"Encumbered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... landlords of Ireland who were represented in the Imperial Parliament shared the principles or the prejudices of English landowners. Since the granting of Catholic emancipation Roman Catholic or Irish ideas or interests have undoubtedly perplexed or encumbered the working of British politics. But the representatives of Ireland have been for the most part divided between the two great English parties, and it was not till Mr. Parnell's influence united the majority of Irish representatives into a party hostile to Great Britain ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... property, which had come down to him through a long line of ancestors. The house stood on a rocky height, and was surrounded, but not encumbered, by noble groups of trees, from the midst of which it looked out over sloping terraced gardens, glowing with flower-beds, which enamelled the smoothest of turf, across the park from which the estate took its name. The original house was old, but while the ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... Jove," they croaked, "no longer fool us, None but ourselves are fit to rule us; We are too large, too free a nation, To be encumbered with taxation! ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... obscure and starless heaven, we had left far behind us the plantations of the valley, and were mounting a certain canon in the hills, narrow, encumbered with great rocks, and echoing with the roar of a tumultuous torrent. Cascade after cascade thundered and hung up its flag of whiteness in the night, or fanned our faces with the wet wind of its descent. The trail was break-neck, and led to famine-guarded deserts; it had been long since ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fair cities and fertile fields. But the rear-guard is entangled in the defiles, the rear-guard is still struggling in mountainous country, attacked and assailed on every side by the onslaughts of a pitiless enemy. The rear-guard is encumbered with wounded, obstructed by all the broken vehicles that have fallen back from the main line of the march, with all the stragglers and weaklings that have fallen by the way and can struggle forward no farther. It is to ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... and every other boat disabled. The canoes were tied together, five abreast, and one of the boats towed these out of the harbor, while the crews of the others remained, keeping the natives at bay; for it was felt that if the whole were to embark at once, while still encumbered with the canoes, they would be able to get out of the creek but slowly; and would, for the most part, be destroyed by the ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... of their experiences in "the hoale," as he terms it, is not suggestive of an inviting place. "We were in the hoale seven days and seven nights and some hours, and were well wearied;" the place was so encumbered with books and furniture that they "could not find place for their legs" even when seated; and the cramped positions which they were compelled to assume caused their legs to swell greatly. Garnet seems to have suffered more of the two. Yet he adds that they were "very merry and content," ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... same rough, fierce game of leaping, crawling, wading, swimming,—battling with the river, the rocks, the ledges. But now they were no longer checked and halted by the alternate stoppings for set-ups and turning-points, and no longer was Blake encumbered with the care of the level. There was nothing now to hinder or delay them except the natural obstacles of their wild path down ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... Shall call my spirit, happy in the choice, When poised upon the gale my form shall ride, Or dark in mist descend the mountain-side, Oh, may my shade behold no sculptured urns To mark the spot where dust to dust returns, No lengthened scroll, no praise-encumbered 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 remembered, or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... of these good men was sorely encumbered with the armor of Saul. Too much favorable legislation and patronizing from a foreign proprietary government, too arrogant a tone of superiority on the part of official friends, attempts to enforce conformity by imposing disabilities on other sects—these were among ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... up draperies and sketches, and in many ways changed the character of the interior. The faded, weary-looking widow from whom I hired the place, and who took care of the rooms, carried away to her own apartment many of the most obnoxious trifles which encumbered the small tables, the etagere, and the wall spaces. She sighed a great deal as we were making the rapid changes to suit our own taste, but made no objection, and we naturally thought it was the regular custom of every new occupant to turn the ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... triumvir. His bath is medicated. The horrible, loathsome disease that corrodes his flesh demands these long immersions to quiet the gnawing pains which distract his active, restless mind. In these baths he can benumb the torment of the body with which he is encumbered. ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... an aunt? Then learn the rules of woman's cant, And forge a tale, and swear you read it, Such as, save woman, none would credit Win o'er her confidante and pages By gold, for this a golden age is; And should it be her wayward fate, To be encumbered with a mate, A dull, old dotard should he be, That dulness claims ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... another storm from the N.W. in the course of the last evening; in the morning we proceeded, having the wind from the north, and encamped on the northern shore, having rowed seventeen miles. The river is here encumbered with sandbars, but no islands, except two small ones, called Detachment islands, and formed on the south side ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... was located in a cheap quarter. It was a dingy place, not encumbered with works of art, but with a few books covered with dust. The doctor himself was stout and greasy, and he rubbed his hands with anticipation at the sight of so prosperous-looking a patient. But he was evidently a man of experience, for he knew ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... and they occupied the heights of the mountains under which the army had to pass. The main body of the troops met with no obstruction, and received no intimation of danger; but the rear-guard, which was considerably behind, and encumbered with its plunder, was overwhelmed by the mountaineers in the pass of Roncesvalles, and slain to a man. Some of the bravest of the Prankish chiefs perished on this occasion, among whom is mentioned Roland or Orlando, governor of the marches or frontier of Brittany. His name became famous in ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... let what I say be encumbered in your minds with the objection, that you think art ought not to be brought into the service of religion. That is not the question at present—do not agitate it. The simple fact is, that old art ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... widower,' said Mr Pecksniff, examining the rings upon her fingers, and tracing the course of one delicate blue vein with his fat thumb, 'a widower with two daughters, still I am not encumbered, my love. One of them, as you know, is married. The other, by her own desire, but with a view, I will confess—why not?—to my altering my condition, is about to leave her father's house. I have a character, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... the difficult nature of the ground, it was nearly two hours before the latter column could reach the enemy, when a heavy fire commenced on both sides. The ascent was steep and difficult, encumbered with rocks and loose stones and covered with dense bush. From the summit of the ridge the enemy poured in a destructive fire, to which the British could only reply at a great disadvantage, and, after losing heavily, the column commenced to retire. Observing this retrograde movement, Major-General ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... it is concerned, there has been no way of forcing the auditor Hieronimo de Legaspi to cease making the deposits with various persons that they might have the profit thereof. For it is plain and well known that as my occupation keeps me most of the time encumbered with duties outside of the Audiencia, and often outside of the city, in my absence these things are done, and others which should not be. I attempt to correct them, although I do not hope for amendment from the licentiate Legaspi in this matter of money and other very unlawful things, ill-befitting ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various
... ground, to prepare their little field for the Indian corn. This kept them quite busy. Catharine attended to the house, and Indiana went out fishing and hunting, bringing in plenty of small game and fish every day. After they had piled and burned up the loose boughs and trunks that encumbered the space which they had marked out, they proceeded to enclose it with a "brush fence", which was done by felling the trees that stood in the line of the field, and letting them fall so as to form the bottom log of the fence, which they ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... precisely that which one experiences as a fresher when one first enters hall for dinner at the 'Varsity. The comparison was very close. First-year men—that is to say, junior officers returning from their first leave—were the most encumbered, self-possessed, and asserting; those of the second year, so to say, usually got a corner-seat and looked out of window; while here and there a senior officer, or a subaltern with a senior's face, selected a place, arranged his few possessions, and ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... four heads tied up in a bundle, made my way for the pacha's stronghold; but the skirmishing was still going on outside of the walls, and I narrowly escaped a corps of janissaries, who would have recognised me. As it was, two of them followed me as I made for the gate of the fortress; and, encumbered as I was, I was forced to turn at bay. No man fights better than, and even a man who otherwise would not fight at all, will fight well, when he can't help it. I never was so brave in my life. I cut down one, and ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... criticism has so many embodiments. Mrs. Browning, to whom Ruskin was one of the nearest of her circle, considered him a critic who was half a poet as well, and her clear insight discerned what is now universally recognized, that he was "encumbered by a burning imagination." She told him that he was apt to light up any object he looked upon, "just as we, when we carried torches into the Vatican, were not clear as to how much we brought to that wonderful Demosthenes, folding the marble ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... more Of twisting, encumbered sleep, And now they make it a ballad, Not for one year or for two only But until the days lie deep As the sand's depth at Kefu, Until the year's end is red with Autumn, Red like these love-wands, A thousand nights are in vain. And ...
— Certain Noble Plays of Japan • Ezra Pound
... mill! Balls pierced it in every part. Half of the roof was carried away. Two walls were battered down. But it was on the side of the Morelle that the destruction was most lamentable. The ivy, torn from the tottering edifice, hung like rags; the river was encumbered with wrecks of all kinds, and through a breach was visible Francoise's chamber with its bed, the white curtains of which were carefully closed. Shot followed shot; the old wheel received two balls and gave vent to an agonizing groan; the buckets were borne off by the ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... wounded tiger, Cornwallis destroys all his heavy baggage, and pushes hard after Morgan. The pursuit is urged with unimaginable fury: and Cornwallis gains so fast upon the Americans, encumbered with their prisoners, that on the evening of the ninth day he came up to the banks of the Catawba, just as Morgan's rear had crossed at a deep ford. Before the wished-for morning returned, the river was so swollen by a heavy rain, that ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... 1820, the horrible fear to which mother and daughter were a prey suggested to their minds a natural excuse by which to escape the solemn entrance into Grandet's chamber. The winter of 1819-1820 was one of the coldest of that epoch. The snow encumbered the roofs. ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... from bank to bank was about 120 yards in width, and the maximum rise of the river was about twelve feet. During the wet season this is a frightful torrent that acts as a barrier to any advance or retreat of troops encumbered with baggage. ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... old bellrope, black with age, and heard the smothered sound of a cracked bell and the barking of an asthmatic little dog. By the way the sounds echoed from the interior he knew that the rooms were encumbered with articles which left no space for reverberation,—a characteristic feature of the homes of workmen and humble households, where space ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... that he raised a white flag and called to the captain of the boat, desiring him to send his canoe on shore, that he might go on board, as he wanted to give himself up. The deplorable condition to which Black Hawk was at this time reduced, flying for safety to the west side of the Mississippi, encumbered by his women and children, and his whole party exhausted by fatigue and hunger, renders it extremely difficult to believe that any decoy was intended by him. Indeed, nothing can be more certain, than that he was most heartily desirous of ending the disastrous ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... this wild, narrow pass, enclosed between stupendous granite cliffs, whose debris encumbered the defile, often rendering the passage difficult and dangerous. Escaping from the pass, we crossed the head of a basin-like plain, which declined to the south-west, and ascending gradually, gloomy, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... heard him answer, as if pondering the matter, while I fled discreetly upstairs at this juncture, "you doubtless are right; Lavinia Dorman's criticisms have been of infinite value in ridding my work of a litter of words that encumbered the spirit and purpose of it. She is direct and to the point, and yet withal most sympathetic. I had thought of dedicating the book to her in some private way, for really we are joint heirs, as it were, in so many traditions and habits of old New York, that it would not ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... lay, being so deep in the water, proved very hard to row against the tide, for the number of its passengers encumbered the oarsmen. After a while a light off land breeze sprang up, as here it often does towards morning; and the officer, Thompson, determined to risk hoisting the sail. Accordingly this was done—with some difficulty, for the mast had to be drawn out and shipped—although ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... beginning to wonder whether it would go on until he developed wings and turned into a Toad-bird, when he landed on his back with a thump, in the soft, rich grass of a meadow. Sitting up, he could just see the motor-car in the pond, nearly submerged; the gentlemen and the driver, encumbered by their long coats, were floundering helplessly in ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... our mariners, that in all likelihood this gigantic task eventually will be accomplished: but, even if it should, it is questionable whether a navigable opening in that direction would prove beneficial to commerce. The floating ice with which those high latitudes are encumbered; the intricacy of the navigation; the cold and tempestuous weather generally prevailing there, and the difficulty of obtaining aid, in cases of shipwreck, must continue to deter the ordinary navigator from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... story—a minister of the Gospel came into possession, by inheritance, of a fifteen-acre farm a short way from Philadelphia. He found the soil a reddish, somewhat gravelly clay, and so worn out from years of cropping that it did not support two cows and a horse. City born and bred, he was encumbered with no knowledge of agriculture which had to be unlearned. He began a careful and systematic study of the agricultural literature, and ultimately developed a novel system of dairy farming to which ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... review I have accompanied Mr. Sargent to a very recent date. If I have said that observers encumbered with a nervous temperament may at any moment have been anxious about his future, I have it on my conscience to add that the day has not yet come for a complete extinction of this anxiety. Mr. Sargent is ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... cried Mark, and after the dog had given every one a friendly recognition, and received his due meed of pats and caresses, he was sent on in front, going forward quite as a matter of course; but before they reached the end of the rock-encumbered opening, there was a roar of laughter from the men, as Billy Widgeon struck an attitude, smiling all over his face, resting his hands upon his short knees, and shaking ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... my trade. I greet them civilly, I supply requisitions when backed by authority; again, what will you? I suffer in silence till their back is turned, and my maledictions accompany them along the road. Ah! if none of them had longer life than I wish him, the road would be encumbered with corpses. Then,—draw your chair nearer, senorita, if you will have the infinite graciousness,—then, at night—it may be this very night—the others come. Hush! yes—the Mambis; the sons of Cuba. Quietly, by ones, by twos, they appear, dropping from the ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... Encumbered by his heavy vestments, the abbot could with difficulty contend against the strong current, and he momently expected to be swept away; but he had a stout and active assistant by his side, who soon placed him under shelter of the wheel. The trampling overhead ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... work for perhaps thirty-five minutes, and the house was seemingly consecrated to the healthy slumber of country life, when a stifled squealing and scuffling in the passage was followed by a loud tap at his door. Before he had time to answer, a much-encumbered Vera burst into the room with the question; "I say, can I ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... stood an old wooden beam. The staircase was encumbered with the geological specimens, and an enormous chain was stretched on the ground all along the corridor. They had taken off its hinges the door between the two rooms in which they did not sleep, and had condemned the outer door of the second ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... brought to a standstill, like himself when Bradley, turning into a green lane or riding by the river-side—a solitary spot run wild in nettles, briars, and brambles, and encumbered with the scathed trunks of a whole hedgerow of felled trees, on the outskirts of a little wood—began stepping on these trunks and dropping down among them and stepping on them again, apparently as a schoolboy might have done, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... length organized and prepared to set forth. It was encumbered by the immense quantity of baggage which the queen and her party of women insisted on taking. It is true that they had assumed the dress of Amazons, but this was only for the camp and the field. They expected to enjoy a great many pleasures while ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... nation, my son, and the young men of this Treasury Guard felt that they had a duty to perform in defending the capital, and must perform it with courage. There was one little drawback, however, to their conduct as soldiers; and that was, that each man wanted to go to the front encumbered with a carpet bag, filled with sandwiches and clean shirts. Aside from this, let me say, the guard was got in order for marching, and their gallant commander, Colonel Floyd A. Willett, made a speech, in which he declared there was not a chicken-hearted ...
— Siege of Washington, D.C. • F. Colburn Adams
... his enemies, who durst not contradict the approbation of so profound a master in theology. None of those self-sufficient creatures, who have either trifled with philosophy, by attempting to ridicule it, or have encumbered it with novel terms and burdensome explanations, understood its real weight and purity half so well as Mr. Smith. He was too discerning to allow of the character of unprofitable, rugged, and abstruse, which some superficial sciolists, (so very smooth and polite, as to admit of no impression,) ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... was as soft as velvet beneath their feet. The first watcher, that is, the man walking immediately behind Manston, now fell back, when Manston's housekeeper, knowing the ground pretty well, dived circuitously among the trees and got directly behind the steward, who, encumbered with his load, had proceeded but slowly. The other woman seemed now to be about opposite to Anne, or a little in advance, but on Manston's ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... former progenitor possessed the parts in question in a perfect state, and that under changed habits of life they became greatly reduced, either from simple disuse, or through the natural selection of those individuals which were least encumbered with a superfluous part, aided by the other means ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... War is drawing to its close," said Ferdinand's proclamation. "The victorious armies of the Central Powers are in Serbia and are rapidly advancing." They advanced less rapidly than they had planned, thanks to the wonderful exploits of the Serbian army, which was heavily encumbered by the growing stream of fugitives. The Austro-Germans failed to encircle the Serbian troops—slowly and keeping in touch with those who were on the Bulgarian frontier, the Serbs retired ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... is its end. It doesn't keep parents together; more often it tears them apart. The wife or the mistress, so soon as she is encumbered with children, becomes all too manifestly ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... exposed photograph. He swore more vigorously, and dashed to the kitchen, where he bathed his hands. The kitchen was the same size as the sitting room; through it was a bedroom. This completed his home. He was renting the flat furnished: of all the objects that encumbered it none were his own except the photograph frame, ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... and came into his own lane, up which the horse staggered, near the end of his endurance. The wagon swung and came to grief against the stone hitching-post at the corner of the porch. Cap'n Sproul, encumbered still with buckets and bag and trumpet, floundered over the porch rail, through a tangled mass of woodbine vines, and into the ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... were many of the finest residences, stately mansions with broad verandas, which bore the terrible effects of the long bombardment. Their walls were scarred and rent. The roofs were crushed, the glass shattered, piles of rubbish and other debris encumbered the ground, and the grass was growing in the streets. The siege of the city had steadily and relentlessly continued for five hundred and eighty-eight days. It was commenced on the twenty-first of August, 1863, by the opening of the Swamp Angel Battery on Morris Island, five miles away. On the ...
— The Flag Replaced on Sumter - A Personal Narrative • William A. Spicer
... serious, griefs added to the embarrassment of the earl's position. Margaret's jealousy had bound him to defer all rewards to lords and others, and encumbered with a provisional council all great acts of government, all grants of offices, lands, or benefits. [Sharon Turner] And who knows not the expectations of men after a successful revolution? The royal exchequer was so empty that even the ordinary household ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gear, but at the speed at which the machine was going the lever would not act. The one line swung the horses around in a short circle, and as the thoroughly alarmed man raised his head he was horrified to find that Elizabeth, encumbered with the jug, and so thoroughly frightened that she held on to it and to Jack's hand with equal tenacity, was within the radius of ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... lines of 'Who comes here—a Grenadier,' made a face, stretched himself, and called on himself to look on reasonableness and justice. Arthur deserved no favour, because he had encumbered himself with a helpless family, and ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... upon him, and he read their curiosity. Just as he was about to speak, the servant appeared with tea. Alma slowly raised herself, and, whilst she plied the office of hostess, Harvey got rid of the foolish hat and stick that encumbered him. He had now no intention ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... such people want in Rome?" asked Miss Winchelsea. "What can it mean to them?" There was a very tall curate in a very small straw hat, and a very short curate encumbered by a long camera stand. The contrast amused Fanny very much. Once they heard some one calling for "Snooks." "I always thought that name was invented by novelists," said Miss Winchelsea. "Fancy! Snooks. ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... vessels, we may depend on it, existed in those days, and though encumbered with much top hamper, and rigged only with square sails, they did not carry the high towers nor the absurdly cut sails which they are represented to have done in all the illustrated histories I have seen. The celebrated ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... horseback in the French fashion, which they did not understand,—the English way being for the great men to ride to the field of battle, but there to dismount and fight with their heavy axes on foot. Earl Ralph, the Frenchman, turned his horse's head and fled the field, and the English, encumbered with their long spears and swords, followed helter skelter. After killing some five hundred, AElfgar and Gruffydd turned to Hereford and came upon the church which Bishop Athelstan had caused to be built. There they met with a spirited resistance: amongst other victims seven of the canons ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher
... Lufu. It is south-east of Kavirondo; and Kilimanjaro can be seen from its shores; in the south-east Okara, Naibash and Baringo seem to have been run by Speke into one Lake. Okara, in the south, is full of large islands, and has but little water between them; that little is encumbered with aquatic vegetation called "Tikatika," on which, as in lakelet Gumadona, a man can walk. Waterlilies and duckweed are not the chief part of this floating mass. In the north Okara is large. Burukinegge land ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... have made our progress, encumbered as we were with our fur coats, too slow; but I had hopes that we would reach the trappers' huts that afternoon, and so decided to discard them in favour of the fur-lined sleigh-rug, which would, at least, keep ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... purposes. Doubtless the fowls are also eaten, but the average Japanese is satisfied with rice and vegetables, adding the inevitable cup of tea three or four times a day. Women carry their children lashed to their backs like American Indians, and thus encumbered perform field labor or domestic work, without seeming in the least to realize their double task. The elder children carry the younger ones in the same manner, going about their play with a load ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... down to the income, which was ample, and even paid off the one mortgage that encumbered this noble estate at five per cent., only four per cent. of which was really fingered by the mortgagee; the balance went to a go-between, though no go-between was ever wanted, for any solicitor in the country would have found the money in a ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... Giovanni counted but twelve survivors from a population of more than four thousand souls. In May 1599, the inhabitants of Turin were reduced by flight and death to four thousand; and of these there died daily numbers gradually rising through the summer from 50 to 180. The streets were encumbered with unburied corpses, the houses infested by robbers and marauders. Some incidents reported of this plague are ghastly in their horror. The infected were treated with inhuman barbarity, and retorted with savage fury, battering their assailants with the pestiferous ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... drawn by post-horses, and driven by postillions in the tightest possible deer-skin breeches, the smallest red coats, and the hugest jack-boots. The streets about the doors of the hotels resound with the cracking of whips and the stamping of horses, and are encumbered with carriages, heaps of baggage, porters, postillions, couriers, and travelers. Night at length arrives—the time ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... fire warned us of another attack. Soon came another stubborn assault by Warren's Corps. Same result. Line after line pushed out from the woods, only to be hurled back, bleeding and torn, leaving on the field large additions to the sad load of dead, and wounded, with which it was already encumbered. They effected nothing! Very little loss to us, heavy loss to them. We were using double shot of canister nearly every time, on masses of men at short range; the infantry fire was rapid and deadly. Our fire soon swept the front clear of the enemy. ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... readers are, no doubt, betrayed, we have found nothing which assists the understanding of the stories which they are supposed to illustrate, when we have found what is most uncommon passed without notice, and what is most trite and familiar encumbered with comment: we have unpacked our hearts of the bitterness which these volumes have aroused in us, and can now take our leave of them and go on with our own ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... England made during her reign, beset with so many perils, which constitutes her chief claim to the admiration of mankind. Let it be borne in mind that she began her rule in perplexities, anxieties, and embarrassments. The crown was encumbered with debts; the nobles were ambitious and factious; the people were poor, dispirited, unimportant, and distracted by the claims of two hostile religions. Only one bishop in the whole realm was found willing to crown her. Scotland was ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... observe, that the streets were often encumbered with the putrefying carcasses of criminals, who had been dragged through them by the heels, and precipitated from the Scalae Gemoniae, or Tarpeian rock, before they were thrown into the Tyber, which was the general receptacle of the cloaca maxima and all the ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... higher, to find a young man, whose estates have, during a long minority, under the careful management of Government officers, been freed from very heavy debts, with which an improvident father had left them encumbered, the moment he attains his majority and enters upon the management, borrowing three times their annual rent, at an exorbitant interest, to marry a couple of sisters, at the same rate of outlay in feasts and fireworks that ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... increased, and yard by yard the black stallion drew ahead. Now in front of them lay a furlong or more of bad ice encumbered with lumps of frozen snow that had not been cleared away, which caused the sleigh to shake and jump as it ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... or four stepped up at once. The others made a general milling, as though each were trying to get forward and each were prevented by the crowd in front. But in the background big Jack Landis was seriously trying to get to the firing line. He was encumbered with the clinging weight ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... better way than breaking through the wall," said Trench, and he uttered a laugh as he spoke and pointed to a prisoner with a great load upon his back who had fallen upon his face in the water, and encumbered by his fetters, pressed down by his load, was vainly struggling to lift himself again. "There is a better ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... for their intended hospitality, and return home. We first halted before an ancient square building, the outside of which has been much encroached upon by the alluvial earth of ages, and the simple but correct Tuscan portico, encumbered with piles of fagots for the village use during the approaching winter. The three doorways of the facade were embellished by sculptured wreaths of vine leaves and grapes. Hearing that some Hebrew inscription was to be found beneath one of ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... inwards, and often tilted to quoins 300 feet high, with an extreme of 1,000. Trachyte and basalt, with dykes like Cyclopean walls, are cut to jagged needles by the furious north-easter. Around the foot, where it is not encumbered with debris like the base of an iceberg, a broad line of comminuted pumice produces vegetation like a wady-growth in Somali Land. The central bed allows no short cut across: it is a series of rubbish-heaps, parasitic cones, walls, and lumps of red-black lavas, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... mountains. By the time he had well passed the last outpost the hue-and-cry was at his heels, followed, after an easy-going delay, by the lumbering dragoon. The soldier, armed with ineffectual sabre and carbine, encumbered with a variety of traps about as useful as they, usually managed, if not forced to put back by stress of provisions, to come up with him in the gates of the hills. There an idle interchange of arrow and round ball between hollow and cliff wound up the eventful history of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... all Fenwick could tell. The explanation came later. It was that unhappy petticoat-tape! A swimmer's leg-stroke may be encumbered in a calm sea, or when the only question is of keeping afloat for awhile. But in moderately rough water, and in a struggle against a running tide—which makes a certain speed imperative—the conditions are altered. Sally may have judged wrongly in trying ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... useful part in the household, the uncovered places on the bureau and the piano would never have been dusted. In one corner of the room were a pile of shoes which need an epic to describe them. The top of the bureau and that of the piano were encumbered by music-books with ragged backs and whitened corners, through which the pasteboard showed its many layers. Along the walls the names and addresses of pupils written on scraps of paper were stuck on by wafers,—the number of wafers without paper indicating the number of pupils no longer taught. ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... Carthusian Monastery outside the Roman Gate, mutilated and profaned though it is, one may still snuff up a strong if stale redolence of old Catholicism and old Italy. The road to it is ugly, being encumbered with vulgar waggons and fringed with tenements suggestive of an Irish-American suburb. Your interest begins as you come in sight of the convent perched on its little mountain and lifting against the sky, around the bell-tower of its gorgeous chapel, a coronet of clustered cells. You ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... have been four or five hundred yards off. Keeping the dog behind us, we hurried round by the east shore to avoid climbing the higher ledges, which rose sixty or seventy feet along the middle of the islet. These bare, flinty ledges, when not encumbered by bowlders, are grand things to run on. One can get over them at an astonishing pace. Once, as we ran on, we heard the bellow repeated, and, on coming within twenty or thirty rods of where it had seemed to ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... below the height. Both Coxhead's and Pickwoad's batteries were covered with missiles. Colonel C. M. H. Downing, commanding all the artillery, quickly assumed the offensive. Dissatisfied with his position, the left of which, lying to the east of Limit Hill, was so encumbered with rocks that of the 53rd battery only two guns could fire at all, and those of the other batteries of the 2nd brigade division only by indirect laying, he drew that part of his line clear, and moved Coxhead's three batteries, the 21st, 42nd, and 53rd, out into the open, facing north-west, ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... poor agonised in the grip of unknown horror, bishop and merchant, prince and chapman, fine ladies in gorgeous litters, abbesses with their train of nuns, and many more, fled north, east, and west, from the pestilent cities, and encumbered the roads with much traffic. One procession, and one only, did Hilarius meet making its ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... carts, from the summit of which Sainte-Foix fraternized with the Marquis de Crequi, discharged their loads directly into the sewer. As for cleaning out,—that function was entrusted to the pouring rains which encumbered rather than swept away. Rome left some poetry to her sewer, and called it the Gemoniae; Paris insulted hers, and entitled it the Polypus-Hole. Science and superstition were in accord, in horror. The Polypus hole was no less repugnant to hygiene than to ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Nevertheless, men, as a rule, have no ground for believing in God a whit more respectable than for disbelief in a devil. The devil is not seen nor is God seen. The work of the devil is as obvious as that of God. Nay, as the devil is a limited personality, belief in him is not encumbered with the perplexities which arise when we attempt to apprehend the infinite Being. Belief may often be tested; that is to say, we may be able to discover whether it is an active belief or not by inquiring what ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... on shore, and seized the vessel, which they named the Retaliation, having put to sea, no doubt with the intention of turning pirates. As they had committed no depredations, and I had no wish to be encumbered with them, they were ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... John, throughout his whole life, was a man of luck—a man of success. And why? Because he had the eye to see his opportunity, the heart to prompt to well-timed action, the nerve to consummate a perfect work. And no tyrant-passion dragged him back; no enthusiasms, no foibles encumbered his way. How well he looked at this very moment! When Paulina looked up as he reached her side, her glance mingled at once with an encountering glance, animated, yet modest; his colour, as he spoke ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... abode of a super- stitious king, and where a strong odor of pigsties and other unclean things so prostrates you for the moment that you have no energy to protest against the obvious fiction. You enter a yard encumbered with rubbish and a defiant dog, and an old woman emerges from a shabby lodge and assures you that you are indeed in an historic place. The red brick building, which looks like a small factory, rises on the ruins ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... he interrupted me to say, as he took possession of me again and held me with a tender fierceness, which had more of suffering in it than passion. "I have always wanted you, Eve, since before you went away, but it didn't seem right to ask you to come into a life so encumbered as mine was. Poverty made it seem impossible, but now, if you will be just a little patient with ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... cried the king, on receiving this message, "from a brush with these hard riders of Xeres! A handful of troops familiar with these wild mountain-passes may destroy an army encumbered ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... the streetS Asserts a joyless goal— Re-echoed clang where traffic meets, And drab monotony repeats The hour-encumbered role. Tinsel and glare, twin tawdry shams Outshine the evening star Where puppet-show and printed lie, Victim and trapper and trap, deny Old truths that always are. So fare ye, fare ye well, old roofs! The syren warns the shore, The flowing tide sings overside ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... conical island, in a broad and ice-encumbered bay, showed itself: it was "the Sugar-Loaf Island" of the whalers; and told us that, on rounding the farther headland, we should see the far-famed Devil's Thumb, the boundary ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... come alone. On the 9th July of the same year, Thomas Smith had been left for the second time a widower. As he was still but thirty-three years old, prospering in his affairs, newly advanced in the world, and encumbered at the time with a family of children, five in number, it was natural that he should entertain the notion of another wife. Expeditious in business, he was no less so in his choice; and it was not later than June 1787—for my grandfather is ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a cold through being exposed to a cold draft, through wet clothing, etc., is not necessarily followed by more serious consequences. If the system is not too much encumbered with morbid matter and if kidneys and intestines are in fairly good working order, these organs will take care of the extra amount of waste and morbid materials in place of the temporarily inactive skin and eliminate them without ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... shoe shops in which the predecessors of the existing factory workers soled and heeled the shoes which shod our armies in the early days of the Civil War. Every city and town had its own slaughter house; New York had more than two hundred; what is now Fifth Avenue was frequently encumbered by large droves of cattle, and great stockyards occupied territory which is now used for beautiful clubs, railroad stations, hotels, and the highest class ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... penetrating, transmuting function that we find it in Dante, in Jeremy Taylor, in Milton, or in Burke; he used it to emblazon his great central truths, to hang clouds of glory on the skirts of his illustration; but it was too passionate, too material, too encumbered with images, too involved in the general melee of the soul, to do its work as a master. It was not in him, as Thomas Fuller calls it, "that inward sense of the soul, its most boundless and restless faculty; for while the understanding and the will are kept as it were in libera custodia ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... treasures, with his mother's shrill tirade about useless truck following him. Ann was a good taskmistress; there were, indeed, great powers of administration in the keen, alert mind in that little frail body. Given a poor house encumbered by a mortgage, a few acres of stony land, and two children, the elder only fourteen, she worked miracles almost. Jerome had shown uncommon, almost improbable, ability in his difficulties when Abel had disappeared and her ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... I reached the ship and went on board. All was bustle and confusion. [I have seen that remark before somewhere.] The pier was crowded with carriages and men; passengers were arriving and hurrying on board; the vessel's decks were encumbered with trunks and valises; groups of excursionists, arrayed in unattractive traveling costumes, were moping about in a drizzling rain and looking as droopy and woebegone as so many molting chickens. The gallant flag was up, but it was under the spell, too, and hung limp and disheartened ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... horses; and away swept troop after troop, with sword-belt braced and carabine in hand, to plunge into the mad uproar of the streets of Paris, risen, stones and all, in revolution. The Garde Royale did their duty in those three terrible days, and if their gallant charges through the encumbered streets, or their patient endurance amid the merciless showers of indescribable missiles, were all in vain, it was because their foe was animated by an enthusiasm of which they knew nothing, save in the endurance of its effects. ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... leaving his widow with a pension and his daughter without a sixpence. It can well be imagined that an offer from an English duke was not to be sneezed at by either Mrs. or Miss O'Byrne; but there were some grave obstacles to the match. The duke was a Protestant. But what of that?—he had never been encumbered with religion, nor even with a decent observance of its institutions, for it is said that, when in England, at his country seat, he had, to show how little he cared for respectability, made a point of having the hounds out on a Sunday morning. He was ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... Doctor," said I; "but I feared to be encumbered with him. Speed was what I wanted ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... monks hurrying to the capital, some on foot, some on horseback, some riding asses or lowing oxen, all carrying their prayer-books and culinary utensils. In such multitudes do they come that the streets and squares of the city are encumbered with their swarms, and incarnadined with their red cloaks. The disorder and confusion are indescribable. Bands of the holy men traverse the streets chanting prayers, or uttering wild cries. They meet, they jostle, they quarrel, they fight; bloody ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... fire, losing one of their generals with many officers and men. There still remained the most arduous task of all, to force a way for the third time along the ridge with weakened and disheartened troops encumbered by the provision train that they were escorting ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... of the rain echoing over empty chambers. The entrance-hall, in which I now found myself, was of a good size and good proportions; potted plants occupied the corners; the paved floor was soiled with muddy footprints and encumbered with straw; on a mahogany hall-table, which was the only furniture, a candle had been stuck and suffered to burn down—plainly a long while ago, for the gutterings were green with mould. My mind, under these new impressions, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson |
