"Refractory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to the refractory fire as though it were a live thing, and asking it why it refused to burn beneath the kettle. A startled look, partly of pleasure and partly of something like alarm, came over her face as she perceived me. I drew her aside and told her all that had happened ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... some protest against these changes in the ceremonies; but, the river being alarmingly near, and several voices remarking on the efficacy of cold immersion in bringing refractory members of the profession to reason, the protest was faint and brief. The remodelled procession started, with a chimney-sweep driving the hearse—advised by the regular driver, who was perched beside him, under close inspection, ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... Relation,10, 11, 13-15, 27. When the author of the Worcester pamphlet came to narrate the execution he wandered away from his text and invented some new particulars. The women were "burnt at the stak." They made a "yelling and howling." Two of them were very "stubborn and refractory." Cf. ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... ANTOINE FRANCOIS, or ABBE PREVOST, a French romancer, born in Heslin, Artois; was educated by the Jesuits, and became a Benedictine monk, but proving refractory, fled to Holland and England; wrote several novels, but his fame rests on one entitled "Manon Lescaut," a work of genius, charming at once in matter and style; a "story," says Professor Saintsbury, "chiefly remarkable for ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... whilst the onlookers not connected with the duty made haste to get out of harm's way. My presence strengthened the authority of the quartermaster in charge, Captain E. P. Fitch, helped in steadying the men, and enabled him to enforce promptly his orders. He stopped the noisy efforts to make the refractory mules move, and sent in haste for a fresh team. As soon as it came, this was put in place of the balky animals, and at the word of command the train started quickly forward. The fog had thinned enough, however, to give the ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... letters, must have been keenly felt? Even shorthand and cipher, though known, were rarely practised. Caesar, [81] however, used them; but in many points he was beyond his age. In America, where labour is refractory, mechanical substitutes for it are daily being invented. A calculating machine, and a writing machine, which not only multiplies but forms the original copy, are inventions so simple as to indicate that it was want of enterprise rather than of ingenuity which, made the Romans content ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... made an enormous difference to the Mistertons. Jim fetched a hired girl from town, and Angela was relieved, during a scorching summer, of a housewife's most intolerable duties. Also, when Jim was hard at work clearing his brush-hills, wrestling with refractory roots of chaparral and manzanita, his greatest pal was kind enough to undertake the entertainment of Angela. The pair rode about together, and Jim told us that it did his heart good to see how the little woman had brightened up. Thorpe, for his part, admitted with becoming modesty that ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... the former. It occupied him for three years and finally left his hands as a long affair in three parts. Yet it is not a trilogy in the proper sense, but a play in ten acts, preceded by a dramatic prelude. At first Schiller found the material refractory. The actual Wallenstein had never exhibited truly heroic qualities of any kind, and his history involved only the cold passions of ambition, envy, and vindictiveness. Whether he was really guilty of treason was a moot question which admitted of no partisan treatment. But Schiller's genius triumphed ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... of water and wash for half an hour. Plenty of compressed air should be used, as the compound nitric ethers which are formed are thus got rid of. As five or six charges are often in this house at one time, it is necessary to have as many tanks arranged in tiers, otherwise one or two refractory charges would stop the nitrating house and the rest of the nitro-glycerine plant. The chief causes of the washed material not passing the heat test are, either that the acids were not clean, or they contained objectionable impurities, or more frequently, ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... 1877 the Standard Oil Company had worked hand in hand with the railroads. It had obtained all its privileges by asking for them and by holding out inducements to railroad managers to grant them. It now commenced to dictate terms to refractory ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... held manfully to his purpose, and would not let her go. He reached the sledge, and put her on it; he tied her there, and, springing on himself, he whipped up his dogs, and started for his home. But the refractory damsel would not stay tied. She cut the lashings with her teeth, she seized the whip out of Metak's hands, she pushed Metak off the sledge, and sent him sprawling on the snow; and then she wheeled the dogs around, and fairly made them fly again on the backward track to her father's hut, ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... destitute of a sense of humour, never thought of Mr. Gall without a smile, so much out of keeping did the man's occupation seem with his jovial humour. Mr. Gall, he said, was the kind of policeman who would bribe a refractory tramp to move on by the present of a pint of beer. But Gall had a good point. He was very proud of his profession, and in the exercise of it he showed a discretion which, if it was the better part of his valour, ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... child of the cradle, or of the forest? The latter is but a creature of impulse, moved by every appetite, and swayed by every gust of passion. He has no fixed principles for the regulation of his life. There is no presiding power to rule and subordinate the tumultuous and refractory elements of his character, and thus unitize the mental organism and its manifestations. This is what culture gives. Here then we also perceive that with the development of variety and complexity, the element of unity becomes more ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... under this, and prepared also to accept the bridle quietly. But in bridling him the man was rough to an extent he had never before known—forcing an oddly shaped bit against his tongue, and twisting and turning his sensitive ears as if these delicate organs were so much refractory leather or metal. Then came the saddle, and with it further torture. The forward belt was made snug, which he was accustomed to and expected; but when the rear girdle was cinched so tight that he found difficulty in breathing, he became nervous and wanted to protest. ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... George proved to be a truthful prophet. By the time those five minutes were up, he had succeeded in coaxing the refractory motor to behave itself; and suddenly the Wireless shot off amid a rattling volley of explosions that told full well how ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... would meet one of the herders sitting at ease on his horse, or galloping madly after some refractory steer that was making a break for freedom. They had, in their ride, passed four of these men, and to every one Scip gave a signal, merely the wave of his hand in a peculiar manner, to which the men had responded likewise. They were nearing another stand, the ranchman, astride his pony, stood against ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... Spirit set the offenders to wander through the desert until they reached a valley in the Sierras, opposite Tehachapi, where he caused them to be exterminated by a horde of savages from the Mojave desert. Then, in a fit of disgust at refractory humanity, he evoked a whirlwind and stripped away every living thing from the country of the savages, declaring that it should be empty of human beings from that time forward. ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... At the moment when the young lady was about to be forcibly married to the fop she despised, or, on the point of eloping with the youth of her choice, the good fairy made her appearance, and, changing the refractory pair into Harlequin and Columbine, the old curmudgeon into Pantaloon, and the body servant into Clown: the two latter in company with the rejected "lover," as he was called, commenced the pursuit of the ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... stated here that Cousin Benedict had endeavored to initiate the young novice into the mysteries of entomology. But Dick Sand had shown himself rather refractory to these advances. For want of better company the savant had fallen back on the negroes, who comprehended nothing about it. Tom, Acteon, Bat, and Austin had even finished by deserting the class, and ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... will ask whether the keen eye, and stimulating word, and helpful hand of Voltaire were wanting to an enterprise which was to awaken men to new love of tolerance, enlightenment, charity, and justice. Voltaire was playing the refractory courtier at Potsdam when the first two volumes appeared. With characteristic vehemence, he instantly pronounced it a work which should be the glory of France, and the shame of its persecutors. Diderot and D'Alembert were raising an immortal edifice, and he would gladly furnish them ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... medicine, should not be trained as an anatomist, a heart and lung specialist, an osteopath or a masseur? He does not need eyes to listen to heart beats, find the third vertebra, or rub the kinks out of a refractory muscle. In Japan the government reserves massage as an occupation for the blind, and in the hospitals of England and France blind masseurs are given the preference, and their work receives the highest commendation. Los Angeles ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... assurance. We arrive at our conclusions by reasoning from analogy. Here we have a disease always exhibiting the same symptoms, more or less peculiar to one class of animal, always with a similar characteristic appearance and smell, always obstinately refractory to treatment, showing always a tendency to spread to the other feet of the same animal, and often to the feet of other animals near enough to become infected, and always cured—when cured it is—by a treatment which may be summed up in two words as 'rigid antisepsis.' Other diseases, with ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... The crisis lasted just a week. The Duke had no mind for a succession of Peterloos, on a vaster scale, and with a different issue. He advised the King to recall his Ministers; and his Majesty, in his turn, honoured the refractory lords with a most significant circular letter, respectful in form, but unmistakable in tenor. A hundred peers of the Opposition took the hint, and contrived to be absent whenever Reform was before the House. The Bill was read for a third time by a majority ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... father had come among them as a spy, instigated, no doubt, by some diabolical design of 'reforming' the school and desecrating the shrine of Henry's holy shade. The poor man, already overpowered by struggling with refractory colonists from Heligoland to New Zealand, was of malice prepense stirring up this additional swarm of hornets. I can hardly suppose, however, that this ingenious theory had much influence. Mr. Coleridge also says that the masters connived ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... away to sea?" the usual course of refractory lads at Portchester, but for so slight a creature only half recovered it did not seem probable. It was more likely that he had gone home, and that Mrs. Woodford felt as somewhat a mortifying idea. However, on looking into his chamber, as she sought her own, she beheld ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lifted up, higher and higher, borne by strong hands. A man bit him in the hand. The fact was he had scratched his hand on a refractory horsehair, which had become tired of acting as stuffing for ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... and eat out of his hand, and they allowed him to approach without making any difficulty, but once harnessed they reared and could with difficulty be held in. However, it was not long before they submitted to this new service, for the onager, being less refractory than the zebra, is frequently put in harness in the mountainous regions of Southern Africa, and it has even been acclimatized in Europe, under zones of ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... artillery deliberated, but nothing was done. After a month's revolution, that service is carried on by only a very small number of volunteers. On my nomination to the ministry I wanted to further the search for arms, the requisition for horses, the pursuit of refractory citizens. I asked help of the Commune; the Commune deliberated, but passed no resolutions. Later the Central Committee came and offered its services to the War Department. I accepted them in the most decisive manner, and delivered up to its members all the documents I had concerning its organization. ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... filled up with English, partly by voluntary emigration, and partly by a double deportation from home, first of refractory Cavaliers during Cromwell's protectorate, and partly of mutinous Puritans after the return of the Stuarts. These often renewed in the streets of Spanishtown the brawls of the mother country, and the exclamation, 'My king!' which the negroes are fond of using, is said to ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... and Uden, were improvised villages, with blocks of long community houses, separate dormitories for the unmarried men and for the single women, a dining-hall, a chapel, one or two schoolhouses, a recreation-hall, a house of detention for refractory persons, one hospital for general cases, and another for infectious diseases. It was all built of wood, simple and primitive, but as comfortable as could be expected under the conditions. The chief danger of the camps was idleness. In providing work to ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... James I., Charles called a new parliament in 1625, and in it Waller took his place for Chipping-Wycombe, a borough in Buckinghamshire. This parliament met in London, but was adjourned to Oxford on account of the Plague. In Oxford, it proved refractory to the king's wishes, and refusing to grant him a tithe of the supplies which he demanded, was summarily dismissed. Waller was not re-elected in 1626, when the next parliament was summoned, but secured ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... breaking the mule. Don't fight or abuse him. After you have harnessed him, and he proves to be refractory, keep your own temper, slack your reins, push him round, backward and forward, not roughly; and if he will not go, and do what you want, tie him to a post and let him stand there a day or so without food or water. Take care, also, that he does not lie down, ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley
... me; I've so concerted Matters, That I defy ev'n Fate to disappoint me. Exert thyself, and to Monelia go, Before th' assembled Chiefs in Council meet; Urge it to her, and to her Brother Torax, That should their Father prove refractory, Withdraw himself, and order his Domestics To hasten home at News of our Design; Urge it, I say, to them; Torax loves War; To linger here in Hopes of his Return, Which tell them I'll effect ere twice the Sun Has run the Circuit of his daily Race. Here they may loiter careless, range the ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... proportion of lead required for scorifying 1 gram of ore is in average cases from 10 to 15 grams, sinking in the case of galena to 2 grams, and rising with earthy and refractory substances to from 30 to 40 grams. But by fusing in a crucible with well-selected fluxes, a proportion of 4 of flux to 1 of ore is generally sufficient; and not only is the proportion of added matter less, but it is also easier to manipulate large quantities ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... Faith," said Mr. Stoutenburgh, "I have my doubts as to the correctness of that first statement; but I'll tell you what I shall do, my refractory young lady. If you set about anything outside the limits, I'll do ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... during all his war, to connect the various and jarring powers of the Grand Alliance, and to carry them on to the main object of the war, notwithstanding their private and separate views, jealousies, and wrongheadedness. Whatever court he went to (and he was often obliged to go to restive and refractory ones) he brought them into his measures. The pensionary Heinsius, who had governed the United Provinces for forty years, was absolutely governed by him. He was always cool, and nobody ever observed the least variation in his countenance; he could refuse more gracefully than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... argument. His manuscripts were as motley as his occupations; the workshop of a mind ever on the alert; evidences mixed up with memorandums for his will; an interesting discussion brought to an untimely end by the hiring of servants, the letting of fields, sending his boys to school, reproving the refractory members of an hospital; here a dedication, there one of his children's exercises—in another place a receipt for cheap soup. He would amuse his fire side by family anecdotes:—how one of his ancestors (and he was praised as a pattern ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... of my only brother.—May God forgive us both! he died when we were in unkindness with each other.—My lord, your words import that my beloved nephew suffers pain and incurs danger on account of my offences?" The Archbishop perceived he had at length touched the chord to which his refractory penitent's heart-strings must needs vibrate. He replied with circumspection, as well knowing with whom he had to deal,—"Far be it from me to presume to interpret the counsels of Heaven! but we read in Scripture, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... abused, too, by the Warden, his Deputy, and his keepers. They looked upon me as an ugly, insubordinate, refractory, rebellious rascal, who was ready to kill any of them, and, worst of all, who would not work. I determined to confirm their minds in the latter supposition, and so one day I threw down my tools and refused to ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott
... was a superb personage in white linen uniform and cap. He stood at the top of the steps lowered from our steamer to the ocean, and from that serene height of power commanded his clamorous and refractory legions. ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... advantage for coal gas for heating or lighting. Such an application is doubtless somewhat premature, but we shall see that it has already got out of the domain of Utopia. Finally the oxyhydrogen blowpipe, which is indispensable for the treatment of very refractory metals, consumes large quantities ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... boy since. The right the masters possessed to cane boys on the hand was taken away from them, and Squirts could no longer emphasize his anger by beating his desk with the cane. He never did more now than take a boy by the shoulders and shake him. He still made a naughty or refractory lad stand with one arm stretched out for anything from ten minutes to half an hour, and he was as violent as before with ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... emperor made an order, saying: "During the six years that our expedition against the East has lasted, owing to my reliance on the majesty of Imperial Heaven, the wicked bands have met death. It is true that the frontier lands are still unpurified, and that a remnant of evil is still refractory. But in the region of the Central Land there is no more wind and dust. Truly we should make a vast and spacious capital and plan it great ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... were peculiarly offensive, not to say atrocious. In Alabama, which might indeed serve as an example for the other rebellious States, "stubborn or refractory servants" and "servants who loiter away their time" were declared by law to be "vagrants," and might be brought before a justice of the peace and fined fifty dollars; and in default of payment they might be "hired out," on three days' notice by public outcry, for the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... for upon a daughter's refusing to marry the man her father had chosen to be her husband, the father was empowered by this law to cause her to be put to death; but as fathers do not often desire the death of their own daughters, even though they do happen to prove a little refractory, this law was seldom or never put in execution, though perhaps the young ladies of that city were not unfrequently threatened by their parents with ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... him to come, when I was in Tuxedo, and he evidently wanted to do so, for he proposed to Amy that she bring him. Of course, I'd no idea he and Miss Lang had ever met before, and when I innocently ordered her in, I did it simply because Radcliffe was refractory and refused to come without her, and I couldn't have a ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... Ivan Nikiforovitch, with tolerable success, towards the spot where stood Ivan Ivanovitch. But the chief of police directed his course too much to one side, because he could not steer himself with his refractory leg, which obeyed no orders whatever on this occasion, and, as if with malice and aforethought, swung itself uncommonly far, and in quite the contrary direction, possibly from the fact that there had been an unusual amount of fruit wine ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... and after an exciting time of it, she fell asleep, rolled in blankets before a hot fire. During the bustle Jo had scarcely spoken but flown about, looking pale and wild, with her things half off, her dress torn, and her hands cut and bruised by ice and rails and refractory buckles. When Amy was comfortably asleep, the house quiet, and Mrs. March sitting by the bed, she called Jo to her and began to bind up ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... up last night about five miles away, and a refractory passenger shot. The son had been out 'possum shooting' ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... in the solitary iron room of which the shed consisted, which diffused a genial warmth around. Several soldiers' wives and female relatives were seated beside it, engaged in quieting refractory infants, or fitting a few woollen garments on children of various ages. These garments had been brought from the Institute, chiefly for the purpose of supplying the wives and children returning from warmer climes to England; and one ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... Macpherson had taken the French lad to his heart, and was never so happy as when working away with him over a refractory engine and chatting along in a seemingly never-ending stream of engine small-talk. All of which was meat and drink to Louis, and was rapidly acquainting him with much that it would otherwise have taken him years of experience ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... Algiers for the persons of consuls, which you deem so sacred?" said Omar savagely. "Hast thou not heard that in time past we have blown the consuls of refractory nations from ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... not: because they could not. They had obtained it with ease; for in obtaining it they had to deal with a subservient Parliament. They could not execute it: for in executing it they would have to deal with a refractory people. These are instances of the difficulty of carrying the law into effect when the people are inclined to thwart their rulers. The great anomaly, or, to speak more properly, the great evil which I have described, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... rebellion, the proceedings were of a character which bore unjustifiably severe on his recusant subjects. Instances have been known where keel-hauling has been resorted to as an exemplary punishment for a refractory individual. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... and spent his money, he was fain to leave all for quietness' sake, and give it up to his adversary. Or else we are insulted over, and trampled on by domineering officers, fleeced by those greedy harpies to get more fees; we stand in fear of some precedent lapse; we fall amongst refractory, seditious sectaries, peevish puritans, perverse papists, a lascivious rout of atheistical Epicures, that will not be reformed, or some litigious people (those wild beasts of Ephesus must be fought with) that will not pay their ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... was deeply grateful to them in her heart whenever they took her refractory niece safely out of her way. Her escapades were apt to be so wild nowadays, and her language so horrifying; and whenever the poor lady remonstrated, she was always told that it was the ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... of the Punjaub necessarily attracted the anxious attention of our Indian government. The horizon grew blacker every hour, as the total inability of the authorities at Lahore to subdue or restrain the refractory and warlike spirit of the Sikh army, was made more and more manifest in unmistakable characters of blood and violence. Upon the 22d of last November, the Governor-General of India, while moving from Delhi to join the Commander-in-Chief in his camp at Umballah, received ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... with water.) It is of snowy whiteness, and is no doubt the remains of a decomposed feldspar. I forwarded a considerable portion of it to the intendant of the province. In a country where fuel is not scarce, a mixture of refractory earths may be useful, to improve the earthenware, and even the bricks. Every time that the clouds surrounded us, the thermometer sunk as low as 12 degrees (to 9.6 degrees R.); with a serene sky it rose to 21 degrees. These observations were made in the shade. But it is difficult, on ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... I had heard it mentioned with an amount of respect—indeed, awe—which no other name could excite, and I was all curiosity to see the man whose influence on the frontier was so great that his word was law to the refractory tribes amongst whom he lived. He had only lately arrived in Peshawar, having been transferred from Bannu, a difficult and troublesome district ruled by him as it had never been ruled before, and where he made such a reputation for himself that, ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... more complying temper, or with a sort of firmness in maintaining her resolution, which would not, perhaps, long resist those means which the law had placed at their disposal for dealing with the refractory ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... agreeable to both of us than such an arrangement: but the old gentleman, since I first knew him, has changed, like the rest of the world, very lamentably for the worse: now, we wish to bring him to reason, if possible, though we mean to dispense with his consent, if he should prove much longer refractory." ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... a cry for help only by the exercise of unusual self-control. After gravely inspecting it, with his head first on this side and then on that, and his lips puckered into a little tube, he submitted it to the same punishment as that meted out to the refractory fruit-tin, and was rewarded by discovering a nice little bit of cheese in the very ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton
... of a stature little above the common size, and disproportionately broad as to his chest and shoulders. It was rumoured that he could bore an apple through with his forefinger and had once killed a refractory horse with a blow of his naked fist; nor looking on the man, did you presume to question the report. His eyes were large and insolent, coloured like onyxes; for the rest, he had a handsome surly face which ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... pronounced upon them. Nettie's haste and peremptoriness were mixed, if it must be told, with a little resentment against the world in general. She had ceased being sad—she was roused and indignant. By the time she had subdued the refractory children, and disposed of them for the night, those vast Australian boxes, which they had brought with them across the seas, were placed in the little hall, under the pale light of the lamp, ready for the process of packing, ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... so that all Geoff's horsemanship and all his strength were necessary to bring the little beast round. The little man did it, setting his teeth with childish rage and determination, digging his heels into the fat refractory sides, and holding his reins twisted in his little fists with savage tenacity. But a conflict of this sort is very exhausting, and to force an unreasonable four-footed creature in the way it does not want to go requires a strain of all the faculties which it is not easy to keep up, ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... little doctor, trying to slip a collar button into a refractory binding. "Dear me, now that's gone—no, 'tisn't—that's luck," as the button rolled off into a corner of the bureau-top where it ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... was called in to assist in taming the refractory subject; but it was soon found that Fanny Jane had none of the chivalrous reverence which had rendered the wild Noddy Newman tolerably tractable, and her failure was as complete and ignominious as that of her sister. Mr. Grant was finally appealed ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... Warden Atherton and San Quentin. The crusading San Francisco newspaper assured its working- class readers that San Quentin was whiter than snow, and further, that while it was true that the strait-jacket was still a recognized legal method of punishment for the refractory, that, nevertheless, at the present time, under the present humane and spiritually right-minded Warden, the strait-jacket was never, under any ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... "get up!" His voice had a rasp; she might from his tone have been a refractory dog. ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... resemble those of farcy, and in these cases the microscopical examination of the pus will disclose the nature of the affection. In the pus the causative organism can be easily seen in the unstained specimen, and is recognized by its size, shape, and highly refractory double outline. Furthermore, the injection of mallein in cases of sporotrichosis will ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... the rule of any ship, and she perishes through his carelessness and negligence, if he comes to land alive with two of his company, they two may chop off his head without any further suit with the King or his Admiralty." The sailor element of the population of the olden days was undeniably rude and refractory, the above rules showing that the authorities needed stern and swift measures to repress evildoers of ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... the gardener struggled with a refractory horse that refused to draw his load of brush and dead leaves. She stared at the group dully: six months ago she would have flinched at the great clambering hoofs ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... account, playing the principal roles in three comedies. The notary in whose office he had been placed was present on the occasion, and warmly applauded the young actor, but the next day sent his refractory pupil back to Paris. Finally, Roger's relatives decided that his vocation for the stage was stronger than their powers of combating it, and they placed him at the Conservatoire. He remained there for one year only, at the end of which time he carried off ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... Spain can only benefit the English, who do not desire peace, by destroying the resources which I find in that ally to carry on the war against them." Over and above this information there is, however, a high probability that Joseph was then informed that since Lucien had proved refractory, he himself was now destined for Spain; that the King expressed at first a decided unwillingness to accept the unwelcome task; and that, like Lucien, he departed under his brother's disfavor. Napoleon's offer had already been discussed at Tilsit as a contingency. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... be consoled. Since his wife's death he had grown ten years older, and his refractory lock of hair had become perfectly white. His Lucie had been the sole joy in his commonplace and obscure life. She was so pretty, so sweet! such a good manager, dressing upon nothing, and making things seem luxurious with only one flower! M. Violette existed only on this dear and cruel souvenir, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... ado, and having called in two men that were passing to help us to take them prisoners, in case of their being refractory, we carried them by the lug and the horn before a justice ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... word 'indefinite.' "Threats," (says one of them) "circulated; I heard them on all sides around me." These threats are repeated on going out: "Valets dismissed by their masters, deserters, and women in rags," threaten the refractory with the lamp post, "and thrust their fists in their faces. In the hall itself, and much more accurately than before the 14th of July, their names are taken down, and the lists, handed over to the populace," travel to the Palais-Royal, from where they are dispatched ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... daughter, the lay-sister who acted as her jailer, came to her at an early hour with a glass of wine. She was astonished: she was not at all thirsty: she never drank wine, especially pure wine, of a morning. The lay-sister, a rough, strong menial, such as they keep in convents to manage crazy or refractory women, and to punish children, overwhelmed the feeble sufferer with remonstrances that looked like threats. Unwilling as she was, she drank. And she was forced to drink it all, to the very dregs, ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... young a colony. The prosperity of the Straits Settlements ports is a great triumph for free traders, and a traveler, even if, like myself, he has nothing but a canvas roll and a "Gladstone bag," congratulates himself on being saved from the bother of unstrapping and restrapping stiffened and refractory straps, and from the tiresome delays of even the ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... in person in February 1643-4, with his two chaplains, Messrs. Ashe and Good, had been engaged in the work through the months of March and April, summoning refractory Heads of Colleges and Fellows before him, examining complaints against them, and putting them in most cases to the test of the Covenant. The result, when complete (which it was not till 1645), was the ejection, on one ground or another, of about one half of the Fellows of the various Colleges ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... the middle of April Ishmael sat at his school desk mending pens, setting copies, and keeping an eye on a refractory boy who had been detained after school hours to learn a lesson he had failed ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... good patriots to be their own police, and to see that this edict is carried out in their respective quartern, and to force the refractory to serve." ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... so-and-so. "Treaty of Westphalia? Leave Salzburg?" shrieked the Right Reverend Father: "Are we getting into open mutiny, then? Open extensive mutiny!" shrieked he. Borrowed a couple of Austrian regiments,—Kaiser and we always on the pleasantest terms,—and marched the most refractory of his Salzburgers over the frontiers (retaining their properties and families); whereupon ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the throne before her,—would adopt as her own representative in Scotland the favourite of William; yet she continued Queensbury in that high station which it was believed none could fill so adequately in the disturbed and refractory kingdom of Scotland.[18] ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... the country to carry on either of these affairs. Now, these vagabonds might not only by this means be kept out of harm's way, but be rendered serviceable to the nation. Nor is there any need of transporting them beyond seas, for if any are refractory they should be sent to our stannaries and other mines, to our coal works and other places where hard labour is required. And here I must offer one thing never yet thought of, or proposed by any, and that is, the ...
— Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business • Daniel Defoe
... supernatural qualities attributed to it: its insignificant little flowers caused water to freeze, he tells us; because it was believed to repel lightning, the Romans planted it near their houses; and a branch of it thrown after any refractory animal, even if it did not hit him, would subdue him instantly, and cause him to lie down meekly beside the stick! Can it be that the Italian peasants, who still believe cattle kneel in their stalls at midnight on the anniversary ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... Reflector rebrililo. Reflection (censure) cenzuro, mallauxdo. Reflux forfluo. Refold refaldi. Reform reformi, plibonigi. Reformation reformo, plibonigo. Reformatory reformejo, plibonigejo. Refractory ribela. Refrain (song) rekantajxo. Refresh refresxigi. Refreshment (food) refresxigo. Refreshment-room bufedo, restoracio. Refuge, to take rifugxi. Refuge, a rifugxejo. Refund repagi, redoni. Refusal rifuzo. Refuse rifuzi. Refuse ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... boatmen to take care of themselves; and, drunk and refractory though they were, they did not neglect to obey the mandate. After which Clifton, leaving the helm, jumped into the water, the servants having gone before, and we all found ourselves safe, after some of us had concluded we ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... This refractory, capricious, and independent spirit, and the inexplicable wild shyness of the woman for whom the Baron had four times found a match—an employe in his office, a retired major, an army contractor, and a half-pay captain—while she had refused an army lacemaker, who had since ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... gendarme, as prefect, sub-prefect, or commissioner of police, that is to say, as subaltern henchman and bully restraining subjects and raising contributions, confiscating and burning merchandise, seizing grumblers, and making the refractory toe the mark.[12137] In 1810, one hundred and sixty thousand of the refractory were already condemned by name, and, moreover, penalties were imposed on their families to the amount of one hundred and seventy millions of francs In 1811 and 1812 the roving columns which tracked ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... persevering means he brought into operation against the refractory republic were admirably seconded by the machinery of communication which had been previously established in the persons of the boyars, whose local influence was of the first consequence on this occasion. As the tide of these numerous negotiations changed, Ivan assumed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... ends of the earth, at whose bidding villas rise white among the olives, and parades stretch along the shore. "I found it a fishing hamlet," the doctor may say with Augustus, "and I leave it a city." It is amusing to see the awful submission which the city-builder expects in return. The most refractory of patients trembles at the threat of his case being abandoned. The doctor has his theories about situation. You are lymphatic, and are ordered down to the very edge of the sea; you are excitable, and must hurry from your comfortable lodgings to the highest nook among the hills. ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... city were full of thrills—of hopes and fears. Groups of excited people met to discuss again all phases of the contest; the freshness of the dogs, the stamina of the men, the possibility of accidents; for a broken harness, a refractory leader, an error in judgment, may mean overwhelming ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... rain, gently at first, even while they were struggling with the rather refractory top, in the dim light of the two oil lamps. But they managed to get it in place. Then, as they were fastening the side curtains, the storm burst in all its fury, with a suddenness ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... term for one who refuses to obey a constituted authority and syn. with Pers. "Yaghi." "Ant 'Asi?" Wilt thou not yield thyself? says a policeman to a refractory Fellah. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... the feather bed on which he slept was also a part of "Catherine's setting out," and was made from feathers she picked herself, showing him as proof a mark upon her arm, left there by the gray goose, which had proved a little refractory when she tried to draw a ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... stubborn scrap grapples with the current and will not let it through until it has made itself useful to you as those two vital qualities of literature, light and heat. Now if I am to be no mere copper wire amateur but a luminous author, I must also be a most intensely refractory person, liable to go out and to go wrong at inconvenient moments, and with incendiary possibilities. These are the faults of my qualities; and I assure you that I sometimes dislike myself so much that when some irritable reviewer chances at that moment to pitch into ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... usual promptness. Their Governor, a practised soldier, knew the value of celerity, and had set his troops in motion with the first opening of spring. He had no refractory assembly to hamper him; no lack of money, for the King supplied it; and all Canada must march at his bidding. Thus, while Dinwiddie was still toiling to muster his raw recruits, Duquesne's lieutenant, Contrecoeur, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... of conscience on these questions of natural right; nor did he possess more toleration than his contemporaries towards savage and infidel nations. He was grand inquisitor of Spain, and was very efficient during the latter years of Ferdinand in making slaves of the refractory Moors of Granada. He authorized, by express instructions, expeditions to seize and enslave the Indians of the Caribbee islands, whom he termed only suited to labor, enemies of the Christians, and cannibals. Nor will it be considered a proof of gentle ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... taste everything,—that is not the best taste! I honour the refractory, fastidious tongues and stomachs, which have learned to say "I" ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... steel, and he would always try gentle means first. Throwing himself back on the hind-quarters, where the weight tells most, and thus driving the brute involuntarily forward till with his powerful legs he had forced it up to the obstacle, with one final squeeze he would get it over. If a refractory horse fell with him, he would be out of the saddle in a moment, and would wait, rein in hand, smiling quietly, until the animal was up again snorting. Then he would remount, and four or five times must the rebellious horse take the jump; then at ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... before at the club meetings. She went downstairs in advance of the other women who had arrived before, and were yet anxiously peering at themselves in the cross-lighted mirror, and being adjusted as to refractory neckwear by ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... habits of industry or enterprise. The colored people in our slave States must, almost without exception, be destitute of information; and in choosing negroes to send away, the masters would be very apt to select the most helpless and the most refractory. Hence the superintendents of Liberia have made reiterated complaints of being flooded with shiploads of "vagrants." These causes are powerful drawbacks. But the negroes in Liberia have schools and churches, and they have freedom, which, wherever it exists, is always striving ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... pleasant garden-house near his palace for her residence, at which he often visited her, and conversed with her on religious topics, to his great edification and comfort, for she was sensibly pious. Not long after her arrival, several refractory vassals who had for years withheld their usual tribute, and against whom the good sultan, unwilling to shed blood, though his treasury much felt the defalcation, had not sent a force to compel payment, unexpectedly sent in their arrears; submissively ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... these foreigners, and the forcing a few refractory lords to a surrender of their castles, King Henry, like a wise prince, began to consider that a time of settled peace was the fittest juncture to recover the rights of the crown, which had been lost by the war. He therefore resumed, by his royal authority, all crown lands that had been ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... besieged by Charlemagne.] Charlemagne, still anxious to seize and punish these refractory subjects, now collected an army and began again to besiege the stronghold of Montauban. Occasional sallies and a few bloody encounters were the only variations in the monotony of a several-years' siege. But finally the provisions ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... (nuggets), whose size increases with the depth of the digging. In the Matakon mine the dust adhered to fragments of iron, emery, and lapis lazuli, from which it was easily detached and washed. The less valuable Semayla placer produced dust in a hard reddish loam, mixed with still more refractory materials; it was crushed in mortars with rude wooden dollies or with grain-pestles. The pits, six feet in diameter, reached a depth of from ten to twelve yards, where they were stopped by a bed of hard ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... conquering Europe in obedience to a word from the Emperor in the order of the day; the heroes of a modern time who outdid the mythical feats of paladins of old. The cities of France, however avaricious or refractory, must perforce do honor to the Imperial Guard, and mayors and prefects went out to meet them with set speeches as if the conquerors had been crowned kings. Mme. de Bargeton went to a ridotto given to the town by a regiment, and fell in love with an officer of ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... pains. "I omit," he writes, "nothing that lies in my power that can contribute towards the public service. God knows what dilatory and imposing evasions one has to struggle with amid a multitude of refractory people in these parts." At length the sum of three hundred pounds was sent to him by Secretary Murray in order to maintain the recruits whom he had raised on ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... Eschenhagen gazed astonished at her son, so tractable all his life until this moment. "I verily believe you are becoming refractory. Let us have no more of it, for you know I would never permit such a thing. What has come over you that you make such reckless assertions? Because I have seen fit to bring this very unsuitable intercourse to an end, and dismiss this ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... occurs a sullen and hardy resolution, that laughs at all common punishment, and bids defiance to all common degrees of pain. Correction must be proportioned to occasions. The flexible will be reformed by gentle discipline, and the refractory must be subdued by harsher methods. The degrees of scholastick, as of military punishment, no stated rules can ascertain. It must be enforced till it overpowers temptation; till stubbornness becomes flexible, and perverseness regular. Custom and reason have, indeed, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... knew that he had had meetings with Tissaphernes whilst he was with Ariaeus, and was factiously opposed to himself, plotting how to win over the whole army to him, as a means of winning the good graces of Tissaphernes. But Clearchus wanted the entire army to give its mind to no one else, and that refractory people should be put out of the way. Some of the soldiers protested: the captains and generals had better not all go; it was better not to put too much confidence in Tissaphernes. But Clearchus insisted so ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... 1800 was mentally and morally a colony of Great Britain still. A few hundred thousand white families scattered over about as many square miles of territory, much of it refractory wilderness with more refractory inhabitants; with no cities of any size, and no communication save by wretched roads or by sailing vessels; no rich old universities for centres of culture, and no rich leisured society ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... the flames arising from a great furnace, sweep over different areas of the Sun with a velocity of hundreds of miles an hour. Vast ridges and crests of incandescent vapour are upheaved by the action of internal heat, which exceeds in intensity the temperature at which the most refractory of terrestrial substances can be volatilised; and downrushes of the same photospheric matter take place after it has parted with some of its stores of thermal energy. Sun-spots of considerable magnitude have been observed to grow rapidly and then disappear ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... globulus and possibly some oaks—shrinkage begins almost at once, thus introducing a factor at the very start of the seasoning process which makes these woods very refractory. ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... and as completely as possible. The expressional impulse is not satisfied by the resonance which an occasional public, however sympathetic, is able to afford. Its natural aim is to bring more and more sentient beings under the influence of the same emotional state. It seeks to vanquish the refractory and arouse the indifferent. An echo, a true and powerful echo—that is what it desires with all the energy of an unsatisfied longing. As a result of this craving the expressional activities lead ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... evil designs, adopted him on the spot as his son. The three companions must now part company. Du Gay, not yet quite reassured of his safety, hastened to confess himself to Hennepin, but Accau proved refractory and refused the offices of religion, which did not prevent the friar from embracing them both, as he says, with an extreme tenderness. Tired as he was, he was forced to set out with his self-styled father to his village, which was ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... tongues and their wagging of heads? She, an immortal fairy! She would change Prince Gerbot back at a time of her own choosing. Let them attend to their own tricks and leave her to mind hers. One pictures long walks and talks between the distracted Harbundia and her refractory favourite—appeals to reason, to sentiment: "For my sake." "Don't you see?" "After all, dear, ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... with which it persevered in its repeated attacks upon the Directory, in framing laws in favour of emigrants and refractory priests, and in every thing inconsistent with the immediate safety of the Republic, and which served to encourage the enemy to prolong the war, admitted of no other direct interpretation than that something was rotten in the Council of Five Hundred. The evidence of circumstances became ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... exception, defrayed by the town, and amounts to about 20l. annually for each boy. These poor children are generally sent there by the magistrates on conviction of some crime or misdemeanour, but are often sent by parents when they have troublesome or refractory children, and the result is, in most cases, very satisfactory. They all seemed very happy, and the whole had much more the appearance of a large school, than of anything partaking of the character of ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... outlined the Mont Pilate in pencil, with a central peak, as indicated by the dotted line in Fig. 72. This is nearly true to the local fact; but being inconsistent with the general look of crests, and contrary to Turner's instincts, he strikes off the refractory summit, and, leaving his pencil outline still in the sky, touches with color only the contour shown by the continuous line in the figure, thus treating it just as we saw Titian did the great Alp of the Tyrol. ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... noon; and, as they did not obey, the officers, in terms of the warrant, proceeded to unroof the cottages, and pull down the wretched doors and windows, —a summary and effectual mode of ejection still practised in some remote parts of Scotland, when a tenant proves refractory. The gipsies, for a time, beheld the work of destruction in sullen silence and inactivity; then set about saddling and loading their asses, and making preparations for their departure. These were soon accomplished, where all had the ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... stole a quilt from the man of the house, and he had her taken up: but Bet Flint had a spirit not to be subdued; so when she found herself obliged to go to jail, she ordered a sedan chair, and bid her footboy walk before her. However, the boy proved refractory, for he was ashamed, though his ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... many things besides sewing a seam. There are attachments which make buttonholes, darn, embroider, make ruffles or hems, and dozens of other things. There are special machines for every trade, some of which deal successfully with refractory materials. ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... to the contrary, and made him acquainted with the true circumstances; not failing to tell him of Mistress Penwick's unsettled disposition; her ambitions, and intractable nature; that she was refractory and vexatious; petulant and forever thwarting Lord ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... asked the professor, somewhat disconcerted, and looking uneasily at the refractory student. "Does the substance behind affect, or does ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... a manual operation, seized and connected the links of ratiocination. Very often has it happened to myself when I have said to Thought peremptorily, "Bestir thyself: a serious matter is before thee, ponder it well, think of it," that that same thought has behaved in the most refractory, rebellious manner conceivable; and instead of concentrating its rays into a single stream of light, has broken into all the desultory tints of the rainbow, colouring senseless clouds, and running off into the seventh heaven, so that after ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
