Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Roundabout   Listen
adjective
Roundabout  adj.  
1.
Circuitous; going round; indirect; as, roundabout speech. "We have taken a terrible roundabout road."
2.
Encircling; enveloping; comprehensive. "Large, sound, roundabout sense."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Roundabout" Quotes from Famous Books



... Chatidoolts (mentioned by Vancouver as a youth), was found to be able to interpret some of the signs made by the strangers, and after a little practice he entered into a continued conversation with them in rather a roundabout way, being himself blind. He informed me that it was the second or third time within his recollection that strangers like those then present had come to Kinnik from the northeast, but that in his youth he had frequently "talked with his hands" to their visitors from the ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery

... had to say to you is something very general, and yet I prefer to choose this roundabout way. I do not know whether it is false or true delicacy, but I should find it very hard to talk with you, face to face, about friendship. And yet it is thoughts on that subject that I wish to convey to you. The application—and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... patiner in French, mean propelling oneself on iron runners over ice, and nothing else; whereas in German there is only the clumsy compound-word Schlittschuh-laufen, which means "to run on sledge shoes," and in Russian it is called in equally roundabout fashion Katatsa-na-konkach, or literally "to roll on little horses," hardly a felicitous expression. As a rule people have no word for expressing a thing which does not come within their own range of experience; ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... his sweetheart entered the castle, which was now theirs, and held their wedding; and all the kings roundabout, who had been in the troll's debt, and were now out of it, came to the wedding, and saluted the youth as their emperor, and he ruled over them all, and kept peace between them, and lived in his castle with his beautiful empress ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various

... her best, and, so that the neighbours shouldn't see her, went up a passage between some model lodging-house buildings, and in this roundabout way got into the Westminster Bridge Road, and soon found herself in front of ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham

... his mind was somewhat easier, Tom strolled on once more. His roundabout path took him along among the rocks that littered the ground over the principal tunnels of El Sombrero. Hundreds of feet beneath him now toiled some of the peons who lived in ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock

... organisations or governments. The Anglo-Saxons being the Ten Lost Tribes, it therefore follows that God has carried out the design included in Abraham's call, and the promise made that in his seed should all the nations of the earth be blessed. To us it seems to have been a roundabout way. Had Israel been obedient to God in Palestine, and had Judah received Jesus as the true Messiah, the state of the nations most certainly would have been very different to what it is now. Still, through all, and for all, the purpose of heaven has ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild

... in roundabout jacket with trousers. He wore leggings over his trousers, and mocassins upon his feet, with a cloth cap set jauntily over his luxuriant curls. He, too, was belted with hunting-knife and sheath, and a very small pistol ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... to take no notice of this remark, and pressed some refreshment upon him; but the old rascal refused, and sat with his knee between his hands, rocking himself backwards and forwards. He went on to make some roundabout inquiries as to who the persons were to whose assistance I had gone, but I told him plainly that I did not desire to discuss ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats

... plain below, which was here covered with heavy growth of timber. We reached the spot where we had concealed our horses without difficulty, and made the best of our way home. In order to avoid hostile war parties we were obliged to take a roundabout course, and it was not until the eighteenth day after our departure that we reached the village. The tribe had given us over for lost, but when they saw us returning with nine scalps and with but one of our party hurt, their grief gave way to admiration, and we ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman

... says," went on Polly. "You see, I was a-comin' up here from the Centre, so's to see if Sam couldn't wait for his roundabout till arter Thanksgivin'; for Keziah Perkins, she 't was my sister's husband's fust wife's darter, 'n' finally married sister's fust husband's son, she's a real likely woman, and she's wrote over from Taunton to ask me to go there to Thanksgivin'; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... fair, which begins on the fifth of August and lasts a fortnight. Almost every Sunday we have a fete, where there is dancing in the open air, and where immense men with prodigious beards revolve on little wooden horses like Italian irons, in what we islanders call a roundabout, by the hour together. But really the good humour and cheerfulness are very delightful. Among the other sights of the place, there is a pig-market every Saturday, perfectly insupportable in its absurdity. An excited French ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... is not {17} surprising that Sir James Craig soon took umbrage at the language and policy of Le Canadien. At first he made his displeasure felt in a somewhat roundabout way. In the summer of 1808 he dismissed from the militia five officers who were reputed to have a connection with that newspaper, on the ground that they were helping a 'seditious and defamatory journal.' One of these officers was Colonel Panet, who had fought in ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles

... show a falling off as compared with its two immediate predecessors, came out in 1857-59. In 1860 the Cornhill Magazine was started with T. for its ed., and to it he contributed Lovell the Widower (1860), The Adventures of Philip (1861-62), The Roundabout Papers, a series of charming essays, and Denis Duval, left a mere fragment by his sudden death, but which gave promise of a return to his highest level of performance. In addition to the works mentioned, T. for some years produced Christmas books and burlesques, of which the best were ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... of St. Victor, and will probably leave the neighborhood to-morrow. I do not dare to keep the bonds in my possession, as I may be followed, but consider it safer to express them to you at once. I shall go back to New York by a roundabout way, but shall probably arrive very nearly as soon as ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger

... better I decided I would go home a roundabout way; perhaps to the top of Black Hill; perhaps up Horse Wash, where I might meet father, who would be on his way home from Fair Oaks where he went ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright

... indulged in the luxury of a theatrical venture, notwithstanding the hankering he had at times to dabble in that direction. As soon as he saw Handy he called him aside and began a little preliminary skirmishing, and in a roundabout way started in to lay bare the strenuous thoughts that were agitating his mind. He opened up the subject by inquiring when the company proposed ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville

... two servants stepped out from the crowd, clothed from head to feet in white sackcloth, one presenting his arm to help me through the court, as though I were a bound-footed woman, and the other led the way. We were taken by a roundabout path, through numerous courts and passages, the front being reserved for the male guests, and were finally ushered into a room filled with white-robed women servants, who with one accord bent their ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland

... seen in 'er I don't know. I asked 'im one evening—in a roundabout way—and he answered in such a long, roundabout way that I didn't know wot to make of it till I see that she was standing just behind me, listening. Arter that I heard 'er asking questions about me, but I didn't 'ave to listen: I could hear 'er twenty yards away, and singing to myself at ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs

... fell wounded and slain on both sides, and there seemed but little likelihood of thus ending the war; when some of the men, who fed their cattle thereabouts, came to Titus with a discovery, that there was a roundabout way which the enemy neglected to guard; through which they undertook to conduct his army, and to bring it within three days at furthest, to the top of the hills. To gain the surer credit with him, they said that Charops, son of Machatas, a leading man in Epirus, who was friendly to the Romans, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... been very kind to Felix Dysart, answering his roundabout questions that always have Joyce as their central meaning. One leading remark of his is to the effect that he is covered with astonishment to find her and Monkton in London. Is he surprised. Well, no doubt, yes. Joyce is in town, too, but she has not come ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... for them, as if they were tied and bound. But in brutes the gentleness of mood inspired by reason, the subtlety, the love of freedom, are not qualities found in excess, but they have unreasonable appetites and desires, and act in a roundabout way within certain limits, riding, as it were, at the anchor of nature, and only going straight under bit and bridle. But in man reason, which is absolute master, inventing different modes and fashions of life, has left no plain or ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... It's no use writin' to those scoundrels of lawyers of hers and telling them. She'd only think it was a trap; or she'd think I'd caved in, and be so cockahoop we should never get any forrader. Then I got the idea. It looks a bit roundabout, but I believe it'll work, I do really. But it'll take a lot of working, and I'm wondering whether that little housekeeper of yours—what's her name—Mary Bride—will be up ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson

... want to be something more interesting surely than a small-town bank president. Have him learn a good loose trade and see the world—get into real life! But they'd had him going for a minute—when the only meaning he could get from Harvey D.'s roundabout talk was that the old girl of yesterday had misunderstood his attentions. That would have been a nice fix to find himself in! But Merle was off his mind; he would become a real Whipple and some day be the head of the family. Funny thing ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... upon a rock and puffed. "I saw you up here—and a fellow doesn't think about taking a roundabout ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower

... and has not the slightest idea about the merits of any of them. Some one came up with her nicely the other night, at a party. He had suspicions, I suppose, that she was trying to pass for too much; at all events, he asked her a great many roundabout questions, which she was obliged to answer, and in doing so she let out the secret. Every body saw what sort of a ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth

... the fire, and on this the limping man was placed. Grandma Padgett emptied her coals on the hearth and surveyed him. He had a red face and bashful eyes, and while the top of his head was quite bald, he had a half-circle of fuzz extending around his face from ear to ear. He wore a roundabout and trousers, and shoes with copper toes. His hands were fat and dimpled as well as freckled. Altogether, he had the appearance of a hugely overgrown boy, ducking his head shyly while Grandma ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... is the language the thieves talk, and I solemnly believe it. That's one thing. Now, here's another. You'll excuse me, my dear fellow. In course you know more than I do, but I must say that you have got sometimes a very roundabout way of coming to the pint. I mean no offence, and I don't blame you. It's all along of the company you have kept. You are—it's the only fault you have got—you are oudaciously fond of hard words. Don't let the young uns larn ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... of, and writers upon, the Free Papers probably underestimate their own effect even now. They are never mentioned in the great daily journals. It is a point of honour with the Official Press to turn a phrase upside down, or, if they must quote, to quote in the most roundabout fashion, rather than print in plain black and white the three words "The New Age" or "The ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc

... nothing final about a logical rendering of experience. Its value is not contained in itself; its significance is that of standpoint, outlook, method. It intervenes between the more casual, tentative, and roundabout experiences of the past, and more controlled and orderly experiences of the future. It gives past experience in that net form which renders it most available and most significant, most fecund for future experience. The abstractions, ...
— The Child and the Curriculum • John Dewey

... life-blood of their brothers—are reached and scotched. As for myself, I am past praying for; but thousands of others could and ought to be saved—by drastic measures and a stern exposure. The fellows in this business are as cunning as the devil; the stuff arrives by roundabout channels and from the most surprising quarters. Now and then they allow a consignment to be seized, but as a mere blind, a sop, and trade flourishes; there is no business to touch it ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... and nearer to his old haunts, yet taking a roundabout road, as the moth is drawn to the candle, or as water descends to its level, he went slowly on, having little hope of comfort in his home, and not knowing ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne

... moment. The dolphin, after having received his pittance, presented his back to the boy, after having tacked in all his spines and prickles as well as he could, and carried him right across the lake, thus saving the little fellow a long roundabout walk; and not only that, but after school hours it was waiting to carry him back again. This continued almost daily for a year or two; but at last the boy died, and the dolphin, after waiting day after day for his reappearance, ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... that, it does not matter at all which road you follow. All highways, as the saying is, lead roundabout to Koshchei. The one thing needful is not to stand still. This much I will tell you also for your song's sake, because that was an excellent song, and nobody ever made a song in praise of me ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... ached. And when that ache became so leaden that he couldn't endure it any longer in silence, he carried it to the one person in his life who was best calculated to understand. Diffidently he broached the subject with Miss Sarah, approaching it in a roundabout fashion least likely to deceive that bright-eyed ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans

... been willing to send you the orchestral parts to the "Turkish Capriccio." It seemed to me, on the one hand, unsuitable to ask Hans for it—apart from the fact that the sending of the parts backwards and forwards from Berlin to Vienna is very roundabout—and, on the other hand, I could not but suppose that you would find first-rate copyists in Vienna, who would do the copying for you far better in a fortnight. Principles of economy are UTTERLY WORTHLESS in copying, ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated

... They came by roundabout ways at last to that little groups of streets, beyond the jail and the markets, where the Jews had their homes. Here were tall brick houses overshadowing narrow streets ill- lit by infrequent lamps, little shops closely shuttered, courtyards with barred gates. ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon

... Mr. Burroughs has written himself into his books. We see him doing this in these early years; he was an earnest student of life at an age when most young men would have been far less seriously occupied. Difficulties and hardships were roundabout him, his force was, indeed, "scattered up and down in the world, in rocks and trees," in birds and flowers, and from these sources he was even then wresting the beginnings of ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... a long ride into the country roundabout, and Jewel had been down at the gate to greet his return. He swung her up into the saddle with him, and in triumph ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham

... should never go further than the paper on which it was written, again discouraged me; whereas I felt more and more strongly impelled to lay a foundation on which it might some day be possible to present such a work, even though the end had to be gained by roundabout means. To secure this object it seemed above all necessary to approach those friends, both at home and abroad, who interested themselves in my art, in order to expound to them more clearly the problems that ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... that had led Richard Shafer into the Rue de Grenelle and under the windows of Carola Brune without knowing it, was long and roundabout, and in places rather rough. It was one of the by-ways of ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke

... he suddenly, "you have come by rough seas and mighty roundabout course to your happiness, but there be some do never make this blessed haven all ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... I received from the attorney in charge of the case is that they came here from New York, not directly but by some roundabout way." ...
— Boy Scouts in the Coal Caverns • Major Archibald Lee Fletcher

... King's army who had made themselves notorious by their cruelty to Americans, seized Augusta. Brown had been tarred and feathered in Augusta just before the breaking-out of the Revolution, and he made the patriots of that town and of the country roundabout pay dearly for the indignities that had been heaped upon him on account of his loyalty to the Crown. He confiscated the property of the patriots, and issued an order banishing all Whig families beyond ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris

... subterfuge, to put a triad at the head of an Ennead was nothing more than a roundabout way of placing a single god there: the three persons only counted as one, and the eleven names only amounted to the nine canonical divinities. Thus, the Theban Ennead of Amon-Maut-Khonsu, Shu, Tafnuit, Sibu, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... fellow with a red nose and white hair, seemed utterly dejected; while the woman, a little roundabout individual with shining cheeks, looked at the official who had ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... how know you that, Herbert?" said his cousin, with a smile, which would have deceived the most penetrating eye. "Are you not presuming too far in your inspection of my heart, seeking in rather a roundabout way, to obtain my ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar

... Widower,' is 'a very clever sketch, but as a novel is rather drawn out.' 'The Roundabout Papers' make very pleasant reading. In one 'he compares himself to a pagan conqueror driving in his chariot up the Hill of Coru, with a slave behind him to remind him that he is only mortal.' In 1863, suddenly, Thackeray died, seven years before ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... for approaching the ideal of its kind is therefore only a roundabout way of specifying its intrinsic merit and expressing its direct effect on our sensibility. If in referring to the ideal we were not thus analyzing the real, the ideal would be an irrelevant and unmeaning thing. We know what the ideal is because we observe what pleases us ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana

... "That sounds like a roundabout sort of plan to me!" said Brown. "Why not go straight in by the lower route, and gather up the women, and carry 'em out, and make ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy

... after about a year and a half of respectful aloofness, that the emotion which he felt towards Samuel Marlowe's grandmother-to-be was love, the fashion of the period compelled him to approach the matter in a roundabout way. First, he spent an evening or two singing sentimental ballads, she accompanying him on the piano and the rest of the family sitting on the side-lines to see that no rough stuff was pulled. Having noted that she drooped her eyelashes and turned ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... indirectly Roman law did exert a by no means insignificant influence through the medium of the Church, which, for all its insular character, was still permeated with Roman ideas and forms of culture. The Old English "books" are derived in a roundabout way from Roman models, and the tribal law of real property was deeply modified by the introduction of individualistic notions as to ownership, donations, wills, rights of women, &c. Yet in this respect also the Norman Conquest increased the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various

... necessary. It is under the strictest law of cause and effect. The first effect of losing one's fortune, for instance, is humiliation; and the effect of humiliation, as we have just seen, is to make one humble; and the effect of being humble is to produce Rest. It is a roundabout way, apparently, of producing Rest; but Nature generally works by circular processes; and it is not certain that there is any other way of becoming humble, or of finding Rest. IF a man could make himself humble to order, it might simplify matters; but ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond

... roundabout way which threatened long detention. In a minute or two Buckland had gathered enough to interrupt ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... young man had just arrived and was fatigued by the trials and perils of his trip, for he must have come by some roundabout way; and very likely he felt nervous and uneasy in the midst of people who were loyal to the government and the Union. Captain Passford decided to say nothing more to his nephew at present as to the occasion and the manner of his visit to Bonnydale, and during the evening meal he avoided ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... wanted. It was a jackpine, and at several places within his reach the fresh pitch was oozing. A bear seldom passes a bleeding jackpine. It is his chief tonic, and Thor licked the fresh pitch with his tongue. In this way he absorbed not only turpentine, but also, in a roundabout sort of way, a whole pharmacopoeia of medicines made from this ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood

... leviathan, her companion floated off with the sense of rocking violently at her side. More than prepared, however, for that excitement, Mrs. Stringham mainly failed of ease in respect to her own consistency. To attach herself for an indefinite time seemed a roundabout way of holding her hands off. If she wished to be sure of neither touching nor smutching, the straighter plan would doubtless have been not to keep her friend within reach. This in fact she fully recognised, and with it the degree to which she ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James

... His roundabout of bottle-green, And pantaloons of fine nankeen Were Sunday best; the month was May, And this from school a holiday; But he had none with whom to play, And wandered wistful,up and down, All in a strange old Garden, And in a strange ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... water that the children were obliged to take roundabout ways; but that was sport to them. They vied with each other as to which could find the soundest ice. They were neither tired nor hungry. The whole day was before them, and they laughed ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof

... roundabout one. Our petty economies are no concern of hers. Man wants specific results at once. Nature works slowly to general results. Her army is drilled only in battle. Her tools grow sharper in the using. The strength of her species is the strength of the obstacles they overcome. We misinterpret ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... however, to myself that he should make so many circles and roundabout motions to come at a discourse which had no such rarity at the bottom of it, if he had known all. But there was another reason why I resolved not to have him, when, at the same time, if he had courted me in a manner less honest ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe

... part prevailed at length. He argued that this interpretation of the disaster would not satisfy the authorities. To take the raider's life insured discovery, retribution. But as he had been brought to the still in the night, it was obvious that if he were conveyed under cover of darkness and by roundabout trails within striking distance of the settlements, he could never again find his way to the locality in the dense wilderness. In his detention he had necessarily learned nothing fresh, for the only names he could have overheard had long been obnoxious to suspicion of moonshining, and ...
— His Unquiet Ghost - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... the plateau of Langres, we set a roundabout course for Paris. There is one great pleasure about automobiling that is considerably curtailed if one sets out to follow precisely a preconceived itinerary, and for that reason we were, in a measure, going where ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... give, even after grumbling a bit, is one of a father's dearest privileges. But no: when Walter wanted anything—which was seldom—he must go to his mother and tell her, and his mother promised to "manage it." In his secret heart the Squire loathed this roundabout management, and tried to wean Walter by consulting him frankly on the daily business of the estate. But no again: Walter seemingly cared little for these confidences: and again, although he learned to shoot and was a fair horseman, ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... detect for yourselves. GOD'S strictness in punishing sin, as in the case of Moses[262];—the efficacy of repentance, as in the case of Ahab[263];—the sure answer to prayer, (to forgotten prayer, it may be!) as in the case of Zacharias[264];—the seemingly roundabout methods of GOD'S providence, (as in the case of Abraham,) yet conducting inevitably to a blessed issue at the last;—the rewards of obedience[265];—the faithfulness of the Divine promises;—the boundless wealth of the Divine contrivance, which, on man's repentance, ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... horns. Yet that's the man's part, mark ye. Don't I know? Smockalley she come from, the Rose of Smockalley they called her, for a Rose in June she were. There weren't a lass to match her south of Hagland and north of Roundabout. And the lads would ha' died for her from Picketty to Chiltington. But twas a Billinghurst lad got her, d'ye see?" Old Gillman ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon

... Francis Grose, that roundabout, jovial friend of Burns, was Richmond Herald for many years, but he resigned his appointment in 1763, to become Adjutant and Paymaster of the Hampshire Militia. Grose was the son of a Swiss jeweller, who had settled in London. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... back, by a somewhat roundabout way, to the idea we started from, that of an original impetus of life, passing from one generation of germs to the following generation of germs through the developed organisms which bridge the interval between the generations. ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... flying-men, he hinted to you that he might be able to do you some service. It occurred to him that he might learn where my grave was and let you know. Nothing further was in his thoughts then—or until he happened to draw out a piece of unexpected information in a roundabout way. ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... on the road we came," he said, "and on another road that leads in a roundabout way to the Grande Avenue again. So now we must look into the unknown and ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn

... dead—in terror. He had heard the breaking of an ice-pan—a great clap and rumble, vanishing in the distance. The noise was repeated, all roundabout—bursting from everywhere, rising to a fearful volume: near at hand, a cracking; far off, a continuing roar. The pack was breaking up. Each separate part was torn from another, and the noise of the rending was great. Each part ground against its neighbour on every side. The weaker pans ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan

... came and examined the injury Agnes had sustained, he found that, independent of the fracture of the spine, she was much hurt internally. He had no hopes of her recovery, and he commenced, in a roundabout way to break the opinion to her; but she saw it already in ...
— Angel Agnes - The Heroine of the Yellow Fever Plague in Shreveport • Wesley Bradshaw

... said to make Mr Gordon fully comprehend the case. The men were dissatisfied. They had come in a roundabout way to the conclusion that some pecuniary concession, not mentioned in their bond, should come from the side of capital to that of labour. Whether wages, interest of capital, share of profits, reserve fund, they ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood

... all night, up hill and down dale. The sun rose, the dawn blossomed, the dew dried on the blueberry; it was morning. Still we kept up our fierce gait. Would our leader never come to his destination? By what roundabout route was he guiding us? The sun climbed up in the blue sky, the heat quivered; it was noon. We panted as we pelted on, parched and weary, faint and footsore. The excitement of the stampede had sustained us, and we scarcely had noted the flight ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... eavesdropper near. It was Pecksniff himself. He had gone into the church to rest, and lying down in one of the high-back pews, had gone to sleep, and now the voices of Tom and Mary had awakened him. He listened and waited till they had both gone; then he stole out and went home by a roundabout way. ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives

... scene of action was almost triangular; for it lay between the three lines joining Jackson, Haynes's Bluff, Rodney, and Jackson again. The respective lengths of these straight lines are forty, fifty, and seventy miles. But roundabout ways by land and water multiplied these distances, and much fighting and many ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood

... "Roundabout trail, an' rough, but you'll make it in one day, easy. Beautiful country. Open, big peaks an' ranges, with valleys an' ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey

... call this, holding the mirror up to Nature, yet, in a curious roundabout way, the stage seems to justify itself and become true after the event. There was a rather bitter discussion some time ago between an author and a critic; the latter had remarked that the language of the dramatist's people did not sound true, that it seemed composed of scraps from the stage, that ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... grisette is perpetually exploring the pockets of her apron. Francine, who wore a roundabout apron of a white and crackling nature, adorned her conversation by attending to the hem of hers. When she asked about my last interview with her father, she ironed that hem with the nail of her rosy ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... the run, at any price. For instance, when Baxter and Donovan delivered that well-timber in the Quondong Paddock, the other day, they were n't five mile from the main road—and a gate to go through—but he made them come right back by the station; thirty mile of a roundabout; and their cheques were n't forthcoming till they did it. No, Priestley; to ask Montgomery is simply to get a refusal; and to argue with him ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... me that for the moment I could not reply. Then, all at once, a strange feeling of curiosity came over me. Why all this secrecy about the suit-case? I mentally asked myself. And what an odd idea to send me to Paris by that long roundabout sea route! What could ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux

... almost to enthusiasm. Of these agreements the former, certainly, and presumably the latter, would be flagrantly illegal in the United States. If, moreover, an attempt were made in America to arrive at the same ends in some roundabout way which would avoid technical illegality, the outburst of popular indignation would make it impossible. Personally I sympathise with the English view and believe both agreements to be not only just and proper but in the public ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... in both civil and military matters, to be appointed, and the honour of the country should be committed to their hands. With a small force, complete in itself, at the disposal of such men, more could be effected at the moment for the honour and interests of the country than by long and roundabout despatches, passing through so many hands that one fool in authority nullifies all, as a bad link in an otherwise good chain renders the whole useless. Omitting the other portions of the correspondence, the following letter from Major-general D'Aguilar, dated Hong-Kong, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... and elsewhere in payment for slaves, servants, or other commodities which were periodically landed at his private wharf to be used on his own estate or retailed from his general store to the small planters roundabout. Before he reached the age of thirty, Byrd became, and remained throughout his life, a leader in his own county and in the colony at large—a colonel of militia, a burgess in the assembly, and member of ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker

... wobbled a good deal, and the Kid came near falling sidewise off the last step before he could balance his burden. But he managed it, being the child of his parents and having a good deal of persistence in his makeup; and he went, by a roundabout way, to the stable with the grub-sack bending him double. Still it was not so very heavy; it was made bulky by about two dozen fresh-made doughnuts and a loaf of bread and a jar of honey and a glass of wild-currant jelly and a pound or so of ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower

... shaven. He had on no spectacles. He was dressed in a green baize roundabout and faded blue overalls, worn sadly at the knee. But I saw at once that he was of my height, five feet four and a half. He had black hair, worn off by his hat. So have and have not I. He stooped in walking. So do I. His hands were large, and mine. And—choicest gift of Fate in all—he had, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... not moderately prosperous and contented, comfortable if not energetic and advanced. This is not a pushing town: it has never known a boom. That I'm sure will some day come, but I hope not in my time. I have faith in the mountains that fold us roundabout; they are rich with the possibilities of coal and iron, and year by year are being more and more widely opened up and developed; year by year the ranks of flaming, reeking coke ovens push farther on beside the railway ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance

... sufficient funds to carry her through for a while, and she'd die before she'd accept the gift of a penny from anybody in Port Agnew, particularly the McKayes. Even a loan from The Laird would be construed as a roundabout way ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... over later," said her father. "Just now I am going to tell you about our auto tour. We are going, as I said, to the city of Portland. It is three hundred miles there, but the roundabout roads we will take ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope

... religion—a republic resting, moreover, on the same simple principles of justice and equal rights as the Mosaic Commonwealth from which the Puritan Fathers drew their inspiration. In America, therefore, the Jew, by a roundabout journey from Zion, has come into his own again. It is by no mere accident that when an inscription was needed for the colossal statue of Liberty in New York Harbour, that "Mother of Exiles" whose torch lights the entrance to the New Jerusalem, the best expression of the spirit of Americanism ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill

... hurriedly, stepping yet farther back from the door. "I am passing by—and I have called on you—I won't enter. Will you help me? I am afraid. I want to get by a roundabout way to Sherton, and so to Exbury. I have a school-fellow there—but I cannot get to Sherton alone. Oh, if you will only accompany me a little way! Don't condemn me, Giles, and be offended! I was obliged to ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... lift, but at the convenience of the elevator-man he was hoisted to Millard's floor. When he presented himself he looked frightened at being ushered into a place accessible only by means of so much ceremony and by ways so roundabout. ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... and which could doubtless claim the Settlement as one of its manifestations. Nevertheless the processes by which so simple a conclusion as residence among the poor in East London was reached, seemed to me very involved and roundabout. However inevitable these processes might be for class-conscious Englishmen, they could not but seem artificial to a western American who had been born in a rural community where the early pioneer life had made social ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... know. But the temperature did not matter. He was bound for the old claim on the left fork of Henderson Creek, where the boys were already. They had come over across the divide from the Indian Creek country, while he had come the roundabout way to take a look at the possibilities of getting out logs in the spring from the islands in the Yukon. He would be in to camp by six o'clock; a bit after dark, it was true, but the boys would be there, a fire would be going, and a hot supper would be ready. As ...
— Lost Face • Jack London

... to understand his hints; he must educate them, not to point out to him the disagreeable things involved in his orders, but to execute unquestioningly, to efface completely the trail between him and them, whether or not they succeed in covering the roundabout and faint trail between themselves and the tools that nominally ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips

... dawn, on his way, apparently, to the ends of the earth, and, after breakfast, fell asleep in the hayloft, leaving them both gaping with pleasure and curiosity. For he came, Aaron had to admit, like a tramp; but spoke, Margaret thought, like the Gospels. "He's from roundabout," she said; "I hope he doesn't think to try and sell us anything. Men with something to sell always talk like the ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan

... he said, "that we have taken the roundabout way of getting to our end in view, when the straight road lay before us. If Mr. Hardyman has passed the stolen note, you know, as well as I do, that he has passed it innocently. Instead of wasting time and money in trying to trace a stranger, why not tell Mr. Hardyman what has happened, and ask ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins

... that gave any promise of decency and comfort, and stayed off Central Avenue and away from its loitering groups of range dwellers who might know him. That is why he hired a horse and rode early and alone to the fair grounds on the opening day, and avoided, by a roundabout trail a certain splotch of gray-white against the brown of the prairie, which he knew instinctively to be the camp of the Flying U outfit, which had made good time and were located to their liking near the river. Andy felt a tightening ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower

... roundabout way, walking down F Street and stopping to make some trifling purchases in two or three shops. She could not detect that she was being followed, but she went into a large department store, and spent ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott

... over to the "Kicking Donkey," partly to communicate what she had seen and partly to ward off by half a quartern of rum the sinking which always threatened her when she was in any way agitated. When he reached the common it struck him that for the first time in his life he had gone a roundabout way to escape being seen. Some people naturally take to side-streets; he, on the contrary, preferred the High Street; it was his quarter-deck and he paraded it like a captain. "Was he doing wrong?" he said to himself. ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford

... need not deny it!" said The Chobb. "I hate roundabout stories. I am a gentleman. Was it a joke or not? Will you pay me a good ten-pound ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... me, the smallest as well as the greatest. Men will always be hasty, their thoughts to extremes ever running: Easily out of their course the hasty are turned by a hindrance. Whereas a woman is clever in thinking of means, and will venture E'en on a roundabout way, adroitly to compass her object. Let me know every thing, then; say wherefore so greatly excited As I ne'er saw thee before, why thy blood is coursing so hotly, Wherefore, against thy will, tears are filling ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... march, with Steele's and Tuttle's divisions. Blair's division remained at Milliken's Bend to protect our depots there, till relieved by troops from Memphis, and then he was ordered to follow us. Our route lay by Richmond and Roundabout Bayou; then, following Bayou Vidal we struck the Mississippi at Perkins's plantation. Thence the route followed Lake St. Joseph to a plantation called Hard Times, about five miles above Grand Gulf. The road was more or less occupied by wagons and detachments ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... passage like this we know, so to speak, that the hunt is up and the whole field tearing after the quarry. But Racine, on other occasions, has another way of writing. He can be roundabout, artificial, and vague; he can involve a simple statement in a mist of high-sounding words and ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... to see," he answered. "We shall do, depend upon it. I've no great fancy for being caught by the Spaniards and clapped into prison; and they are certain to be looking for us all along the western coast. We shall have to go rather a roundabout way, but that can't be helped. Now, from what I hear, the Indians have pretty well cleared the country of the white men to the south of this, so we shall have little to fear from the Spaniards; and as you say the Indians are your friends, ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston

... often repeated. The drawings of the Danish painter Carstens formed one of those spiritual books that shed its holy baptism over that growing genius. The little atelier looked like a battle-field, for roundabout were broken statues. Genius formed them often in the midnight hours; despondency over their faults broke them in ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... of being lost at sea. Rudolf in particular would have liked to know whether it was a hurricane or sharks or pirates or a nice desert island that had been the end of that little boy, and he was about to begin his questioning in a roundabout manner by asking whether sea serpents had often been known to swallow ships whole, when the door opened, and in came Betsy, Aunt Jane's old servant. She had the lamp in one hand and the great brass warming-pan, with which she always warmed the ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels

... quite open, it was impossible to see the river channel, even though fringed with rows of splendid gum-trees, for any distance, as it became hidden by the high sandhills. I was very reluctant to cross, on account of the frightfully boggy bed of the creek, but, rather than travel several miles roundabout, I decided to try it. We got over, certainly, but to see one's horses and loads sinking bodily in a mass of quaking quicksand is by no means an agreeable sight, and it was only by urging the animals ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... first at Crondall, and then at me, "our plans are simplicity itself. In Canada we have not risen yet to the cultivation of much diplomacy. We don't understand anything of your high politics, and we don't believe in roundabout methods. For instance, I suppose here in England you don't find parsons of one denomination working in partnership much with parsons of another denomination. Well, now, when I took over from my predecessor at Kootenay, I found my friend Reynolds doing a fine work there, among ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... as roundabout a route as he could contrive so as to spare the young officers the gruesome sights that he and the other men had encountered; but enough was left to make Murray wince ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn

... toward the Lunch Club might have been very different had it welcomed her in the majestic setting of the Plinth drawing-rooms; but not liking to reflect on the inadequacy of Mrs. Ballinger's establishment she sought a roundabout satisfaction in ...
— Xingu - 1916 • Edith Wharton

... can swallow that pill," said Henry Smith, "how well soever it may be gilded. The knave has a shrewd eye for a kirtle, and knows a wild duck from a tame as well as e'er a man in Perth. He were the last in the Fair City to take sour plums for pears, or my roundabout cousin Joan for this piece of fantastic vanity. I fancy his bearing was as much as to say, 'I will not see what you might wish me blind to'; and he is right to do so, as he might easily purchase himself a broken pate ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... county. He owns to the fearful; says it has served him through many a hard squeeze; but now that he finds law so necessary to carry out villainy, he's taken to studying it himself. His dress is of yellow cotton, of which he has a short roundabout and loose pantaloons. His shirt bosom is open, the collar secured at the neck with a short black ribbon; he is much bedaubed with tobacco-juice, which he has deposited over his clothes for the want of a more convenient place. A gray, slouch hat usually adorns his head, which, in consequence of the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... that something else will have happened meanwhile and that he'll see, and thank God for it, that what is is best. There'll be another thing too. He'll find his wife has married again. Yes, fact! I heard in a roundabout way that she's going to marry an old neighbour of theirs, chap called Major Millett, Hopscotch Millett, old Sabre used to call him. However, that's not the thing—though it would be a complication—that I mean will have happened and will make him ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... a roundabout walk, passing more than one of his acquaintances with inward amusement at their failure to recognize him. He had arranged for Helene to invite Shine Taylor and Reginald Warren down to call on her at the apartment in the California at this particular time. ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... boat-deck or from B deck to the steerage quarters, I often noticed how the third-class passengers were enjoying every minute of the time: a most uproarious skipping game of the mixed-double type was the great favourite, while "in and out and roundabout" went a Scotchman with his bagpipes playing something that Gilbert says "faintly resembled an air." Standing aloof from all of them, generally on the raised stern deck above the "playing field," was a man of about twenty to twenty-four years of age, well-dressed, always gloved and nicely groomed, ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley

... he said reproachfully, "that I had no money. Do you think that if I had it I would not have given it to you at once, instead of sending it in that roundabout manner? Do you know the handwriting? that may afford ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

... said he, taking the eldest daughter's hand and laughing himself. "You think my ambition as nonsensical as if I were to freeze myself to death on the top of Mount Washington only that people might spy at me from the country roundabout. And truly that would be a noble ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... in New Street, and the Roundabout House in High Street were at one time the only public buildings in the town, besides the Parish Church, the Lockups, and the Pinfold. The Market Cross, Public Office, Workhouse, &c., came after, and it is only ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... mother walked bride in, and Lovey and I had roundabouts of it afterwards. She had the chicken-pox when we was about four years old, and one of the first things I can remember is climbing up and looking over mother's footboard at Lovey, all speckled. Mother had let her slip on her new green roundabout over her nightgown, just to pacify her, and there she set playing with the kitten Reuben Granger had brought her. He was only ten years old then, but he 'd ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin

... this queer little beak, with his eyes, that made his countenance anything of a face at all. From a distance he looked like the groceryman's delivery boy in a small town. His dress seemed an acknowledgment of his grotesqueness: a short coat, like a little boys' roundabout, and a vest fantastically sprigged and dotted, over ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... took him to old Nance, the widow. Still later, you, Cook and Moriarity took refuge at Swanson's ranche in the Indian Territory, and after attempting to rob your host, which attempt was frustrated by my men, you came, in some roundabout way, to Chicago, where you put up at the Commercial Hotel, disguised by a false mustache. Every evening you went to West Lake street, and last night you were arrested. Now, Mr. Wittrock, ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton

... in the Lusitania case is believed here to mean that the statement was prepared and was ready for promulgation before the destruction of the Lusitania on Friday. Several days usually have been required for messages to come to Washington from Ambassador Gerard, by roundabout cable relay route, and it is believed that this dispatch is no exception ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... Potts, you know as well as any man in this town that you're an all-round no-good—you're a human Not—and a darn scalawag into the bargain. So what's the use? Will you go, or won't you?' Then if he'd begin to hem and haw and try to put it off with one thing or another, why, just hint in a roundabout way—perfectly genteel, you understand—that there'd be doings with a kittle of tar and feathers that same night at eight-thirty sharp, rain or shine, with a free ride right afterward to the town line and mebbe a bit beyond, without no cushions. Up about the Narrows would ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... Willy, the deck-hand, we'll take the long boat an' go out an' explore this region roundabout. Somebody may have gasoline somewhere, and if so, we can git ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough

... we made a winding, roundabout march to Trintange. Here we were instructed to settle down for a week or ten days' halt, and many worse places might have been chosen. The country was very broken, with hills and ravines. Little patches of woodland and streams dashing down rocky channels on their ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt

... first day in the new week, Agnes left London on her way to Ireland. As the event proved, this was not destined to be the end of her journey. The way to Ireland was only the first stage on a roundabout road—the road that led to the ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins

... of the mist, and the still happier discovery that the travellers had groped their way, though by a very roundabout direction, to within a mile or so of the part of the valley in which the farm-house was situated, restored Mr. Idle's sinking spirits and reanimated his failing strength. While the landlord ran off to get the dog-cart, Thomas was assisted ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens

... between the Elk and the trees and shifted his guns in their scabbards. His rifle he had left with Sam. Either Plimsoll had not passed the peaks, was in the woods, or he had come and gone. Something told Sandy this last had not occurred. Travel beyond the peaks must have been hard and slow and roundabout for Plimsoll while he had tangented fast for ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... mainly the French, who were living in Moscow, on the sole grounds that they were suspected of hoping for the arrival of Napoleon's troops. Some days before the battle of Moscow, the Cossacks having captured about a hundred sick Frenchmen, Koutousoff sent them by a roundabout road to the governor of Moscow, who, regardless of their condition, left them for forty-eight hours without food and then paraded them triumphantly through the streets, where a number of these unfortunates collapsed and died of starvation. As this was happening, policemen read ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... then. As long as I asked him direct questions he could answer falsely. I must trip him up in some roundabout way. ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells

... could not prevent the speech from producing its effect. Although Presburg was only six hours' journey from Vienna, the route had been made so difficult that the news of anything done in the Hungarian Diet had hitherto reached Vienna in a roundabout manner, and had sometimes been a week on ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... improvement and general mental development of my pupils. The advancement will unquestionably be rapid, for it proceeds step by step, and one thing is founded upon another; the pupil learns every thing quietly, thoughtfully, and surely, without going roundabout, without any hindrances and mistakes to be unlearned. I never try to teach too much or too little; and, in teaching each thing, I try to prepare and lay the foundation for other things to be afterwards learned. I consider it very important not to try to cram ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck

... through Cyprus, where Barnabas was well acquainted, and through that section of Asia Minor roundabout the province of Cilicia, where Paul was practically at home. Paul was born in Tarsus in Cilicia and it was to this region that he went for some part of the time between his conversion and his call to the missionary ...
— Bible Studies in the Life of Paul - Historical and Constructive • Henry T. Sell

... you want to do, that you are asking my permission in this roundabout way? What do you want to do, that you ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner

... of this earth. When he poured out his whole self before Him, then calm came over him and a holy peace, a feeling of unspeakable love. He felt himself a part of God, and remained in this relation to Him from that time throughout his whole life. He heeded no longer the roundabout ways of the ancient Church; he could, with God in his heart, defy the whole world. Even thus early he ventured to believe that those held false doctrine who put so much stress on works of penance, that there was nothing beyond ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... wide entrance gate to the old family mansion of Midbranch, but it was never opened to admit the family or visitors; although occasionally a load of wood, drawn by two horses and two mules, came between its tall chestnut posts, and was taken by a roundabout way among the trees to a spot at the back of the house, where the chips of several generations of sturdy wood-choppers had formed a ligneous soil deeper than the arable surface of any portion of the nine hundred and fifty acres which formed the farm ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton

... of his long imprisonment, was speedily restored to his happy, kindly state of mind. A long, roundabout trip took them all back to the Marshallton Tech where the late unfortunate could again outfit himself from an ample wardrobe, while Bill and Gus restored, with the janitor's knowledge, the radio transmitting set and the portable receiver. A new receiving set was to be completed soon and set up for ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple

... they quarreled and the brother threatened to shoot Gasca if he came near the place. Also, he told the border patrol some things about Gasca so that he was afraid to go over any more. Just after I met Gasca, he had heard, in a roundabout way as my people hear things, that the brother had been killed and the Indian woman had died of a sickness. Gasca wanted me to go over with him to find out if the treasure was still there—he felt sure that it was because he said the brother would be afraid to dispose of it without his help—but ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall

... awakening thought of those who die is of the tremendous happening that has come upon them. So it was with Sandy. For a while he lay quite still, with his hands folded, and a strange awful brooding, almost as though of fear, breathlessly wrapping his heart roundabout. But it was not for a long time that he lay thus, for suddenly, like a second flash of lightning in the gathering darkness of a cloud, the thought shot through him that no friends had come to meet and to greet him as they had come to meet and greet ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... the bell. Only, as it happened to be the wrong bell, he obtained the presence of Joseph in a roundabout way, through the agency of a gentleman-in-waiting. Such, however, is the human faculty of adaptation to environment that he was merely amused in the morning by an error which, on the previous night, would have ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett

... sight to see the Otters swimming about in the stream, because they are beautiful swimmers. But what Father and Mother Bear liked best was the picture of Little Bear running up the roundabout path to the top of the bank and going down the slide three times as fast as the Otter children and their parents. The Otters were more at home in the water than Little Bear was, but they could not run ...
— Little Bear at Work and at Play • Frances Margaret Fox

... fraction of a man's experience in an hour. The speed of the eyesight and the hearing, and the continual industry of the mind, produce; in ten minutes, what it would require a laborious volume to shadow forth by comparisons and roundabout approaches. If verbal logic were sufficient, life would be as plain sailing as a piece of Euclid. But, as a matter of fact, we make a travesty of the simplest process of thought when we put it into words; for the words ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... By a roundabout road of self-surrender she had come to the same destination that she might have reached by the straight path of self-indulgence. She was perilously near to resolving that she had been a fool not to have taken happiness, physical happiness, first. A grand red passion ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... this thought the squire raised his head and considered his homestead. It looked good to him—the small white cottage among the honey locusts, with beehives and flower beds about it; the tidy whitewashed fence; the sound outbuildings at the back, and the well-tilled acres roundabout. ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... during the night, if we can make the get-away," he told her. "We'll have to take a roundabout way at first, edging the valley along the foothills on this side until we're well past the ranch house, then cut across the shortest way and pick up the trail on the other side. We can take enough water in ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory

... better customs in the place of the old. You need not rest your reputation on the dinners you give. For my own part, I was never so effectually deterred from frequenting a man's house, by any kind of Cerberus whatever, as by the parade one made about dining me, which I took to be a very polite and roundabout hint never to trouble him so again. I think I shall never revisit those scenes. I should be proud to have for the motto of my cabin those lines of Spenser which one of my visitors inscribed on a yellow walnut leaf for ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... return to the rebel camp that night, for it had been aroused, and my own chances of escape would be none of the surest; so I let two days pass before setting out, and then I did not follow my usual course, but took a roundabout way to get behind their camp, where I would not run so much risk ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon

... cogitative powers, is competent to suggest improvements to an intelligence supposed to be omniscient and all-wise! And what shall we say of the numerous cases in which the supposed purposes of this intelligence could have been attained by other and less roundabout means? In short, not needlessly to prolong discussion, it is admitted, even by natural theologians themselves, that the difficulties of reconciling, even approximately, the supposed processes of divine thought with the known processes ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes

... Charlotte broke out. "You'll meet him coming home if you wait any longer. Here; I'll tell you how to go a roundabout way." ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various

... him. The Connoisseur was placing his eye occasionally close to the paintings, or removing to short distances, right and left, to catch them in the most judicious lights, and making remarks on his catalogue with a pencil; and Mrs. Roundabout, from Leadenhall, who had brought her son Dicky to see the show, as she called it, declared it was the 'most finest sight she ever seed, lifting up her hand and eyes at the same time as Dicky read over the list, and charmed her by reciting the various ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... my thoughts concerning you. I believed you to be the victim of circumstance. Now I know you have deceived me, and that I, myself, am the victim. I need only add that someone else—whom I know not—knows of your hiding-place, for, by a roundabout way, I heard of it, and hence, I address ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux

... turned to Pierre for help—not yet confessing his love, though; he only tried to make friends again with the lad after their silent estrangement. And Pierre for some time did not choose to perceive his cousin's advances. He would reply to all the roundabout questions Morin put to him respecting household conversations when he was not present, or household occupations and tone of thought, without mentioning Virginie's name any more than his questioner did. The lad would seem to suppose, ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell

... climbed up the cliff by a gradual, roundabout path; and after Windham saw her, she had wandered on, lost herself for a while, and got back after both stage and boat had left, each party supposing she ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various

... than willing, for he seldom received instruction. With now and then a word of counsel or warning from the wise man of the west in the corner, he cautiously assembled two other fizzes, while Mr. Pike, in a most nonchalant and roundabout manner, sought information concerning affairs of state, local politics, the Governor-General's household and Princess Kalora. Popova told more than he had meant to tell and more than he ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade

... ceremony over, from within Paulina's house and from shacks roundabout, women appeared with pots and pails, from which, without undue haste, but without undue delay, men filled tin cups and tin pans with stews rich, luscious, and garlic flavoured. The feast was on; the Slav's hour of rapture had come. From pot to keg and from keg to pot the happy crowd would ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor

... came over last night and sat on my gallery making very roundabout inquiries concerning Jeems. I pried out of him the details of your swamp battle. But I want to know now just what Jeems has been doing. Your brother is ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton

... have made a man or a woman, you must do, something with him. You can't leave him standing, without any visible means of support. One person writes a novel of four hundred pages to convince you in a roundabout way, through thirty different characters, that a certain law, or the mode of administering it, is unjust. He does not mention himself, but makes his men and women speak his arguments. Another man writes a treatise of forty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... the mill, Will motioned to them to stay where they were, and ran ahead to intercept a guard. A moment later he returned with the latter, and the whole party made its way hurriedly and stealthily in a roundabout direction, which would almost certainly intercept ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope

... the Wanderer," answered the boy, "and I have come, through many travels and by roundabout ways, from my former home in a far corner of ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... of other famous Izumo temples; but they are most eagerly sought for. Those strips of white paper, bearing the deity's name, and a few words of promise, which are sold for a few rin, are tied to rods of bamboo, and planted in all the fields of the country roundabout. The most curious things sold are tiny packages of rice-seeds. It is alleged that whatever you desire will grow from these rice-seeds, if you plant them uttering a prayer. If you desire bamboos, cotton-plants, peas, lotus-plants, or watermelons, it matters not; only ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn



Words linked to "Roundabout" :   roundabout way, ride, route, indirect, circle, rotary, traffic circle, road, carrousel, devious



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com