity, we shall be eternally pestered with the humming and buzzing of these stingless wasps. Though they cannot wound or poison, they will tease and vex. They will divert our attention from the important affairs of State to their own mean antipathies, and ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... Monroe, musingly, "that if they'd begun by eatin' separate they might have got along, 'cause it's only His saints that the Lord has made pleasant-tempered enough to stand bein' pestered with three meals a day, unless they're busy enough not to have time to think about anythin' but swallerin'. Hayin'-time most men is kinder pleasant 'bout their food—so long 's it's ready. Wal, however ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... pinnaces, was lying at anchor under the Island of Florez. Light in ballast and short of water, with half his men disabled by sickness, Howard was unable to pursue the aggressive purpose on which he had been sent out. Several of the ships' crews were on shore: the ships themselves 'all pestered and rommaging,' with everything out of order. In this condition they were surprised by a Spanish fleet consisting of 53 men-of-war. Eleven out of the twelve English ships obeyed the signal of the ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... tendency to exaggerate the various sensations of the body and their importance, their exaggeration being at times so great as to amount to actual delusion. All sorts of symptoms are dwelt upon, and the doctor is pestered to the extreme by the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... evening, when there was a great hurrying up stairs and down, and a mad seeking of wrong trains by right people, the company's servants who were taking tickets, and directing passengers this way and that, were patiently kind with futile old men and women, who came up, in the midst of their torment, and pestered them with questions as to the time when trains that had not arrived would leave after they did arrive. I shuddered to think what would have at least verbally happened to such inquirers with us; but, there, not only their lives but their feelings were safe, and they ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... lest I fail to embark in proper season, due either to an unexpected change in the hour of sailing or perchance to some unforeseen delay encountered in transit from my hotel to the water front, and pestered finally by a haunting dread lest the cabman confuse the address in his own mind and deposit me at the wrong pier, there being many piers in New York and all of such similarity of outward appearance, I must confess ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... where he stopped he was generally taken for a fighi, or teacher, and was pestered to write out charms. One day his washerwoman insisted on being paid with a charm in writing, that would induce people to ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... distant parts, which brought with them abundance of bread-fruit, cocoa-nuts, and a few hogs. These they exchanged for hatchets, nails, and beads; for red feathers were not so much sought after here as at Otaheite. The ship being a good deal pestered with rats, I hauled her within thirty yards of the shore, as near as the depth of water would allow, and made a path for them to get to the land, by fastening hawsers to the trees. It is said, that this experiment has sometimes succeeded; but, I believe, we got clear of very few, if any, of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... mugs. And sometimes, alas, they hotly argued and raised their voices in donner-und-blitzen style, as Germans have been known to do. Yet they were friends, and the honest Zelter's yearly visits were as a godsend to the old poet, who was often pestered to distraction by visitors who only voiced the conventional, the inconsequential and absurd. Here was a man ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... he has to-day a copy of them written in his own boyish unformed hand. Among other things they provided that "any one pointing a gun, accidentally or otherwise, at anybody else or Duke, is fined one cent." The entire club went into a committee of the whole, marched down town in a body and pestered a number of store-keepers. Finally it purchased a silver bangle a little larger than a ten-cent piece, had it hung from a bar pin, and inscribed "First Prize." The second prize, following Mrs. Orde's practical suggestion, was a bright ribbon. Winners were privileged to wear these until ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... show me a few of them, but I have been pestered with them for years, and this year I ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... we were more or less pestered with ticks of various sizes. These clung to the grass blades; but with no invincible preference for that habitat; trousers did them just as well. Then they ascended looking for openings. They ranged in size from little red ones as small as the period of a printed page to ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... fift part of the same, which the more doth aggravate the fault and foolish slouth in many of our nation, chusing rather to live indirectly, and very miserably to live and die within this realme pestered with inhabitants, then to adventure as becommeth men, to obtaine an habitation in those remote lands, in which Nature very prodigally doth minister unto mens endeavours, and for art to ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... allowed to the present age, that the tongue in general is so much refined since Shakespeare's time, that many of his words, and more of his phrases, are scarce intelligible. And of those which we understand, some are ungrammatical, others coarse; and his whole style is so pestered with figurative expressions, that it is as affected as it is obscure. It is true, that in his latter plays he had worn off somewhat of the rust; but the tragedy, which I have undertaken to correct, was in all probability one of his first endeavours ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... Munday the 11 of January the terme should have begun in the house, but because of the extreame cold and froast which had now continued full six weekes and better without any intermission, as also by reason the hall was still pestered with the stage and scaffolds which were suffered to stand still in expectation of the Comedy, therefore it was agreed by the President and the officers that the terme should bee prorogued for 7 dayes longer in which time it was agreed the Comedy should ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... Radials at the South declared that they would take Washington and make it the Confederate Capital. Prominent men at the North declared that the South could not be and should not be coerced. And with these terrible problems puzzling him, Lincoln was also pestered with office-seekers until he remarked, "This struggle and scramble for office will yet test our institutions." For his Cabinet he chose William H. Seward, Secretary of State; Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers
... remission, though she often slapped her children in vexation instead. They were used to slapping, and when nobody else slapped them they slapped one another. They were bright, ill-mannered brats, who pestered their parents and worried their teachers, and were as happy as the Road ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... Little lawlessness pestered the gold settlements. The Dominion promptly despatched to Dawson a body of her famous mounted police. Our Government, more tardily, made its authority felt from St. Michaels, near the Yukon mouth, all the way to the Canadian border. On June 6, 1900, Alaska was constituted ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... sat upon a bench where Lord Wellington and Bluecher perhaps met, and drank to their healths in Vin de Bordeaux. In spite of the corn, there are still bits of leather caps and bullets and bones scattered about in the fields, and you are pestered with children innumerable with relics of all sorts. We had heard magnificent accounts on our road here of all that was to be done on the field, balls, fetes, sham fights, processions, and I do not know what, but they have all dwindled to a dinner given here ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... pay the detective force for? To let murderers escape?' Mark my words, if we don't lay our hands on this chap quickly, we'll have the whole of the London press howling at our heels like a pack of wolves. Half a dozen special reporters travelled down in the train with me and pestered me with questions all the way. They are coming along here later for a statement for the evening editions. But never mind the journalists—let us get to work without further loss of time. Have you made a list of all the ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... driven the ancient inhabitants of the island out of the more fertile portions of the country, and had made themselves, according to their notions, pretty comfortable in their new homes; they, in a little time, in their turn, were sadly pestered by foreign invaders. These were the Danes. Those hardy sons of the North, still more wild and fierce than the Saxons, and still less scrupulous in their proceedings, pleased with the appearance of the country which they had come over to look ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... week o' disagreeable lessons once-t at one school 'cause he was watchin' a bird-nest on the way to that school. He was determined them young birds was to be allowed to leave that nest without bein' pestered, an' they stayed so long they purty nigh run him into long division 'fo' they did fly. Ef he'd 'a' missed school one day he knowed two sneaky chaps thet would 'a' robbed that ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... sea rovers from the West Indies had made their appearance, and the factory at Fort St. George reported that the sea trade was 'pestered with pirates.' The first comers had contented themselves with plundering native ships. Now their operations were extended to European vessels not of their own nationality. In time this restriction ceased to ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... man, name of Doy," he continued. "Long as he lived he was pestered by inquiries from the French government respecting a Dieppe fishing-smack supposed to have been picked up abandoned at sea. He had picked up no fishing-smack, and he answered no letters about it. He was an old man when it happened, and he died at sea soon after ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... chose that famous one in which the best of monarchs is represented in a frock-coat with a fur collar, and breeches and silk stockings, simpering on a sofa from under his curly brown wig. She had him painted in a brooch and wore it—indeed she amused and somewhat pestered her acquaintance with her perpetual talk about his urbanity and beauty. Who knows! Perhaps the little woman thought she might play the part of a Maintenon or ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I was going to say that Mr. Champfort, who saw the fracas between my lord and me, about the key and the door, the night of my lady's accident, has whispered it about at Lady Singleton's and every where—Mrs. Luttridge's maid, ma'am, who is my cousin, has pestered me with so many questions and offers, from Mrs. Luttridge and Mrs. Freke, of any money, if I would only tell who was in the boudoir—and I have always answered, nobody—and I defy them to get any thing out of me. Betray my lady! I'd sooner cut ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... secretary, and receive all the contributions levied in his department on big affairs. Anybody would take Giroudeau for a fool at first sight, but he has just enough shrewdness to be an inscrutable old file. He is on picket duty; he sees that we are not pestered with hubbub, beginners wanting a job, or advertisements. No other paper has his ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... bit with himself. He saw he would be all right when the tribe returned to the main island, and right enough where he was, if he kept by the lagoon, yet he had a mind to make things righter if he could. So he told the high chief he had once been in an isle that was pestered the same way, and the folk had found a means to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... them. And also ther were sente by their freinds some under hope that they would be made better; others that they might be eased of such burthens, and they kept from shame at home that would necessarily follow their dissolute courses. And by this means the country became pestered with many unworthy persons, who, being come over, crept into one place ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... friend had so much to say against it, that I was pestered into vowing I would go! Tell me not, Mr. Prendergast,—I should not mind giving up to you;' and she ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... political advantages accrued to the convert." For "in many places the missionary intrudes himself into the Chinese court, and sits beside the magistrate to hear a case between his convert and a non-Christian native. The influence of the missionary is very great, and the official is often pestered and worried by the messengers of the Gospel." Therefore the Christian converts are voted a "source of trouble and ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... always has his afternoon coffee there. And on Thursday when we passed by there before the gymnastic lesson there was the gymnastic master sitting with him. Of course we bowed to them as we passed and in the gymnastic lesson Herr Baar said to us: So you two are tormented and pestered by my cousin in natural history? "Pestered" we said, o no, it's the most delightful lesson in the whole week. "Is that so?" said he, "I won't forget to let him know." Of course we begged and prayed him not to give ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... such a man as Mr. Philip Slotman to be shocked, then Slotman was deeply shocked at this moment. He had come to regard Joan as something infinitely superior to himself. Self-indulgent, a libertine, he had pursued her with his attentions, pestered her with his admiration and his offensive compliments. Then it had slowly dawned on the brain of Mr. Philip Slotman that this girl was something better, higher, purer than most women he had known. He had come to realise it little by little. His feelings towards ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... been beaten in a debate by Lincoln, and it seemed that this defeat ought to put him out of the running for president. I sat down a few rods from the polls and thought over the matter of choosing between Edward Everett and John C. Breckenridge, pestered by Governor Wade and H.L. Burns and N.V. and the rest, until finally they left me and when I had made my decision, I found that the polls had closed. I was ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... me for requesting your presence to-day earlier than usual. I have taken it into my head to know something of my own tenantry, and as they have pestered me with petitions, and letters, and complaints, I am anxious to have your opinion, as you know them better than ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... are happy to stand by the crib. Only the industrious man discovers later, but only then, how much trash he has learned, often was not taught the very thing that he needed most, and has to begin to learn in good earnest. During the best time of his life he has been pestered with useless or even harmful stuff. He needs a second part of his life to rub all this off, and to work himself up to the height of his age. Only then can he become a useful member of society. Many do not arrive beyond the first stage; others are stranded in the second; ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... went to windward of their camp fires they were maddened by swarms of mosquitoes, and everywhere were pestered by ants. ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... famous: it flattered her to think that she had loved him,—(and that she had rejected him).—She reminded him of it jokingly without much delicacy. She asked him for his autograph for her album. She pestered him with questions about Paris. She showed a mixture of curiosity and contempt for that city. She pretended that she knew it, having been to the Folies-Bergere, the Opera, Montmartre, and Saint-Cloud. According to her, the women of Paris ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... whether Zeb was pestered or not. A faded clipping is all that remains of the incident. As literature the article, properly enough, is lost to the world at large. It is only worth remembering as his metropolitan beginning. Yet he must have thought rather highly of it (his estimation ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... fly, and flutter in all directions, and to their immense concourse, and the perfect freedom with which they intrude themselves even into the piazza of the house, the pantry, and kitchen, I partly attribute the swarms of fleas, and other still less agreeable vermin, with which we are most horribly pestered. ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... view of the pugilism to be imparted to women for their physical-protection in extremity, and the distinction of it from the blow conveying the moral lesson to them; his wife having objected to the former, because it annoyed her and he pestered her; and she was never, she said, ready to stand up to him for practice, as he called it, except when she had taken more than he thought wholesome for her: he had no sense. There was a squabble between them, because he chose to scour away to his master's office ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... pestered with cares, Though, no doubt, he can often trepan them; But one comes in a shape he can never escape - The implacable National Anthem! Though for quiet and rest he may yearn, It pursues him at every turn - No chance of forsaking Its ROCOCO numbers; They haunt him when waking - They ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... be, there is one sentiment which will always avail to make her break her fast from words, and that is her vanity. For the last three years, Hortense, having become very inquisitive on such matters, had pestered her cousin with questions, which, however, bore the stamp of perfect innocence. She wanted to know why her cousin had never married. Hortense, who knew of the five offers that she had refused, had constructed her little romance; ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... engine changed ends, and we saw the train steam off in another direction. The hold-up of the train had taken place at a depressing spot. We were completely stranded, without provisions or any other necessities, and at an isolated spot where it was impossible to obtain any supplies. The passengers pestered the guard for information, and at last the officers, to still any further enquiry, declared that they were going to do something, to ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... roses (the first I had come across that year), not the fringed or the green-backed species which botanists love best, but the honest old rust-backed rhododendron, which every Swiss traveller has been pestered with in places where the children are one short step above mere mendicity, but, equally, which every Swiss traveller hails with Medean delight when he comes upon it on the mountain-side. We were now, ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... When you could keep him from the can, And Meg, his easy-going wife, Had taken her into their van; And kept her since her parents died ... And she had lived a happy life, Until Fat Pete's young wife was taken ... But, ever since, he'd pestered her ... And she dared scarcely breathe or stir, Lest she should see his eyes aleer ... And many a night she'd lain and shaken, And very nearly died of fear— Though safe enough within the van With Mother Meg and her good-man— For, since Fat Pete was Long Dick's friend, And they were thick ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... hold of money. Jenkins had kept a close eye on Jim Crill, and had grown continually more uneasy lest the old chap become too favourably impressed with Rogeen. He had early sensed the old man's weak spot—one of them—Crill hated to be pestered. That was the vulnerable side at which Evelyn Barnett, the niece, could jab. And Reedy had planned all her attacks. This last move of Crill's—hiring Rogeen to lend money for him, had alarmed Reedy more than anything that had happened. ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... inclined to take a business-like view of the case, and refer the lady to her parish. What are poor-rates intended for, I should like to know, if a man who pays four-and-twopence in the pound is to be pestered in ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... some time before our shouts and beating on the gates aroused the watchman to answer our appeal, for it was the hour of prayer, and Ibrahim was at his devotions. At last, pestered by their dalliance, I fired my double-barrelled gun, whose loud report I knew was more likely to reach the ear of a praying Mussulman. I did not reckon improperly, for hardly had the echoes died away before the great war-drum of the town was rattled, while a voice from a loophole demanded ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... mistress was preparing supper. It was dark before we had settled for the night, which was so warm that sleeping under the trees was no hardship. Jabez covered the dying fire with damp litter, the smoke of which kept off the mosquitos, which pestered ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... and do your talking outside," interrupted the hotel proprietor, and then the disgruntled traveling man had to leave, with the angry mob of colored men following him. He was so pestered by the latter that he had to take a train out of town the ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... one baby, born on the ice-pan, came aboard amidst cheers renewed again and again. They had to be washed and fed, cleaned and clothed. The two officers were invited to live aft and the remainder of the rescued party being pestered to death by the sealing crew in the forecastle, it was decided to abandon the sealing trip, and the brave explorers were carried to St. John's, the American people eventually indemnifying the owners ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... 'doubtless. Still, if you-all but counts the rings on my horns, as givin' some impression of the years I've lived an' what troubles I've probably gone through, you'll onderstand that I ain't takin' Satan no more serious than a empty six-shooter. But the mere trooth is, parson, I'm pestered by them promises I makes deeceased. Which I'd give a yellow stack to get put next to Dead Shot's sperit long enough to explain concernin' them nuptials, an' make cl'ar jest how me ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... their connection had lasted for many years, though they were as closely bound to each other as if they had been married, and although Charlotte Guindal pestered him with entreaties, and upset him with continual quarrels on the subject, and, in spite of the fact that he believed her to be absolutely faithful to him, and worthy of his most perfect confidence and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Jove's court My mansion is, where those immortal shapes Of bright aerial spirits live insphered In regions mild of calm and serene air, Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot Which men call Earth, and, with low-thoughted care, Confined and pestered in this pinfold here, Strive to keep up a frail and feverish being, Unmindful of the crown that Virtue gives, After this mortal change, to her true servants Amongst the enthroned gods on sainted seats. Yet some there be that by due steps aspire ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... Lord to give ye the sense of a man, Mr. Sanborn," she said, "while He was a makin' on ye. If ye'd go to bed, now, instead o' snivelin' round here, you might be good for somethin' in the mornin', when there'll be plenty to do. Anyhow, I'm not goin' to be pestered by the sight on ye any longer," and Hannah banged ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... who went off in the middle of the night," continued the clerk. "She pestered me with a lot of questions as to how she could get North—to Edinburgh. That would be about eleven o'clock. I told her she couldn't get a train until morning. I saw her going upstairs just before I went off duty—soon after eleven. It ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... east, we found ice as far north as 51 deg.. Bouvet met with, some in 48 deg., and others have seen it in a much lower latitude. It is true, however, that the greatest part of this southern continent (supposing there is one), must lie within the polar circle, where the sea is so pestered with ice, that the land is thereby inaccessible. The risque one runs in exploring a coast, in these unknown and icy seas, is so very great, that I can be bold enough to say that no man will ever venture farther than I have done; and that the ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... I pestered the police until they escorted me to the door and told me that if I came again, they'd take me to another kind of door and loose thereafter the key. I shrugged and left disconsolately, because by that time I had been able to esp, page by page, the entire ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... little niggers, sha'p ez a steel trap, en sly ez de fox w'at keep out'n it. Dis yer Wiley had be'n pesterin' Dilsey 'fo' she come ter our plantation, en had nigh 'bout worried de life out'n her. She didn' keer nuffin fer 'im, but he pestered her so she ha' ter th'eaten ter tell her marster fer ter make Wiley let her 'lone. W'en he come ober to our place it wuz des ez bad, 'tel bimeby Wiley seed dat Dilsey had got ter thinkin' a heap 'bout Dave, en den he sorter hilt off aw'ile, en purten' lack ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... man tell what it is in folks that causeth other folks to fancy them? for I have oft-times been sorely pestered to find out. Truly, if man be very fair, or have full winning ways, and sweet words, and so forth, then may it be seen without difficulty. I never was puzzled to know why Sir Roger or any other should have fallen o' love with Queen Isabel. But what on ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... continuing till either the sun gathers strength to dissipate it, or it is dispersed by a brisk sea-breeze. This renders the place close and humid, and probably occasioned the many fevers and fluxes we were there afflicted with. I must not omit to add, that we were pestered all day by vast numbers of mosquetoes, which are not much unlike the gnats in England, but much more venomous in their stings. At sunset, when the musquetoes retired, they were succeeded by an infinity of sand-flies, which made a mighty buzzing, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... had hitherto objected to every purchase in the market,—not that he was insensible to the importance and consideration of landed property, but because, till he himself became the legal receiver of the income, he thought it less trouble to suffer the money to lie in the Funds, than to be pestered with all the onerous details in the management of an estate that might never be his. He, however, with no less ardour than his deceased relative, looked forward to the time when the title of Vargrave should be based upon the venerable foundation of ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book I • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... narrator of the German ghost story, got caught, and he chose his brother John as his keeper. They tried to catch one of their sisters, or some of the eldest of the family, but were very glad at length, so pestered were they by Bouldon, to catch him, when in a daring mood he ventured near them. Thus the game went on, and many other games succeeded, till bed-time at last arrived, and the boys exclaimed with one voice, "Well, we have had a ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... I was pestered with questions; so that, had I not been determined, I should scarce have been allowed to sleep; moreover, so much was writ about me, and my power to hear, and divers stories concerning tales of love, that I had been like to have grown mazed to take note of it all; yet some note I did ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... Rabbit. The old darkey closed his eyes and chuckled. "You sho is axin' sump'n now, honey. Und' his hat, ef he had any, Brer Rabbit had a mighty quick thinkin' apple-ratus, an' mos' inginner'lly, all de time, de pranks he played on de yuther creeturs pestered um bofe ways a-comin' an' a-gwine. De dogs done mighty well, 'long ez dey had dealin's wid de small fry, like Brer Fox, an' Brer Coon, an' Brer Wolf, but when dey run ag'in' ol' Brer B'ar, dey sho struck a snag. De mos' servigrous ...
— Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit • Joel Chandler Harris
... 'bout the harnt. An' then ag'in I got toler'ble oneasy fur fear the Law mought hold ME 'sponsible fur knowin' 'bout Birt's crime of stealin' the grant an' yit not tellin' on him. An' I'd take ter hopin' an' prayin' the boy would confess, so ez I wouldn't hev ter tell on him. I hev been mightily pestered in my mind lately with ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... invitations were accepted, someone was sure to say: "You know, my dear, your mother was far the prettiest girl in Edinburgh. Oh, Christina, you were!..." It was true, too, a French artist who had come to Scotland to decorate Lord Rosebery's ballroom at Dalmeny had pestered Mrs. Melville to sit to him, and had painted a portrait of her which had been bought by the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Ellen had never had a clear idea of what the picture was like, for though she had often asked her mother, she ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... You will have them written, or I shall be pestered to my grave! Is that the voice of a friend of so long standing? And yet it seems but yesterday since we had good hours in Virginia together, or met among the ruins of Quebec. My memoirs—these only will ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the country, if continuing another year. Thus, though great the distance betwixt a man and a mouse, the meanest may become formidable to the mightiest creature by their multitudes; and this may render the punishment of the Philistines more clearly to our apprehensions, at the same time pestered with mice in their barns and pained with emerods in ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... 1813, the married life of Shelley and Harriet appears to have been a happy one, so far as their mutual relation was concerned; though rambling and scrambling, restricted by mediocrity of income (L400 a year, made up between the two fathers), and pestered by the continual, and to Percy at last very offensive, presence of Miss Westbrook as an inmate of the house. They lived in York, Keswick in Cumberland, Dublin (which Shelley visited as an express advocate of Catholic ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... he said at last, "safer than anywhere else, I think, for your father cannot come back until the King goes to supper. For myself, I have an hour, but I have been so surrounded and pestered by visitors in my apartments that I have not found time to put on a court dress—and without vanity, I presume that I am a necessary figure at court this evening. Your father is with Perez, who seems to ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... offered wager of a pound of tobacco or a month's wages to that effect—I was to be pent on the same ship with her. As sure as cosmic sap was cosmic sap, just that sure was I that ere the voyage was over I should be pestered by her making love to me. Please do not mistake me. My certainty in this matter was due, not to any exalted sense of my own desirableness to women, but to my anything but exalted concept of women as instinctive huntresses of men. In my experience women hunted men with quite ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... retaking of such fugitives became easy, as it was only necessary to search the wards for them. City owners of escaped slaves besieged Brinnaria for years and as it was reported that her intercessions were invariably effective, her fame increased and petitions for her assistance pestered her. ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... Thence we made many turnings, and stopped at a house near the Models' Club. At this club, which was formed only in 1913, the artists may go at any time to secure a model—which is a distinct boon. The old way was for the model to call on the artist, the result being that the unfortunate man was pestered with dozens of girls for whom he had no use, while the one model he really wanted never appeared. The club combines the advantages of club, employment bureau, and hotel. There is no smoking-room; every room is ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... wife learned the news, and as soon as she saw her husband the first thing she asked him was whether the donkey was well. To this greeting he replied that the donkey was better than he himself. And then she pestered him with questions as to what he had brought back with him for her and the children; to which he impatiently remarked that she would have to wait until he got his island or empire, when she would be called Her Ladyship. ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... which all boys eager strove to see, and when his old chum and comrade, the captain, went to call on him at his hotel, the great chief of scouts would not rest until together they had gone to see his friends "the boys." That other parents should have been pestered half to death as a result of this visitation any one who knows boys has not to be told, and many were the queries and complaints addressed to the laughing cavalryman upon that score. Parents, as a rule, had no proper conception ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... you said that you were never pestered with rats; besides, this noise was just like walking would ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... He considered himself as playing a desperate stake, and had roused all the energies he possessed, to enable him to do justice to so interesting a transaction. Disengaged from the insects that at first pestered him, he paced up and down the room with a magisterial stride, and flashed an angry glance on every side. He then broke silence. "If any one had any thing to say to him, he should know where and how to answer him. He would advise any such person, however, to consider well what he was about. If ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... same column with that which yielded 136, I do not know what to think. I endeavoured to prevent pollen dropping from an upper to a lower flower, and I tried to remember to wipe the pincers carefully after each fertilisation; but in making eighteen different unions, sometimes on windy days, and pestered by bees and flies buzzing about, some few errors could hardly be avoided. One day I had to keep a third man by me all the time to prevent the bees visiting the uncovered plants, for in a few seconds' time they might have done irreparable mischief. ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... Doubtful. You'll see ever so many officials will ask to look at Miss Morley's ticket. Why? Because the place would get choked up with artists I suppose. And also they want to sell their own photos. You'll be pestered to buy post-cards ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... that lad does," observed Mr. Snape to the skipper; "nigh about pestered me to death, comin' down. You'd better charge double ef yer goin' to carry him home, 'cause it's two days' work fur one man ter tend to his talk. I ben't ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... life in the hospital. The brethren, she said, had a yearly stipend (the amount of which she did not mention), and such decent lodgings as I saw, and some other advantages, free; and, instead of being pestered with a great many rules, and made to dine together at a great table, they could manage their little household matters as they liked, buying their own dinners and having them cooked in the general kitchen, and eating them snugly in ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... savages, during the Revolution, resulted only in the capture of non-combatants, in the almost deserted villages, it was long known as "the squaw campaign." Hand was a competent officer, but was much pestered, at Fort Pitt, with the machinations of tories, who were numerous among the borderers. Succeeded at Fort Pitt in 1778, by Brig.-Gen. Lachlan McIntosh, Hand in turn succeeded Stark in command at Albany. We find him, in 1779, actively engaged on Sullivan's campaign against ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... same time, pestered Mr. Lincoln with plans and schemes for the termination of the war. One Duff Green, a Virginia politician, wrote from Richmond in January, 1863, asking the President for an interview "to pave the way for an early termination of the war." He asked ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... pestered by Grand Models, became another rustic paradise. Their suns were warm, their forests vast, their people delighting in a sort of wild civilization. When James II. went down, the Carolinians needed no care-taker, and declined to avail themselves ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... the girls, and a miserable afternoon we had of it. The Story Girl again and again declared that she "didn't believe it," but when we asked her to tell a story, she evaded it with a flimsy excuse. Cecily pestered at Aunt Janet's life out, asking repeatedly, "Ma, will you be washing Monday?" "Ma, will you be going to prayer meeting Tuesday night?" "Ma, will you be preserving raspberries next week?" and various similar questions. It was a huge comfort to her that Aunt Janet always said, "Yes," or "Of course," ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... already said, I was blamed for, very early in my career but by learned trees, with grave and dignified complaisance. These saplings, on the contrary, pestered me with silly nicknames. For example, they took a malicious delight in calling me Skabba, which means ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... saw that he was different, and they pestered him. They ill-treated him when they could, and made his life a hellish thing. Men do those things, and people do ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... our ships companies were on shore in the island of Flores, some providing ballast for the ships, others filling water, and others refreshing themselves from the land with such things as they could procure either for money or by force. Owing to this, our ships were all in confusion, pestered, rummaging, and every thing out of order, very light for want of ballast; and what was most of all to their disadvantage, the half of the men in every ship was sick and unserviceable. For in the Revenge, there were ninety sick; in the Bonaventure, not so many in health ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... "means, if I have any skill in reading Mr. Ferret, that that gentleman, having some ulterior purpose in view, which I cannot for the moment divine, is determined to have this writ, and does not wish to be pestered with any argument on the subject. Be it so: it is your affair, not mine. And now, as it is just upon three o'clock, ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... We were pestered with two very modest requests, which were not in our power to grant. In the first place, the native inhabitants sent a deputation to ask us to use our influence with the Governor of Mourzuk to procure a reduction of their taxes; and then the Arab ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... "He pestered the life out of me," explained Joe ruefully, "and I finally told him I'd ask you fellows. But I suppose we can't take two more. Nine would—um—be rather ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... young officer on horseback looked earnestly into the carriage, and recognized some faces that he had seen before; so he rode along by our side, and we pestered him with queries and observations, to which he responded more civilly than they deserved. He was on General McClellan's staff, and a gallant cavalier, high-booted, with a revolver in his belt, and mounted on a noble horse, which trotted hard and high without ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... while sitting at breakfast, and he caught the idea of it in an instant. Since the supper of the night before he had been pestered by many misgivings, and troubled by some remorse. Capt'n Davy was bent on going away. Overwhelmed by a sense of what he took to be his dastardly conduct he was in that worst position of the man who can forgive neither himself nor the person he has injured. So much had Lovibond done for him by ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... English books and infinite fardles of printed pamphlets this country is pestered, all shops stuffed, and every study furnished," says a contemporary. {288a} If a doubter will look at the cheap and common books of that day (a play in quarto, and the Sonnets of Shakespeare, when new, were sold for fippence) in any great collection; he will not marvel ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... be day after to-morrow. Don't come; your father will be all that must be here of the family. I shall shut up the house and come straight to you. I know that I am needed; but you mustn't say a word about pay—I can't stand it, I have had too much affliction to be pestered about wages." ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... as yet, only one corner of Frederic's character. He was well acquainted with all the petty vanities and affectations of the poetaster; but was not aware that these foibles were united with all the talents and vices which lead to success in active life, and that the unlucky versifier who pestered him with reams of middling Alexandrines, was the most vigilant, suspicious, and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... some inquiries about Portugal; as, for instance, in what part of the world it lies, and whether it is an empire, a kingdom, or a republic. Also, and more particularly, the expenses of living there, and whether the Minister would be likely to be much pestered with his own countrymen. Also, any other information about foreign countries would be ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... heard a woman pitying her, pitying the Mere Tortue. While I, I pity Monsieur. "He pesters her and torments her," said the woman. How much more is he pestered and tormented, say I. ...
— Tortoises • D. H. Lawrence
... other men, like William Brown, who were a shade too honest and too stiff-chinned to buckle under to the social conditions of England in those days, and who were consequently not exactly pestered with offers of employment. And a man who could see the difference between doffing his ragged cap to a dissolute squire or parson, and saluting his better on parade, could also see the selfishness of leaving an honest girl to languish for him. Brown could not get a living in England. ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... drawback in all America to life in the woods, or life in cities, or every other kind of life; which is the manner, go where you will, in which you are pestered by the mosquitoes. Strangers are not the only sufferers; those who are born and die in the country are equally tormented, and it is slap, slap, slap, all day and all night long, for these animals bite through everything less thick than a buffalo's skin. As we ascended the ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... disposal of the profit. It was argued that as the money raised had so far exceeded expectation, it ought, in fairness, to be divided between the two hospitals. Correspondence in the newspapers became warm, and almost angry. Walsh was pestered with all sorts of suggestions, and a deputation waited upon him, urging the "claims" of the General Hospital. Walsh received them with politeness, but with reticence, and they left dissatisfied. It was a difficulty, but Walsh was equal to it. Summoning his committee, ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards |
