"Fractious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fact, a prodigious writer, having left behind him when he died a vast quantity of memoirs, letters, and even good verse; and besides these, maps and charts in great numbers. No matter how trying the day had been, with fractious crews and boisterous ocean, no matter how little sleep the anxious commander had had the night before, no matter how much the ill-smelling swinging lamp in his cabin rocked about, he never failed ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... turned away her head from the rice pudding in a kind of gesture of repulsion. She was in the fractious period of influenza, and Maggie had had a ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... that the first rule for all who believe in a progressive world is not to believe in it too much. Long ago Plato said that he drove two horses, one white and tractable, the other black and fractious; Jesus said that two masters sought man's allegiance, one God, the other mammon; Paul said that his soul was the battle-ground of two forces, one of which he called spirit and the other flesh; and only the other day one of our own number told ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... we sometimes quarrell'd; for, when a little intoxicated, he was very fractious. Once, in a boat on the Delaware with some other young men, he refused to row in his turn. "I will be row'd home," says he. "We will not row you," says I. "You must, or stay all night on the water," says he, "just as you please." The others said, "Let us row; ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... fully occupied? Ah, that's just where it is! When you have lost half an hour in the morning, and can't pick it up again—to say nothing of having the store-room on your mind, and the children's dinner late, and the baby fractious—one slips on a petticoat and a shawl, and gives it up in despair. What can I have done with my handkerchief? Would you mind looking among those bottles behind you? Oh, here it is, under the baby. Might I trouble you to hold my book for one moment? I think ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... her room. You will find her very poorly and fractious this afternoon. Will you tell her that you are coming to ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... and more than once while I was talking to her, I saw the tears well up to her eyes. I, at first, thought that her mother had been bothering her, for that Venus was in one of her most exacting and fractious moods, but I soon came to the conclusion that that was not the root of the trouble. Fortunately, Marcia and I were alone for a short time before I left and I endeavored to find out what was weighing ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... the lane first. They will be easier to manage on a straight road than in among the trees, if they are fractious." ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... with a woman's? And what rights has he as against hers? No: between man and man all that can be needed is plain speech and manly frankness—aided by a little diplomacy. I'll break you to pieces, James H., if you are fractious; and I've got the weapons to do it with. It is all for your good, and you'll bless me the rest of your life. One thing must be understood: I can't have you coming to my place and practising your wild backwoods manners on my family, and then sneaking off in the ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... something up more than you think, sir; there is indeed. He was that fractious that he wouldn't hold the hosses for me, not for a minute, till I could go ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... the story of the fray had reached Bristol, for birds of the air do carry a matter even from the loneliness of the upward path to the table-land of the Mendips. But the day dragged wearily on to evening, and still no news. Mrs Lambert was very fractious and fault-finding, and complained that a hole in a bit of lace had been so ill mended that she must have every thread unpicked. Then the water for the tea was smoked, and the 'muffin' too much buttered, with a dozen more grievances of a like character, which were simple ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... on the other hand, had gone singing about the house. And really the child had done her best. But how could any one expect her to manage her father and the house, especially on the scraps of time left her by her V.A.D. work? The Squire had been like a fractious child over the compulsory rations. Nobody was less of a glutton—he pecked like a bird; but the proper food to peck at must be always there, or his temper was unbearable. Pamela made various blunders; the household knew hunger for the first time; and the servants began ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... led her classes, but had spent two winters in a State Normal School. She was a trim body, compactly built, had black hair and eyes, and a fresh, rosy complexion that is so characteristic of her class. She could ride a fractious horse, milk, sew, knit and cook, and had followed the plow more than one day; while during harvest and corn-husking she had many a time "made a hand." From this cause she was strong and well knit in all her frame, a perfect picture of young ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... their manes entwined with roses, and necks enchained with garlands, fractious at the shouts that ran along the line, increasing from the clapping of children clothed in white, standing on the steps of the Capitol, to the tumultuous vociferation of hundreds of thousands of enraptured ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... growing, robust patient whose vis vitae is active is amenable to treatment which one with a waning constitution and past mature energies would be unable to endure, and a docile, quiet disposition will act cooperatively with remedial measures which would be neutralized by the fractious opposition of a ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... he "has the intention of asking this young lady to become his wife." During the engagement, however, he contrives to disturb her tranquillity by insisting prematurely on the right divine of husbands, and, as she proves fractious, announces to her, that, much as he loves her, he sees no prospect of future happiness in their union, and that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... cast-iron habit. We abandon ourselves easily to careless acquiescence. We make much of external laws, and, like a mother bemused with torpid beer when she overlays her child, we stifle the law of the soul because its crying is such a nuisance. Like a new baby, a new thought is fractious, restless, and incalculable. It saps our strength; it gives us no peace; it exposes a wider surface to pain. There is something indecent, uncontrolled, and unconscionable about it. Our friends like it best when it is asleep, and they like us ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... we ain't forgot—de time when Miss Lucy lay on her las' bed. She sent for Uncle Bushrod, and she say: 'Uncle Bushrod, when I die, I want you to take good care of Mr. Robert. Seem like'—so Miss Lucy say—'he listen to you mo' dan to anybody else. He apt to be mighty fractious sometimes, and maybe he cuss you when you try to 'suade him but he need somebody what understand him to be 'round wid him. He am like a little child sometimes'—so Miss Lucy say, wid her eyes shinin' in her po', thin face—'but he always been'—dem was her words—'my knight, ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... height of the pass. One foaming stream they forded eight times in three hours, driven from side to side by precipice and windfall; and in places they could advance only by ascending the stream bed. This was risky work on a fractious pony, and some of the riders preferred wading to riding. At noon on the 22nd of August the riders crossed a small stream and set up their tents on the border of a sedgy lake. Then {70} somebody noticed that the lake emptied ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... by the arm, and would have assisted her, but she shook herself free. She felt, and conducted herself, like a fractious child. ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... self-denying kindness of the ladies, and he lightened their hands by giving occupation to the boys. Then came out the result of training at the Refuge. Those who had been some time there showed themselves amenable to discipline; but the late arrivals were more fractious, and difficult to manage. These were the lads "upon whom," as Miss Macpherson says, "the street life had left sore marks." Even when only nearing the American coast, this indomitable lady's spirit is planning ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... flight to London. Lensky, the little, thin man, had got all his life locked into a resistance and could not relax again. He lived in a sort of insane irritability, touchy, haughty to the last degree, fractious, so that as assistant doctor in one of the hospitals he soon became impossible. They were almost beggars. But he kept still his great ideas of himself, he seemed to live in a complete hallucination, where he himself figured ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... get me something.... Some Bovril ... or ... something." Gaga was like a wasted child, not fractious, but fretful and wanting to be petted. Sally shuddered as she took steps to gratify him; and was glad to have some occupation that carried her out of the room and gave her something to do. She was momentarily diverted from thought of Toby; but ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... trying conclusions with her mount. Whether dissatisfaction with the latter or some fear of her own had caused her to cry out might have been less certain, had it not been sure that her eye was at the moment fastened, not upon the fractious steed, but upon the cause ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... happiness was to be out in the open air, away from my mother's presence, and this was only to be obtained when I was ordered out with my little brother Pierre, whom I had to carry as soon as I had done the household work. If Pierre was fractious, my mother would order me out of the house with him immediately. This I knew, and I used to pinch the poor child to make him cry, that I might gain my object, and be sent away; so that to duplicity I added cruelty. Six months ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... rose to meet the doctor with an alacrity that made Edmonson bite his under lip hard. She thought that dressing the wound took a long time that evening, that the physician had never been so slow before, nor the patient so fractious. But to Edmonson it seemed as if she vanished ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... up with a fractious convalescent nearly the whole day, dear Daddy, and I am sure it will be a pleasant change to go and chat with Mr. Radford, who is always serene," she said urgently; and so, more to please her than himself, her father said ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... at the surly gentleman. At this moment he exchanged glances with his brother, the King. The look of each was eloquent. The King's said, "I hate you for being a disloyal brother and a fractious subject; for conspiring to take away part of my kingdom; and who knows but that you are secretly aiming at my throne and my life?" The younger brother's look conveyed this much: "I hate you for ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... "I should prefer not to take the responsibility of advising you," nor "Pray do as you think best"; she simply said, in a tone she might have used to a fractious boy: ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... this fine young German Emperor, who aims to lead the dance, Has a very trying vis-a-vis, that fractious dame, La France, To keep step with that lady, without treading on her train, Would tax Terpsichore herself; he finds the effort vain; Does this fine ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... let you down easy. You know it's the dovery for the Pass-up-the-fists of this section, and what the Arizona papers would do would be comic if they ever got hold of the fact that Singleton picked a new bird for the dove cage, and the dratted thing changed before their eyes to a fractious game rooster swinging a right like the hind leg of a mule! No, Bub, we're orderly, peaceable folks around here, so for the sake of our reputation Singleton has prevailed on his manager to be merciful to you, and Conrad has in true ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... plenty. In manners he could be perfect, when he so chose. Courage and strength he had none. Ellis had seen this fellow, who boasted of his descent from a line of cavaliers, turn pale with fright and spring from a buggy to which was harnessed a fractious horse, which a negro stable-boy drove fearlessly. A valiant carpet-knight, skilled in all parlor exercises, great at whist or euchre, a dream of a dancer, unexcelled in Cakewalk or "coon" impersonations, for which he was in large social demand, Ellis had seen ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... until all the girls began to grow apprehensive. They started away along a country road a gay party, indeed, but Harriet noted that horse and driver were not well matched. The horse she could plainly see was young and fractious, and she wondered what the old man would do should the animal prove unmanageable. Their driver, however, appeared to have perfect control over the animal, so Harriet dismissed the disturbing thought from her mind and prepared ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... as from another world on that unkempt fractious Marcie of Cliff House, the Marcella of the present saw with a mixture of amusement and self-pity that one great aggravation of that child's daily miseries had been a certain injured, irritable sense of social difference between herself and her ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... probably no psychosis in which the patients exhibit such infantile reactions as in stupor. Except for the stature and obvious age of these patients, one could easily imagine that he was dealing with a spoiled and fractious infant. One thinks at once of the negativism which is so like that of a perverse child and of the unconventional, personal habits to which these patients cling so stubbornly. Masturbation, for instance, is quite frequent, while willful wetting ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... it is made for me, but I can come away early and make up lost sleep. I do hate to be so fractious," and Rose rubbed the forehead that ached with ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... renders me delightfully insensible to one fruitful source of provocation among inanimate things. I am so dull as to regard all distinctions between "rights" and "lefts" as invidious; but I have witnessed the agonized struggles of many a victim of fractious boots, and been thankful that "I am not as other men are," in ability to comprehend the difference between my right and left foot. Still, as already intimated, I have seen wise men driven mad by a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... a few dozen more or less impersonal objects, took his departure, his fractious horse having quieted down in the meanwhile, and Tom was ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton
... a moment afterward, when I went into the schoolroom and found Dot fractious and weary, and Jack vainly trying to amuse him. Allan was busy, and the two children had ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... alias Robert King. Samuel was a representative of Revel's Neck, Somerset Co., Md. His master he regarded as a "very fractious man, hard to please." The cause of the trouble or unpleasantness, which resulted in Samuel's Underground adventure, was traceable to his master's refusal to allow him to visit his wife. Not only was Samuel denied this privilege, but he was equally denied all privileges. His master ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... the table, as well as the two Endicotts, had listened to this colloquy with varying feelings. Segrave was burning with impatience, Lord Walterton was getting more and more fractious, whilst Sir Michael Isherwood viewed the young secretary with marked hauteur. At the last words spoken by Lambert there came from all these gentlemen sundry ejaculations, expressive of contempt or annoyance, which caused an ugly frown to appear between de Chavasse's ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... yearling calf had not yet felt the searing-iron. Into the very midst of the seething mass would a vaquero dart, single out his victim without a moment's halt, drive the animal to the open space, and throw his lasso with unerring aim. If a steer proved fractious two of the centaurs would divide the labor, and while one dexterously threw the rope around his horns, the other's lasso had quickly caught the hind foot, and together they brought him ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... seated on the floor, his back against a stanchion, his hands lashed behind him by bonds which confined him to the upright support. But the most uncomfortable feature of his predicament was a marlinespike which was stuck into his mouth like a bit provided for a fractious horse, and was secured by lashings behind his head. He was effectually gagged. Furthermore, the back of his head ached in most acute fashion. He rolled his eyes about and discovered that he had a companion in misery. A very pretty young woman was ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... stability of India as Wressley of the Foreign Office. There might be other good men, but the known, honored and trusted man among men was Wressley of the Foreign Office. We had a Viceroy in those days who knew exactly when to "gentle" a fractious big man, and to hearten-up a collar-galled little one, and so keep all his team level. He conveyed to Wressley the impression which I have just set down; and even tough men are apt to be disorganized by a Viceroy's praise. There was a case ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... more fractious patient than Du Meresq as he lay listlessly on the sofa, while the bone reunited. He had speculated on many a stolen walk with Bluebell in that unfrequented wood, where they would be far less liable to interruption than at ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... glad as anybody when the sun disappeared. It had been a hard day. Her step-mother had spent it in making soap. Soap-making is ill-smelling, uncomfortable work at all times, and especially in August. Mrs. Davis had been cross and fractious, had scolded a great deal, and found many little jobs for Mell to do in addition to her usual tasks of dish-washing, table-setting, and looking after the children. Mell was tired of the heat; tired of the smell of soap, of being lectured; and when ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... Suddenly a fractious horse jerked away from the man who had been standing at its head holding it, and whirling short about, half-overturned the wagon to which it was hitched and raced wildly down the street. People scattered in every direction, ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... a sort of brotherly admiration. At such moments, the most crabbed and peevish person seemed to be transfigured, to be acting a delightful part for the pleasure of a spectator, and an inner benevolence, a desire to contribute zest and amusement to the banquet of life, seemed to underlie the most fractious gestures or irritable speech. On such days, one seemed to have an affectionate understanding with even slight acquaintances, an understanding which seemed to say, "We are all comrades in heart, and nothing but circumstance and bodily ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... against enemy a blockade as effective as possible. In one of his comprehensive, quietly delivered and powerful speeches EDWARD GREY showed that situation is not so easily managed as amateur diplomatists below the Gangway believe, or as fractious newspapers, bent on damaging the Government even if the Empire falls, assert. Explained in detail steps taken by Foreign Office to deal with it. House listened critically but approvingly. Took note of fact that FIRST LORD OF ADMIRALTY emphatically cheered denial of one of the malicious rumours ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various
... not augur well of it; but if so, she held her peace, though I was not so sparing. For many things contributed to make me less good-humoured now than my real nature was; and the very least of all these things would have been enough to make some people cross, and rude, and fractious. I mean the red and painful chapping of my face and hands, from working in the snow all day, and lying in the frost all night. For being of a fair complexion, and a ruddy nature, and pretty plump withal, and fed on plenty of hot victuals, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... a glum an' fractious wean Has sat an' sullened by his lane Till, wi' a rowstin' skelp, he's ta'en An' shoo'd to bed—— The ither bairns a' fa' to play'n', As gleg's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this, strange as it may seem to those of my readers who may have admired the general good qualities of this singularly faithful animal, so disturbed old Battle's equanimity that he made several attempts to bring his master to the ground: indeed he became so fractious that the general again found it necessary to resign the honor of fighting this great battle to Don Perez Goneti, since the management of his horse was quite enough for the head of any one general. The reserve of ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... to him in much the same tone which she would have made use of to soothe a fractious child. But her instinct as a woman guided her truly: in venturing on that little reference to "Mary," she had not ventured in vain. It quieted him, and turned aside the current of his thoughts into the better and smoother direction. "Didn't she never ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... the north and unite with Rosecrans, and that then the combined force should attack Bragg promptly. But Rosecrans lay still for about six weeks, to repair losses and fatigue, and again played the part of the restive steed, responding to the President's spur only with fractious kickings. It was August 16 when he moved, but then he showed his usual ability in action. The march was difficult; yet, on September 6, he had his whole force across the Tennessee and in the mountains south of Chattanooga. Burnside, meanwhile, had advanced to Knoxville, but had stopped there, and ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... pleased to see me again. Shall I go away? Are you busy, or tired, or is there anything the matter?' asked Lady Betty, in an extremely fractious voice. ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... you been doing?" she asked, when I got into her room, where her maid was settling her veil before the glass, and trembling over it. Lady Ver is sometimes fractious with her—worse than I ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... wee fractious and self-willed at the off-go, an' wud be wantin' this an' that for his denner, but he sune learned tae tak' what wes pit afore him; an' as for gaein' oot withoot tellin' me, he wud as sune hae thocht o' fleein'; ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... imperatively necessary to the stability of India as Wressley of the Foreign Office. There might be other good men, but the known, honored and trusted man among men was Wressley of the Foreign Office. We had a Viceroy in those days who knew exactly when to "gentle" a fractious big man and to hearten up a collar-galled little one, and so keep all his team level. He conveyed to Wressley the impression which I have just set down; and even tough men are apt to be disorganized by a Viceroy's praise. There was a case ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... been a little fractious," replies Bobby, leniently—"a little disposed to quarrel with our bread-and-butter; but, as you may remember, my dear, from your experience of our humble roof, Christmas ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... crippled victims of disease. They were there because they had no homes, nor hospital, nor poorhouse, nor friends to offer them any. They could not minister to the needs of their sick; they had no bread to quiet the fractious, hungry cries of their children. Mothers and babes, daughters and grandparents, all alike were clothed in tatters, lacking even sufficient covering for the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... cut up in the Champion—is it not so? this day so am I—even to shocking the editor. The critic writes well; and as, at present, poesy is not my passion predominant, and my snake of Aaron has swallowed up all the other serpents, I don't feel fractious. I send you the paper, which I mean to take in for the future. We go to M.'s together. Perhaps I shall see you before, but don't let me ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... it all day, whereas his morning had been spent amid books, rare prints, statuettes, soft carpets, all the delicate luxuries of Master Blanchminster's library. Yet he could not help feeling the contrast; and the children were always at their most fractious on Mondays, chafed by a morning in school after ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of five Dan made as elaborate a toilet as the washroom permitted. He consumed both time and soap on the fractious forelock, and spent precious moments trying to induce a limp string tie to assume the same correct set that ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... has learned this art of equilibrium, and learned it so thoroughly that its skill is not apparent to our sight. We only learn to appreciate it when we try to imitate it. Now, there are two ways of learning how to ride a fractious horse: one is to get on him and learn by actual practice how each motion and trick may be best met; the other is to sit on a fence and watch the beast awhile, and then retire to the house and at leisure figure out the best way of overcoming his jumps and ...
— The Early History of the Airplane • Orville Wright
... excuse for deferring my promised lecture. The month of May had arrived. My father delicately broached the subject of the announcement. Being a little fractious, perhaps from some ebb in my strength, I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... work in a field not far away, often paused to listen, the former never failing to catch Amy's clear notes as she sat on a rock, the gentle power behind the throne, that had maintained peace and good-will among all the little fractious subjects. ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... I go?" he asked himself, trying to think of a spot he liked which would agree with his frame of mind. He could not think of one, for being alone made him feel fractious, yet he could not bear to meet any one. As he came out on the Grand Quay he hesitated once more; then he turned toward the pier; ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... sure, Miss Elliott. I have grown so fractious and contrary lately that maybe my sister winna care to have me. And as to ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... the king as they would to any other man, and his majesty touched his cocked hat in return. Then came the prize-cattle, many of them led by women, who are as interested as their husbands in all farm matters. Everything goes off smoothly, except there is a momentary panic over a fractious bull, who plunges into the crowd; but the six white jackets are about him in an instant, and entangle him ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Will Shag by name, who was a persistent runaway, and who whipped the overseer and was obstreperous generally. Another slave committed so serious an offense that he was tried under state law and >vas executed. When a bondman became particularly fractious he was threatened with being sent to the West Indies, a place held in as much dread as was "down the river" in later years. In 1766 Washington sent such a fellow off and to the captain of the ship that carried the slave ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... Gregory was a little fractious for a while, considering it an indignity to be sleeping in the caravan instead of with the men; but he was no sooner tucked into his berth than he fell asleep and forgot the insult. The girls were also very soon on their little shelves, either sleeping ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... her brother had reached an age when it was convenient, if possible, to throw the blame of all nursery differences on Polly. In families where domestic discipline is rather fractious than firm, there comes a stage when the girls almost invariably go to the wall, because they will stand snubbing, and the boys will not. Domestic authority, like some other powers, is apt to be magnified on the ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... good woman," said the doctor, as he rode away, "though she wears her womanhood so ungraciously—as a rough husk rather than a flower. All the same, she's laying up misery for herself in her devotion to this fractious child; I wish I'd had no ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... the happier a man is, the better and kinder he will be. The greater part of unamiability, ill-temper, impatience, bitterness, and uncharitableness comes out of unhappiness. It is because a man is so miserable that he is such a sour, suspicious, fractious, petted creature. I was amused, this morning, to read in the newspaper an account of a very small incident which befell the new Primate of England on his journey back to London, after being enthroned at Canterbury. The reporter of that small incident takes occasion to record that the Archbishop ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... godmother. It cheers me to hear you say so. But you see it is so hard to bring up a child well, when you work, work, work, all day. When he was out of employment, I couldn't always keep him near me. He got fractious and nervous, and I was obliged to let him go into the streets. And he never did well in the streets, he never did well out of sight. How often it happens with children! How can I say what I might have turned out myself, but for my back having been so bad and my legs so ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... the cows, to drive the plow, to ride the most fractious horses, and to break the fiery young colts; he knew precisely how to look after the horses, cattle, pigs, sheep, fowls, and everything at ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... the green Jeddak were formally presented to each other. Then Thuvia was lifted to the least fractious thoat, Xodar and Carthoris mounted two others, and we set out at a rapid pace toward the east. At the far extremity of the city we circled toward the north, and under the glorious rays of the two moons we sped noiselessly across the dead sea bottom, away from the Warhoons ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Glazier discovered—a disagreeable habit of running away every time he saw a train of cars. Perhaps the horse couldn't help it; it was no doubt an inherited disposition, descended to him through long lines of fractious ancestors, and therefore it need not be set down against him in the catalogue of wilful sins. But whether so or otherwise, this little unpleasantness in his disposition was an established fact, and unfortunately there were two railroads to cross between ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... and I am here, not with you—and my 'fractious' headache at the very worst got suddenly better just now, and is leaving me every minute—as if to make me aware, with an undivided attention, that at this present you are waiting for me, and soon will be wondering—and it would be so easy now to dress myself ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... family, who is supposed to have run off with another woman's husband. It is the day of the village bazaar, and amid a lot of hustle and bustle Catherine enters—the prodigal daughter most inopportunely returned! As the day progresses Old Mrs. Deveral becomes fractious, the Fete entertainment falls through and Judy decides to run away with the unpleasant Rodney. Things are going from bad to worse when Catherine steps in. She pacifies her mother, gives a talk on her experiences to the Village audience, and convinces Judy that Bobbie is nicer than Rodney. ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden
... the rule of unanimity, beings with souls so dead that never to themselves had said, "This is my own, my native land," and who yet looked upon the Boer as an object of commiseration. But these were, first, men linked either by birth or family ties with the Afrikander cause; second, fractious Irishmen and political obstructionists who posed for notoriety at any price; and, third, eccentrics and originals, whose sense of opposition forbade them from floating at any time with the tide of public opinion. Every one else cried aloud for a chance to ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... he did not know what to say. Mrs. Jernyngham had, he gathered, been unusually fractious for the last week or two, and Cyril was invariably forbearing. Indeed, Prescott sometimes wondered at his patience, for he imagined that his comrade had outgrown what love he had borne her. The man had ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... the Arpan sub-base like a fractious child. Kincaide and I endeavored to cheer him up, and Hendricks, the Ertak's young third officer, tried in vain to induce Correy to ...
— The Terror from the Depths • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... to Russia, falling from a fractious horse. Left a sweetheart, too, they tell me. Married, ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... good spirits nor in good temper during the next few days. My mother and Julia appeared astonished at this, for I was not ordinarily as touchy and fractious as I showed myself immediately after ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... to make her burro follow after Noddy, but he was fractious and would not go near the cliff. He made a detour, however, about a small group of trees and just as he came opposite them, something upon the snow-drift at the base of the largest tree, caused him to ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... resign himself; and so exceedingly fractious was he, that Clara had been feeling quite dispirited, when her brother called her to tell her joyously that Lord Ormersfield and Louis were coming home, and would call in on their way the next evening. Those wretched children must not take her for ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... into a chair. In her secret heart Eunice knew that when her sister was tired out she was fractious; she loved her too well ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... His voice had a fractious tone, as if he combated an unseen tyrant. Amelia dared not speak. At a word, she felt, he might say too much. Now Jared was looking at her in a bright appeal, as if, sure as he was of her sympathy, he besought the ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... the country; but Ellangowan! that had been a name amang them since the Mirk Monanday, and lang before—HIM to be grinding the puir at that rate! They ca'd his grandfather the Wicked Laird; but, though he was whiles fractious aneuch, when he got into roving company and had ta'en the drap drink, he would have scorned to gang on at this gate. Na, na, the muckle chumlay in the Auld Place reeked like a killogie in his time, and there were as mony puir folk riving at the banes in the court, ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... with Isaac Bumps; he'll charge you twenty-five cents, and tell you it's a mile and a half from the station to my house, but it's only a mile, and don't you hear to him, for your Cousin Abijah can't come until after the milking, and if the cows are fractious, it may ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... pass without an outbreak of this sort. It occurred about tea-time. Perhaps the infants were fractious because there was no tea. Esther had to economize her resources and a repast at seven would serve for both tea and supper. Among the poor, combination meals are as common as combination beds and chests. Esther had quieted Sarah by slapping Isaac, but as this made Isaac howl the ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... state became increasingly oppressive and draconian through the 1980s. CEAUSESCU was overthrown and executed in late 1989. Former communists dominated the government until 1996 when they were swept from power by a fractious coalition of center-right parties. Today the Communist Party, renamed the Party of Social Democracy, rules in cooperation with the ethnic Hungarian minority rights party. Much economic restructuring remains to be carried out before Romania can achieve its ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... stay in bed next morning, a thing that Mrs. Brandeis took to most ungracefully. After the holiday rush and strain she invariably had a severe cold, the protest of the body she had over-driven and under-nourished for two or three weeks. As a patient she was as trying and fractious as a man, tossing about, threatening to get up, demanding hot-water bags, cold compresses, alcohol rubs. She fretted about the business, and imagined that things were at a stand-still ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... don't work so very hard. But don't tell him I said so: he's real fractious on that subject, caused, I think, by rheumatiz, and mebby ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... niece of Mrs Pipchin did not expect to find that exemplary dragon prostrate on the hearth-rug when she went downstairs, she was relieved to find her unusually fractious and severe, and with every present appearance of intending to live a long time to be a comfort to all who knew her. Nor had she any symptoms of declining, in the course of the ensuing week, when the constitutional viands ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... be expected to show. Solvents such as benzene, ethylacetate and chloroform fail to effect a separation of active from inactive material. In all fractioning operations the vitamine tends to distribute itself between the fractious rather than to become concentrated in one or ...
— The Vitamine Manual • Walter H. Eddy
... the discipline of the tan-bark. If a cadet falls from a horse and has no bones broken, or no other desperate injury, he must wait until his horse comes around, catch it and mount again. If the horse be excited and fractious, all the more reason why the cadet should capture the beast and mount instantly. A horse must always be taught that ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... house from its foundations. He took her by the shoulders and put her back in her chair. His inexorable eyes looked her into submission; and his lean forefinger shook at her warningly, as if he was quieting a fractious child. ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... sold, and Faye has bought another, a sorrel, that seems to be a very satisfactory animal. He is not as handsome as Ben, nor as fractious, either. Bettie is behaving very well, but is still nervous, and keeps her forefeet down just long enough to get herself over the ground. She is beautiful, and Kelly simply adores her and keeps her bright-red coat like satin. Faye can seldom ride with me because of his numerous duties, and ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... the spirit is supposed to be particularly present in its old home. In all the other cases, I should remark, the spirit does not leave the home until its devil is made and if this is delayed too long he naturally becomes fractious. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... pugnacious &c. (bellicose) 720; cantankerous, exceptious[obs3]; restiff &c. (perverse) 901a[obs3]; churlish &c. (discourteous) 895. cross, cross as crabs, cross as two sticks, cross as a cat, cross as a dog, cross as the tongs; fractious, peevish, acaritre[obs3]. in a bad temper; sulky &c. 901a; angry &c. 900. resentful, resentive[obs3]; vindictive &c. 919. Int. pish! Phr. a vieux comptes nouvelles disputes[Fr]; quamvis tegatur proditur vultu furor [Lat][Seneca]; vino tortus et ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... was the fractious reply. "That's where we are being over-careful. She can hear our ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... cattle, bellowing in a chorus of fear, rage, and pain. And still the work of sorting, branding, cutting-out, went steadily on. Though an outsider would not have perceived it, the work was as crisp-cut and exact in its methods as the work in a counting-house. One of the cow-boys, in hot pursuit of a fractious heifer, encountered a gopher-hole, and horse and rider were down in a heap. In a second a dozen helping hands were dragging him from under the horse. He limped painfully, but stooped to examine his horse. The beast had broken ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... him Andy, in the family. Somewhat fractious at first—colic and things. I suppose it is right, or it would n't be so; but the usefulness of measles, mumps, croup, whooping-cough, scarlatina, and fits is not clear to the parental eye. I wish Andy would be a model infant, and dodge the ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... of a revolt. Though the uprising lasted but twenty days, the diplomatic corps at the capital proffered its mediation between the contestants, in order to avoid any further bloodshed. The result was that the fractious Governor withdrew his candidacy and a radical change was effected in the relations of Buenos Aires, city and province, to the country at large. The city, together with its environs, was converted into a federal district and became solely and distinctively the national capital. Its public ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... was Joseph. He was to blame for some things,—I never saw an Ashby that wasn't,—and I dare say he was aggravating. They were clearing a piece of woodland that winter, and the old man was laid up in the house with the rheumatism, off and on, and that made him fractious, and he and John connived together, till one day Joseph and Susan Ellen had taken the sleigh and gone to Freeport Four Corners to get some flour and one thing and another, and to have the horse shod beside, so they ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... secondary importance by the surrender of Vicksburg, it was certain that Grant would be called to conduct one of the great armies which must still make war upon the rebellion. In a visit to New Orleans to consult with Banks, he had been lamed by a fractious horse and was disabled for some days. As soon as he was able to ride in an ambulance he was on duty, and was assured by General Halleck that plenty of work would be cut out for him as soon as he was fully recovered. [Footnote: Official ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... time, and heating themselves in fractious disputations about doctrinal points drawn from the Bible, these men ought to know, and if they do not it is civility to inform them, that the first thing to be understood is, whether there is sufficient authority for believing ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... an old cousin in Kendal, the widow of a grocer, said to be richly left, who had once in his boyhood given him five shillings. With much distaste he wrote the letter and walked to Elterwater in the rain to post it. Then he tried to work; but little Carrie, fractious from confinement indoors, was troublesome and disturbed him. Phoebe, too, would make remarks on his drawing which seemed to him inept. In old days he would have laughed at her for pretending to know, and ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... believe he is driving a skittish team all alone. Jean believed that she was acting alone in this, as in everything else. She had yet to learn that Lite had for three years been always at hand, ready to take the lines if the team proved too fractious for her. ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... good. On Wednesdays and Friday nights he would make the slaves come up to the Big House and he would read the Bible to them and he would pray. He was a doctor and very fractious and exact. He didn't allow the slaves to claim they forgot to do thus and so nor did he allow them to make the expression, "I thought so and so." He would say to them if they did: "Who ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... little Bella was unusually fractious with some slight childish indisposition, and Sylvia was obliged to have recourse to a never-failing piece of amusement; namely, to take the child into the shop, when the number of new, bright-coloured articles was sure to beguile the little girl out of her fretfulness. She was walking ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... they could not go out. She found pictures, and got everything ready for them good-naturedly, and then they sat themselves down at a little table opposite each other; but the weather affected their spirits, and made them both fractious. They wanted the same picture to begin with, and only settled the question by demolishing it in their attempts to snatch it from each other. Then there was only one left between them, but happily they remembered that ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... of the Hampshire Coopers, and the first earl. He was a sort of English Voltaire: small and thin, nervous and fractious, with a great cold brain, no affections and no illusions; he had faith in organizations, but none in man; was destitute of compunctions, careless of conventions and appearances, cynical, penetrating, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... was well started, patrolled the length of the drive in his light buckboard. He had a first-class team of young horses—high-spirited, somewhat fractious, but capable on a pinch of their hundred miles in a day. He handled them well over the rough corduroys and swamp roads. From jam to rear and back again he travelled, pausing on the river banks to converse earnestly with one of the foremen, surveying the situation ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... doubt you are a general favorite among the fair sex." "Any man," he replied, "that understands horses has a pretty considerable fair knowledge of women, for they are jist alike in temper, and require the very identical same treatment. Encourage the timid ones, be gentle and steady with the fractious, but lather the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... lips twisted in a smile of cool irony—"you have come as the guardians of conservatism to admonish me, the fractious child of the Dollar family. It is delightful, gentlemen, to encounter in actual life so humorous a situation." Then the mouth line grew set again and the voice hardened. "Well, I make you no pledges. I say to you, to hell with ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... lived; he spoke; he opened his dark eyes and smiled upon us; he demanded a battered "boy stout" doll, and hugged it to his pneumonia jacket; he drank his milk, and said "More!" he grew cross and fractious—oh, welcome, gladdening sign!—and said, "Doe away! No more daddies! No more nursies! Don't want nobodies! Boo-hoo-hoo!" and we went ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... a graft on the family stock, in temperament, at least. Born into a genial, jovial, healthy family, his was the only moody nature there. His brother and sisters might be mischievous or even fractious; but they were never prone to have black half-hours. It was reserved for the youngest one of them all, Allyn McAlister, aged fifteen, to spell his moods with a capital M. His father was wont to say that Allyn was a mixture of two people, of two nameless, far-off ancestors. For days at a time, ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... hot and red, and thoroughly exasperated. His brown eyes were disproportionately angry, considering the slight importance of his enterprise. He was evidently a man of keen, quick temper, easily aroused and nervous. His handsome, well-groomed horse was fractious, and difficult for so impatient a rider to control. His equestrian outfit once more attracted the covert glance of Con Hite, whose experience and observation could duplicate no such attire. He was tall, somewhat heavily ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock |
