"Unenviable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... In this unenviable state of mental anxiety, and corporeal lassitude, was our justly renowned hero, at the period of those preparations being completed, which were calculated to display him, in the view of an enraptured people, as the greatest and most felicitous of mortals; nor did his ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... JOHN, an English navigator and admiral, born at Plymouth; was rear-admiral of the fleet sent against the Armada and contributed to its defeat; has the unenviable distinction of having been the first Englishman to traffic in slaves, which he carried off from Africa and imported ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... escapes while he follows the squirrels and weasels and bats. It is not surprising that, their author being so inartistic with regard to their object, his verses themselves should be harsh and unmusical beyond the worst that one would imagine fit to be called verse. He enjoys the unenviable distinction of having no rival in ruggedness of metric movement and associated sounds. This is clearly the result of indifference; an indifference, however, which grows very strange to us when we find that he can write a lovely verse and even ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... that he was a swineherd is correct. It is certain that to the day of his death he could neither read nor write. He never even learned to sign his own name, yet he was a man of qualities who made a great figure in history in spite of these disabilities, leaving behind him an immortal if unenviable name. His career was humble and obscure to the vanishing point for forty years, of which practically nothing is known. It is alleged that he made a campaign in Italy with his father, but this is doubtful. A father who left him to tend the swine, ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... survive, there are few one can commence a friendship with, because one has probably all one's life despised their heart or their understandings. These are the steps through which one passes to the unenviable lees of life! ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... statement on March 6, 1572.[50] By about this time there had arrived in Salamanca Diego Gonzalez—an experienced official, whose conduct of the Inquisitionary case against Bartolome de Carranza, the Archbishop of Toledo, has earned him an unenviable repute.[51] Under the presidency of Gonzalez, who might be trusted to keep the weaker brethren, if there were any, up to the mark, the local Inquisition on March 15 resolved to recommend the arrest of Luis de Leon. Apparently the gravity of this step was recognized. Another sitting ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... Illinois State Register, February 5, 1841. Judge Smith is put in an unenviable light by contemporary historians. There seems to be no reason to doubt that he misinformed Douglas and others. See Davidson and Stuve, History of Illinois, ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... Salem; but the death-penalty has never been hastily inflicted in Portsmouth. The first execution that ever took place there was that of Sarah Simpson and Penelope Kenny, for the murder of an infant in 1739. The sheriff was Thomas Packer, the same official who, twenty-nine years later, won unenviable notoriety at the hanging of Ruth Blay. The circumstances are set forth by the late Albert Laighton in a spirited ballad, which is too long to quote in full. The following stanzas, however, give the pith of ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... independence is that sort of self-confidence and resolution which leads one to go forward in what he has to do, with decision and energy, without leaning upon others. Without this, a man will gain to himself that unenviable distinction described by the homely but expressive term shiftless. The following description, from Mrs. S. C. Hall's "Sketches of Irish Character,"* furnishes an admirable illustration of the results of a want ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... commands; and, most significant of all, he has lived! That is the point! He has not starved to death. Not only has he been care-free and happy, but he has lived! And from the knowledge that he has idled and is still alive, he achieves a new outlook on life; and the more he experiences the unenviable lot of the poor worker, the more the blandishments of the "road" take hold of him. And finally he flings his challenge in the face of society, imposes a valorous boycott on all work, and joins the far-wanderers of Hoboland, the gypsy ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... to have taken a desperate step. Miss Jane Marston, Della's sister-in-law, had always been the superfluous member of her family. Such unenviable tasks as amusing or teaching the younger children, sewing, or making up whist sets, had, as is usual with the odd members in a family, fallen to her share. All this Miss Marston hated in a slow, ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... An unenviable notoriety in this respect attached to William Maule (created Baron Panmure 1831). He was the second son of the eighth Earl of Dalhousie, but on succeeding, through his grandmother, to the estates of the Earls of Panmure, he had assumed ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... before filled with rage toward Tarzan of the Apes, stood close to the battling pair, his red-rimmed, wicked little eyes glaring at them. What was passing in his savage brain? Did he gloat over the unenviable position of his recent tormentor? Did he long to see Sheeta's great fangs sink into the soft throat of the ape-man? Or did he realize the courageous unselfishness that had prompted Tarzan to rush to the rescue and imperil his life ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... by scores. One of their favorite remedies, when the scourge first makes its appearance, is to plunge into the nearest river, by which they think to purify themselves. This course, however, in reality, tends to shorten their existence. When the small pox rages among the Aborigines, a most unenviable position is held by their "Medicine Man." He is obliged to give a strict account of himself; and, if so unfortunate as to lose a chief, or other great personage, is sure to pay the penalty by parting with his own life. The duties of the "Medicine Man" among the Indians ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... womanhood, as for instance, the possession of a sixth toe or finger, would in the eyes of the multitude go far toward making a man morally objectionable. It was, perhaps, because I wished to save my friend Storm from this unenviable lot that I always contended that he was yet a promising candidate ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... out against him which had no foundation in fact. These things alone would have had a tendency to embitter his heart and to make him rail at the so-called justice of the land. But when we add to this the fact that he was of a proud, sensitive nature, that he shrank from the unenviable notoriety to which he had been exposed, and that he writhed under the things that had been said about him, it can be easily seen that his whole nature rose up in revolt. Everything in the gaol aroused his antagonism, and made him bitter and revengeful. The daily ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... of their own number, to be condemned and reprobated without a protest. The knotted lash of Jonathan Swift was never more worthily applied, than to "the Legion Club," which he has consigned to such an unenviable immortality. Swift's inspiration may have been mingled with bitter disappointment and personal revenge; but, whatever motives animated him, his fearless use of his great abilities must always make him the first political, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... contrived to keep our legs. The ship was running before the wind, and rolling considerably, and the motion, aided by the wine and the act of plucking aside the flag, might have precipitated the captain into his unenviable situation; he thought otherwise. No sooner was he placed upon his feet, and his mouth sufficiently clear from the salt water decoction of hog-wash, than he collared the poor victim of persecution, and spluttered out, "Mutiny—mu—mu—mutiny—sentry. ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... that, among these venerable surroundings, availing himself of whatever was good in former things, and eking out their imperfection with the results of modern ingenuity, the Master might lead a not unenviable life. On the cloistered side of the quadrangle, where the dark oak panels made the enclosed space dusky, I beheld a curtained window reddened by a great blaze from within, and heard the bubbling and squeaking of something— doubtless very nice and succulent—that was being cooked ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with the Governor General, Mr. Gohr, the Director of Justice—who at present is in the unenviable position of having many critics in Europe, usually imperfectly informed of the details and evidence laid before the judges—Mr. Vandamme, who knows everyone and everything connected with the State, Commandant and Madame Sillye, Judge ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... the interview ended. Public feeling among the drummer-boys rose to fever pitch and the lives of Jakin and Lew became unenviable. Not only had they been permitted to enlist two years before the regulation boy's age—fourteen—but, by virtue, it seemed, of their extreme youth, they were allowed to go to the Front—which thing ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... of the reformers, was born at Vezelai, in the Nivernois, in 1519, and was originally a Catholic, and intended for the law. At the age of twenty, he gained an unenviable reputation by the composition of Latin poetry which was at once elegant and licentious, and which, some years afterwards, he published under the title of "Juvenile Poems." Though not in orders, he possessed benefices ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... central government, as in the case of the Su-chow-Ning-po line, and notably in the matter of the Tientsin-Pukau (Nanking) railway. In that case the provincial authorities overrode the central government, with the result that "for wholesale jobbery, waste and mismanagement the enterprise acquired unenviable notoriety in a land where these things are generally condoned." The good record of one or two lines notwithstanding, the management of the railways under Chinese control had proved, up to 1910, inefficient and corrupt.[23] Nevertheless, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... doctrines were zealously propagated by an ever-growing number of itinerant exhorters. The Spanish alliance was disastrous to English fortunes abroad and distasteful to all patriotic Englishmen at home. And finally, the violent means which the queen took to stamp out heresy gave her the unenviable surname of "Bloody" and reacted in the end in behalf of the views for which the victims sacrificed their lives. During her reign nearly three hundred reformers perished, many of them, including Archbishop Cranmer, by ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... from his unenviable situation, and Zeb put in his place. The negro made no threats or declaration, but submitted to the trying ordeal without a word. The scenes through which he had passed had evidently had some effect upon him. He seemed to possess a faint ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... continued to increase, Captain Markham was not the man to put back into port as long as he could possibly keep the sea. He had a good deal of the Flying Dutchman spirit about him, without the profanity of that far-famed navigator, which has so justly doomed him to so unenviable ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... considerable. The first was my terror of the hobbledehoy girls, to whom (from the demands of my situation) I was obliged to lay myself so open. The other, if less momentous, was more mortifying. In early days, at my mother's knee, as a man may say, I had acquired the unenviable accomplishment (which I have never since been able to lose) of singing Just before the Battle. I have what the French call a fillet of voice, my best notes scarce audible about a dinner-table, and the upper register rather to be regarded as a higher ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... of what she is doing or the essential character of the means she is employing, she runs wild and soon earns an unenviable reputation, which she either cannot live down or which she feels obliged to live up to in order to satisfy her craving for attention. Many a girl has gone wrong simply because she felt that it ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... of New England were gradually extended to the other colonies, but not without calling forth some opposition in some of them, especially where there was opposition to the use of the Bible. This fact has been rendered quite memorable, by the rather unenviable remark of Governor Berkeley of Virginia in 1670, to the effect, "I thank God, there are no ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... was the last of the statesmen of the middle period of our history whom it was my fortune to meet. As a whole, and as individuals their fortunes were unenviable. They struggled against the order of things. They accomplished nothing, unless it may be said of them, that they kept the ship afloat. Their memories deserve commiseration, possibly gratitude. No effort ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... in this case had not been produced by the causes to which I have attributed it, or if my views of their duties and the present importance of their rigid performance were other than they are, I should have cheerfully acquiesced and attempted to find others who would accept the unenviable trust; but I can not consent to appoint directors of the bank to be the subservient instruments or silent spectators of its abuses and corruptions, nor can I ask honorable men to undertake the thankless duty with the certain prospect of being rebuked by the Senate for its faithful performance ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... another head rises; that of Chaucer's great friend, John Gower. Unlike Chaucer in this, Gower hated and despised common people; when he allows them room in his works, the place assigned to them is an unenviable one. He is aristocratic and conservative by nature, so that he belongs to old England as much as to the new nation, and is the last in date of the recognisable representatives of Angevin Britain. Like the latter, Gower hesitates between several ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... of Pharaoh to his too tractable slaves, introduces us to the story of the birth and preservation of Moses. His mother—unenviable name in this sad season of calamity!—his weeping mother, by a thousand schemes, such as maternal fondness and ingenuity would naturally devise to save the little darling of her heart, contrived to conceal this "goodly child" for the space of three months; but finding it impossible ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... England with very unenviable sensations. A cloud seemed to hang over the fate of his brother, which no speculations of his could pierce. Numberless were the conjectures he formed, as to the real causes of George's sickness and mental depression. It was in vain he re-read the letters, and varied ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... the history of the Chicago club had any of its teams ever started a pennant race so badly as did the Chicago "Colts" in 1894. They finished the April campaign with the unenviable record of eight defeats out of nine games played, they then being a bad tail-ender in the race, with the poor percentage figures of .111 only. They remained in the last ditch up to May 10th, by which date they had won but two games out of thirteen played, the result being ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... for instance," said Charles Larkyns, "which always contained a full, true, and particular account of his Wheatley doings. He used to go over there, Verdant, to indulge in the noble sport of cock-fighting, for which he had a most unamiable and unenviable weakness; that was the reason why he was called 'Cocky' Palmer. His elder brother - who was a Pembroke man - was distinguished by the pronomen 'Snuffy,' to express his excessive partiality for that ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... for some time remarked that Delphin was openly paying his attentions to Madeleine, and the more plainly her sharp eyes took in the situation, the more clearly did she perceive that she had been relegated to the unenviable position of third person. She knew that Delphin had been used to the society of Christiania; he was neither so young nor so green as most of her father's assistants, and she therefore found his society agreeable. But when she found that, as usual, he began at once to show his admiration ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... anti-suffragists—undoubtedly by some vicious element among the men which had its own good reason for opposing us. The "antis" also suffered in this campaign from the "pernicious activity" of their spokesman—a lawyer with an unenviable reputation. After the campaign was over this man declared that it had cost the opponents ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... may possibly escape general obloquy, for his part in the crime was no greater than that of Pilate, who sought to wash his hands of innocent blood; but von Bissing will enjoy "until the last syllable of recorded time" the unenviable fame of Judge Jeffreys. He, too, was an able Judge and probably believed that he was executing justice, but because he did not execute it in mercy, but with a ferocity that has made his name a synonym for judicial tyranny, the world has condemned him to lasting infamy, and this ...
— The Case of Edith Cavell - A Study of the Rights of Non-Combatants • James M. Beck
... John Anderson an unenviable reputation among sailors. It was seldom that the same crew served him twice. Two voyages under this tartar were more than could be stood, and from his subordinates, therefore, he gained nothing ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... and the clapping of hands and kicking of heels was most satisfactory. There was at any rate no prejudice at the onset. "English Ladies and Gentlemen," he said, "I am in the unenviable position of having to say hard things to you for about an hour and a half together, if I do not drive you from your seats before my lecture is done. And this is the more the pity because I could talk to you for three hours about your country and not say an ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... de Commarin was not one of those who possess the rather questionable and at times unenviable accomplishment of pleasing every one. He was wise enough to distrust those astonishing personages who are always praising everybody. In looking about us, we often see men of success and reputation, who are simply dolts, without any merit except their perfect insignificance. ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... bitterly accusing himself of timidity and he needed sustenance for his waning faith in his own temerity. It was characteristic of him that he should pick an easy beginning, as a timid swimmer seeks proficiency in shallow water. Sol Breck had the unenviable reputation of one who never declined battle—and never emerged from one crowned with victory. Joe hurled at him the challenge of the fighting epithet and after a brief but animated combat had him down and ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... condemned for it, her woman's prerogative was recognized nevertheless. But for a lady, and ward of a priest, to dance in public and for money, was a thing unheard of; and gossip was fast giving her an unenviable reputation. This latest escapade, as it was generally termed, had nearly cost her her position in the school. When, however, it was taken into consideration that her services were gratuitous and that it would be impossible to replace her by any one ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... him the scandal such a measure would give rise to, and urged him not to place himself in such an unenviable position, but he insisted that he was willing to let society have its fling, and that if I would consent to the child's adoption, he would take the responsibility attached ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... many weeks of pleasant comradeship, Cuthbert found himself in the unenviable position of standing rival to his friend in the affections of Cherry, and the more he thought about it the less he liked the situation. He could not give Cherry up—that was out of the question; besides, had he renounced her twenty times over, that would not improve ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... alike were wont to agree in giving Catherine Street an unenviable reputation. Gay is specially outspoken in his description of that thoroughfare and the class by which it used to be haunted. It was in this street, too, that Jessop's once flourished, "the most disreputable night house of London." That nest of iniquity, however, has long been cleared ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... had time to clear his brain and think what he had better do or say in his present unenviable dilemma. For some time past a suspicion had been growing in his mind, until it had now almost swollen into certainty. He felt that, before he compromised himself, or allowed his too generous entertainers ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... happened to hear this remark, and as soon as it was generally known, created the greatest consternation among them, and upon arriving at Kelley's Island and not receiving the messenger promised by Cole, they were in a very unenviable position. To go to Sandusky they would be arrested; the only course they could take to save their own lives and liberty, was that which they eventually adopted. Capt. Beall, after hearing this report, quickly determined ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... To make or to refute such a statement implies so wide a knowledge of contrasted civilizations that to most of us the words have no significance. It is true that certain communities have earned for themselves in the course of centuries an unenviable reputation for discourtesy. The Italians say "as rude as a Florentine"; and even the casual tourist (presuming his standard of manners to have been set by Italy) is disposed to echo the reproach. The Roman, with the civilization of the world at his back, is naturally, one might ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... among cobwebs in the fosse, stung by cold till he shivered as in a quartan ague, suffering alternately the chagrin of the bungler self-discovered and the apprehension of a looming fate whose nature could only be guessed at, was in a state unenviable, Argyll himself was scarcely less unhappy. It was not only that his Chamberlain's condition grieved him, but that the whole affair put him in a quandary where the good citizen quarrelled in him with another old Highland gentleman whose ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... they were neglected, matters could not be much worse than they were at present. As the new commissioners had merely to take a message and were credited with no discretionary power, it was thought unnecessary to burden the higher magnates of the State with the unenviable task, or to expose them to the undignified predicament of finding their representations flouted by a rebel who might have eventually to be recognised as a king. A chance was given to younger members of the senatorial ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... he received a notification from his steward that Varvara Pavlovna had asked for the first quarter's allowance. Then worse and worse rumors began to reach him; at last, a tragic-comic story was reported with acclamations in all the papers. His wife played an unenviable part in it. It was the finishing stroke; Varvara Pavlovna had become ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... the next seven years do not concern you, gentlemen. I had one aim in life—to forget. I earned an unenviable reputation for foolhardy enterprises. Until this very hour, no man has known why I did the things that I did do. From the time that I left India until the moment when fate literally threw me in the way of the late Sir Charles Abingdon, I had heard nothing of the cult of Fire-Tongue; ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... Paesti—have supplied the theme of every Roman poet from Vergil to Ausonius. Yet in spite of its apparent prosperity, the seeds of coming decline had already been sown. Strabo tells us that even in early Imperial days the city was obtaining an unenviable reputation for malaria: a circumstance that was due to the over-flowing of the unwholesome streamlet, the Salso, whose reeking and fever-bearing waters began to impregnate the earth. Engineering works on a large scale were ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... some time of his friends at Brudenell Hall. He knew that Mr. Middleton had a first-class school at his house, and he envied the privileged young gentlemen who had the happiness to attend it: little knowing how unenviable a privilege the said young gentlemen considered that attendance and how a small portion of happiness ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... and that he who begins with the little, will rapidly pass on to the much! I am also additionally urged to these mournful disclosures, from their forming one portion only, of Mr. Coleridge's life. It has been my unenviable lot, to exhibit my friend in his lowest points of depression; conflicting with unhallowed practices, and, as the certain consequence, with ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... pay goes to his family—were as much required of every employer and his the burden of proving the accident the fault of the employee, how the safety appliances in factories would multiply. There is a man attached to Ancon hospital whose unenviable duty it is to write a letter of condolence to the relatives in ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... of things we succeeded to this unenviable position of general butt. The Dutch had thriven under it pretty well, and there was hope that we could at least contrive to worry along. And we certainly did in a very redoubtable fashion. Perhaps we deserved some of the sarcasm ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... restrict the freedom, and efficiency of the church. Had either Philip, or, after him, Louis, succeeded, by linking the Catholic cause to his personal ambition, in realizing his dream of universal monarchy, Europe would most likely have been plunged into a political and social condition as unenviable as that into which old Asia has been plunged for these four hundred years; and it may well be believed that it was Providence that raised and directed the tempest that scattered the Grand Armada, and that gave victory to the arms of Eugene ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... every good resolution she had once made to marry Le Gardeur de Repentigny and become a reputable matron in society. Her ambitious fantasies dimmed every perception of duty to her own heart as well as his; and she had worked herself into that unenviable frame of mind which possesses a woman who cannot resolve either to consent or deny, to accept her lover or ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... should easily feign ignorance of his offence. An Elizabethan distich—familiar to all barristers, but too rudely worded for insertion in this page—informs us that in the sixteenth century Gray's Inn had an unenviable notoriety amongst legal hospices for the shamelessness of its female inmates. But the pungent lines must be regarded as a satire aimed at certain exceptional members, rather than as a vivacious picture of ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... collapsed. Miss Paul had been given the maximum sentence of seven months, and at the end of five weeks the Administration was forced to acknowledge defeat. They were in a most unenviable position. If she and her comrades had offended in such degree as to warrant so cruel a sentence, (with such base stupidity on their part in administering it) she most certainly deserved to be detained for the full sentence. The truth is, every idea of theirs ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... a long hour, but presently there came the distinct dip of oars. In spite of my unenviable position I felt excited. I thought there were two boats. Naturally there would be. The dinghy was small; crew and confederates could not have got ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... forcible, his knowledge of Greek literature and philosophy far from contemptible. He enjoyed the society of Sophists and distinguished rhetoricians, and so far affected authorship as to win the unenviable title of Graeculus in his own lifetime: yet he never neglected state affairs. Owing to his untiring energy and vast capacity for business, he not only succeeded in reorganising every department of the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... in the life of the country at large, doubly dark in the life of the Jews. The power of absolutism, banished by the March revolution from the European West, asserted itself with intensified fury in the land of the North, which had about that time earned the unenviable reputation of the "gendarme of Europe." Thrown back on its last stronghold, absolutism concentrated its energy upon the suppression of all kinds of revolutionary movements. In default of such a ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... French distinguished themselves greatly. Anaverdy Khan was defeated and slain. His son, Mahommed Ali, who was afterwards well known in England as the Nabob of Arcot, and who owes to the eloquence of Burke a most unenviable immortality, fled with a scanty remnant of his army to Trichinopoly; and the conquerors became at once masters of almost ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... late, the lake had been her favourite haunt. Caribou Lake enjoys an unenviable reputation for weather; Bela thought nothing of crossing the ten miles ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... we have heard it surmised that the defence means to claim that it was Cory's. Cory doubtless went on his errand of forgiveness unarmed, and beyond doubt the second weapon belonged to the woman herself, who has an unenviable record. ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... was bound for Mobile, where he intended establishing a mercantile house in connection with a gentleman named Waldron, a native of Portsmouth, who had resided several years in Charleston. I had one brief interview with him, but no opportunity offered of entering into the details of my unenviable position on board the John. On a hint from me that I was dissatisfied, and should not object to accompany him in the Edwin, he gravely shook his head, and remarked that such a course would be unusual and improper; that he was about to retire from the sea; that it would ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... treatment was bad and torture still occasionally practised; but he nowhere found things so bad as in England. In Holland the prisons were so neat and clean as to make it difficult to believe that they were prisons: and they were used as models for the legislation of 1779. One cause of this unenviable distinction of English prisons had been indicated by an earlier investigation. General Oglethorpe (1696-1785) had been started in his philanthropic career by obtaining a committee of the House of Commons in 1729 to inquire into the state of the gaols. The foundation of the colony ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... desperate as to make his name dreaded even in Paris. On one occasion, at a cafe, he had cut a bullying hussar's head clean off with his own sabre for knocking a woman down; and in another duel, where he had detected a French count cheating him at cards, he shot his nose off for a bet. With this unenviable reputation, and at the urgent solicitations of his agent, after years of absence he returned to his ancestral home. We met as of old—it was Paul and Henry—and though still the same restive, hot-headed spirit as he had ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... though thus limited by a jealous sovereign and an early death, has left little which we can reasonably deplore but its brevity; while that brevity itself throws around his character the last touches of romantic interest, and assigns him the not unenviable lot of having carried off the rewards of age without its infirmities, and borne a maturity of honors into the safe asylum of ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... rumour that he was a "stickit minister," that is, one who had failed in the attempt to preach; and when the presbytery dismissed him on the charge of heresy, there had been many tears on the part of his pupils, and much childish defiance of his unenviable successor. ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... saw off there when we passed northward. However, we saw nothing but a brig inside the harbour, sailing close along the land. Late on the evening of the 28th, when rounding Cape St. Angelo, a squall from the high land carried away our fore and second masts, and left us in a very unenviable situation, considering we had but a few hours' coals on board. However, a breeze favouring us all night, we arrived here at ten A.M., 29th May. Upon the foremast we ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... happened in New Orleans a few years later, where General Butler commanded, and gained the unenviable sobriquet of "Beast" by his war upon the women and those not engaged in the struggle, and by trampling upon every right and liberty sacred to the people. He had issued some degrading order, which the citizens were bound in pain of death to obey. One brave man, Mumford, refused, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... and the other 2 had long been past all hopes of recovery, so that the death of these 3 men in one day did not in the least alarm us.* (* These were the last deaths directly attributable to the dysentery contracted at Batavia. Though always enjoying an unenviable reputation, Batavia seems to have had, this year, a more unhealthy season than usual. The Endeavour lost seven persons while at Batavia, and twenty-three after sailing up to this date.) On the contrary, we are in hopes ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... not inconvenient; our landlord is an hosier. I am sure I have a thousand reasons to rejoice that I am so little known: for my present situation is, in every respect, very unenviable; and I would not, for the world, be seen by ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... That's what's so horrible, that such dark deeds have ceased to horrify us. What ought to horrify us is that we are so accustomed to it, and not this or that isolated crime. What are the causes of our indifference, our lukewarm attitude to such deeds, to such signs of the times, ominous of an unenviable future? Is it our cynicism, is it the premature exhaustion of intellect and imagination in a society that is sinking into decay, in spite of its youth? Is it that our moral principles are shattered to their foundations, or is it, perhaps, a complete lack of such principles among us? ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... clear that Monroe had omitted to explain properly our reasons for treating with England, that he had held out hopes to the French government which were totally unauthorized, that he had brought on a renewal of the hostilities of that government, and that he had placed us in all ways in the most unenviable light, Washington recalled him, and appointed Charles Cotesworth Pinckney in his place. By this time too he was thoroughly disgusted with Monroe's performances, and in his letter to Pinckney, on July 8, 1796, offering him the appointment to Paris, he said: ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... escort them to some place of safety; therefore, there was little chance that the missionaries would try to make a bolt. Instead of being in the position of a cat that watches silently and springs when the mouse breaks cover, he was in the unenviable condition now of being forced to make the first move. Over and over again he cursed the men who had made Ali Partab prisoner, and over and over again: he wondered how—by all the gods of all the multitudinous Hindoo mythology—how, ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... defences of these islands, for such misgovernment produces discontent, and discontent is the best ally of the invader. Alter that by Home Rule, and your cause instantly becomes ours. Give the Irish nation an Irish State to defend, and the task of an invader becomes very unenviable. As for levying war on Great Britain, we have no inclination in that direction. The best thought in Ireland has always preferred civilisation to war, and we have no wealth to waste on expensive stupidities of any kind. In ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... English poetry offers no more interesting case between poet and critic than that of John Keats. The imputed influence of a savage critique in hastening the death of the poet has given the Quarterly Review an unenviable notoriety which clings in spite of the efforts of scholars to establish the truth. To many students, Keats, Endymion, and Quarterly are practically connotative terms; and this is a direct result of the righteous but misguided indignation of Shelley—misguided ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... that once upon a time he had seen Black Madge, who was the daughter of a Frenchwoman by an Italian father; Black Madge, who had already made an unenviable record for herself on both sides ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... by Feversham, in command of the royal forces at Bridgewater, after the battle of Sedgemoor. He had already gained an unenviable notoriety, as governor of Tangier, where he displayed the worst vices of a tyrant and a sensualist; and his regiment had imitated him in his disgraceful brutality. But this leader and these troops were now let loose on the people of ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... gave way to despair. There are few conditions in life so utterly unenviable as penury and love—to be next door to starving, and at the same time in love. Day after day Shiel, who was thus afflicted, had revelled in Gladys's company, and had intoxicated himself with her beauty, fully aware that for each moment of pleasure there would, later on, be a corresponding ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... the end of the Foam; and such will, in every ease, probably be the concluding scene of piratical craft and their crews now-a-days. They certainly deserve no better; and although their captains, to rise to that unenviable post, must possess some of those fiercer qualities which people are apt to admire, I have no fancy for making them interesting characters, or heroes ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... the Standard Oil Company, however, was not due solely to the alliance with the railroads, although this advantage came at a strategic time when it was fighting for supremacy. Its marketing department gave it an unenviable reputation, but achieved amazing success. The department was organized to cover the country, find out everything possible about competitors, and then kill them off by price-cutting or other means. The great resources of the Company enabled it to undersell rivals, going ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... wind, and each time the boat rolls from side to side she is liable to dip the end of her heavy boom in the water and "trip herself up." When a boat trips up she does not necessarily go down, but she is likely to upset, placing the young sailors in an unenviable, if not dangerous, position. Fourth, when the craft begins to swagger before the wind she is liable to "goose neck," that is throw her boom up against the mast, which is another accident fraught with the possibilities of ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... the difficulties which beset the new Prime Minister brings home a sense of his unenviable position. Ireland was on the verge of starvation and revolt; everywhere in Europe the rebellions which culminated in 1848 were beginning to stir, seeming then more formidable than they really were in their immediate consequences; in England the Chartist movement was thought ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... of the typical animals of the far North. It has an unenviable reputation for being the greatest plague that the hunter knows. Its habit of following to destroy all traps for the sake of the bait is the prime cause of man's hatred, and its cleverness in eluding his efforts at retaliation give it still ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... I commanded in Louisiana and Texas my position was a most unenviable one. The service was unusual, and the nature of it scarcely to be understood by those not entirely familiar with the conditions existing immediately after the war. In administering the affairs of those States, I never acted except by authority, ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... Clay was one of unenviable distinction and power. He could not be elected President, but he could, it was believed, determine which of his rivals should have the coveted office. His own State favored Jackson as a second choice; but Clay wrote to a friend that he could not consider ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... and rival bookseller to, Gaine in seventeen hundred and sixty was James Rivington. Mr. Hildeburn has given Rivington a rather unenviable reputation; still, as he occasionally printed (?) a child's book, Mr. Hildeburn's ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... looking down, wondering how on earth he was to endure this stark publicity. He was there poised bleakly for all to see, an unenviable position. And there was no escape. He must stand there, because it was his job, and recover from the nervousness that had come from finding himself so abruptly thrust on to this veritable pillar of Stylites in the midst of an interested and ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... be wise to trust yourself ashore alone with those fellows?" I asked. "You must remember that we have seen very little of them, thus far; and it will be well to keep in mind, too, the fact that they have rather an unenviable reputation for treachery. Why not order so many canoe-loads of wood from them, and let it go ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... to a much greater extent than the man who, he says, drove him to the act of mutiny. After giving an account of the manner of his death, Captain Beechey says, 'Thus fell a man who, from being the reputed ringleader of the mutiny, has obtained an unenviable celebrity, and whose crime may perhaps be considered as in some degree palliated by the tyranny which led to its commission.' It is to be hoped, such an act as he was guilty of will ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... appeared to be no one on whom he could visit his wrath. Dismissing the under-gardeners curtly, he was forced to return to his work in a very unenviable frame of mind, suspicious ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... advanced concerning the supreme position of Adriano Lemmi, who, further, himself denies it, and, whatever his past history, is as much entitled to belief as accusers who betray their true character in this unenviable manner. ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... woman succeeded in achieving an unenviable notoriety in 1809. The daughter of a printer residing in Bowl and Pin Alley, near White's Alley, Chancery Lane, the remarkably intelligent girl had early attracted the notice of friends, one of whom placed her at a boarding school, where she picked up an education ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... of the troubles and afflictions incident to the unenviable office of Governor of a colony. Those innocent country gentlemen who have expended the better part of their property on contested elections, and now weary heaven and Her Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State for colonial appointments, little know what they invoke upon themselves. In my opinion ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... Committee of the Whole, having been concurred in, etc., the Joint Resolution, as originally reported by the Judiciary Committee, was at last passed, (April 8th)—by a vote of 38 yeas to 6 nays—Messrs. Hendricks and McDougall having the unenviable distinction of being the only two Senators, (mis-)representing Free States, who voted against this definitive Charter ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... four years on her travels, and during those four years, I must confess, I had played a rather strange and unenviable part in regard to her. When in earlier days she had told me she was going on the stage, and then wrote to me of her love; when she was periodically overcome by extravagance, and I continually had to send her first one and ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... first sight, wildly improbable, but it is at any rate an almost incredible coincidence. With your knowledge of the law I need scarcely remind you that the facts as you have just recounted them place you in a rather unenviable position." ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... meaning of it all. At first a great rage filled her heart at the thought of Stephen Frenelle talking in such a way to her husband. But when the papers had been read her anger was changed to fear, which was much increased by Farrington's excited condition. She realized that he was placed in an unenviable position, but thought not so much of the meanness of his deed as of what the neighbours would say. How could she ever hold up her head again? she wondered. How the women would talk! And then to think that Si was in danger ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... town beyond Yonkers, covers the old Post Estate. In early times the inhabitants seem to have developed a rather unenviable reputation as sports, cock fights and horse racing being mentioned as the principal amusements. Here, in 1776, a troop of Sheldon's Horse ambuscaded a body of Hessians, only one of whom escaped. Peter Post, ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine
... first arrival at York, had taken up his quarters at a public house. The York inns of the period had an unenviable reputation, and were widely different from the Queen's and Rossin of the present day. Some of my readers will doubtless remember John Gait's savage fling at them several years later. To parody Dr. Johnson's characterization of ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... of Labor, and a congressional committee devoted their time to numerous investigations, thereby giving immense satisfaction to those obscure agitators who were lifted suddenly into the glare of universal notoriety, to the disgust of the town thus dragged into unenviable publicity, and to the discomfiture of ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... unpleasantly fast; then, with a quick sense of relief, she recollected that only at spring tides was the little bay where she stood entirely under water. There was no danger, she reflected, but nevertheless her position was decidedly unenviable. It was not yet high tide, so it would be some hours at least before she would be able to make her way home, and meanwhile the sun was sinking fast, it was growing unpleasantly cold, and she was decidedly hungry. In ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... ignorant savage, it is true, but he was possessed of a dauntless courage, a persistency of purpose, and an unscrupulous craftiness and ambitiousness of character which would have won him distinction of a certain unenviable kind in any community. Already his brain was teeming with vague unformed plots of the wildest and most audaciously extravagant description, the possibility of which he was determined to ascertain for himself, and the maturing of which he was quite prepared ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... offspring of prolific Thetys, and daughters of Ocean your sire, who rolls around the whole earth in his unslumbering stream; look upon me, see clasped in what bonds I shall keep an unenviable watch on the topmost crags ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... family, had settled upon her as the wife for his nephew, Ignacio Borgia. He had been emboldened to this step by the fact that her only protector was her brother, Filippo di Santafior, whom they had sought to coerce. It was her brother, who, seeing himself in a dangerous and unenviable position, had secretly suggested flight to her, urging her to repair to her kinsman Giovanni Sforza at Pesaro. Her flight, however, must have been speedily discovered and the Borgias, who saw in that act a defiance of their supreme ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... unregenerate man—to mark their hue and their multitude, it would be found that they are indeed 'evil.' We speak not of the thief, and the murderer, and the adulterer, and such like, whose crimes draw down the cognizance of earthly tribunals, and whose unenviable character it is to take the lead in the paths of sin; but we refer to the men who are marked out by their practice of many of the seemliest moralities of life—by the exercise of the kindliest affections, and the interchange ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... o'clock, when silence had reigned for a quarter of an hour, there entered with much bustle the last occupant of the bedroom. She was a young woman with a morally unenviable reputation, though some of her colleagues certainly envied her. Money came to her with remarkable readiness whenever she had need of it. As usual, she began to talk very loud, at first with innocent vulgarity; exciting a little laughter, she became anecdotic and very scandalous. ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... commencement of the 7th century, Archilochus, a native of this place, harnessed his ribaldries better, and put them into a "light horse gallop." He raised the Iambic style and metre so as to obtain the unenviable notoriety of having been the first to dip his pen in viper's gall. Good cause had he for his complaints, for a young lady's father, one Lycambes, refused to give him his daughter's hand. There was apparently some difficulty about the marriage gifts—the poet having nothing to give but ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... the rare biographical details which, as has been explained, may "force the consigne" here, is that Beyle in his youth, and almost up to middle age, was acquainted with an old lady who had the very unenviable reputation of having actually "sat ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... gazing silently out into the deserted street, lighted only by the brilliant moon. They began now to feel that their position was critical, and Bert, who more easily yielded to the depressing effects of circumstances, bemoaned his fate and all the series of events that had led up to their present unenviable plight. He was inclined to blame Harry for the ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... I have sometimes thought I might consider it worth while to set up a school for instruction in the art. "Poetry taught in twelve lessons." Congenital idiocy is no disqualification. Anybody can write "poetry." It is a most unenviable distinction to leave published a thin volume of verse, which nobody wanted, nobody buys, nobody reads, nobody cares for except the author, who cries over its pathos, poor fellow, and revels in its beauties, which he has all to himself. Come! who will be my pupils ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... The aristocratic class of the Jews is formed of men of wealth—of wealth honourably acquired, and thus open to every man: but unless the strictest regard be had to the education of our co-religionists, we shall have that class, noted only for its money and its ignorance, shamed into an unenviable notoriety by an indifference to the wants of the majority, and dragged downwards with them into one general obscurity. As wealth is within the attainment of poorer orders, the requisite education should be at once provided for ...
— Suggestions to the Jews - for improvement in reference to their charities, education, - and general government • Unknown
... for the citizens, has not been very stirring, apart from the few incidents already briefly mentioned. Executions in the Market Place seem to have had an unenviable notoriety. The most dramatic of these was the beheading of the Duke of Buckingham in 1484. A headless skeleton dug up in 1835 during alterations to the "Saracen's Head," formerly the "Blue Boar," was popularly supposed to be his, though records appear ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... the Recollets at this time was unenviable. The agents of the merchants were not better disposed towards them than the interpreters. Some of these agents were demoralized, and the reproach that they received from the fathers caused them to avoid their presence. The conduct of some of these agents was so ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... I had forgotten my sweet companion for a moment. 'I am sorry,' said I, taking her hand, 'very sorry, that you think the United States so unenviable a place of residence. I hope, dear lady, to persuade you to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... principal river of Dalmatia and Herzegovina, by one of the numerous mouths which combine to form its delta. Its ancient name was the 'Naro,' and it is also called by Constantine Porphyrogenitus 'Orontium.' Later it acquired an unenviable notoriety, as being the haunt of the 'Narentine Pirates,' who issued thence to make forays upon the coast, and plundered or levied tribute on the trading vessels of the Adriatic. At one time they became so powerful as to be able to carry on a regular system of ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... after what had occurred, was an unenviable one, for he was placed in the cruel dilemma of either remaining in a home where his presence was not agreeable to the host and hostess, or abruptly leaving without having an understanding with the one he so dearly loved. He chose the latter alternative, and burning ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... the union between the divinity and true worshipers; but some interpret them in the most literal way possible. This is done especially by the followers of Vallabha Acharya.[28] These men attained a most unenviable notoriety about twenty years ago, when a case was tried in the Supreme Court of Bombay, which revealed the practice of the most shameful licentiousness by the religious teachers and their female followers, and this as a part of worship! The disgust ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... regret I must admit it's true. I have the unenviable fortune of being known as a man who does not observe the outer forms of conduct. It is on account of that characteristic I was fired from my position as government clerk, and it's on that account I am now frequently condemned ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... rheumatic, always rheumatic." The disease appears to be lost to all sense of decency and reason; and to such unprincipled lengths may it go, that I have actually known one luckless individual who had the unenviable record of seventeen separate and successive attacks of rheumatic fever. As he expressed it, he had "had rheumatism every spring but two for nineteen years past." Yet only one ankle-joint was appreciably the worse for ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... her married life a sway over her lord and master all the greater that neither of them was conscious of the fact. A most devoted and submissive wife, a most indulgent and affectionate mother, Mrs. Wedmore occupied the not unenviable position of being half slave, half ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... who had, through the necessity of defending, for fifteen years, an unenviable position between Isobel and Gyp, developed an unusual amount of assertiveness, was what his uncle fondly called "quite a boy." But the dignity of his first long trousers, at one glance, fell before the boyish mischievousness ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... have lived through other experiences and have seen much I cannot pretend to explain or understand; but, so far in my life, I have only once come across a human being who suggested a disagreeable familiarity with unholy things, and who made me feel uncanny and 'creepy' in his presence; and that unenviable individual was ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... and corruptions of language are supposed to originate in that unclassic section, while the truth is that the laws of polite English are as much violated on Fifth Avenue. Of course, the foreign element mincing their "pidgin" English have given the Bowery an unenviable reputation, but there are just as good speakers of the vernacular on the Bowery as elsewhere in the greater city. Yet every inexperienced newspaper reporter thinks that it is incumbent on him to hold the Bowery up to ridicule ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... L7 10s. a foot was paid. The hanging up of the northern land claims, and the inability of the Government to buy native land while it refused to let private persons do so, joined, with a trade collapse in Australia, to make the condition of the Auckland settlers soon almost as unenviable as that of their ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... his mastery of incisive diction, been poisoned with the bile of Swift, it is terrible to think what a repertory of biting sarcasms and envenomed repartees he might have transmitted for the study and imitation of cynics and sneerers. Bitterer enemies no man ever had to contend against; and unenviable indeed must have been their disappointment at finding themselves wholly impotent to discompose his sage and large-hearted serenity. So impressive, withal, is his spirit of toleration and benevolence that a diligent reader of his pages is, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... slipped away without that end being achieved he became worried and perplexed. His own position was an unenviable one, and his thoughts were far from pleasant. He felt that he had failed badly, and that his standing with his superiors in Scotland Yard was under a cloud in consequence. But he could not see where he had actually been at fault. It was such a damned amazing case. In most ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... the daughter of the Greek Emperor, and succeeded in expelling the Tartars, and making himself master of their city Kazan. He was followed by his son Vasilii, who was succeeded by Ivan IV., who has gained a very unenviable reputation on account of his cruelties. Already the yoke of the Tartars had begun to have a very deteriorating effect upon the Russian character, and the more sanguinary code of the Asiatics had effaced the tradition of the laws of Yaroslav. Mutilation, flagellation, ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... agency, and a very guilty agency, too. Inspector, I am but a child in your estimation, and I feel my position in this matter much more keenly than you do, but I would not be true to the man whom I have unwittingly helped to place in his present unenviable position if I did not tell you that, in my judgment, this cry was a spurious one, employed by the gentleman himself as an excuse for dropping ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... Arkansas, that they are born with skins like alligators, and with strength like bears. They work hard, and they play hard. Gaming is the recreation most indulged in, and the gaming-houses of the western part of Arkansas have branded it with an unenviable notoriety. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... known in Cheshire as "Gethsemane," and the red anemone, which has been termed the "blood-drops of Christ." A Flemish legend, too, accounts in the same way for the crimson-spotted leaves of the rood-selken. The plant which has gained the unenviable notoriety of supplying the crown of thorns has been variously stated as the boxthorn, the bramble, the buckthorns, [14] and barberry, while Mr. Conway quotes an old tradition, which tells how the drops of blood that fell from the crown of thorns, composed of the rose-briar, fell to the ground ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... on the street or at some place of amusement. Very often the proprietor of the house is simply victimized by such people, and several respectable houses have been so far overrun by them that decent persons have avoided them altogether. One or two of the smaller hotels of the city bear a most unenviable reputation of this kind. Even the first-class hotels cannot keep themselves entirely free from the presence of courtezans of the better class. Rich men keep their mistresses at them in elegant style, ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... midnight. And I just want to say, Jane, that the big country girl, Shirley Duncan, is the only one not terrified. But I suppose country girls are accustomed to wild things." Everyone seemed loath to add further criticism to Shirley's rather unenviable reputation. ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... thought that his position was very peculiar and very unenviable. He had just quarrelled with his best friend, and had just been saved from murdering him, for the sake of a girl whom he had ceased to love (or whom he believed he had ceased to love, which was the same thing just then); and now here was another of Katie's ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... encircled the smutted head of industrialism. They put the stamp of their genius on certain inhuman practices, and of course it has been the part of the academic mind to imitate them ever since. The orthodox economists are in the unenviable position of having taken their morals from the exploiter and of having translated them into the grandiloquent language of high public policy. They gave capitalism the sanction of the intellect. When later, Carlyle and Ruskin battered the economists into silence with invective ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... chairman of the congress, Howell Cobb. Corpulent even to grossness, he formed a curious contrast to the small and wasted forms of the two presidents elect, who sat at his side. The events of this day have given to every trait of these men a lasting and unenviable interest. Neither looked like a great man, neither like a man thoroughly bad. All the impressions produced by the first appearance of Mr. Davis were strengthened, without being changed, by a farther ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... almost universal character of this law it would be strange if these peculiar forms of dependence did not appear in the avian community. We do find such developments in that department of creation. Across the waters there is one bird that has won an unenviable reputation as a parasite: the European cuckoo relies almost wholly on the efforts of its more thrifty neighbors to hatch and rear its young, and thereby perpetuate the species. Strangely enough, our American cuckoos are not given to such slovenly habits, but build ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... and encouragement brightened up Davy's wits so much that he ceased before long to occupy that unenviable and lowly position, and astonished his teacher by his ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... rule; and, if the Roman commonwealth has presented all the different political functions and organizations more purely and normally than any other in ancient or modern times, it has also exhibited political disorganization-anarchy— with an unenviable clearness. It is a strange coincidence that in the same years, in which Caesar was creating beyond the Alps a workto last for ever, there was enacted in Rome one of the most extravagant political farces that was ever produced upon the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the German officers in their embarrassment. Here was the son of the old King whom they had raised, and whom they had deserted. What an unenviable office was theirs when they must make war upon, suppress, and make a feint of punishing, this man to whom they stood bound by a hereditary alliance, and to whose father they had already failed so egregiously! They were loyal ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... porters placed us in a very unenviable position; the train was due to start, the ladies were in the carriage, but the luggage was in a pile at the other side of the station, and Mr. Sydney, thinking all was well, had followed the ladies. I was requested to do likewise, as the train ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... seize the city and commence hostilities, and, in the event of their success, everything hitherto achieved would be lost. Or again, the destruction on his part of many fellow-creatures and allies was a terrible alternative, which would place the Spartans in an unenviable light with regard to the rest of Hellas, and render the soldiers ill-disposed to the cause in hand. Accordingly he took with him fifteen men, armed with daggers, and marched through the city. Falling in with one of the reed-bearers, a man suffering from ophthalmia, ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... the crown at this time were men whose names have justly acquired an unenviable notoriety. We must take heed, however, that we do not load their memory with infamy which of right belongs to their master. For the treaty of Dover the King himself is chiefly answerable. He held conferences on it with the French agents: he wrote many letters concerning it with ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Cambridge shall bee called Harvard Colledge." It appears that before this time there had been a school; but the name of college was not assumed until the above date. The teacher of this school was Mr. Nathaniel Eaton, who has left an unenviable reputation, and made an inauspicious beginning of that institution which was to attain to such distinction. He finally got into serious trouble, in consequence of his brutal conduct and for one act in particular, which led to his leaving ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... unenviable. He had been brought all the way across France, leaving his wife and family; he had, it seems, been met by no letters from his noble friends, who may well have ceased to expect him, so long was ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... chief character—at first! It was a case in which the Vicar's wife won an unenviable notoriety. It seemed there had been a secret in her life, years before when she was a pretty, silly girl, which was known to very few besides her husband and, I presume, her own people. Now you would not think I was a sympathetic person—one in whom ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... part of Tinker's education was the careful cultivation of his faculty of observation. Sir Tancred himself had a natural gift of understanding his fellow-creatures, which, along with his finer brain, little by little placed him in the noble but unenviable position of being the first person to whom his friends flew to be extricated from their scrapes. He had found that his gift stood him in such good stead in his varying fortunes that he spared no pains to equip Tinker with the ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... ally of the pope and the Jesuits in their efforts to check Protestantism in the latter half of the sixteenth century was the son of Charles V, Philip II. Like the Jesuits he enjoys a most unenviable reputation among Protestants. Certain it is that they had no more terrible enemy among the rulers of the day than he. He closely watched the course of affairs in France and Germany with the hope of promoting the cause of the Catholics. He eagerly forwarded every conspiracy against England's ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... an unenviable state of mind when he left me. I had an impulse to send for Miss McCoy and ask her if she had understood what Krebs was "driving at," but for reasons that must be fairly obvious I refrained. I read over again that part of Krebs's speech which dealt with the immediate ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Of course the man on the stretcher was dead—'dead drunk.' No questions were asked, therefore no untruths were told. The unit had the satisfaction of learning that their lines were satisfactory; but in a certain company's orderly-room the following morning a certain man had a most unenviable quarter of an hour in the presence of ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss |
