"Encumber" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was straddling up and down the room, a pent volcano ready to explode. He knew Whaley's advice was good. It would be suicide to encumber himself with this girl in his flight. But he had never disciplined his desires. He wanted her. He meant to take her. Passion, the lust for revenge, the bully streak in him that gloated at the sight of some one young and fine trembling before him: all ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... Stationery Office. (London, 1868.) What Sir Patrick says professionally of Scotch Marriages in this chapter is taken from this high authority. What the lawyer (in the Prologue) says professionally of Irish Marriages is also derived from the same source. It is needless to encumber these pages with quotations. But as a means of satisfying my readers that they may depend on me, I subjoin an extract from my list of references to the Report of the Marriage Commission, which any persons who may be so inclined can verify ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... go not, then they will be lost," I cried out in desperation. For Mary was shrieking that she would not go, and I knew that Humphrey did not know the way, and could not find it and launch the boat in time with that struggling maid to encumber him, for already the door trembled as if ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... which resisted his urgency. But I was averse to noting down, because I was conscious that it did better for me to keep the things in my head, if they suited my purpose; and if they did not, they would only encumber me. I knew that, when I wrote down, I put the thing out of my care, out of my head; and that, though it might be put by very safe, I should not know where to look for it; that the labour of looking ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... almost satisfied to abandon the pair, to let them take their wretched chance. But this was a climax which did not occur often; she returned, in most of her waking moments, to devising schemes by which Laura might be delivered into the hands she was so likely to encumber. The new French poet, the American novelist of the year, and a work by Mr. John Morley lay upon Alicia's table many days together for this reason. She sometimes remembered what she expected of these volumes, what plein air ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... are the hussars. How much more they carry to battle than at reviews. The hay in those great nets must encumber them. [She turns and sees that her daughter has become pale.] Ah, now I know! HE has just gone by. You exchanged signals with him, you wicked girl! How do you know what his character is, or ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... of mere rain and air must be attributed, I think, those vast deposits of boulder which encumber the mouths of all the southern glens, sometimes to a height of several hundred feet. Did one meet them in Scotland, one would pronounce them at once to be old glacier-moraines. But Messrs. Wall and Sawkins, in their geological survey of this island, have abstained ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... said the doctor, opening his eyes. "Would you really encumber yourself with a person whose reason is in suspense, and ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... leather satchel or bag, used by shepherds and others to carry a little food; sustenance, then, was also to be left uncared for. Dress, too, was to be limited to that in wear; no change of inner robe nor a spare pair of shoes was to encumber them, nor even a spare staff. If any of them had one in his hand, he was to take it (Mark vi. 8). The command was meant to lift the apostles above suspicion, to make them manifestly disinterested, to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... against the Neutrals. They carried two frontier villages, in one of which were more than 1600 men, the first at the end of autumn, the second early in the spring of 1651. The old men and children who might encumber them on their homeward journey were massacred. The number of captives was excessive, especially of young women, who were carried off to the Iroquois towns. The other more distant villages were seized with terror. ...
— The Country of the Neutrals - (As Far As Comprised in the County of Elgin), From Champlain to Talbot • James H. Coyne
... thoughts of other men; Wisdom in minds attentive to their own. Knowledge, a rude, unprofitable mass, The mere material with which Wisdom builds, Till smoothed, and squared, and fitted to its place, Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich. Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much, Wisdom is humble that he ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... first degree is to symbolize the struggles of a candidate groping in darkness for intellectual light, that of the second degree represents the same candidate laboring amid all the difficulties that encumber the young beginner in the attainment of learning and science. The Entered Apprentice is to emerge from darkness to light; the Fellow Craft is to come out of ignorance into knowledge. This degree, therefore, by fitting emblems, ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... last. And so notorious is all this, that the corruptions of Christianity, as years rolled on, have ever been to assimilate it to the other religions of the earth; to abate its spirituality; to relax its austere code of morals; to commute its proper claims for external observances; to encumber its ritual with an infinity of ceremonies; and, above all, to uncover the future and invisible, on which it left a veil, and add a purgatory into the bargain! Thus, whether contrasted with other religions or with its corrupted self, Christianity does not seem a religion ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... In 1848 Austria consumed 40,000 tons, of which 8,000 were beet-root. Last year (1851,) she produced 15,000 tons. The production of the continent rising to 200,000 tons, and the consumption remaining nearly stationary, it is evident that Brazilian and Cuban sugars will encumber the English market, independently of the refined sugar of Java, which Holland sends to Great Britain. When the continental system was established by the decrees of Milan and Berlin, the Emperor Napoleon asked the savans to point out the means of replacing the productions which he proscribed: it ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... the art, Great be the manners of the bard. He shall not his brain encumber With the coil of rhythm and number; But leaving rule and pale forethought He shall aye climb For his rhyme. 'Pass in, pass in,' the angels say, 'In to the upper doors, Nor count compartments of the floors, But mount to paradise By the ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... vestments, and making crosses of them, to be sewn on the shoulders of the people. An exhortation from the Pope was read to the multitude, granting remission of their sins to all who should join the Crusade, and directing that no man on that holy pilgrimage should encumber himself with heavy baggage and vain superfluities, and that the nobles should not travel with dogs or falcons, to lead them from the direct road, as had happened to so many during the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... moment, Delia had the sense to put a finger to her lip. The man wheel'd round without another word, led us aft over the blocks, cordage, and all manner of loose gear that encumber'd the deck, to a ladder that, toward the stern, led down into darkness. Here he sign'd to us to follow; and, descending first, threw open a door, letting out a faint stream of light in our faces. 'Twas the captain's cabin, ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... of civilisation have crumbled like sand-castles in a horror of anarchy. Thousands upon thousands of unburied dead, anticipating the more deliberate doom that comes and smokes, and rides and comes and comes, and does not fail, encumber the streets of London, Manchester, Liverpool. The guides of the nation have fled; the father stabs his child, and the wife her husband, for a morsel of food; the fields lie waste; wanton crowds carouse in our churches, universities, palaces, banks ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... sorrowful tone, "dis Massa Leo's." I recognised it indeed as the one Leo had with him. Fatigue alone could have made him throw it aside; and perhaps, hoping soon to reach the Europeans of whom he had heard, he would no longer encumber himself with it. Securing it to the ox's back, we went on still more eagerly, looking carefully about on every side. I expected every moment to overtake Leo. We went on for another mile or more, when to my dismay we found his rifle on the ground. That ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the onset was irresistible. In a few moments the walls were scaled, the streets flooded with the foe, the pavements covered with the dead, and the city on fire in an hundred places. The conquerors did not wish to encumber themselves with captives. All were slain. Laden with booty and crimsoned with the blood of their foes, the victors dispersed in every direction, burning and destroying, but encountering no resistance. During the month they took fourteen ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... praise and incense as the foundress of this community. It has been quite easy for her to found so vast an establishment with the treasures of France, since she herself had remained poor, by her own confession, and had neither to sell nor encumber Maintenon, ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... personal friend of George III. and a model gentleman of his day, that he would have made the tour of Europe without ever touching the back of his travelling carriage. But perhaps we should be most struck with the total absence of those elegant little articles which now embellish and encumber our drawing-room tables. We should miss the sliding bookcases and picture-stands, the letter-weighing machines and envelope cases, the periodicals and illustrated newspapers—above all, the countless swarm of photograph books which now threaten to swallow up all space. A small writing-desk, ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... a truck in that place in the street? In the first place, to encumber the street; next, in order that it might finish the process of rusting. There is a throng of institutions in the old social order, which one comes across in this fashion as one walks about outdoors, and which have no other reasons ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Ease was properly conducted, so that it might always appear to have Respect for its Motive; And only to act in Obedience to that, as the ruling Principle, it would then comprehend the just Plan of good Breeding; But as this was formerly encumber'd with Ceremonies and Embarrassments, so the modern good Breeding perhaps deviates too far into Negligence and Disregard; —A Fault more unpardonable than the former; As an Inconvenience, evidently proceeding from the Respect which is paid to us, ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... picking their way among the casks, cases, bales, packages and anchors, and guns stuck upright with their muzzles in the ground, and bits of iron chain and spars, and broken boats, and here and there a capstan or a windlass, tall cranes, and all sorts of other articles such as encumber the wharves of a mercantile seaport. As they went along the Baron asked the same question which he had put to the burly individual of several other persons whom he and his friend encountered; some laughed and did not take ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... and stood still, As it came soften'd up the hill, And deem'd it the lament of men 140 Who languish'd for their native glen; And thought how sad would be such sound, On Susquehanna's swampy ground, Kentucky's wood-encumber'd brake, Or wild Ontario's boundless lake, 145 Where heart-sick exiles, in the strain, Recall'd fair ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... which truly resist the toil of men, and conspire against their fame; which are cunning to consume, and {112} prolific to encumber; and of whose perverse and unwelcome sowing we know, and can say assuredly, "An enemy ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... his closed umbrella, which, in his precarious circumstances of travelling, he used in preference to a walking- stick, and no longer able to encumber himself with even the light load of his bag, he cast it amongst the brambles near him. Thinking, from the symptoms he felt, that he might not have many more hours to endure the ills of life, he staggered ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... Far from the struggling masses, whom the ditch Detain'd perforce; there many a royal car With broken pole th' unharness'd horses left. On, shouting to the Greeks, Patroclus press'd The flying Trojans; they, with panic cries, Dispers'd, the roads encumber'd; high uprose The storms of dust, as from the tents and ships Back to the city stretch'd the flying steeds; And ever where the densest throng appear'd With furious threats Patroclus urg'd his course; ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... particular practical rules.—"It is given as a rule by Fresnoy, that 'the principal figure of a subject must appear in the midst of the picture, under the principal light, to distinguish it from the rest.' A painter who should think himself obliged strictly to follow this rule, would encumber himself with needless difficulties; he would be confined to great uniformity of composition, and be deprived of many beauties which are incompatible with its observance. The meaning of this rule extends, or ought to extend, no further than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... autumn. In digging, great care should be taken to remove the small as well as the full-grown; for those not taken from the ground will remain fresh and sound during the winter, and send up in the spring new plants, which, in turn, will increase so rapidly, as to encumber the ground, and become troublesome. In localities where the crop has once been cultivated, though no plants be allowed to grow for the production of fresh tubers, yet the young shoots will continue to make their appearance from time to ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... for me to believe that Abel understood the Christian doctrine of redemption, is monstrous. There is no proof that Abel know anything about it. The probabilities lean all the other way. It is a pity those self-satisfied theorizers have not something else to do, than to encumber religion and perplex good ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... house. Doors open out of it to the right and left. A table stands in the centre of the room. Trunks and boxes encumber the floor, and preparations for departure are evident. TRIGORIN is sitting at a table eating his breakfast, and MASHA is ...
— The Sea-Gull • Anton Checkov
... early settlers of an exposed frontier, which has suffered severely from Indian wars, and other causes of depression. With the exception of divorce cases, there were really no bad laws passed; and no disposition manifested to excessive legislation, or to encumber the statute book with new schemes. Local and specific acts absorbed the chief attention ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... in her mind was therefore flight. She had concealed her journal under a looser piece of the flooring in one of the closets of her room, being unwilling to encumber herself with it, and dreading the result of a search ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... and for whom I am not otherwise responsible. That person is the person from whom you derive your expectations, and the secret is solely held by that person and by me. Again, not a very difficult condition with which to encumber such a rise in fortune; but if you have any objection to it, this is the time to ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... metaphysicians, was too much under the dominion of his system and unable to see beyond: or that the study of philosophy, if made a serious business (compare Republic), involves grave results to the mind and life of the student. For it may encumber him without enlightening his path; and it may weaken his natural faculties of thought and expression without increasing his philosophical power. The mind easily becomes entangled among abstractions, ...
— Sophist • Plato
... His Majesty's Army it was certainly a peculiar collection, few or none of these articles being included in the Field Service regulations. Still, not more peculiar than some of the things with which solicitous friends and relatives encumber officers at the Front. ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... Patin could no longer understand how he had ever imagined Dsire to be different from other women. What a fool he had been to encumber himself with a penniless creature, who had undoubtedly inveigled him with some drug which she had ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... present day, presents, in contrast with the Louis XV. gallantries, a charming collection of mahogany furniture; it resembles a boudoir; the bookshelves are full, but the fascinating trivialities of a woman's existence encumber it; in the midst of which an inquisitive eye perceives with uneasy surprise pistols, a narghile, a riding-whip, a hammock, a rifle, a man's blouse, tobacco, pipes, a knapsack,—a ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... arrival. Frank had purchased a strong, serviceable horse for his own riding, and a pony for his baggage, together with blankets and other necessaries for the journey. His mining outfit he decided to get at Sacramento, as, although the cost would be considerable, he did not wish to encumber himself with it on his journey across the plains. The rifle and revolver had been presented him by Mr. Willcox, and he determined to practise steadily with both on his voyage up the river, as his life might depend on ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... A more resolute, indefatigable pioneer never wrought amidst rocks and dangers. Firm, faithful, and devoted, full of energy, and zeal, and truth, he labours for his race; he clears their painful way to improvement; he hews down like a giant the prejudices of creed and caste that encumber it. He may be stern; he may be exacting; he may be ambitious yet; but his is the sternness of the warrior Greatheart, who guards his pilgrim convoy from the onslaught of Apollyon. His is the exaction of the ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... approach those ancient Religions which once ruled the minds of men, and whose ruins encumber the plains of the great Past, as the broken columns of Palmyra and Tadmor lie bleaching on the sands of the desert. They rise before us, those old, strange, mysterious creeds and faiths, shrouded in the mists of antiquity, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... married woman shall not mortgage or in any manner encumber her separate property acquired by descent, devise or gift, as a security for the debt or liability of her ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... dreamt of in your philosophy. But come; Here, as before, never, so help you mercy, How strange or odd so'er I bear myself,— As I perchance hereafter shall think meet To put an antic disposition on,— That you, at such times seeing me, never shall, With arms encumber'd thus, or this head-shake, Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase, As "Well, well, we know," or "We could, an if we would," Or "If we list to speak," or "There be, an if there might," Or such ambiguous giving-out, to note That you know aught of me: this not to do, So grace and mercy ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... with the dawn, and prepared to execute his design, hiding his upper garment, which might encumber him; he then proceeded to the Palace of Tears. He found it lighted up with an infinite number of flambeaux of white wax, and perfumed by a delicious scent issuing from several censers of fine gold of admirable workmanship. As soon as he perceived the bed where ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... was something I have wanted to do all along, but it was the cowardly thing to do, after I had failed, for it was not as though I had conquered the desires, the desires conquered me. At any rate, I couldn't come to you to encumber you, to be a drag upon you. I felt that I must have something to offer you. I've got a plan, Maude, for my life, for our lives. I don't know whether I can make a success of it, and you are entitled to decline to take the risk. I don't fool myself that it will be all plain sailing, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... bearing soft leaves, for the healing of the nations.... The lantern carried in Christ's left hand is the light of conscience.... Its fire is red and fierce; it falls only on the closed door, on the weeds that encumber it, and on an apple shaken from one of the trees of the orchard, thus marking that the entire awakening of the conscience is not to one's own guilt alone, but to the guilt of the world, ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... could overspread the region which these birds inhabit could hardly have been less than universal. If the deluge were local, and all the birds of these kinds in that district perished,—though we should think they might have fled to the uninundated regions,—it would have been useless to encumber the ark with them, seeing that the birds of the same species which survived in the lands not overflowed would speedily replenish the inundated tract as soon as the waters subsided." It will be found that the reasoning here is mainly based upon an error in natural science, into which even naturalists ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... description, which necessarily constitutes no inconsiderable part of every work of fiction. The descriptive passages should be true to fact, and graphic enough to enable the reader to picture the scenes in his mind; but they should not be so long drawn as to encumber or impede the story. Description is subordinate in fiction; instead of being an end in itself, its purpose is to throw light upon the characters ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... roses. Sir Rudolph entered; rich and bright Was all that met his ravished sight; Soft tapestries from far countries brought, Rare cabinets with gems inwrought, White vases of the finest mould, And mirrors set in burnished gold. Upon a couch a grayhound slumbered; And a small table was encumber'd With paintings, and an ivory lute, And sweetmeats, and delicious fruit. Sir Rudolph lost not time in praising; For he, I should have said was gazing, In attitude extremely tragic, Upon a sight of stranger magic; A sight, which, seen at such a season, Might ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... (furious) So I encumber the earth, do I, according to you? (to Artamo and slaves) March him off inside! yes, and tie him to a pillar—tight! (to Chrysalus) You shall never take ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... he declared that in the lady's place she would have been the better woman of the two. There are so many splendid lives hidden in the world, unknown and unsuspected! And, on the other hand, the hosts of the living dead, who encumber the earth, and take up the room and the happiness of others in the light of ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... been a dream, monsieur," she said with sad finality. "It is folly to encumber one's life with ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... representations of Christian subjects, which had become blasphemous under the treatment of men like the Caracci. Gods without power, satyrs without rusticity, nymphs without innocence, men without humanity, gather into idiot groups upon the polluted canvas, and scenic affectations encumber the streets with preposterous marble. Lower and lower declines the level of abused intellect; the base school of landscape[23] gradually usurps the place of the historical painting, which had sunk into prurient pedantry,—the Alsatian ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... in the armoury, where 'tis right they should be; for men of peace, as these most surely are, encumber not themselves ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... claim'd, new powers are still bestow'd, Till rude resistance lops the spreading god; The daring Greeks deride the martial show, And heap their valleys with the gaudy foe; The insulted sea with humbler thoughts he gains, A single skiff to speed his flight remains; The encumber'd oar scarce leaves the dreaded coast Through purple billows and a floating host. 240 The bold Bavarian,[3] in a luckless hour, Tries the dread summits of Caesarean power, With unexpected legions bursts away, And sees defenceless realms ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... winter, the Voles spread themselves about the steppe. Each hollows little pits around the roots he wishes to extract. After having bared them he cleans them while still in position, so as not to encumber his storehouses with useless earth. This preparatory labour having been completed, he divides the root into slices of a weight proportioned to his strength, and carries away the fragments one by one. Seizing each with his teeth, he walks backwards drawing it after him, and thus traverses ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... Redeemer? Perish the thought. Still how common is the question, which one of the disciples put to his master, 'Lord, are there few that be saved?' How striking the answer! 'Strive to enter in at the strait gate' (Luke 13:23). Encumber not thy mind with such needless inquiries, but look to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... strictness to the original definition of the terms. If the same method were made use of in reasoning on other subjects, they would approach to the mathematics in simplicity and in truth, and the science of medicine in particular would be stripped of the heaps of learned rubbish which now encumber it, and would appear in true and native simplicity. Such is the method I propose to follow: I am certain of the rectitude of the plan; of the success of the reasoning it does not become ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... impossible to encumber the pages of the Atlantic Monthly with references to all the authorities on which such geological results rest. They are drawn from the various State Surveys, including that of the mineral lands of Lake Superior, and other more general works ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... contrary, the simplicity of this primitive cult is touching and respectable in the extreme. These Copts who install themselves in their church, as round their firesides, who make their home there and encumber the place with their fretful little ones, have, in their own way, well understood the word of Him who said: "Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and do not forbid them, for of such is ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... holy matrimony— In fact, I have heard from one or two men, That one wife in a house is one too many— But, be this as it may, in China no man Who can afford it shuts himself to any Fix'd number, but is variously encumber'd With better halves, from twenty ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... but on acquaintance soon conciliated and found to be not at all the formidable and haughty person she would have had people believe her; not too far gone in middle age, preserving, despite her spinsterhood, much of her bloom and many of those little roundnesses of contour which adorn but do not encumber. ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... as the Major was anxious not to encumber himself with all his heavy waggons to the junction of the Darling, as he would have to return again, a depot was formed, and the men divided. Mitchell, with a lightly equipped party following down the river, leaving Stapylton ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... things come to confusion! When we arise next morning, the grey showers fall steadily, the trees hang limp, and the face of the stream is spoiled with dimpling raindrops. Yesterday's lilies encumber the garden walk, or begin, dismally enough, their voyage towards the Seine and the salt sea. A sickly shimmer lies upon the dripping house roofs, and all the colour is washed out of the green and golden landscape of last ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... letter, to write another, which she addressed to the steamer which was to carry him the greater part of his long journey. She did not give her address; she told him how she believed it would be for his advantage not to encumber his noble career with concern for her. She had added that, if it were destined for them to meet, nothing would give her greater pleasure than to see him again. She ended by wishing him God-speed, a safe return, a ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... star-fort, with curtains and jutting angles from which the curtains could be enfiladed. Through the dawn, while the British slept in the woods, the Frenchmen laboured, hacking and felling. Scores of trees they left to lie and encumber the ground: others they dragged, unlopped, to the entrenchment, and piled them before it, trunks inward and radiating from its angles; lacing their boughs together or roughly pointing them with a few strokes of ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... I shall be a desolate, miserable, broken-hearted woman. Can you understand, now, the valuelessness of my riches, and how desolate my splendid house must seem to me? They have been given me for no useful purpose here or hereafter; they encumber me, and do no good to others. Who is to have them when I die? Hospitals and schools? I hate the medical profession, and I am against the education of the poor. I think it the great evil of the day, and I would not leave a penny of mine to such a radical wrong. What is to become ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... together. We will let him know that the orders are probably already on the road for his arrest, and that he had best lose not an hour, but at once cross the water. I should not think that he would wish to encumber himself with women, for I never thought he showed the least affection to either his wife or daughter. At any rate, we will see that he does not take them with him. I will tell him that, if he goes, and goes alone, I will do my best ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... fearfully aggravated by laws and customs which, resting on the old assumption that every woman should be a wife, habitually deprive them of the pecuniary and educational advantages of men, exclude them absolutely from very many of the employments in which they might earn a subsistence, encumber their course in others by a heartless ridicule or by a steady disapprobation, and consign, in consequence, many thousands to the most extreme and agonizing poverty, and perhaps a still larger number ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... it necessary to encumber myself with my rifle, and was, therefore, provided with no weapon of defence but the long gad I used to urge on the cattle. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon when I rounded Sandy Point, that long point which is about a mile a-head of ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... luggage. Let no traveller encumber himself or herself with a trunk on the Continent. A valise or a carpet bag that can be carried in the hand, will hold enough. Four or five changes of linen, and one dress, besides the travelling costume, are all sufficient. Washing can be done in a few hours anywhere. A lady had better ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... in one of the other salons, whilst all around medallions large and small of heads and figures, male, female and infantile, with a variety of vine-wreathed Bacchuses and bow-drawing Cupids, which are considered especially fit to decorate cafes, cluster along the mouldings, encumber the panels or fill up the niches. Huge mirrors reflect the pea-green walls, the crystal chandeliers, the gilding, glass and divans; cats perambulate the apartments; people come and go—black, elegant fellows, with broad-rimmed hats, pretty canes, good ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... entertaining place For travel-worn and weary fellows Who landed where Caleb S. Bellows, Out on "the Point" his habitation Built in a pleasant situation, Before the days when piles of lumber Did first fair nature's face encumber; Quite near the spot where first with skill John Perkins built his little mill, Where Philip Thompson many a year Ago, commenced his bright career, And took the ebbing of the tide, Which into golden waves did glide; He man'd his craft and steered her well O'er placid ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... Scaurus will give the reader the best notion of the style in which such an apartment was furnished and ornamented. For each particular in the description he quotes some authority. We shall not, however, encumber our pages with references to a long list of books not likely to be in the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... London that night, and, the next day, being singularly fine for an English summer, he resolved to go to Moleswich on foot. He had no need this time to encumber himself with a knapsack; he had left sufficient change of dress in ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... me but one shift, besides what I had on, and two handkerchiefs, and two caps, which my pocket held, (for it was not for me to encumber myself,) and all my stock of money, which was but five or six shillings, to set out for I knew not where; and got out of the window, not without some difficulty, sticking a little at my shoulders and hips; but I was resolved to get out, if ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... true, are directed not to temporary or private purposes, but to the eternal and the general—they seek the truth and the meaning of life, they seek God, the soul, and when they are harnessed to passing needs and activities, like pharmacies and libraries, then they only complicate and encumber life. We have any number of doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, and highly educated people, but we have no biologists, mathematicians, philosophers, poets. All our intellectual and spiritual energy is wasted ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... lumber Useful bookshelves so encumber? I will tell thee; for thy question Of wonders brings me to the best one. There's a future wonder, may be— Sure a present magic baby; (Patience, friend, I know your looks— What has that to do with books?) With her sounds ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... are full of fire and fancy, and exquisite melody of versification. The personifications from line 303 to 309, in the heat of the battle, had better been omitted; they are not very striking, and only encumber. The converse which Joan and Conrade hold on the banks of the Loire is altogether beautiful. Page 313: the conjecture that in dreams "all things are that seem," is one of those conceits which the poet delights to admit into his creed,—a creed, by the way, more marvellous ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... bosom one particle of natural feeling she would not have remained mute and motionless, and allowed the parish to bury her brother-in-law and encumber itself with her niece. ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... and noble stock. The family of Graham can be traced back in unbroken succession to the beginning of the twelfth century; and indeed there have been attempts to encumber its scutcheon with the quarterings of a fabulous antiquity. Gram, we are told, was in some primeval time the generic name for all independent leaders of men, and was borne by one of the earliest kings of Denmark. ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... mourning. Man's vigour shall fail As his locks shall grow hoary, And where is the tale Of his youth and his glory? My life is a dream— My fate darkly furl'd; I a hermit would seem 'Mid the crowd of the world. Oh! let me be free Of these scenes that encumber, And enjoy what may be Of my ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... and passing by his father, and perhaps his grandfather, served heir to him who was last infefted; for unless they were actually seised of the estate according to the forms of law, they were no more than simple possessors, and could not encumber the land with any deed or debts; whereby the heir got clear of all that intervened betwixt himself and the person whom he represented by his service. This was an unjustifiable practice, which the diligence of creditors might always have prevented; and which is now wholly prevented by an act ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... pistols and automatics. As for us, we are all pretty fair shots and used to handling weapons. Now, look here, Captain Folsom," he said, pleadingly, advancing and laying a hand on the other's arm; "I know what you are saying to yourself. You are saying how foolish it would be for you to encumber yourself with three harum-scarum boys. But that is where you make a mistake. We have been through a lot of dangerous situations, all three of us and, I can tell you, we have been forced to learn to keep our wits ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... notice. He had no verbiage. We do not merely mean by this that he never used a superfluous word (which, in fact, he rarely did), but that he kept quite clear of the hazy, half-relevant ideas which encumber meaning and are the chief source of prolixity. He threw away every idea that did not decidedly help on his argument, and expressed the others in the fewest words that would make them clear. He began at once where the pith of his argument ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... other requisites of their art, seem to have an unfortunate knack at preserving likenesses. Heads powdered even whiter than the originals, laced waistcoats, enormous lappets, and countenances all ingeniously disposed so as to smile at each other, encumber the wainscot, and distress the unlucky visitor, who is obliged to bear testimony to the resemblance. When one sees whole rooms filled with these figures, one cannot help reflecting on the goodness of Providence, which thus distributes self-love, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... French terms, not correctly used and not even rightly spelt, his endless iterations, lists, catalogues, categories, things not clearly visualised or even remotely perceived, but swept relentlessly in, like the debris of some store-room, all these are ugly mannerisms which simply blur and encumber the pages. The question is not whether they offend a critical and cultured mind, but whether they produce an inspiring effect upon ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the one possible means—if it withdraws all solicitude about the handicap this entails to women as a whole, introducing a spirit of laissez-faire competition between men and women, the women with sense enough to see the point will not encumber themselves with children. For each one of these who has no children, some other woman must have six instead of three. And some people encourage this in ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... return to our former place of concealment, and watch their motions. There is no saying when the party with Miss Percival may return; they may have arrived while we have been away, or they may come to-morrow. It will be better, therefore, not to encumber ourselves with more prisoners unless it ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... a man die that a dog may live? Must a mother's gray hairs be brought in sorrow to the grave; must the heart of a wife be crushed within a bloody hand and children never know a father's loving care, that such a thing as thou may'st yet encumber this fair earth? Precious indeed must be that life, purchased at ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... couples and triads, the extreme diversity of deities, and thus indicate a reason for the very peculiar aspect of the cylinders and engraved stones of Chaldaea, for the complex forms of the gods, and for the multitude of varied symbols which encumber the fields of her sculptured reliefs. Some of the figures that crowd these narrow surfaces are so fantastic that they astonish the eye as much as they pique the ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... The rain-drops encumber The hawthorn's crest: My thoughts have no number: You would not slumber If laid at my breast, Little sister, I'll rock ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... stratagem to overcome him, which fails in regard to him, but overwhelms her son in confusion, and causes his defeat: she cuts the cord of a canopy under which the knight has to pass, in the hope that it will fall in his way, and encumber his advance; but he adroitly catches it on the end of his spear, and Odon, in falling from his horse after the knight's attack, gets entangled in the garlands and drapery, and makes a very ridiculous figure. Of course the stranger-knight ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... said that women will not vote if they have the opportunity; or, if permitted to vote, such an inconsiderable number will exercise the privilege that it will not be worth while to encumber the electoral system by granting it. In all matters in which women have an interest, as large a percentage vote as of the other sex. They have the same interest in all which pertains to good government. They have exercised the privilege of voting not in a careless and indifferent manner but ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... Like house-encumber'd Snail we creep; While far ahead the women keep, For when to the devil's house we speed, By a thousand steps they ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... which men record their power—satisfy their enthusiasm—make sure their defence—define and make dear their habitation. And in six thousand years of building, what have we done? Of the greater part of all that skill and strength, NO vestige is left, but fallen stones, that encumber the fields and impede the streams. But, from this waste of disorder, and of time, and of rage, what IS left to us? Constructive and progressive creatures, that we are, with ruling brains, and forming hands, capable of fellowship, and thirsting for fame, can we ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... to less unpleasing themes, where, still expressing disapproval, one may do it with some grace, one of the few limitations to Mr. Hardy's great charm as a writer lies in his tendency to encumber his page with detail. At a supremely romantic moment one of his people sits down to contemplate a tribe of ants, and watches them through two whole printed pages. In another case a man in imminent deadly peril surveys through two pages the history of the geologic changes ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... to turn &c (uncertain) 475; perdre son Latin [Fr.]; stick at, stick in the mud, stick fast; come to a stand, come to a standstill, come to a deadlock; hold the wolf by the ears, hold the tiger by the tail. render difficult &c adj.; enmesh, encumber, embarrass, ravel, entangle; put a spoke in the wheel &c (hinder) 706; lead a pretty dance. Adj. difficult, not easy, hard, tough; troublesome, toilsome, irksome; operose^, laborious, onerous, arduous, Herculean, formidable; sooner said than done; more easily said than ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... propose to send all our provisions, furniture, and clothes to my wife's father, who approves of the scheme, and to reserve nothing but a few necessary articles of covering; trusting to the furs of the chase for our future apparel. Were we imprudently to encumber ourselves too much with baggage, we should never reach to the waters of—-, which is the most dangerous as well as the most difficult part of our journey; and yet but a trifle in point of distance. I intend to say to my ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... conversation during this period also, without specifying each scene where it passed, except one, which will be found so remarkable as certainly to deserve a very particular relation. Where the place or the persons do not contribute to the zest of the conversation, it is unnecessary to encumber my page with mentioning them. To know of what vintage our wine is, enables us to judge of its value, and to drink it with more relish: but to have the produce of each vine of one vineyard, in the same year, kept separate, would ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... suppliant's response. That is a very characteristic right-about-face of the crowd, who one moment were saying, 'Hold your tongue and do not disturb Him,' and the next moment were all eager to encumber him with help, and to say, 'Rise up, be of good cheer; He calleth thee.' No thanks to them that He did. And what did the man do? Sprang to his feet—as the word rightly rendered would be—and flung away the frowsy rags that he had wrapped round him for ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... preference. Even when he treats the larger forms of the concerto or the sonata this concentrated, not to say pointed, character of Chopin's style becomes obvious. The more extended dimensions seem to encumber the freedom of his movements. The concerto for pianoforte with accompaniment of the orchestra in E may be instanced. Here the adagio takes the form of a romance, and in the final rondo the rhythm of a Polish dance ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... yet awhile," answered Olfan. "Take this," and he handed Leonard the spear of the third captain, who had left it when he started down the mountain, fearing that it might encumber him, "and drive him along with you at its point. Should we be overpowered, you may buy your lives as the price of his. But should we hold them back and you escape, then do with him what ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... their failing to support the Cause. Holy Fire, it goes on to say, has been aroused to its sacred function of purifying the country; and other agencies are also at work to see that those who are not true sons of the motherland do cease to encumber her lap. The signature is ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... are so very bulky. He says we shall find plenty as we go on, and that he will not encumber the wagons with a skin until we leave the Val River, and turn homeward. Now, Bremen and ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... North Wilkesboro', where he proposed to make a first essay in railway journeying, Zeke seated himself under the shade of a grove of persimmon-trees by the wayside, there painfully to encumber his feet with the new shoes. As he laced these, he indulged in soliloquy, after a fashion bred of his lonely life, on a subject born of ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... the goddess with the beautiful voice: 'The past returns to clay, because I have prophesied evil before the gods! Prophesying evil before the gods, I have counselled the attack to bring my men to nothing; and these to whom I myself have given birth, where are they? Like the spawn of fish they encumber the sea! 'The gods wept with her over the affair of the Anunnaki;' the gods, in the place where they sat weeping, their lips were closed." It was not pity only which made their tears to flow: there were mixed up with it feelings of regret ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... seem overpleased with the prospect of my company?" she observed. "Or perhaps you fear I may encumber you?" With mock irony. "Confess, the service is more ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... souvenirs! I know there are a number Who stuff their homes with memories of dread; The ancient hat-stand in the hall encumber With Pickelhaubes and delight to slumber With heaps of nasty ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... garden, through tubes little bigger than common glyster-pipes. It must be owned indeed that the fountains have their merit in the way of sculpture and architecture; and that here is a great number of statues which merit attention: but they serve only to encumber the ground, and destroy that effect of rural simplicity, which our gardens are designed to produce. In a word, here we see a variety of walks and groves and fountains, a wood of four hundred pines, a paddock with a few meagre deer, a flower-garden, an aviary, a grotto, and a fish-pond; and in ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... power. They thought, as they nearly came up to him, that he would loose his hold on his child; but the father's heart was strong within him. He flies, and the Sioux are close upon his heels! He fires and kills one of them. The other Sioux follows: he has nothing to encumber him—he must be victor in such an unequal contest. But the love that was stronger than death nerved the father's arm. He kept firing, and the Sioux retreated. The Chippeway and his young son reached ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... hoping we could never furnish our house till I went again to the press. When Mrs. Chapone heard of my father's difficulties about Chelsea, and fears of removal, on account of his twenty thousand volumes,—"Twenty thousand volumes!" she repeated; "bless me! why, how can he so encumber himself? Why does he not burn half? for how much must be to spare that never can be worth his looking at from such a store! And can he want to keep them all? I should not have suspected Dr. Burney, of all men, of ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... pages the main facts of our national history, and a very fair and judicial presentment it is, too. While the general reader will find it of interest, it has been prepared more particularly for the young, who are easily wearied by the prolix details which encumber so many of the histories prepared for them. Mrs. Parmele very truly remarks that the child, bewildered in a labyrinth of unfamiliar names and events, fails to grasp the main lines and soon dislikes history, simply because he has been studying, not with a thinking mind, ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 16, February 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... taken by the enemy. I thought I was following a routed army. Ten thousand horses were killed by the cold stormy rains and the green rye, which is their only food, and new to them. They lie on the roads and encumber them; their bodies exhale a poisonous smell—a new plague, which some compare to famine, though the latter is much more terrible. Several soldiers of the young guard have already died ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... into two general classes, figures of words, and figures of thought, and they give elaborate definitions, classifications, and rules for their use. The interpreter of Scripture, however, need not encumber himself with any rhetorical system. The general rules of interpretation already considered will be, for the most part, a sufficient guide to the meaning of the rich variety of figures contained in the Bible, especially in its poetical parts. It is only necessary to add ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... Soliman, had been replaced, not long after the former siege, by fortifications better adapted for modern warfare; but during the long interval of security, the extensive suburbs, with the villas and gardens of the nobles and opulent citizens, had been suffered to encroach on the glacis and encumber the approaches; and the ruins of these luxurious abodes, imperfectly destroyed in the panic arising from the unexpected celerity of the enemy's movements, were calculated at once to impede the fire from the walls, and to afford shelter and lodgement to the besiegers. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... shot him dead. When he fell, the other three stood motionless for some minutes, as if petrified with astonishment; as soon as they recovered, they went back, dragging after them the dead body, which, however, they soon left, that it might not encumber their flight. At the report of the first musket we drew together, having straggled to a little distance from each other, and made the best of our way back to the boat; and crossing the river, we soon saw the Indian lying dead upon the ground. Upon examining the body, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... develop into an immense flame, when a force will make its appearance of the existence of which you have never dreamed, and which will, without a sign of warning, devastate and destroy all around it. But when this does happen and the corpses of the slain encumber the streets, when the quiet, peaceful, apparently indolent Moslem who for years has worked faithfully for you, is transformed in a few hours into a fanatical hero, whom thousands follow like so many sheep, then, at the sight of the burning ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... bad lands, turtles six feet square, and alligators, compared with which the present squatter sovereigns of the territory are lovely and refined. The fossil remains of these ancient inhabitants still encumber the earth of that region, and make it unpleasant to view with an agricultural eye; but here and there the general desolation is relieved by a fertile valley, with a running brook and green slopes. White men, whisky, and Funny Fellows have not yet penetrated ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... Society should in some measure be disappointed, is only what might naturally be anticipated of all very sanguine expectation. Cheap editions are expensive editions to the publisher; and historical societies, from a necessity which appears to encumber all corporate English action, rarely fail to do their work expensively and infelicitously. Yet, after all allowances and deductions, we cannot reconcile ourselves to the mortification of having found but one volume in the series to be even tolerably ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... sterile. It is the acknowledged wife and the acknowledged husband that are fruitful; it is the husband and wife who furnish the world with men and heaven with souls, whereas the lover and the mistress fulfil no purpose, they merely encumber the world with their vice, they are useless to Nature, and are hateful in God's sight; the nations that do not cast them out soon become decrepid. If we go to the root of things, we find that the law of the Church coincides very closely with the law of Nature, and that the so-called natural ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... acquired might not long encumber the soldier, or blunt his ardour for farther enterprise, the usual means of dissipating military spoils were already at hand. Courtezans, mimes, jugglers, minstrels, and tale-tellers of every description, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... is not fit to innovate."[89] This is admirably said, and with Dryden's accustomed penetration to the root of the matter. The Latin has given us most of our canorous words, only they must not be confounded with merely sonorous ones, still less with phrases that, instead of supplementing the sense, encumber it. It was of Latinizing in this sense that Dryden was guilty. Instead of stabbing, he "with steel invades the life." The consequence was that by and by we have Dr. Johnson's ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... thou thus insatiable? why thus unreasonable? why encumber the world?—"Aye, but I fain would have my wife and children with me too."—What, are they then thine, and not His that gave them—His that made thee? Give up then that which is not thine own: yield it to One who is better than thou. "Nay, but why did He bring one into the world on these ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... came in, seemingly enjoying the rain like the bushes and trees. They put on little clothing so that they may be the more easily dried, and as for the children, a thin shirt of sheeting is the most they encumber themselves with, and get wet and half dry without seeming to notice it while we shiver with two or three dry coats. They seem to prefer being naked. The men also wear but little in wet weather. When they go out for all day they put on a single blanket, but in choring around camp, ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... "One book at a time." He would not encumber himself with books any more than he would with shoes. But that the mind might not go barefoot, he always bought a new book before destroying the one in hand. Destroying? Yes; for after reading or studying a book, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... to be doubted. Neither is it to be disguised that the organization of our judicial system is at once a difficult and delicate task. To extend the circuit courts equally throughout the different parts of the Union, and at the same time to avoid such a multiplication of members as would encumber the supreme appellate tribunal, is the object desired. Perhaps it might be accomplished by dividing the circuit judges into two classes, and providing that the Supreme Court should be held by these classes alternately, the Chief Justice ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... uncle, all your answers therein. But one doubt yet remaineth there in my mind, which ariseth upon this answer that you make. And when that doubt is solved, I will, mine own good uncle, encumber you no further for this time. For methinketh that I do you very much wrong to give you occasion to labour yourself so much in matter of some study, with long talking at once. I will therefore at this time move you but one thing, and seek some other ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... written for the stage, it is this one. And on the stage there is nothing to take the place of the notes and introductory explanations that so frequently encumber the printed volume. On the stage all explanations must lie within the play itself, and so they should in the book also, I believe. The translator is either an artist or a man unfit for his work. As an artist he must have a courage that cannot even be cowed by his reverence for the work of a great ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... enthusiasm, are described by him in a shrewd, gay, and natural style, and even with some degree of fidelity. But he inaugurates the pleiad of amateur, curious, and commercial travellers. He is the first of that prolific race of tourists who each year encumber geographical literature with numerous volumes, from which the savant finds nothing to glean ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... by a dissertation on the high probability of a southern continent existing, and that this supposed continent must be another Indies. Both of these fancies being now sufficiently overthrown by the investigations of our immortal Cook, and other modern navigators, it were useless to encumber our pages ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... encumber our pupils with accurate demonstration. The application of mathematics to mechanics is undoubtedly of the highest use, and has opened a source of ingenious and important inquiry. Archimedes, the greatest name amongst mechanic philosophers, scorned the mere practical ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... smile, as though he had heard other words than those—perchance an unconscious wish, the hope that the old aunt might die before he himself did, that he would inherit the promised half-million of francs, and then not long encumber ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... were all in bed! I only discovered it by accident, and I have been driving like the deuce to overtake you. Just look at the mare. Why go off like this? You know that nobody wished to hinder your going. And how unnecessary it has been for you to toil along on foot, and encumber yourself with this heavy load! I have followed like a madman, simply to drive you the rest of the distance, ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... really right to indorse for any one, under any circumstances? Why should a third party encumber his estate, and run the risk of ruining himself and his family, to secure the payment of a debt in which he has no personal interest, simply to make a capitalist secure in the investing of his funds, or in the profitable disposal of his property on credit? ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... unfair description. The Vandals were very sensible people. They did not believe in a religion, and so they insulted it; they did not see any use for certain buildings, and so they knocked them down. But they were not such fools as to encumber their march with the fragments of the edifice they had themselves spoilt. They were at least superior to the modern American mode of reasoning. They did not desecrate the stones because they held ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... malicious talker Samuel Rogers delighted to tell at Edward Law's expense. "Lord Ellenborough," says the 'Table-Talk,' "was once about to go on circuit, when Lady Ellenborough said that she should like to accompany him. He replied that he had no objection provided she did not encumber the carriage with bandboxes, which were his utter abhorrence. During the first day's journey Lord Ellenborough, happening to stretch his legs, struck his foot against something below the seat; he discovered that it was a bandbox. Up went ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... with nothing." How often do we "labor for that which satisfieth not." More than we use is more than we need, and only a burden to the bearer. [16] We most of us give ourselves an immense amount of useless trouble; encumber ourselves, as it were, on the journey of life with a dead weight of unnecessary baggage; and as "a man maketh his train longer, he makes his wings shorter." [17] In that delightful fairy tale, Alice through the Looking-Glass, the "White Knight" is described as having loaded himself on ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... hand, have no such aggressive tendencies. With eyes fixed on the noble goal to which "per aspera et ardua" they tend, they may, now and then, be stirred to momentary wrath by the unnecessary obstacles with which the ignorant, or the malicious, encumber, if they cannot bar, the difficult path; but why should their souls be deeply vexed? The majesty of Fact is on their side, and the elemental forces of Nature are working for them. Not a star comes to the meridian at its ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... far calmer spirit than at that past date when they had rushed into each other's arms and vowed to be one for the first time, she ever and anon caught herself reflecting, 'Were it not that for my honour's sake I must re-marry him, I should perhaps be a nobler woman in not allowing him to encumber his bright future by a ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... am the cause of this great light and thunder; It is through my fury that they such noise doth make. My fearful countenance the clouds so doth encumber That off-times for dread thereof the very earth doth quake. Look, when I with malice this bright brand doth shake, All the whole world from the north to the south I may them destroy with one ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... no use to talk about it. You are very kind, but it will not do to encumber you with a lone ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... I think it is impossible. Of all men your father is the last to encumber his estates in a manner unknown to his agent, and to pay off ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... with all the usual arguments on the subject. I cannot stop to take up the old proofs from causation, from statistics, from the certainty with which we can foretell one another's conduct, from the fixity of character, and all the rest. But there are two words which usually encumber these classical arguments, {149} and which we must immediately dispose of if we are to make any progress. One is the eulogistic word freedom, and the other is the opprobrious word chance. The word 'chance' I wish to keep, but I wish to get rid of the word 'freedom.' Its eulogistic ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... overweight you—nor encumber your memory with pledges— these two and no more. And here we part. See what it is to sin against society. I, whom your conversation has so interested, to whom your company is so agreeable—in one word, I, who love you, can find no kinder word to say to you to-day than this—let me never ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... their airy hall, my fathers' voice Shall call my spirit, joyful in their choice; When, poised upon the gale, my form shall ride, Or, dark in mist, descend the mountain's side; Oh! may my shade behold no sculptured urns To mark the spot where earth to earth returns! No lengthen'd scroll, no praise-encumber'd stone; My epitaph shall be my name alone: If that with honor fail to crown my clay, Oh! may no other fame my deeds repay! That, only that, shall single out the spot; By that remember'd, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... looked with awful veneration. This girl was regarded with an unfavourable eye by all the competitors, honest Dinmont only excepted; the rest conceived they should find in her a formidable competitor, whose claims might at least encumber and diminish their chance of succession. Yet she was the only person present who seemed really to feel sorrow for the deceased. Mrs. Bertram had been her protectress, although from selfish motives, and her capricious tyranny was forgotten ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... body of men that the incentives to progress chiefly spring. They behold the errors which encumber old systems—they are, indeed, too apt to conceive them as wholly composed of errors. To them, the common and current beliefs appear to be simply superstitious. It irks them that humanity should wallow in its ignorance and blindness. They chafe and ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the body, to be as if the body for the time were not,—this is to set the mind thinking in freedom unrestrained. For the body and the conscious sensation of the presence of the body seem to serve to drag down and encumber the energy of thought. A sound through the ear, a sight presented to the eye, a touch, an ache,—these break off sustained thinking. No wonder, when the body sleeps profoundly, the soul is often then most active. And will not this be so when the profoundest sleep ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... Turk. One condition was attached to the bequest. The legatees were to erect a statue to Colleoni on the Piazza of S. Mark. This, however, involved some difficulty; for the proud Republic had never accorded a similar honour, nor did they choose to encumber their splendid square with a monument. They evaded the condition by assigning the Campo in front of the Scuola di S. Marco, where also stands the Church of S. Zanipolo, to the purpose. Here accordingly the finest bronze equestrian statue in Italy, if we except the Marcus Aurelius of the Capitol, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... indeed is much to be hoped from his famous Purse: That Purse, it is said, was never empty, and such a Purse, may be sometimes convenient; but as Money will not purchase Peace, it is not necessary for a Man to encumber himself with a great deal of it. Peace and Happiness depend so much upon the State of a Man's own Mind, and upon the Use of the considering Cap, that it is generally his own Fault, if he is miserable. One of these ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous
... do not now influence me; I speak the language of the natural, of the visible world.—You love not me, Annot—you love Menteith—by him you are beloved again, and Allan is no more to you than one of the corpses which encumber ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... foreign to the general scope of this little treatise to encumber a simple argument by controverting any of the trite objections of habit or fanaticism. But there are two; the first, the basis of all political mistake, and the second, the prolific cause and effect of religious error, which it ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... naturally from his primary qualities. In speaking it was effective, and to us pleasing, because there was some new modulation, some addition in the manner, just as the sea never sets up one wave exactly like the last or the next. But in his books it did somewhere encumber his thoughts, and the reader's progress and profit. It did not arise, as in many lesser men, from his having said his say—from his having no more in him; much less did it arise from conceit, either of his idea or of his way of ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... which has, and must by its circumstances and natural formation continue to have, chiefly a mixed population of Chinese and other coolies, whom it is assuredly not to our interest to take into our family. I suppose it is a proper rule that we should not encumber ourselves with territory which by reason of unchangeable natural causes will repel our farmers and artisans, and which, therefore, will not become in time Americanized. If this is true, we ought not ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... restitution, you talk to the deaf; his heart and soul, with all his senses, are got among his bags, or he is gravely asleep, and dreaming of a mortgage. Tell a man of business, that the cares of the world choke the good seed; that we must not encumber ourselves with much serving; that the salvation of his soul is the one thing necessary. You see, indeed, the shape of a man before you, but his faculties are all gone off among clients and papers, thinking how to defend a bad cause, or find flaws in a good one; or, he weareth ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various
... mountains, whence he issued first. There, under shadow of his sacred plumes Swaying the world, till through successive hands To mine he came devolv'd. Caesar I was, And am Justinian; destin'd by the will Of that prime love, whose influence I feel, From vain excess to clear th' encumber'd laws. Or ere that work engag'd me, I did hold Christ's nature merely human, with such faith Contented. But the blessed Agapete, Who was chief shepherd, he with warning voice To the true faith recall'd me. I believ'd His words: and what he ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante |
