"Pother" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... half a week after, the wind sallied forth, And, in anger or merriment, out of the north, Coming on with a terrible pother, 15 From the peak of the crag blew the giant away. And what did these school-boys?—The very next day They went ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... "Don't make such a pother about nothing. She's all right. They're in a very healthy place; a little seaside village, where it has been quite cool, they say, so far. And they will return before long, because they mean to spend the autumn in Scotland. Yes, they say it is 'quite ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... about Whatever he descries or meets, The crowds, the beauty of the streets, The city's growth, its splendour, size, "You're dying to be off," he cries; For all the while I'd been stock dumb. "I've seen it this half-hour. But come, Let's clearly understand each other; It's no use making all this pother. My mind's made up, to stick by you; So where you go, there I go, too." "Don't put yourself," I answered, "pray, So very far out of your way. I'm on the road to see a friend, Whom you don't know, that's near his end, Away ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... tried to throw herself in front of the door; I pushed her aside so roughly that she fell, and, I believe, hurt herself slightly. She immediately filled the house with her cries; and later, in the trial, made a great pother about what she was pleased to call an attempt to murder her. I at once entered Edmee's room; there I found the abbe and the doctor. I listened in silence to what the latter was saying. I learnt that the wounds in themselves were not mortal, that they would not even be very serious, ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... commander, wept and made a pother, At conquering only half the world, but Drake had conquer'd t'other; And Hercules to brink ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... reached up its long neck now and taken this same half-breed son of Belial, I should have said, 'Well done, good and faithful monster,' and the rest of our voyage would have been happier. Oh! what a lot of pother a beneficent ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... And styl'd of war, as well as peace. (So some rats, of amphibious nature, Are either for the land or water). But here our authors make a doubt Whether he were more wise, or stout: 30 Some hold the one, and some the other; But howsoe'er they make a pother, The diff'rence was so small, his brain Outweigh'd his rage but half a grain; Which made some take him for a tool 35 That knaves do work with, call'd a fool, And offer to lay wagers that As MONTAIGNE, playing with his cat, Complains she thought ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... guardian friend, or mother Tell the woes of wilful waste; Scorn their counsel, scorn their pother, You can hang or ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... admiringly, "what a wonder tha' art! Tha' always sees a way out o' things. They was quite in a pother yesterday. They didn't see how they was to manage without orderin' up more food—they ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... another bad manitou at the mouth of Superior Bay, where conflicting currents make a pother of waters. This spirit sat on the bottom of the lake, gazing upward, and if any boatman ventured to cross his domain without dropping a pipe or beads or hatchet into it, woe betide him, for his boat would be caught in a current and smashed against a rocky ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... membership—fifteen or so, and membership is ranked as the highest honor of the college. But in God's name, what is all this pother? Are there not already enough jealousies without this one added? Does not college society already fall into enough locked coteries without this one? No matter how keen is the pride of membership, it does not atone for the disappointments and the heart-burnings of failure. It is hinted obscurely ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... of three camels by voice persuasion alone is no mean performance, but no voice, not even the vocal chords of the Archangel Gabriel, would have moved the cause of all this pother, for at the word of command, in a tone which should have put fear of death into her black heart, she slightly shifted her hind-quarters and ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... save their egg—and bacon? Their plunder couldn't then be bagg'd; Should it in forward paws be taken, Or roll'd along, or dragg'd? Each method seem'd impossible, And each was then of danger full. Necessity, ingenious mother, Brought forth what help'd them from their pother. As still there was a chance to save their prey,— The sponger yet some hundred yards away,— One seized the egg, and turn'd upon his back, And then, in spite of many a thump and thwack, That would have torn, perhaps, a coat of mail, The ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... pretty toy we got for Peg, A priest has hooked, the cursed plague I— The thing came under the eye of the mother, And caused her a dreadful internal pother: The woman's scent is fine and strong; Snuffles over her prayer-book all day long, And knows, by the smell of an article, plain, Whether the thing is holy or profane; And as to the box she was soon aware There could not be much blessing there. "My child," she cried, "unrighteous gains Ensnare ...
— Faust • Goethe
... they touched their caps, but in Dunstable they crawled upon their bellies. I thought the landlady would have kissed me; such a flutter of cordiality, such smiles, such affectionate attentions were called forth, and the good lady bustled on my service in such a pother of ringlets and with such a jingling of keys. 'You're probably expected, sir, at the Place? I do trust you may 'ave better accounts of his lordship's 'elth, sir. We understood that his lordship, Mosha ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he despised himself acutely. Of course, he had hours and moods when he felt that he must lift up his voice and shout aloud to all men—What? That he did not know exactly what he did believe? For, in reality, that was all the whole pother was amounting to. What was the use in starting the alarm, when the whole great crisis might be merely a matter of imagination, of indigestion, even, as Doctor Keltridge had diagnosed it? In that case, the best, the only ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... very good company too. The animal happily came down just far enough for me to cut him loose from the cord. By way of encouraging his tormentors to come down after him, I threw my mining leather, my shoes, and even my miner's coat, on to the fire, and they sent up such a pother of smoke that the Swedes gave it up as a bad job, for that time at all events. I am only a poor miner, but I never repented giving up my mining leather, my shoes, and my coat, to save that ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... them themselves. So these states regard it as the duty of a ruler to provide them with all the good things imaginable, but to keep his own hands off them all the while. (12) So then, for my part, if anybody desires to have a heap of pother himself, (13) and be a nuisance to the rest of the world, I will educate him in the manner suggested, and he shall take his place among those who are fit to rule; but for myself, I beg to be enrolled amongst ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... ordinance of banishment to Bermuda offered him against his enemy. It is nearly always in the power of a party politician to distort and misrepresent the act {17} of an opponent, however just or blameless that act may be. Brougham made a great pother about the rights of freemen, usurpation, dictatorship. As a lawyer he raised the legal point, that Durham could not banish offenders from Canada to a colony over which he had no jurisdiction. He enlisted other ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... to provide our meat and bread! Where the eager crowd is moiling, struggling on with weary tread! Battling with stockjobbing ladies, meeting all their wiles and tricks, or embarking in the Hades of the city's politics! But forgotten is the pother, all the work day cares are gone, when she comes home to dear father with his nice clean apron on! There's your chair, he says; "sit in it; supper will be cooked eftsoons: I will dish it in a minute—scrambled eggs and shredded prunes." ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... of a tragic scene: A little fellow comes bustling in, goes bustling about, and runs bustling out." Here Mr. Cibber left the room, to give greater effect to his description, but presently returned in a mighty pother, saying: "'Give me another horse!' Well, where's the horse? don't you see I'm waiting for him? 'Bind up my wounds!' Look sharp now with these wounds. 'Have mercy, Heaven!' but be quick about it, for the pit can't wait for Heaven. ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... servant to fetch Mr. Butler, the prime cause of all this pother—for all of it can be traced to Mr. Butler's invasion of the Tavora nunnery—and with him went to bear the incredible tidings of their joint absolution to the three who waited so anxiously in ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... a hurrying stream of vehicles had rumbled into the courtyard, setting down the servants and effects of his Highness of Wirtemberg, and of the lady who ruled his destiny. Frisoni was in a mighty pother; he ran round the room excitedly, moving a chair, smoothing out a fold in the curtains, drawing a table to another position. He hopped hither and thither like some gay little monkey. Suddenly a tremendous shout went up from the three thousand Italian workmen who had been permitted ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... territories in Ireland, where I entertained the gentry in a style the Lord Lieutenant himself could not equal; gave the fashion to Dublin (to be sure it was a beggarly savage city in those days; and, since the time there has been a pother about the Union, and the misfortunes attending it, I have been at a loss to account for the mad praises of the old order of things, which the fond Irish patriots have invented); I say I set the fashion to Dublin; and small praise to me, for a poor place it was ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Poke, Which out of it sent such a smoke, 650 As ready was them all to choke, So greeuous was the pother; So that the Knights each other lost, And stood as still as any post, Tom Thum, nor Tomalin could ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... tired of death-hunting? Very good; live on, drink deep of the fountain of life, drain it to the dregs, and much good may it do you! You have wealth and therefore power, and you will become just such a dare-devil villain as the man who has caused all this pother. You will betray innocent, confiding maidens, deceive loving friends, ruin families, and beget unfortunate, ill-starred beings. You will become a heartless libertine, a selfish sensualist. You will mock ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... poke, Which out of it sent such a smoke, As ready was them all to choke, So grievous was the pother; So that the knights each other lost, And stood as still as any post; Tom Thumb nor Tomalin could boast Themselves of ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... he, as he staggered and plunged and bumped along, extricating his boat-bonnet now from a bower of raspberry-bushes, now from the branches of a brotherly birch-tree,—"better," thought he, "were I seated in what I bear, and bounding gayly over the billow. Peril is better than pother." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... wind did not reach me. It roared overhead, but, save an occasional sigh, as if of sympathy with their suffering brethren abroad in the woild, the hermits of this cell stood upright and still around the sleeping water. But my heart was a well in which a storm boiled and raged; and all that "pother o'er my head" was peace itself compared to what I felt. I sat down on the seat at the foot of a tree, where I had first seen Miss Oldcastle reading. And then I looked up to the house. Yes, there was a light there! It must be in her window. She then could not rest any more than I. Sleep was driven ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... Braund, and Barnes, is a Banter on Criticks, and Genealogists, who make such a Pother about the Orthography of Names and Things, that many Times, three Parts in four of a Folio Treatise, is taken up in ascertaining the Propriety of a Syllable, by which Means the Reader is left undetermined; having nothing but the various Readings on a single ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... Inspector turned the letter over. Mahon fretted. He could see on its face the Division headquarters stamp—Lethbridge—but why all this ceremony and pother about an official note that came almost every day? He recalled suddenly that his wife would be holding lunch for him—with fresh fish he had seen unloaded little more than an hour ago from the through train from Vancouver. He could almost smell it sizzling on the ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... this time, while they were talking together, some black clouds gathered about the giant's middle, and burst into a tremendous storm of thunder and lightning, causing such a pother that Hercules found it impossible to distinguish a word. Only the giant's immeasurable legs were to be seen, standing up into the obscurity of the tempest; and, now and then, a momentary glimpse of his whole figure, mantled in a volume of mist. He seemed to ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... I not had that tangible memento of them. Who were they, those two of whom that one strange glimpse had befallen me? What, I wondered, was the previous history of each? What, in particular, had all that tragic pother been about? Mlle. Ange'lique I guessed to be thirty years old, her friend perhaps fifty-five. Each of their faces was as clear to me as in the moment of actual vision—the man's fat shiny bewildered face; the taut white face of the woman, the hard red line of her mouth, ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... child. Immediately after the intelligence had been made known, a servant, having upon some business passed outside the gate of the castle-yard, was met by Jacque, who, contrary to his wont, accosted him, observing, 'So, after all the pother, the son and heir is still-born.' This remark was accompanied by a chuckling laugh, the only approach to merriment which he was ever known to exhibit. The servant, who was really disappointed, having hoped for holiday times, feasting and debauchery with impunity during ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... groom, "ye are NOT the young spark who is to marry Mistress Amy at the Hall, yet makes a pother and mess of it all by a duel with Sir Roger de Cadgerly, the wicked baronet, for his over-free discourse with our fair Maudlin this very eve? Ye are NOT the traveler whose post-chaise is now at the Falcon? ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... me; I am growing shiftless. When I came on board I decided to marry Arthur, and have done with the pother. Now I am at the same place as when I left home. I don't want to marry anybody. Have you noticed that ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... Marka were the only disquieting feature. But what about Taghati and the Russian activity? What on earth is going on or about to go on in this square inch of mountain land to make all the pother? If it is a tribal war on a first-class scale then we must know about it, for it is in the highest degree our concern too. If it is anything else, things look more than doubtful. All the rest I don't mind. ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... glorious army of martyrs! Sanguis martyrum semen Ecclesiae; though it would seem this Church is indeed of the purely Invisible, Kingdom-come kind: Militant here on earth! Triumphant, of course, then, elsewhere! Ah, good Heaven, but I would I were out far away from the pother! ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough
... all his might that he was Drowning, that he should never see his dear Mamma again, and that all his Estate would go to the Heir-at-Law, whom, as well as he could, for screeching and spluttering, he Cursed heartily in the English tongue. I wondered how he could be in such a Pother, seeing that he was so close to shore, and that moreover there were those nigh unto him who could have helped him if they had had a Mind to it. Close upon him was a Fat gentleman in a clergyman's cassock and a prodigious Fluster, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... cons the children's lesson for the morrow with Merrycourt? They be no great loss, when the place is full of roses. Or why could you not call to the wench to take better heed of them, instead of making all this pother?' ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pheasants. At any rate it had something to do with the Land Bill—practically everything that happens in England has something to do with the Land Bill—and Lloyd George was in a free state of perspiration over it; and the papers were full of it and altogether there was a great pother over it. ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... Mrs. Pettifer in to dinner that night and she found him poor company. He tried indeed by fits and starts to entertain her, but his thoughts were elsewhere. He was in a great pother and trouble about Stella Ballantyne, who sat over against him on the other side of the table. She wore no traces of the consternation which his words had caused her a couple of hours before. She had come ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... so devilish dear To one that was, or would have been a peer. Let me extol a cat, on oysters fed, I'll have a party at the Bedford-head; Or even to crack live crawfish recommend; I'd never doubt at Court to make a friend. 'Tis yet in vain, I own, to keep a pother About one vice, and fall into the other: Between excess and famine lies a mean; Plain, but not sordid; though not splendid, clean. Avidien, or his wife (no matter which, For him you'll call a dog, and her a bitch) Sell their presented partridges, and fruits, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... I muttered, grinding my teeth with impotent anger; for it seemed such hard lines, just when I had succeeded in getting into favor, to go and spoil it all in that unhappy way. Now that I had become acquainted with their style of singing, the supposed fib, about which there had been such a pother, seemed a very venial offense compared with my attempt to lead the singing. Nevertheless, when the concert was over, not a word was said on the subject by any one, though I had quite expected to be taken at once to the magisterial ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... middle of the night, and Rozenoffski, rocking in his berth, cursed his encounter with the red-haired romanticist who had stirred up such a pother in his brain that he had not been able to fall asleep while the water was still calm. Not that he suffered physically from the sea; he was merely afraid of it. The shuddering and groaning of the ship found an echo in his soul. He could not shake off the conviction ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... appears to me little better than idle, restless vanity. O my friend, what a fuss and a pother we are all making, we little flies who are going round on the great wheel of time! To-day we are flickering and buzzing about, our little bits of wings glittering in the sunshine, and to-morrow we are safe enough in the little crevice ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... the great gods, That keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads, Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch, That hast within thee undivulged crimes Unwhipp'd of justice. Close pent-up guilts, Rive your concealing continents, and cry ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... have left her somewhere, got drunk afterward, and plunged into the ditch. Things have happened like that. Abby, don't make a camel's-hair shirt out of your paint-brushes. What a pother about a singer! If it had been a great inventor, a poet, an artist, there would have been nothing more than a two-line paragraph. But an opera-singer, one who entertains us during our idle evenings—ha! that's a different matter. Set instantly that ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... hosier; deem me not absurd That I should thank thee for so apt a word. 'Tis thus that Modesty our language trims: Where men say "legs" she softly whispers "limbs." And, while they fume and rage in angry pother, Stills the big D—— and substitutes a "bother." Speaks not of "trousers"—that were sin and shame; "Continuations" is the gentler name. Turns "shirts" to "shifts," and, blushing like the rose, Converts the lowly stocking into "hose." Thus thou, my hosier, profferest me a pair Of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 21, 1892 • Various
... and its gathering of wanderers from every corner of Europe, speaking every European tongue. Neuilly was as busy as it well might be about its yearly business, and could scarcely have made more fuss and noise and pother if it had known that not only the King of France, but every crowned head in Christendom, proposed ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... his way to the end of the table and drew out the chair opposite Miss Carmichael with a degree of assurance that precipitated the rest of the table into a pretty pother. ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... bring the good people to help us!" she cried. And with that she ran up-stairs, and I after her, in a great pother of haste. For the candle in her hand was the only bit of fire we had, and I did not want it blown out if ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... like to this The hot Grecian did miss, Of whom histories keep such a pother; To the bottom he sunk, And when he had drunk, Grew maudlin, ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse |
