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Prematurely   /prˌimətʃˈʊrli/   Listen
Prematurely

adverb
1.
(of childbirth) before the end of the normal period of gestation.
2.
Too soon; in a premature manner.  Synonym: untimely.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Prematurely" Quotes from Famous Books



... "Thou art becoming exercised prematurely; his Lordship may not condescend to visit his puling babe before his guests depart. In such case, thou wilt have time to cool thy haste. I will go now. Do not eat too much, Lambkin." Janet looked back admiringly as she left the room; her eyes upon her mistress' ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... child of five or six, his father had given him Peter as his own boy. Peter was really not many years older than the colonel, but prosperity had preserved the one, while hard luck had aged the other prematurely. Peter had taken care of him, and taught him to paddle in the shallow water of the creek and to avoid the suck-holes; had taught him simple woodcraft, how to fish, and how to hunt, first with bow ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt

... portion of the line commanded by Lieutenant Hall, a pile of cartridges lay under the muzzle of one of the guns. Some fire had probably lodged inside the piece, which the sponging did not extinguish, for, in loading it, it went off prematurely, and blew off the right arm of the gunner, Daniel Hough, who was an excellent soldier. His death was almost instantaneous. He was the first man who lost his life on our side in the war for the Union. The damage did not end here, for some of the fire from ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday

... Xenophon to follow him. The march of the army became little better than a rout, so that the rear division reached the halting place in extreme confusion; upon which Xenophon proceeded to remonstrate with Cheirisophus for prematurely hurrying forward and neglecting his comrades behind. But the other—pointing out to his attention the hill before them, and the steep path ascending it, forming their future line of march, which was beset with numerous Karduchians—defended himself by saying that he had hastened ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote

... procession wending its way toward us. In front walked a big, hardened-looking man, in the prime of life; behind him came a child, a slim, wonderfully fair girl of about ten years, lithe and graceful, with large, expressive dark eyes. After her came a woman prematurely old, her face lined and seamed ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... through the lattice, but could see little. In front lay the brown leaves of last year, and upon them some yellowish-green ones of this season that had been prematurely blown down by the gale. Above stretched an old beech, with vast armpits, and great pocket-holes in its sides where branches had been amputated in past times; a black slug was trying to climb it. Dead boughs were scattered about like ichthyosauri in a museum, and beyond ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... him disappointed, if it were only in joke; so she came out prematurely from behind the closet door, and ran into his arms, while the two young Cratchits hustled Tiny Tim, and bore him off into the wash-house that he might hear the pudding ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith

... blundering business took place; too far gone to be called back. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN suggests that we shall change his name; call him "The JUDICIOUS HOOKER." Certainly he "hooked it" a day before holidays commenced, and won't return till several days after they have prematurely closed. Still remnant of House here to-night, though growling and discontented, does ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various

... it!" said Janet, with great thankfulness in her heart, lifting up her soul to God who had given her the power to sing. She strained her prematurely old and weary eyes to make out the sense. "A genuine source of pride to every native of the ancient ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various

... living thing of the inferior orders. That, alike in the animal and the vegetable world, we see one individual rendered, by circumstances beyond its control, exceedingly wretched compared to its neighbours—one only exists as the prey of another—even a plant suffers from disease till it perishes prematurely, while the plant next to it rejoices in its vitality and lives out its happy life free from a pang. That it is an erroneous analogy from human infirmities to reply by saying that the Supreme Being only acts by ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... gathered them in his arms, with sudden passion, and as he sat through the long night, he held them closely to him, for kin of his they surely were—these frosted roses, on whose fragrant young hearts the blight had so prematurely fallen! ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung

... cheap and so good as ours. The cheaper restaurants are apt to be English, sincere in material, but heavy and unattractive in expression; in everything culinary the island touch seems hopelessly inartistic. One Sunday morning, far from home, when the lunch came prematurely, we found all the English eating-houses devoutly shut, and our wicked hope was in a little Italian trattoria which opened its doors to the alien air with some such artificial effect as an orange-tree ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... exclaimed Oliver, "and not the first that has been prematurely dispelled by too ardent a pursuit of strong drink! And now, Charlie, as you appear to be in the vein, and we have still some distance to go, will you tell me something about the giants, and how it came to pass that they were so fond of ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne

... . . Julio looked doubtfully and for a long time at the soldier before he could be convinced. That blind officer motionless on the bench, that figure of heroic grief, was Laurier! . . . At first glance, he appeared prematurely old with roughened and bronzed skin so furrowed with lines that they converged like rays around all the openings of his face. His hair was beginning to whiten on the temples and in the beard which covered his cheeks. He had lived twenty years in that one month. . . . At the same time he appeared ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... the "gymnasium," as Ed and Don called it, she could not help smiling at the grand title they had given prematurely to a very ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge

... of age, perhaps, somewhat prematurely, as the poet's gradually growing conservatism culminated in his opposition to the Catholic Relief Bill, before he was sixty years old. But there is nothing to wonder at in the fact that the mind of a man of brooding and solitary ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers

... the hill country few persons wholly escaped malarial disorders. "When this home-building and land-clearing is accomplished," wrote one whose recollections of the frontier were vivid, "a faithful picture would reveal not only the changes that have been wrought, but a host of prematurely brokedown men and women, besides an undue proportion resting peacefully ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg

... fluctuated with the breath of the bellows. Just now he was meekly quailing before the old woman, whom he evidently had not thought to find here. It was as apt an illustration as might be, perhaps, of the inferiority of strength to finesse. She seemed an inconsiderable adversary, as, haggard, lean, and prematurely aged, she swayed on her prodding-stick about the huge kettle; but she was as a veritable David to this big young Goliath, though she, too, flung hardly more than a ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn

... gullies, and giving a false message to the sleeping ground; so that, long before their time, the grass and flowers had sprung up, only to be cut down by a heavy frost that was succeeded by snow. Again a hot wind had come, and again the grass had sprouted prematurely and been blighted. When spring opened, the winds veered to the south and drove back, and what green things had survived the cold died early ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates

... fell on the occupant of the bed Theodosia started in bitter surprise. All unconsciously she had been expecting to find Wesley as he had been when they parted. Could this gaunt, haggard creature, with the unkempt beard and prematurely grey hair and the hollow, beseeching eyes, be the ruddy, boyish-faced husband of her youth? She gave a choking cry of pain and shame, and the sick man turned his head. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... took part in the capture of Laon, Soissons, Compiegne, and other places, and, in the attack on Paris, September, 1429, which she prematurely urged, was severely wounded. In a sally from Compiegne, where she was besieged by Burgundians, she was taken prisoner May 24, 1430, and held until November, when for a large payment in money she was surrendered to the English, who took her to Rouen, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... it dissolve of itself, or be broken up by the defection and opposition of its own supporters, are disposed to be patient and moderate; that is, the more sagacious of them are; but they are always in danger of being prematurely urged on by the violence and impetuosity of their tail. Such is the state of parties at the present moment, and it would puzzle the most sagacious observer and most experienced actor in political life to predict the result of the ensuing session. There is quite enough, however, in the general ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... of Savoy, and later the councilor of the countess regent, he emulated his uncle's heroic example and joined the English armies under Buckingham in France, there winning praise and the offer of the chevalier's accolade. But he failed to fulfil the promise of his youth and died prematurely, leaving his young son Antoine, the last hope of the family, to succeed to his grandfather. Count Antoine's overlord, the youthful count of Savoy, confided the education of his vassal and protege to a venerable prelate of Lausanne; but heeding ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven

... woman of the play,—a woman taken by an instinct, long submerged, but which has floated to the surface, and is beginning to command her actions. In another moment she had slipped back into her weary lymphatic nature, at once prematurely old and extravagantly childish. She could not talk of indifferent things; and having asked some strange questions, and laughed loudly, she wished Hubert 'Good-afternoon' in her curious, irresponsible fashion, ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore

... other very different and entirely solid ones, and there is no need to enlarge upon the former unless one is animated with a desire to find fault. Here we have a youth who had the misfortune to have fortune smile upon him prematurely, and who loves where perhaps—he has as yet no certainty of it—he should not love; what more is needed to enable us to comprehend the arrogance displayed in the first catastrophe and the pusillanimity in the second? Kleist has put a set of pulleys in motion where the simplest lever ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... blooms; bright birds flitted from tree to tree, ringdoves began to coo. The terror of the tempest and the darkness of night were overpast; the world awoke again to life and love and joy. Instantly this change reflected itself in their young hearts. They whose natures had as it were ripened prematurely in the stress of danger and the shadow of death, became children once again. The very real emotions that they had experienced were forgotten, or at any rate sank into abeyance. Now they thought, not of separation or of the dim, mysterious ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard

... certainly not democratic, and least of all socialist. The theory of selection teaches that in human life, as in animal and plant life everywhere, and at all times, only a small and chosen minority can exist and flourish, while the enormous majority starve and perish miserably and more or less prematurely. The germs of every species of animal and plant and the young individuals which spring from them are innumerable, while the number of those fortunate individuals which develop to maturity and actually reach their hardly-won life's goal is out of all proportion trifling. The cruel and merciless struggle ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel

... year later and came very near drawing us into a big general war of Europe. We went so far as to mobilize, and we should undoubtedly have taken the field, if the peace of Villafranca had not been concluded, somewhat prematurely for Austria, but just in time for ourselves, for we should have been obliged to wage this war under unfavorable circumstances. We should have turned this war, which was an Italian affair, into a Franco-Prussian war, and its cessation, outcome, and treaty of peace would no ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... what he'll be like," said Austin. "A lean, brown traveller, with his face tanned by tropic suns and Arctic snows to the colour of an old saddle-bag. His hair, of course, prematurely grey. On his right cheek there'll be a lovely bright-blue scar, where a charming tiger scratched him just before he killed it with unerring aim. I know the sort of person exactly. And now he comes to say that he lays his battered, weather-worn ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour

... Dor died, prematurely aged and broken down by grief, corroding disappointment and ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... weather as we before mentioned, so great a famine over all England, that many hundreds of men died a miserable death through hunger. Alas! how wretched and how rueful a time was there! When the poor wretches lay full nigh driven to death prematurely, and afterwards came sharp hunger, and dispatched them withall! Who will not be penetrated with grief at such a season? or who is so hardhearted as not to weep at such misfortune? Yet such things happen for ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown

... history. Nowhere else can we find, on careful study, so little of the hurry and anxiety which destroys the even tenour of modern life,—nowhere else so few of the circumstances which tend to make men insane, inebriate, or phthisical, or prematurely old. ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... that, since the mental competence of this man is concerned—since it is our contention that he is patently and plainly a victim of senility, an individual prematurely in his dotage—any utterances by him will be of no value whatsoever in aiding the conscience and intelligence of the court to arrive at a fair and just conclusion regarding the defendant's ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... poem on the Last Day, which all who are aware of the difficulties of the subject, and the limitations of the author's genius, must rejoice that he never wrote. Consumption and asthma removed him prematurely on the 15th of February 1708, ere he had completed his thirty-third year. He was buried in Hereford Cathedral, and Sir Simon Harcourt, afterwards Lord Chancellor, erected a monument to his ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... necessitating the use of clouded spectacles in the open air. He had not the rich complexion of the typical colonist, being indeed peculiarly pale, but it appeared that he had been confined to his berth for the greater part of the voyage, while his prematurely gray hair was sufficient proof that the rigors of bush life had at last undermined an originally tough constitution. Our landlady, who spoilt my brother from the first, was much concerned on his behalf, and wished to call in the local doctor; but Ralph ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... to eleven when it was brought to me, one even then dying. His little life ebbed away in a few hours; but of the remaining ten, nine, now in the third week of their abode under my roof, have recovered health, strength, and spirits, and bid fair to live to a good old age, if not prematurely cut off. One of them, more feeble than the others, needed and received especial attention. Him I tended through dreary days of east wind and rain in a box on the mantel-piece, nursing him through a severe attack of asthma, feeding and amusing him through his protracted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various

... the voices of hurrying throngs. Through the long, dim streets, and past the tall rows of silent houses, the full tide of life eddied and poured in rapid current; stout burghers, closely muffled and staff in hand; children grown prematurely old, with the hard marks of vice already branded on their features; young girls with flaunting ribbons and bold, flushed faces; pale-faced operatives, and strong men whose brawny limbs told of the Titanic labours ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown

... sons were unassuming citizens, Messer Andrea's second son, Giacopo, was of a very different disposition. A man of far greater ability and more vaulting ambition than his brother, he was looked upon as the head of the family. In appearance he was prematurely old and withered up, with a pallid face and palsied frame, with great restless, staring eyes. He perpetually tossed his head about from side to side, as though afflicted with St Vitus' dance. Giacopo was unmarried, a libertine, ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley

... distant interval, the Ayr Bank paid all its engagements, and the loss only fell on the original stockholders. The warning was, however, a terrible one, and has been so well attended to in Scotland, that very few attempts seem to have been afterwards made to establish Banks prematurely—that is, where the particular district was not in such an advanced state as to require the support of additional credit; for in every such case, it was judiciously foreseen, the forcing a capital on the district could only lead to wild speculation, ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury

... must say what he had come to say without loss of time, lest Marilla return prematurely. "Well now, Anne, don't you think you'd better do it and have it over with?" he whispered. "It'll have to be done sooner or later, you know, for Marilla's a dreadful deter-mined woman—dreadful determined, Anne. Do it right off, I ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... his title. I wonder who that former schoolfellow of mine was that told Mr. Lewes, or how she had been enabled to identify Currer Bell with C. Bronte. She could not have been a Cowan Bridge girl, none of them can possibly remember me. They might remember my eldest sister, Maria; her prematurely-developed and remarkable intellect, as well as the mildness, wisdom, and fortitude of her character might have left an indelible impression on some observant mind amongst her companions. My second sister, Elizabeth, too, may perhaps be remembered, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... board the "Medora," my berth would not altogether have suited a delicate female with weak nerves. It was an ammunition ship, and we slept over barrels of gunpowder and tons of cartridges, with the by no means impossible contingency of their prematurely igniting, and giving us no time to say our prayers before launching us into eternity. Great care was enjoined, and at eight o'clock every evening Captain S—— would come down, and order all lights out for the night. But I used to put my lantern into a deep basin, behind some boxes, ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole

... affected everybody about him. Especially it communicated itself to the person chiefly concerned. The result was just what might have been expected. My mother was brought to bed prematurely, a full month before ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... being timid, timidity being out of her role, and then she judged prematurely that the matter was settled. She had got so accustomed to order about girls that she had fallen into the bad habit of expecting that her will should be law to all the world, with the exception of Miss Sandys. As for Mr. and Mrs. Middlemass, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... brought them to the house, and they were soon seated by the blazing hearth, while Helen Wallace was busy preparing for them some humble refreshments; but the lady continued to become worse—she had been taken in labour, prematurely, as the female said, from the fatigue of travelling. She appeared to be of a rank far above her companions, who treated her with lowly attentions; but there was something harsh and forbidding in the manner and appearance ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton

... disinclined to run the slightest unnecessary risk; he argued that, the church having once been subjected to a tolerably thorough search, he and Dick were reasonably safe, so long as they chose to remain where they were, and that, to venture abroad prematurely, even in disguise, for the mere sake of avoiding a few hours of further discomfort, would be the very height of folly. For, how could they tell at what moment a door might open and someone enter the church and discover them—supposing them to be so foolish as to venture out of their ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... dropped, a little prematurely, I fancy, for when I got to the Kremlin I found that the first note of opposition had been struck by the man who least of all was expected to strike it. Albrecht, the young German, had opposed the immediate founding of the Third International, on the double ground that not all nations ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome

... search for amusement. Leslie, though unprincipled, lacked several qualities necessary for a successful rascal, and, oppressed by the fear of Shackleby's displeasure should Thurston return to the mountains prematurely, and uncertain what to do, was willing to try to forget his perplexities ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... curious. A little research along the right lines and you would prematurely learn your own secret. Then a race of mad demigods would be loosed through the void, an all-conquering scourge instead of a blessing. I would sooner have your whole race die with your very existence unsuspected, than have you live in infamy, the ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan

... until directed to do so by his commander-in-chief. 'It is more than probable that Sir S. Hood's reason for having waited for the signal to engage from his commander-in-chief, ere he would fire, arose from the supposition that had he been the occasion of prematurely bringing on an action under the above circumstances, he would have been responsible for the results.'" (White's ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... perhaps it never will be. It is exposing ourselves to temptation to wish to anticipate God, and to prepare ourselves for things which He may not destine for us. If such things should come to pass, He will give us light and strength according to the need. Why should we desire to meet difficulties prematurely, when we have neither strength nor light as yet provided for them? Let us give heed to the present, whose duties are pressing; it is fidelity to the present which prepares us for fidelity ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston

... those responsible for the policy of Greece appeared to be unanimous in the decision not to be drawn prematurely into the European cataclysm, but to reserve her forces for the defence of the Balkan equilibrium. Under this apparent ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... the courage even if I have the right," she said, presently. "Besides, the last year I have been loving an ideal—the Steve O'Valley who existed one time and might still exist if other things were equal. But in reality you are a prematurely nerve-shattered, blundering pirate; not my Steve." She spoke his name softly. "The failure of my ideal—and it's a little hard to live with and work with such a failure. My hands are tied, yet my eyes see. Besides, ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley

... a thin, very fragile-looking man of thirty-eight. His disordered hair is prematurely gray, his beard is a grizzled four days' stubble. He is exceedingly haggard and worn, but has the face and look of a man of refinement and cultivation. He has lost his hat; his shoes and trousers are ...
— The Man from Home • Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson

... with the rounded cheeks and dimpled chin, was the look of gravity and thoughtfulness, in the serious, childish eyes. He was a boy, who seemed to have been prematurely taught the self-reliance of a man. A strange thrill went through Colonel B.'s heart as the ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various

... ten-year-old eyelids grow very heavy as midnight approaches. When at length it ended, and my fellow-page was curled up fast asleep on the steps of the throne in his official finery, in glancing at my father I was amazed to find him prematurely aged. The powder from eight hundred cheeks and necks had turned his moustache and beard white; he had to retire to his room and spend a quarter of an hour washing and brushing the powder out, before he could take part in ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... charnel-houses pass their lives And seek in death life's secret! And let Those hard-faced worldlings prematurely old Gnaw their thin lips with vain desire to get Portia's fair fame or Lesbia's carcanet, Or crown of Caesar or Catullus, Apicius' lampreys or Crassus' gold! For these consider many things—but yet By land nor sea They shall not find ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey

... afternoon, when darkness was rather prematurely coming on—and the rain descending almost in torrents—that I left Heidelberg for MANHEIM—the ultima Thule of my peregrinations on the German side of the Rhine. The road is nearly straight, in good order, and lined with poplar ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... death in any form. He doesn't really know that the human organism is wound up like a clock to run at best for so many years, or months, or hours, and that even if nothing unexpected happens to cut short its course prematurely, it can only run out its allotted period. Within his own experience, almost all the deaths that occur are violent deaths, and have been brought about by human agency or by the attacks of wild beasts. There you have a cause with whose action and operation ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen

... the horsemen moving cautiously among the closely-set trees on either side of the road. It was growing prematurely dark, and objects were none too distinct. And thus it befell that when from the reverie of dejection into which he had fallen he was suddenly aroused by the thud of hoofs, he looked up to find two mounted men barring the road some ten yards in front of him. Their attitude ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini

... five years ago, had confined Madeline for several weeks or rather months to the house; and as the old hall possessed a very respectable share of books, she had then matured and confirmed that love to reading and reflection, which she had at a yet earlier period prematurely evinced. The woman's tendency to romance naturally tinctured her meditations, and thus, while they dignified, they also softened her mind. Her sister Ellinor, younger by two years, was of a character equally gentle, but ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... again, the daily tornado would rage with such fury as to defeat its own purpose by prematurely exhausting itself. On these rare occasions we would sit out on the deck, and enjoy the unwonted luxury of ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome

... She did not move on. She seemed, indeed, to have the air of one anxious to say more. In that ruthless light, the advantages of her elegant clothes and graceful carriage were suddenly stripped away from her. She was the abject wreck of a beautiful woman, wizened, prematurely aged. Nothing remained but the eyes, which seemed somehow to ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... to circumstance individuals, who are able to struggle forward to maturity, these inhabiting only the situations to which they have superior adaptation and greater power of occupancy than any other kind; the weaker and less circumstance-suited being prematurely destroyed. This principle is in constant action; it regulates the colour, the figure, the capacities, and instincts; those individuals in each species whose colour and covering are best suited to concealment or protection from enemies, or defence from inclemencies ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... of Mr. Fox and Mr. Steele; nay, it was intended to be a general massacre of all the English in Sarawak territory; but by a mistake of the Kenowits these two unfortunates were killed prematurely. The day had not arrived, and this led to the discovery of the plot. When Mr. C. Johnson went with an armed force to Kenowit, Seriff Messahore had already killed the fort men, who had only executed his own orders. For some time he, the guilty one, escaped detection. At last some Christian ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... purposes, while no doubt practical, failed by being undertaken prematurely as forewarned by many of our ablest thinkers, who, unfortunately, were in the minority when the question of making the initial trial was voted upon. And by this failure the earth was rent in a fearful manner, its map considerably ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson

... was brought in. It was from Mrs Enderby to Mr Hope, written hurriedly, and blistered with tears. It told that she had been extremely wrong in mentioning to him prematurely what was uppermost in her mind about a certain family affair, and begged the great favour of him to keep to himself what she had divulged, and, if possible, to forget it. Once more, Mr Hope unconsciously sighed. It was ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... part of Russia and Persia? Listen to the language of one of the responsible authors of the policy since followed by such fearful consequences, Sir John Hobhouse—who, on the 11th July 1840, on the occasion of a dinner given to their richly and prematurely rewarded hero, Lord Keane, thus poured forth his insane, exulting avowal of the real object they ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... had no desire for the perpetual companionship of any of her own kith and kin, nor for the constant smiles and flattery of a paid companion. Her pale daughter, whom she had systematically snubbed, had married; her handsome son, whom she had adored and spoiled, had prematurely died, before the death, a few years since, of Thomas, fifth Duke of Meldrum. He had come to a sudden and, as the duchess often remarked, very suitable end; for, on his sixty-second birthday, clad in all the splendours of his hunting ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay

... and oftentimes had to suffer pains and lacerations for her virtuous self assertion. When she reached maturity all the tender instincts of her womanhood were ruthlessly violated. At the age of marriage, always prematurely anticipated under slavery, she was mated as the stock of the plantation were mated, not to be the companion of a loved and chosen husband, but to be the breeder of human cattle for the field or ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... admiration without being at all confused. If I had any doubt of him, I suppose this half-awakened it; but I am inclined to believe that, with the simple confidence and natural reliance of a child upon superior years (qualities I am very sorry any children should prematurely change for worldly wisdom), I had no serious mistrust of him on ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... prematurely old and broken man, ruined and impoverished, but Brudenell Hall is still mine, and the name of Brudenell is one of the most ancient and honored in the Old and New World! If you consent, Ishmael, I will ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... to be the design of the Deity throughout the whole of Nature. Blossoms come forth only to be blighted; fish lay their spawn where it will be devoured; and what a large portion of the human race are born merely to be swept prematurely away! Does not this waste of budding life emphatically assert that it is not men, but Man, whose preservation is so necessary to the completion of the grand plan of the universe? Children peep into existence, suffer, and die; men play like moths about a candle, and sink into the flame; ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft

... the middle height and very slender, the limbs having even an attenuated look. The whole appearance is that of a man of delicate and even feeble organization. The blonde complexion, the pale blue eyes, and the light sandy hue—save where they are prematurely touched with gray—of the hair, moustache, and short, pointed beard, all indicate the Flemish origin of one who would fain be regarded as "wholly a Spaniard." The protruding under-jaw is another proof ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... that pass between a democratic foreman and a couple of new girls. Under his jovial exterior there seemed to be a vein of seriousness, amounting almost to sadness when one looked at his well-modeled face and his steady gray eyes. Tall and pale and prematurely bent, he had a certain distinction, as if he had been cut out for better things. His manner had lost all the easy familiarity of a few hours before, and he asked us in the kindest tone possible how we liked the work, and heartened us with the assurance ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... habit of looking on the bright side of things, the result of a life which, had pessimism been allowed to rule it, might have ended prematurely with what the papers are fond of calling a "rash act," led her to consider first those points in the situation which she labelled in her meditations ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... leather in the gap caused by the corners of the board having been cut off. The book is then turned up on end, resting the tail on a folder or anything that will keep the projecting leather for the head-cap from being prematurely flattened. The head-caps (fig. 67) must now be set. To do this the first finger of the left hand is placed behind it, and a sharp folder is pressed into the corners of the head-cap between the headband and the thread. The leather is then tapped over the headband, and the ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell

... small stature, Beauregard was a man of striking personal appearance—small, dark, thin, hair prematurely gray, his ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... he has one, is that of Strauss-Humanism. But he is perfectly master of himself and of his utterances, and will take good care never to preach anything prematurely. ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... actually threatened to fail for the want of ten pounds!—pastry-cooks, who took their families regularly "to summer at the sea," assisted the counter-plot, and prematurely dunned my husband! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 404, December 12, 1829 • Various

... across the bridge with a dozen swift strides. Then a peculiar slew of his active little frame, and he whirls back to starboard. His keen, clean-shaven face, hardened prematurely into an expression of relentless ferocity, looks out from the peak of his badge-cap, the strap cramming the crown against his bullet head. He is twenty-two, and pure Liverpool. He served his apprenticeship in sail on ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee

... would be a power in the meetings; and she prayed constantly for a clear manifestation, something she could not mistake, that she might not be tempted by the hope of relief from present suffering to move prematurely in ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney

... blinded and engrossed by my own feelings that I did not understand you. I have proved myself unworthy of even a sister's love; but I will try to make amends. Do not judge me harshly because I was so headlong. There is no use in trying to disguise the truth. What I have said so unwisely and prematurely I cannot unsay, and I shall always be true to my words. But I will wait patiently as long as you please; and if you find, in future years, that you cannot feel as I do, I will not complain or blame you, however sad the truth may be ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... common is not unfavorably affected by oppositions. The poles are God's anointed and stand firm; but opposition has quickened the currents of love until it has melted the social ice at the extremities for us, and even the snows which very prematurely, I do assure you, begin to fall upon the heads of some of us. I have been speaking and writing on this subject for a year and a half, and I find the subject always getting outside of my efforts much more rapidly than ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... been said in the above report, the tests, though prematurely interrupted, have shown results of great importance, and though the final results are hard to foresee, it would seem advisable to continue the trials. By waiting for the return of spring there will be plenty of time to finish the tests and it will not be necessary to rush matters, ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... similar high masses and sermons by enthusiastic monks, were heard in the capital[599] and elsewhere. But the jubilant strains were sounded rather prematurely; for the victory was yet to be won. The Huguenot nobles, invited by Conde, were flocking to La Rochelle; the Protestant inhabitants of the towns, expelled from their homes, were generally following the same impulse. But others, reluctant, or unable to traverse such an expanse ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... spoke nor stirred. Yuba Bill walked wrathfully toward it, and turned the eye of his coach lantern upon its face. It was a man's face, prematurely old and wrinkled, with very large eyes, in which there was that expression of perfectly gratuitous solemnity which I had sometimes seen in an owl's. The large eyes wandered from Bill's face to the lantern, and finally fixed their gaze on that luminous ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... children of the main street. The poor are always rich in children, and in the dirt and ditches of this street there were groups of them from morning to night, hungry, naked and dirty. Children are the living flowers of the earth, but these had the appearance of flowers that have faded prematurely, because they grew in ground where there was no healthy nourishment. Often the teacher would gather them round him, would buy them bread, eggs, apples and nuts, and take them into the fields by the river side. There they would sit and greedily eat everything ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky

... of the most degraded. He rarely went to bed sober—in fact, his bride's first sight of him was when he was drunk, at the age of ten. He was, too, "a liar and a coward, vicious and violent; pale, sickly, and uncomely—a crooked soul in a prematurely ravaged body." ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... without painful sensations, that the author feels compelled to notice the many dishonourable insinuations which have been promulged by bold speculators on public credulity: some of whom, by prematurely publishing, have already sufficiently evinced their want of genuine information; and others, after the most illiberal reflections on all contemporaries, have found it expedient entirely to abandon their own boasted performances, or to wait the completion of ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison

... for some time in doubt as to the true interpretation to be put upon this mighty apparition in the desert: but at length the savage clamors of hostile fury and clangor of weapons unveiled to the Emperor the true nature of those unexpected calamities which had so prematurely ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey

... it that it is the most valuable and comprehensive educational publication ever printed in the English language, and it will be a lasting disgrace to the teachers and educators of America if it has to be prematurely suspended for want of sufficient patronage. Besides conducting this Journal, he has found time for other labors of a general nature. As president of the American Association for the Advancement of Education, his influence ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various

... bride's-maids were Lady Mary Elmsley and Lucy Tempest. The story of the long engagement between her and Edmund Hautley had electrified Deerham; and some began to wish that they had not called her an old maid quite so prematurely. Should it unfortunately have reached her ears, it might tend to place them in the black books of the future Lady Hautley. Lady Verner was rather against Jan's going to church. Lady Verner's private opinion was—indeed ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... young officer in charge of Louis Napoleon's two letters to Queen Hortense had prematurely come to the conclusion that the prince was meeting with success, and had hurried off the letter announcing the good news to ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... been, he was a lovable fellow, and for the doctor his fair face was a reflection of the face of the woman Dick had never really known; of the mother he had lost while still a child; the wife whose loss had withdrawn Dr. Vaughan from the world of successful men and women and prematurely whitened his hair ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson

... successively resemble the corresponding organs in a fish, a reptile, a bird, and a quadruped; but they are not identical, even in outward appearance, with those organs. Of course, if arrested at any stage of its growth, and prematurely born, the embryo would not be one of the lower animals, but only something resembling it in outward shape; and conversely, if it were possible for the birth of a bird to be delayed till it had reached a higher stage of development ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen

... Cromwell died prematurely, if not for his fame, at least for his usefulness. His reign as Protector lasted only five years, yet what wonders he did in that brief period! He suppressed the anarchies of the revolution, he revived law, he restored learning, he developed the resources of his country; he made it respected ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... together, to lure them from behind their ramparts of stubbornness, to see them eventually shake hands and grin as men will who recognize that they have been playing the fool! She became fired with the idea. Only she must not move prematurely; there must ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath

... Clotilde uncloaks. Catching and mastering her, his wilder animation may be appeased, but his political life is threatened with a diversion of its current, for he will be uxorious, impassioned to gratify the tastes and whims of a youthful wife; the Republican will be in danger of playing prematurely for power to seat her beside him high: while at the same time, children, perchance, and his hardening lawyer's head are secretly Philistinizing the demagogue, blunting the fine edge of his Radicalism, turning him into a slow-stepping Liberal, otherwise ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... mottled roof of the rural almshouse which figures in the admirable water-color picture that he exhibited last spring. A group of remarkably pretty countrywomen have been arrested in front of it by the passage of a young soldier—a raw recruit in scarlet tunic and white ducks, somewhat prematurely conscious of military glory. He gives them the benefit of the goose-step as he goes; he throws back his head and distends his fingers, presenting to the ladies a back expressive of more consciousness of his fine figure ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James

... mean, and is ashamed to own it. I've knowd em to go into a dungeon and interview a man who dident have two hours to live. Dot rot em. I wish one of em would try to interview me. If he didn't catch leather under his coat tail it would be bekaus he retired prematurely—that's all. But I like editurs sorter—especially sum. I like them that is the guardeens of sleepin' liberty, and good morals, and publik welfare, and sich like; but there's sum kinds I don't like. Them what makes sensation a bizness; ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... prepared thee and rockers to rock thee to rest; since desire for sleep in thy case springs not from toil but from vacuity and nothing in the world to do. Even the natural appetite of love thou forcest prematurely by every means thou mayest devise, confounding the sexes in thy service. Thus thou educatest thy friends: with insult in the night season and drowse of slumber during the precious hours of the day. Immortal, thou art ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon

... gentle, pretty woman whose soft, wavy hair was becoming prematurely gray, with an intelligent countenance and eyes that fixed one's attention almost immediately. Here, Mr. Day saw, was a capable, energetic spirit—a woman who would carry through whatever she undertook could it be carried through at all, yet who was not objectionably self-assertive-like ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long

... subdued though it was, a man crossing the nek would have shown up sharply, and Boer sentries always keep well down where they can watch the sky-line. Our troops, naturally anxious not to discover themselves prematurely, lay down in a convenient donga and waited for darkness. There they had to lie an hour or longer, until the nearest ridges were again merged in the gloom of their surroundings, and the more distant hills became vague shadows, perceptible only to the second sight of men ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse

... coming to the point manfully, Sir Richard—I beg pardon for thus styling you, but I happen to know that your name has been before the prince, for some time, as one of those who are to receive the riband from a sovereign really authorized to bestow it; if I have spoken a little prematurely, I again entreat your pardon;—but, this is at once coming manfully to the point! Serve us you can, of course, and that most effectually, and in an all-important manner. I now greatly regret that my father had ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... sufficiently known; and they themselves made no secret of their design to place their niece on the throne of England: that deeming themselves secure of success, they had already, somewhat imprudently and prematurely, taken off the mask; and Throgmorton, the English ambassador at Paris, sent over, by every courier, incontestable proofs of their hostile intentions:[*] that they only waited till Scotland should be entirely subdued; and having thus deprived the English ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... place of that fair-haired girl at the church, then all happiness, a prematurely old woman, faded and disheartened. Three ragged children cling to her scanty clothing. They beg of her mere bread to keep off hunger. She has none to give them—she draws them closer to her, and folding them in her emaciated arms, kisses them. She gives ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff

... and if he had any idea who had played that prank. I looked to his pew; yes, there he sat, rosy and beaming, bland as ever! I looked for old Peter Dexter, president of the Dexter Trust Company—yes, he was in his pew, wizened and hunched up, prematurely bald. And Stuyvesant Gunning, of the Fidelity National—they were all here, the masters of the city's finance and the pillars of "law and order." Some wag had remarked if you wanted to call directors' meeting after the service, you could settle ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair

... still, or certainly ought to be. What was then this delicate, grave, spiritual look in the face, the thoughtful intelligence, the refinement of perception, so beyond her years? No doubt it was due to her living alone, with a somewhat gloomy father, and being prematurely thrown upon a woman's needs and a woman's resources. Pitt recognised the fact that his own absence might have had something to do with it. So long as he had been with her, teaching her and making a daily breeze in her still life, Esther had been in a measure ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner

... figure before him, the face bleached with the ghastly pallor which a sunless prison gives, the deep sunken eyes looking like coals of fire, eating their way into his brain, the tattered clothing, the long unkempt hair and beard, prematurely whitening, and filled with filth, the fingers grown claw-like and blue, with prison mould, the dull vacant look and the thought that this was Reuben, his brother; these things all filled him with such an unutterable, intolerable pity, that it seemed as if he should lose ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... knowledge of Hindoo governments. There are many such instances: for though, by Hindoo institutions, a woman cannot reign, she is the legal regent of a kingdom during the minority of the heir; and minorities are frequent, the lives of the male rulers being so often prematurely terminated through the effect of inactivity and sensual excesses. When we consider that these princesses have never been seen in public, have never conversed with any man not of their own family except from behind a curtain, that ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill

... to choose a Lot of my Things to be bequeathed you: Books, Pictures, Furniture. You mustn't think I prematurely deck myself in Sables for my own Funeral; but it happens that I sent the rough Draft of a Will to my Lawyer only ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald

... look back upon Halleck's literary life I cannot help thinking that if his death had happened forty years earlier, his life would have been regarded as a bright morning prematurely overcast. Yet Halleck's literary career may be said to have ended then. All that will hand down his name to future years had already been produced. Who shall say to what cause his subsequent literary inaction was owing? It was not the decline of his powers; his brilliant ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... early age she exhibited unusual abilities, and was particularly distinguished for an extraordinary facility in acquiring languages. Her father, proud of the displays of her intelligence, prematurely stimulated it to a degree that was ultimately injurious to her physical constitution. At eight years of age he was accustomed to require of her the composition of a number of Latin verses every day, while her studies in philosophy, history, general science and current literature were pressed ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various

... social tastes, and was willing enough to pass two or three of the summer months in the country, where she was much better bestowed than she would have been at one of those watering-places where so many half-formed girls get prematurely hardened in the ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... will indeed, humanly speaking, be a terrible loss to his family, for they want his fatherly care, and will do so for years. Not so with me; and as I am in my seventy-second year, it cannot be said that I am cut off prematurely: but on the contrary, fall like a fruit or a sheaf at its proper ripeness. Oh! that it ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... agitation beyond the frontiers. In case the king should find his position in Paris intolerable, he had been advised by Mirabeau to withdraw into western or southern France and gather the loyal nation about him. But unfortunately, Mirabeau, worn out by dissipation and cares, died prematurely in April, 1791. Only two months later the royal family attempted to follow the course against which they had been warned. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, in an effort to rid themselves of the spying vigilance of the Parisians, disguised themselves, fled from the ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... duty as well as privilege to perfect our constitution, and see that it does not wear out too soon, that we are not prematurely called away from our duties. And I bring it as serious charge against modern systems of education, that they tend to degenerate mankind, to impair the constitution and to shorten life. That we should not ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various

... temporary boarder from the country, consisting of a somewhat more than middle-aged female, with a parchment forehead and a dry little "frisette" shingling it, a sallow neck with a necklace of gold beads, a black dress too rusty for recent grief, and contours in basso-rilievo, left the table prematurely, and was reported to have been very virulent about what I said. So I went to my good old minister, and repeated the remarks, as nearly as I could remember them, to him. He laughed good-naturedly, and said there was considerable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... other hymeneals in Devonshire; but it is the nature of a complex story to be entangled with many weddings towards its close. In this little history there are, we fear, three or four more to come. We will not anticipate by alluding prematurely to Hugh Stanbury's treachery, or death,—or the possibility that he after all may turn out to be the real descendant of the true Lord Peterborough and the actual inheritor of the title and estate of Monkhams, nor will we speak of Nora's certain fortitude under either of these emergencies. ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... impression on me; and finally, of men with whom I was often in grave dispute. I endeavour to judge of them all in objective fashion, but I have to describe people and things as I saw them. Wherever the description appears to be at fault, the reason will not be due to a prematurely formed opinion, but rather, probably, to a prevailing lack of the capacity ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin

... could they not have been allowed to cook their soup and eat it in peace, since they had done nothing for the last two hours but stand there in the road like so many sticks? Their hunger was making itself felt again; they had a resentful recollection of the savory contents of the kettle dumped out prematurely upon the ground, and they could see no necessity for this headlong retrograde movement, which appeared to them idiotic and cowardly. What chicken-livers they must ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... stood on the top step of the flight which leads to the hall door and waved his pocket handkerchief. Callaghan picked up his scythe cautiously, and went on tip-toe across to Miss King's hammock. He did not wish to disturb her prematurely. Then, his hone in one hand and his scythe in the other, he stood and watched Meldon, The handkerchief waved again, and Meldon started walking briskly across the lawn. The hone rasped harshly against the scythe blade, and "The Irish Washerwoman" rang out shrilly. Miss ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham

... gave him the appearance of "spinning" down the pavement or up the stairs; always wore clothes of some fluffy material, with a low collar and bright red tie; had soft pink cheeks, dancing grey eyes and loosely scattered hair, prematurely thin and unquestionably like feathers. His hands and feet were small and nimble. When he stood in his favorite attitude with hands plunged deep in his pockets, coat-tails slightly spread and flapping, head on one side and hair disordered, talking in that high, twittering, yet very agreeable ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood

... his own seed from the best plants—and especially to reject all plants that showed any tendency to go prematurely to seed. Furthermore, I told him I thought if he would sow a little superphosphate of lime with the seed, it would greatly stimulate the early growth of ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris

... session, when a proposition was made by my eminent colleague and friend, Mr. RUTHERFURD, to discuss and vote upon the adoption of the meridian of Greenwich as the common prime meridian, I thought it necessary to say that the proposal appeared to me prematurely made, and that we could not agree to the discussion proceeding in that manner. Mr. RUTHERFURD has informed me that he would withdraw his proposition for the present, in order to permit me to direct the discussion, in the first place, to the principle which should direct the choice of a common ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various

... was second nature since from the moment of her birth it had been her lot in life. Arriving in the world prematurely she had found nothing prepared for her coming and had been forced to put up with such makeshifts for comfort as could be hurriedly scrambled together. From that day until the present instant the same fate had shadowed her path; perhaps it was in her stars. Her parents had been of dilatory habits ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett

... Lincoln intimately, said that he never saw him so much annoyed, nor, for the time, so angry. If the address were to be published prematurely, it might be made the occasion of a vast amount of mischief. Then, too, it was the product of much painstaking thought and he ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham

... attacks on a hostile ant heap, abduction of chrysalids), thanks to its head and brain which were of the worker type. The female itself is incapable of such complex actions. I cite these facts here as material for study, for we are only too prone in this domain to generalize prematurely and to draw too hasty conclusions. In reality, there is still a wide field for study ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... said the centurion, coldly, "we know our time. An attack commenced too early would be worse than thrown away, nor would an opportunity occur of executing our project in the fitting time, if an alarm were prematurely given at this moment." ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... MINISTER rose to reply to his critics. The accusation that he had forgotten some of his recent promises, such as "No Conscription," "Punish the Kaiser," and "Germany must pay," did not trouble him much. If these election-eggs had hatched out prematurely and the contents were coming home to roost at an inconvenient moment he had no time to attend to them. What the country most needs at the moment is a firm clear statement on the Labour troubles, and that is what it got. So far ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various

... past and gone, that the world was open to me, and that I was free to do and act as I would was exhilarating. I felt that I had already attained to manhood, and that the world was at my feet, and a glorious life before me; well, I suppose most boys prematurely let loose would think the same, and I don't know that it is any harm to start under the circumstances with a hopeful and ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth

... sister Elizabeth I have found my only balm of consolation! Their graciously condescending to sympathise in the grief with which I was overwhelmed from the cruel disappointment of my first love, filled up in some degree the vacuum left by his loss, who was so prematurely ravished from me in the flower of youth, leaving me a widow at eighteen; and though that loss is one I never can replace or forget, the poignancy of its effect has been in a great degree softened by the kindnesses of my excellent father-in-law, the Duc de ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 4 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... this had lasted long, the enticing contact with the object of her lawless fancy inflamed Ryder, and made her so impatient that she struck her long meditated blow a little prematurely. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... Don Quixote of La Mancha is my own; for though I had no intention of declaring myself until my achievements in your service and honour had made me known, the necessity of adapting that old ballad of Lancelot to the present occasion has given you the knowledge of my name altogether prematurely. A time, however, will come for your ladyships to command and me to obey, and then the might of my arm will show ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... doubt the owner took pride and pleasure, to judge from the expense lavished with unsparing hand on its decoration; and if he could be supposed to have any cognizance of what is now passing on earth, his vanity might find some consolation for having been prematurely deprived of it, in the posthumous celebrity which it has obtained. But his taste and wealth have done nothing to perpetuate his name, for not a trace remains that can indicate to what person or to what family it belonged. It is indeed usually called the Villa of Marcus Arius Diomedes, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... person in the great assembly, however, who seemed to be unduly confident. It was an ample, perspiring person in evening dress, who now and again mopped a prematurely bald head, and who said to himself, as Kaid talked to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... destined to be the seat of a people more numerous probably than any nation now existing with the same vernacular language, unless one except some Asiatic nations. It would be little honorable to the founders of a great empire to be hurried prematurely into errors and corruptions by the mere force ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder

... typical butler, an Englishman of over forty, heavily built, soft-moving, with ruddy, smooth-shaven cheeks and prematurely gray hair. But now from his face the look of perfunctory politeness had fallen; the subdued voice had changed to a snarl that carried with it the ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis

... to do our work by degrees, working slowly in the right direction, than to attempt to do it prematurely by wholesale, and fail. More men have been broken up by attempting too ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... man with a head of pronounced egg shape topped by prematurely balding sandy hair. Something about his lanky, intense appearance suggested his ...
— Old Rambling House • Frank Patrick Herbert

... Paris—an intimacy had been established between us. He married in Cleveland, Ohio, and many years passed before I came up with him again. One day in Whitelaw Reid's den in the Tribune Building he reappeared, strangely changed—no longer the rosy-cheeked, buoyant boy—an overserious, prematurely old man. I was shocked, and when he had gone Reid, observing this, said: "Oh, Hay will come round all right. He is just now in one of his moods. I picked him up in Piccadilly the other day and by sheer ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... recommended, and where a dirty and bejewelled Hebrew chaffered with me (beginning at 18s.) over two reeking orange slabs distantly resembling moieties of the human figure. Their odour made me close prematurely for 14s., and I hurried back (for I was due there at eleven) to my office with my two disreputable brown-paper parcels, one of which made itself so noticeable in the close official air that Carter attentively asked if I would like to ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... awkwardness of it, and not increase a naturally uncomfortable self-consciousness by personal remarks which might disturb the composure of older, prettier, and better-dressed people. It is bad enough to be quite well aware that the size of one's hands and feet prematurely foreshadow the future growth of one's figure; that these are the more prominent because the simple dresses of the unintroduced young lady seem to be perpetually receding from one's bony-wrists above, and shrinking towards the calves of one's ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... respectfully suggest, that it is your duty to examine the accounts of Mr. Price, and cause him to pay over the bonus of 40,000 dollars which was granted by the Government on account of the Rising Star, which bonus Mr. Price prematurely obtained in advance nearly three years ago, although it did not become due till the arrival of the ship. This sum, which is part of the remuneration due to my brother on account of the said ship, Mr. Price, or the house of which he is a member, refuses to deliver up, under the pretence that ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... perfectly normal from a sexual standpoint had it not been for acquired impressions at or about the period of puberty. This man presented a typically neurotic type of physique, complained of being intensely nervous, was prematurely gray, of only fair stature, and had an uncontrollable nystagmus, which, he said, had existed for some fifteen years. As might be expected, treatment in this case was of no avail. I began the use of hypnotic suggestion at the hands of an expert professional hypnotist. The patient, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... in truth, was at once closed. Everything was left exactly as it was on that fatal night. A few years ago, the house being unexpectedly full, I opened the room in which you have been staying, and it has been used from time to time as a guest-room since. My son lived some years, prematurely old, heart-broken, and desolate. He died with her name on ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... accumulation of tartar, which so commonly incrusts neglected teeth. If suffered to remain, it gradually accumulates, presses upon the gums, and destroys their health. By this means the roots of the teeth become bare, and thus deprived of their natural stimulus, they prematurely decay. Food or drink either very hot or very cold is exceedingly injurious to the teeth. Sour drops, acidulated drinks, and all articles of food that "set the teeth on edge," are injurious, and should be ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... sufficiently to the question—the burning question which has since burned out—had made quite splendid. There had been leaders in the newspapers about it, half in compliment to her husband, who was known to be failing so prematurely—he was almost as young to die, and to die famous, for Lady Agnes regarded it as famous, as his son had been to stand—tributes the boy's mother religiously preserved, cut out and tied together with a ribbon, in the innermost drawer of a favourite cabinet. But it had been a barren, or almost a barren ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... considerable tracts of land. By him the Colonial Office was persuaded to have a reasonable force retained for the protection of the Colony. He put an end to the office of "Protector of the Aborigines," the source of much well-meant but unpractical advice. When Earl Grey sent out in 1846 a constitution prematurely conferring upon the Colonists the right of governing themselves—and also of governing the Maoris—Sir George had the moral courage and good sense to stand in the way of its adoption. For this, and for refusing to allow private purchase of native land, he was bitterly ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... separate types composing the page are held in place and together by strong twine called "page cord," which is wound around the whole page several times, the end being so tucked in at the corner as to prevent its becoming unfastened prematurely. The page thus held together is quite secure against being "pied" if proper care is exercised in handling it, and it can be put on a hand-press and excellent proofs readily taken from it. A loosely tied page, however, may allow the letters to spread apart at the ends of the ...
— The Building of a Book • Various

... pale, sad children, with haggard little faces, already prematurely old. They had been separated ever since Emilie had left the gymnasium, and, not living in the same place, they hardly recognized each other. Emilie was a tall and beautiful girl, enjoying all the delight of perfect health. Jacques almost had ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... between the hangman and the purchase of a pardon, and we have seen the moneys so obtained providing his bastard, the Cardinal Francesco Cibo, with the means for the luxuriously licentious life whose gross disorders prematurely killed him. ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... you treat this essentially sacred step as a joke it will not be strange if the young people follow suit and take marriage as a yet larger joke. The home is the place where the home is treated most irreverently. Of course one must not take too seriously those "calf" courtships, prematurely fostered by boys and girls, under the pressure of the high-school tendency to anticipate all of life's riper experiences. But even here jesting and teasing will only tend to confirm and make permanent what would be but a temporary aberration. In that case either silence ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope

... reputation. That the poet sought his patronage need not be concealed; and if he used a little flattery in doing so, we must make allowance for the adulatory instinct of the tuneful tribe. We cannot live without bread upon bare reputation, or on the prospect of having tombstones put over our bones, prematurely hurried to the grave by hunger, when they shall be as insensible to praise as the stones themselves. To speak seriously, I think that a poet sacrifices his usefulness to himself and others, and an importance in society which may be turned to public good, if he shuns the patronage that can ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... the shape of his leaves. Both these tasks fall upon criticism. The younger generation looks round a little apprehensively to see if there is a gardener whom it can trust, and decides, perhaps a little prematurely, ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry

... Aunt Emma's favors; Mr. Winslow sat in a corner, apparently crushed, with restorative conversation administered by Ruth; Mason Winslow was haltingly attentive to a plain, well-dressed, amiable girl named Florence Crewden, who had prematurely gray hair, the week-end habit, and a weakness for baby talk. Ruth's medical-student brother, Bobby Winslow, was not there. The more he saw of Bobby's kind Aunt Emma, the more Carl could find it in his heart to excuse Bobby for having escaped ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... a good deal since that night after Jack's trial, when the kind-hearted old Major had turned up at Joel's cabin to take him back to the Bluegrass. He was taller, broader at shoulder, deeper of chest; his mouth and eyes were prematurely grave from much brooding and looked a little defiant, as though the boy expected hostility from the world and was prepared to meet it, but there was no bitterness in them, and luminous about the lad was the old ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... public journals. The right of the executive to issue any proclamation of neutrality was fiercely and pertinaciously denied as a usurpation of legislative authority, and in that particular case it was charged with forestalling and prematurely deciding the question whether the United States were bound, by the guarantee to France of her West India possessions in the treaty of alliance, to take side in the war with her against Great Britain—and ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... heartiest sympathy and our best co-operation, for as Galton, the founder of modern Eugenics, wrote towards the end of his life of this new science: "Its first object is to check the birth-rate of the unfit, instead of allowing them to come into being, though doomed in large numbers to perish prematurely." We can seldom be absolutely sure what stocks should not propagate, and what two stocks should on no account be blended, but we can attain reasonable probability, and it is on such probabilities in every department of life that we are always called ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis



Words linked to "Prematurely" :   premature, untimely



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