"Irregular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... resembles somewhat that of Paris; the different quarters have gradually developed around a centre, and the river Moskva meanders through them as the Seine. The centre is the Kremlin; in shape an irregular triangle surrounded by high walls, outside which is the first walled-in quarter—the Kitai-Gorod, that is the Chinese city, about the meaning of which term there is some dispute. It is not, nor ever has been, in any ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... General Fremont himself out of moneys intended to be applied to other purposes. The money was actually paid to a gentleman known at Fremont's headquarters as his special friend, and was then paid in that irregular way because this friend desired that that special bill should receive immediate payment. After that, who can believe that Stevens was himself allowed to pocket the ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... resolve upon interposing effectually to remedy these disorders, I think it will be necessary to have at Lucknow, for at least the first few months, a corps of irregular cavalry. We have no cavalry in Oude, and none of the King's can be depended upon. The first thing necessary will be the disbanding of the African, or Hubshee corps, of three hundred men. They are ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... of exactly the opposite meaning to the former. Under the term Agrarians is included, in common usage, all that class of men who exhibit a desire to remove social ills by a resort to means which are considered irregular and dangerous by the great majority of mankind. Of late years we have heard much of Socialists, Communists, Fourierites, and so forth; but the word Agrarians comprehends all these, and is often made to include men who have no more idea of engaging ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... curious additions, something between transepts and side-chapels, were added in memory of Harrow men who fell in South Africa. The total result of these successive changes is a building of remarkably irregular shape, but richly decorated, and sanctified by innumerable memories of friends long since loved and lost. A tablet, near which as a new boy I used to sit, bears ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... sixty-five years of age, a coarse, strong, big-boned man, with large irregular features; he has a haughty supercilious look, a swaggering gait, and a person not at all bespeaking one's favour in behalf of his mind; and his mind, as you shall hear by and bye, not clearing up those prepossessions in his disfavour, with which ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... The irregularity, and occasionally the excessive duration, of these periods of unemployment too often makes unemployment not a beneficent vacation (comparable to shorter hours), but a period of tragic anxiety, demoralizing and unfitting for return to work. Irregular work is generally recognized to be a greater cause of poverty and of actual pauperism than is a low ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... and 14th of December passed away with- out any change in our condition. The wind continued to blow in irregular gusts, but always in the same direction, and the helm, or rather the paddle at the back of the raft, has never once required shifting; and the watch, who are posted on the fore, under orders to examine the sea with the most scrupulous attention, have had no ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... was a large, irregular edifice of dark red sandstone with its walls covered closely with the clinging ivy, that had been clipped away only from a few of the doors and windows, and its roof over-shadowed by the top branches of gigantic ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... clothes by rolling on park grass. Instead, she led him to a tea-room behind a candy-shop on Tottenham Court Road, a low room with white wicker chairs, colored tiles set in the wall, and green Sedji-ware jugs with irregular bunches of white roses. A waitress with wild-rose cheeks and a busy step brought Orange Pekoe and lemon for her, Ceylon and Russian Caravan tea and a jug of clotted cream for him, with ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... headquarters still at the Border homestead known as Haargrond Plaats. Something drew him back to the place, and kept on drawing him. From thence he could observe and conduct his operations, and gather news of the besieged in Gueldersdorp. He was there at the time when the Division—Irregular Horse and Baraland Rifles, with a half battalion of Town Guards, converted into mounted infantry by the simple process of putting beasts underneath men who could ride them—marched out of Gueldersdorp ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... your situation, Mr. Yvard," said Cuffe, "and wish with all my heart you had fallen into our hands in open battle instead of in this irregular way." ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... greatest points in the guide's favour when he had brought it for her inspection. He was enthusiastic in its praise, but volubly vague as to its antecedents, which left Diana with the conviction that the animal had either been stolen or acquired in some irregular manner and that it would be tactless to pursue further inquiries. After all it was no business of hers. It was enough that her trip was to be conducted on the back of a horse that it was a pleasure to ride and whose vagaries promised to give interest to what otherwise ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... Presumptuousness, for setting himself up against the wisdom of the ages, and the decisions of all the established men in the world, for being in short a Presumptuous Sort of Ass. He was judge and jury and prosecutor, but rather inexplicably the defence was conducted in an irregular and undignified way by some inferior stratum ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... the Barriere and started at a brisk walk down the long stretch of the Chemin de Pantin. The night was dark. The rolling clouds overhead hid the face of the moon and presaged the storm. On the right, the irregular heights of the Buttes Chaumont loomed out dense and dark against the heavy sky, whilst to the left, on ahead, a faintly glimmering, greyish streak of reflected light revealed the ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... alluded to stopped, and turned just then a face grotesquely hideous in our direction, and, seeing me, smiled, and nodded feebly—disclosing, as he did so, long, fang-like teeth, yellow, as if cut from lemon-rind, and fantastically irregular. ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... removed, Mandy Ann took an irregular bundle out of the basket. It was tied up in a blue-and-white handkerchief. Untying it with extreme care, as if the contents were peculiarly precious, she displayed a collection of fragments of many-coloured glass and gay-painted china. Gloating ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... resent the visit of Liszt and a companion to his apartments when he was absent? Indeed he may be fairly called a moralist. Carefully reared in the Roman Catholic religion he died confessing that faith. With the exception of the Sand episode, his life was not an irregular one, He abhorred the vulgar and tried to conceal this infatuation ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... precedence over Negroes, and still others because they saw in their support of woman suffrage an opportunity to harass the Republicans. During 1866, petitions for woman suffrage with 10,000 signatures were presented by Democrats and irregular Republicans. ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... charges,—the rates may be held in a fair degree of restraint. A wholesome respect for the possibilities of lawmaking here takes the place of actual statutes. A respect for the law appears in advance of its enactment and may amount to submitting rates in an imperfect and irregular way to the approval of the state. This effect, when it is realized, is to be credited in part to laws which will never be enacted. The merely potential law—that which the people will probably demand if they are greatly ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... visited Charlestown, Alexander Garden, a man of some sense and erudition, who was the episcopal clergyman of that place, to put the people upon their guard, took occasion to point out to them the pernicious tendency of Whitfield's wild doctrines and irregular manner of life. He represented him as a religious impostor or quack, who had an excellent knack of setting off to advantage his poisonous tenets. On the other hand, Whitfield, who had been accustomed to bear reproach and face opposition, recriminated with ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... clump of bamboos which grew on a point projecting into the stream, a creature with a savage countenance and huge paws resting on the trunk of a tree overhanging the water. It was of a brownish-yellow colour, the upper parts of the body variegated with irregular oblong spots of black. It was so intently watching the stream that it did not appear to observe us. Had it not indeed been pointed out to me, I might not have discovered it, so much had it the appearance of the trunk on which it was resting. Presently we ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... the ship were a government transport. We are all going to the West Coast or to the Congo. Should you wish to continue on to Cape Town along the South Coast, as they call the vast territory from Lagos to Cape Town, although there is an irregular, a very irregular, service to the Cape, you could as quickly reach it by going on to the Congo, returning all the way to Southampton, and again starting ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... institution appears, however, to have derived little advantage from Porson's supervision of it, beyond the few criticisms which were found in his handwriting in some of the volumes. Owing to his very irregular habits, the great scholar proved but an inefficient librarian; he was irregular in attendance, and was frequently brought home at midnight drunk. The directors had determined to dismiss him, and said they only knew him as their librarian from seeing his name attached to receipts of salary. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... in the Tachytes' burrows from July onwards. Moreover, the Cerocoma is very abundant in the neighbourhood of the sand-heaps haunted by the Tachytes, while the Mylabris does not occur there. Nor is this all: the few nymphs obtained have curious antennae, ending in a full, irregular tuft, the like of which is found only in the antennae of the male Cerocoma. The Mylabris, therefore, must be eliminated; the antennae, in the nymph, must be regularly jointed, as they are in the perfect insect. There ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... way, but our coolies never made a false step, but hastened onwards. Not one of us uttered a word. It was as if we had agreed to be silent at these moments. We felt as though wrapped in the heavy veil of dark-ness, and no sound was heard but the short, irregular breathing of the porters, and the cadence of their quick, nervous footsteps upon the stony soil of the path. One felt sick at heart and ashamed of belonging to that human race, one part of which ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... study. At the beginning of this war Napoleon had to choose between methodical operations, with provisions carried in the train of his army, or purchased of the inhabitants and regularly paid for; and irregular warfare, with forced requisitions—war being made to support war. The question was ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... particularly true throughout its native quarters, as exemplified in streets and bazars in the vicinity of the Nile, and in its old-time mosques; in this connection I would emphasize the bazars, both Turkish and Arabic. Some of the old irregular thoroughfares on which the bazars are situated radiate from the wider and more important Muski; then, again, there are narrower alley-like streets, a veritable tangle! The bazars everywhere are similarly constructed, but vary in size and importance; they are box-like ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... "Then you have an irregular character in your book, and Mrs. Blemish's extensive circle of intimates assert that nothing can be more pointed than your allusion to her conduct ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 404, December 12, 1829 • Various
... themselves. The people are the only censors of their governors; and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people, is to give them full information of their affairs through the channel of the public papers, and to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... The irregular development of the poor laws, from the act of Elizabeth down to that of 1834, belongs to economic rather than to general history. It is enough to say here that in later years, and especially since the system of allowances adopted by the Berkshire ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... the women of Ireland, that they should provide regimental colours for the battalions of the Division. This appeal was promptly met, to Redmond's great delight—delight which was soon changed into vexation, for the War Office stepped in, declared the proceeding irregular, and prohibited the holding of colours by any temporary battalion. General Parsons was obliged to publish an explanation which must have been galling to himself, and which went far to confirm the impression that the War Office, with all its preoccupations, had time to keep an unfriendly ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... Alfred, and the ponies, and the cook-wagon, and the cook, and the Mexican vaqueros had done the alkali for three days. Underfoot had been an exceedingly irregular plain; overhead an exceedingly bright and trying polished sky; around about an exceedingly monotonous horizon-line and dense clouds of white dust. At the end of the third day everybody was feeling just a bit choked up and tired, and, to crown a series of petty misfortunes, the fire ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... its own organism,—capable of giving origin to any of the phenomena to which we apply the term disease. We must, therefore, seek for origins of the phenomena in causes lying outside the body, and affecting it in such manner as to either render the natural actions and processes irregular, or to excite actions and processes that are ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... Asia. It is about the size of England, 460 miles from North to South, and 430 from East to West. On the North it is bounded by Turkestan, East by India, South by Beloochistan, and West by Persia. The population numbers about 7,000,000. They are as wild as the country is broken and irregular. They are chiefly agriculturists. The country is rich in minerals and timber. In time past they have seldom been at peace, being very generally at war among themselves. Afghan is a Persian word, and means that which is wrapped around—no doubt having reference to the mountain chain that hems ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... we have described is not obtained; and not only is the property injured by such a system, but in Ireland the most shocking consequences ensue from it. There is little manufacture in Ireland; the price of labour is low, the demand for labour irregular. If a poor man be driven, by distress of rent, from his potato garden, he has no other resource—all is lost: he will do the impossible (as the French say) to retain it; subscribe any bond, and promise any rent. The middleman ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... day, much of the way had of necessity been made slowly. Wherever the dusty, irregular roads had permitted greater speed, the swarthy Mexican who had served Senor Montez as chauffeur on the trip had opened wide on the speed. At the end of their long automobile ride Tom and Harry fairly ached from ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... died as he lived, engrossed in the labour of his life. A copy of Burke's "Vicissitudes of Families" was lying open on the table, and beside it were two sheets of foolscap, covered with notes in thin irregular handwriting. The first of these depicted the arms of the Turrald family, as originally selected at the first institution of heraldry, and the quarterings of the heiresses who had married into the family ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... bows as we dashed through the dancing waves. Away we went; the big sea-serpent could not have beaten us. Every minute the low, dull sound of the gun reached our ears, growing louder and louder as we drew nearer the ship. Her distress was evidently great. From the somewhat irregular way the gun was fired, and from its tone, Jack pronounced the ship to be a merchantman, as he remarked that minute-guns from a man-of-war would have been far louder and more regular. The mist, fortunately, did not again settle down thickly over the ship, so that, although twilight was ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... see it bobbing up and down with the little waves. Slowly it receded from the shore, flashing and turning as it went. The wind was carrying it out to sea. Soon it became a mere speck, doubtfully discerned at irregular intervals; and then the mystery of it was swallowed up by the greater mystery of the ocean. Geddie stood still upon the beach, smoking and ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... warfare preferred to hide behind trees rather than to flourish banners, and the white men soon learned to follow their example. Nevertheless, it always seemed to the minds of the colonists a little irregular and out of place not to carry a flag of some sort when they were ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan
... his face—such a kindly good placid face, that it seemed beautiful, though by some rules it was irregular and ugly enough. The Dean laid his hand on Sam's curly head, and said, "God bless you, Samuel Buckley," and won Sam's ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... taste, what the blind are with regard to light. The second class are the absent-minded, chatterboxes, persons engrossed in business or ambition, and others who seek to occupy themselves with two things at once, and eat only to be filled. Such, for example, was Napoleon; he was irregular in his meals, and ate fast and badly. But there again was to be traced that absolute will which he carried into everything he did. The moment appetite was felt, it was necessary that it should be satisfied; ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... meteke auton}, "until at last he dismissed it"; but the construction is very irregular, and there is probably some corruption of text. Stein reads {ekon} by conjecture for ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... has been fully described by Layard—see Early Adventures, vol. II, p. 295. It is of comparatively recent date, not unlike the shrines of Mussulman saints, and is surmounted by a high conical dome of irregular brickwork, somewhat resembling in shape a pine cone. The reader is referred to the beautiful pictorial illustrations of Daniel's reputed tomb, of the ruins of Susa, and of Schuster and its bridges in Mme. Dieulafoy's La Perse, la Chaldee et la ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... the address. It was in the large, irregular, uncertain writing of a child. He opened the ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... to the aborigines, is situated in latitude 24 deg. 6' N., and longitude 74 deg 26' W., and is an irregularly shaped white sandstone islet in about the middle of the great Bahama Bank. The space occupied by the whole group is shaped like an irregular triangle extending from the Navidad Bank in the Caribbean Sea at the south-east corner, to Bahama Island in Florida Strait on the north, about 200 miles. The south side trends west by north for 600 miles, and the north side north-west by north 720 miles. Most of the islands and small rocks in this ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... send you a Christmas present?" asked Thorny one January day, when an irregular bill had ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... specimens in the collection now being prepared for exhibition, one which will excite the greatest curiosity is a specimen of the honey locust, which was brought here from Missouri. The bark is covered with a growth of thorns from one to four inches in length, sharp as needles, and growing at irregular intervals. The specimen arrived here in perfect condition, but, in order that it might be transported without injury, it had to be suspended from the roof of a box car, and thus make its trip from ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... by the dichotomous organisations is divided almost equally between matrilineal and patrilineal tribes. The latter occupy the region north of Lat. 30 deg. and west of an irregular line running from Long. 137 deg. to 140 deg. or thereabouts. In addition a portion of Victoria and the region west of Brisbane form isolated patrilineal groups. The problem presented by these anomalous areas has already been discussed ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... the river is here so wide as to give it the appearance of a noble lake; an island, covered with lofty forest trees divides it, and relieves by its broad mass of shadow the uniformity of its waters. The town stretches in a rambling irregular manner along the cliff, from the Wolf River, one of the innumerable tributaries to the Mississippi, to about a mile below it. Half a mile more of the cliff beyond the town is cleared of trees, and produces good pasture for horses, cows, and pigs; sheep they had none. At either end ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... covered with dense forest, stagnant morasses, and trim tea-gardens, we one morning awake to find that over the horizon to the north hangs a long cloud-like strip, white suffused with pink—level on its lower edge but with the upper edge irregular in outline. No one who had not seen snow mountains before would suppose for a moment that that strip could be a line of mountain summits. For there is not a trace of any connection with the earth. Between it and the earth is nothing but blue haze. And it is ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... if the spring and the summer had dragged their steps here, to lie down and die with the paupers. The uncut grass lay rank and grey and long—Nature's unkempt beard—on the earth. The great bare chestnuts and oaks threw narrow shadows over the irregular mounds of earth. Small, rude wooden crosses stood at the heads of some of the mounds, lopsided, drunken, weather-beaten. No names were inscribed upon them. All the bones laid down here were anonymous. A robin was singing at ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... rhythms through this magic month of May, the gold of fireflies in the perfumed darkness—'aerial gold.' I long to catch the subtle music of their fairy dances and make a poem with a rhythm like the quick irregular wild flash of their sudden movements. Would it not be wonderful? One black night I stood in a garden with fireflies in my hair like darting restless stars caught in a mesh of darkness. It gave me a strange sensation, as if I were not ...
— The Golden Threshold • Sarojini Naidu
... the rhythm of "Margery Daw" sung twice through, and then counting up to twenty. Very often they went to watch the trains. Cecil is particularly interested in them, and wanted to know how long was the time between. He said three minutes, I guessed nine, but we found they were irregular. In the intervals while waiting for a train to pass, we played a 'listening' game, listening to what sounds we could hear. A thrush came and sang right over our heads, so the listening was concentrated ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... might properly be considered the crater of the volcano. It was four or five acres in extent, irregular in contour, and so filled with gases and vapors that one could not see the bottom, while the jagged boundary on the farther side came out to view only at intervals, when the obstructing smoke ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... had, at irregular periods, paroxyms of reformation and arrangement, which she called "clarin' up times," when she would begin with great zeal, and turn every drawer and closet wrong side outward, on to the floor or tables, and make the ordinary confusion seven-fold more confounded. Then ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... made no special crusade to amend. Now, in view of the awe-inspiring visit of the Reverend T. W. Beasley, M.A., Mademoiselle had instituted an eleventh-hour spurt of diligence, and kept her pupils with reluctant noses pressed hard to the grindstone. Irregular verbs and exceptions of gender seemed much worse when taken in such large doses. The girls began to wish either that the Tower of Babel had never been attempted, or that the world had reached a sufficient stage of civilization to adopt a universal language. Over one ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... tackled two questions and strikes have been treated more than once—notably in George Moore's clever, interesting, uneven work, The Strike at Arlingford. Much further back there was Man and Wife, an attack upon the system of irregular marriages still existing in Scotland and some of the States of the Union. Probably there have been some other native works touching more or less directly upon questions of legislative reform within my time, but it is difficult to remember all of them; yet there are many burning ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... reversed.[1] Then I gave her wine and drank a cup myself, and in my happiness sang a few score notes. And these notes turned into a poem, a poem without fixed measure, for the measure followed my irregular tune. In ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... fall seemed to impress the covering party strangely, and for a brief space nothing was heard but the irregular tramp of the ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... light. Could it be any volcanic fire? In that case, surely I should have felt the heat. Still, if on this there was doubt, it was of the utmost importance to our common safety to clear it up. I examined the sides of the descent, and found that I could venture to trust myself to the irregular projection of ledges, at least for some way. I left the cage and clambered down. As I drew nearer and nearer to the light, the chasm became wider, and at last I saw, to my unspeakable amaze, a broad level road at the bottom of the abyss, ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... printed, at irregular intervals, in 1764, the Geistliches Magazien. There are fifty numbers in the first volume. Sauer cast his own type, and this magazine is therefore printed, as he himself says on page 136 of the second volume, with the first ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... are regulated. In that state of mental relaxation, when the intellect is not intently occupied on any particular subject, numberless phantasms will involuntarily intrude: for, during the time we are awake, the mind is never wholly unoccupied, and such irregular presentations of Ideas constitute our reveries. However these ignes fatui may glimmer in their wanderings, tumultuously assemble, or abruptly depart; such confluence or dispersion contributes nothing to effective thought. As far as these Ideas or phantasms, ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam
... "Spectator" type. Irving and J. K. Paulding were the principal contributors, but they had some assistance from William Irving and a few others. In the course of a year twenty numbers were published at irregular intervals, when they suddenly ceased to appear. The authors, who wrote under fictitious names, affected from the start complete indifference to fame or profit. Their purpose, they said with whimsical ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... of witches, and seeming to have either shrunk away from the faded black silk dress in which she is clad, or passed through half a century of starvation merely to bolster up her dignity. A sharp, hatchet-face, sallow and corrugated; two wicked gray eyes, set deep in bony sockets; a long, irregular nose, midway of which is adjusted a pair of broad, brass-framed spectacles; a sunken, purse—drawn mouth, with two discolored teeth protruding from her upper lip; a high, narrow forehead, resembling somewhat ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... Rouletabille was squatted like a tailor at work; but Matrena remained on all-fours, her jaw out, her eyes fixed, like a bulldog ready to spring. The minutes passed by in profound silence, broken only by the irregular breathing and puffing of the general. His face stood out pallid and tragic on the pillow; his mouth was open and, at times, the lips moved. There was fear at any moment of nightmare or his awakening. Unconsciously he threw an arm over toward the table where the glass of narcotic ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... school, and that this school was mainly attended by young fellows of tender years, and inordinate ideas were suddenly aroused in him. While he therefore fictitiously gave out that he went to school, [he was as irregular in his attendance as the fisherman] who catches fish for three days, and suns his nets for the next two; simply presenting his school-fee gift to Chia Tai-jui and making not the least progress in his studies; his sole dream being to knit a number of familiar friendships. Who would have ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... exist a single instant, they are and always will be by fatality reduced to improvise a despotism without other reason of existence than necessity, and which, consequently, is violent and blind as Necessity. We escape from the harmonious monarchy of Reason, only to fall under the irregular dictatorship ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... concert of birds, from different quarters, in keeping with the fresh scent, the peace, the naturalness all around me. I am lately noticing the russet-back, size of the robin or a trifle less, light breast and shoulders, with irregular dark stripes—tail long—sits hunch'd up by the hour these days, top of a tall bush, or some tree, singing blithely. I often get near and listen, as he seems tame; I like to watch the working of his bill and throat, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... tip, about 1/2 in. long, a few borne in a loose, terminal raceme. Calyx of 2 small sepals; corolla irregular, of 4 erect, closed, and flattened petals joined, 1 of outer pair with short rounded spur at base, the interior ones narrow and keeled on back. Stamens 6, in 2 sets, Opposite outer petals; 1 pistil. Stem: Smooth, curved, branched, 1 to 2 feet high. Leaves: Pale grayish green, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... drawn tightly back over his prominent teeth, and his breath came in irregular gasps. Across the pillow in a straight black line lay his dripping queque. As his eyelids fluttered feebly, the doctor straightened ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... them where they will all be brought one day, into the brightness of Christ's countenance. If you want to find out the flaws in some thin, badly-woven piece of cloth, you hold it up against the light, do you not? and then you see all the specks and holes, and the irregular threads. Hold up your lives in like fashion against the light, and I shall be surprised if you do not find enough there to make you very much ashamed of yourselves. Were you ever on the stage of a theatre in the daytime? Did you ever see what miserable daubs the scenes look, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... Bengore, you behold, as you look up from the sea, a gigantic colonnade of basaltes, supporting a black mass of irregular rock, over which rises another range of pillars, "forming altogether a perpendicular height of one hundred and seventy feet, from the base of which the promontory, covered over with rock and grass, slopes down to the sea, for the space of two ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... upon me! I even selected the best places to escape up the rough stone walls of the canal. All my boyhood I enjoyed thrilling imaginary perils, and the planning means of escape. The walls of this canal were made of irregular stones from the field. Alternately wet and dry they had taken on beautiful colors, variegated according to the character of the stone, and between them in summer, and quite covering them in places, grew many ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... Lordship despairs, that even this argument will have any force with our abominable clergy, because, to use his own words, "They are an insensible and degenerate race, who are thinking of nothing but their present advantages; and so that they may now support a luxurious and brutal course of irregular and voluptuous practices, they are easily hired to betray their religion, to sell their country, and give up that liberty and those properties, which are the present felicities and glories of this nation."[34] He seems to reckon all these ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... and closed his eyes, while a happy smile lit up his worn, thin face. His breast rose and fell with his irregular breathing, shaken now and then by his cough and feverish shivering, and often he cried out like one inspired: "Infinite labour, measureless reward! All, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... doubt that Erasmus himself knew, or had known, that not all particulars of this version were correct. In all probability his father was already a priest at the time of the relationship to which he owed his life; in any case it was not the impatience of a betrothed couple, but an irregular alliance of long standing, of which a brother, Peter, had been ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... Damien caught me by the hand, and a hearty welcome shone from his kindly face as he helped me up the rock. He immediately called me by my name, "Edward," and said it was "like everything else, a providence," that he had met me at that irregular landing-place, for he had expected the ship to stop ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... same time it renders the balloon a steadier target for hostile fire. On the other hand, the swaying of a spherical balloon with the wind materially contributes to its safety. A moving object, particularly when its oscillations are irregular and incalculable, is an extremely difficult object at which to ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... over it," she said, and sighed as she turned to the papers still left in the bottom of the box. There were only a few, a thin packet of six or eight, and one lying separate. She slipped the rubber band from the packet and looked hard at the irregular, strong writing, woman's or man's, it was hard to say which. Then she spread out the envelopes and took them in order by the postmarks. The first was a little note, thanking him for a book, a few lines ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... the air was rent by a screeching whistle, and some dozen shells fell within the hospital enclosure, piercing one of the buildings, but sparing the men. This was the beginning of an irregular but almost continuous bombardment, which was not specially directed against us, no doubt, but which ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... which the mycelium has run, and before the crop of mushrooms appears. That is, the bed is spawned in the ordinary way. When the mycelium has thoroughly permeated the bed, it is taken down and broken into irregular pieces, six to eight inches in diameter. Thus, the French spawn, where the beds are made entirely of horse manure, with no admixture of soil, consist merely of the fermented and cured manure, through which the mycelium has run, ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... squire, rode together the next morning to the scene of the feast. They arrived on a village green, surrounded with cottages peeping from among the trees by which the green was completely encircled. The whole circle was hung round with one continuous garland of flowers, depending in irregular festoons from the branches. In the centre of the green was a May-pole hidden in boughs and garlands; and a multitude of round-faced bumpkins and cherry-checked lasses were dancing around it, to the quadruple melody of Scrapesqueak, Whistlerap, Trumtwang, and Muggledrone: harmony ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... through. "Your Royal Highness," said a corporal one day to Prince George, the impetuous young man who had resigned his position as heir to the throne and was at this moment far more congenially occupied as the chief of an irregular band in the mountains, "we have no more ammunition," said the corporal. "Each man has a knife?" asked George. The corporal nodded. "Then let us go on." The Prince has a great wound across his breast, from one side to the other. He is very much the descendant of Kara George; he dislikes making ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... predicted is to set up a tide-gauge, or automatic recorder, and keep it working for a year or two. The tide-gauge is easy enough to understand: it marks the height of the tide at every instant by an irregular curved line like a barometer chart (Fig. 117). These observational curves so obtained have next to be fed into a fearfully complex machine, which it would take a whole lecture to make even partially intelligible, but Fig. 118 shows its aspect. It consists of ten integrating ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... seen by the officers of H.M.S. "Osborne," on June 2, off the coast of Sicily, which is sketched by Lieut. Haynes and figured in the London Graphic. The first sketch is merely of a long row of fins just appearing above the water, of irregular height, and extending, says Lieutenant Osborne, from thirty to forty feet in length. The other sketch is of the creature as seen "end on," and shows only the head, which was "bullet-shaped and quite six feet thick," and a couple of flappers, one on each side. The creature was, says Lieutenant Osborne, ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... risk that I would not run, nor any inconvenience to myself that I would not encounter, to carry this business into effect." [Footnote: While these negotiations in England were in progress, an application was made, without Seabury's knowledge, to Cartwright of Shrewsbury, an irregular non-juring bishop. As, however, this was subsequent to the opening of negotiations with Scotland, nothing, fortunately, came of it. It has been said that an application was made to, or an offer received from, the Danish ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... sleeve?" He smoked with great energy, and cast his eyes alertly about as if to make sure that there was no chance of Wanhope's physically escaping him, from the corner of the divan, where he sat pretty well hemmed in by the rest of us, spreading in an irregular circle before him. ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... now twenty-nine years old,—a visionary man, full of schemes, with crude opinions and unbounded self-conceit, but poor and unknown,—a true adventurer, with many agreeable qualities, irregular habits, and not very scrupulous morals. Favored by letters of introduction to ladies of distinction,—for he was a favorite with ladies, who liked his enthusiasm, freshness, elegant talk, and grand sentiments,—he succeeded ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... of my untimely end rather out of curiosity than from a sincere intention to take warning by my unhappy fate. You see me here in the very prime of my youth, cut off like an untimely flower in the rigorous season, through my having been too much addicted to a voluptuous and irregular course of life, which has been the occasion of my committing those crimes for which I am now to suffer. As the laws of God as well as of men call upon me to Lay down my life as justly forfeited by my manifold transgressions, I acknowledge the justice of my sentence, patiently submit to the same ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... them life. Therefore when they come to be dissolved, not by externall violence, but intestine disorder, the fault is not in men, as they are the Matter; but as they are the Makers, and orderers of them. For men, as they become at last weary of irregular justling, and hewing one another, and desire with all their hearts, to conforme themselves into one firme and lasting edifice; so for want, both of the art of making fit Laws, to square their actions by, and also of humility, and patience, ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... to see, Mr JABBERJEE, what advantage you can hope to gain by these highly irregular digressions. The plaintiff is under my immediate observation, and I have seen nothing in her conduct during the trial of which you have ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... spot, he lifted his cap, above the peak of which were embroidered three interlaced oak leaves in silver, and uncovering his brow, stood bareheaded for a moment to feel the fresh air that rose from the valley of the Neckar. At first sight his irregular features produced a strange impression; but before long the pallor of his face, deeply marked by smallpox, the infinite gentleness of his eyes, and the elegant framework of his long and flowing black hair, which grew ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... street that could be called which was an irregular cluster of poor cottages of many heights and ages, some with their fronts, some with their backs, and some with gable ends towards the road, with here and there a signpost, or a shed encroaching on the path—was close at hand. There was a faint ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... his antagonist by the knees to slide into the path of the two on-comers; at the same time, catching up his battered can, and smashing it into the face of the door-orderly, who now peeped in, he slipped through, and was gone into a yard, small, of irregular shape, and dim, with one wall-lantern, and but one egress (except the egress into the prison-hall), namely a blind-alley between the laundry and carpet- makers' building on one side, and stables ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... leaving Green River City the explorers reached the end of the Canon of Lodore, which is nearly twenty-four miles long. The walls were never less than two thousand feet high except near the foot. They are very irregular, standing in perpendicular or overhanging cliffs here, terraced there, or receding in steep slopes broken by many side-gulches. The highest point of the wall is twenty-seven hundred feet, but the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... flashed back upon him with full force. He saw that the gates were chained and locked, and, with a natural curiosity, he followed the road beside the wall. It stopped almost abruptly and gave place to a low railing which divided the lawn in front of the house from the park beyond; and the long irregular facade of the old ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... Baltimore, it underwent a second disruption on the fifth day; the Northern wing nominated Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, and the Southern wing John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky as their respective candidates for President. In the meanwhile, also, regular and irregular delegates from some twenty-two States, representing fragments of the old Whig party, had convened at Baltimore on May 9 and nominated John Bell of Tennessee as their candidate for President, upon a platform ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... long broken ridge like a wall of cliff, an embankment stained the many colours of the south-west; red it looked in streaks and yellow and orange and even lavender and pale elusive green. It swept in a broad, irregular curve about the further level lands; it was carved and notched along its crest into strange shapes, here thrusting upward in a single needle-like tower, there offering to the clear sky a growth like a monster toadstool, again notched into ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... head was hot, his feet cold. The temptation simply and crudely to give in, bundle down the pulpit stairs and bolt, was contemptibly great. His eyesight played tricks on him. Below there, in the body of the church, the rows of faces ran together into irregular pink blots spread meaninglessly above the brown of the oaken pews, the brown, drab, and black, too, of their owners' Sunday best. Here and there a child's light frock or white hat intruded upon the prevailing neutral tints; as did, in a startling manner, Damaris Verity's russet-red ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... cost of simplicity and breadth. But the essential difference between it and the central art, is its disorder in design—you see the locks of hair cannot be counted any longer—they are entirely disheveled and irregular. Now the individual character may, or may not, be a sign of decline; but the licentiousness, the casting loose of the masses in the design, is an infallible one. The effort at portraiture is good for art if ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... examined Gaston, and found his breathing heavy and irregular, prescribed a heavy dose of sulphate of quinine; he then retired, saying he would return the ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... which has but three or four arches, we pass to the town of Windsor, which crouches, on the river-side, close up to the embattled walls of the castle—so closely that the very irregular pile of buildings included in the latter cannot at first glance be well distinguished from the town. High over all swells the round tower to a height above the water of two hundred and twenty feet—no excessive altitude, if we deduct the eminence on which it stands, yet enough, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... toss their blankets aside, and spring up ready dressed, and move amongst their horses; the Kaffirs attend to the morning meal, the everlasting rusks and coffee are served up, horses are saddled, cattle are yoked to waggons, and in the twinkling of an eye the camp is broken up, and the irregular army is on the march again, with scouts guarding every pass in front, scouts watching (themselves unseen) on every height. They travel fast, because they travel light; they use very little water, because they find it impossible to move ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... been driven to the south. Like them, they were slothful and effete. Their training was imperfect; their discipline was lax; their courage was low. Nor was even this all the weakness and peril of their position; for while the regular troops were thus demoralised, there existed a powerful local irregular force of Bazingers (Soudanese riflemen), as well armed as the soldiers, more numerous, more courageous, and who regarded the alien garrisons with fear that continually diminished and hate that continually grew. And behind regulars ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... two marriages, and a very silly, although pretty child. The daughter, Camille, was like her, although not so pretty, and the man whom Camille had married was what Margaret had been taught to regard as "common." His business pursuits were irregular and partook of mystery. He always smoked cigarettes and chewed gum. He wore loud shirts and a diamond scarf-pin which had upon him the appearance of stolen goods. The gem had belonged to Margaret's own mother, but when Camille expressed a desire to present it to Jack Desmond, Margaret had ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... sprang up two hundred feet from the very bosom of the river, a smooth perpendicular wall; sometimes broken with a fissure and an out-jutting ledge, in other parts only roughened with lichens; then breaking away into a more irregular and wood-lined shore; but with this variety keeping its bold front to the river for many an oar's length. Probably as bold and more deep below the surface, for in this place was the strength of the channel. The down tides rushed by here furiously; ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... Philomena, but that he could not stand. So they act as parish women here, and they do it very well. I liked Sister Beata when I have come in contact with her, and I am sure she is an excellent nurse. They will do your nieces no harm, though I don't like the irregular." ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... an irregular round knob, of wood, perhaps, resting on the rail. It did not move in the least; but as another broken- down buzz like a still fainter echo of the first dismal sound proceeded from it I concluded it must be the head of the ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... possession of a town recently flourishing, and containing a population of 124,000, but ruined and reduced to 80,000 inhabitants by the blessing of being united to the French Empire. On the following day, the 18th, Colonel Tettenborn entered Hamburg at the head of 1000 regular and 200 irregular Cossacks. I have described the military situation of Hamburg when it was evacuated on the 12th of March, and Napoleon's displeasure may be easily conceived. Tettenborn was received with all the honours usually bestowed ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne |
