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Roundabout   /rˈaʊndəbˌaʊt/   Listen
Roundabout

adjective
1.
Marked by obliqueness or indirection in speech or conduct.  Synonym: circuitous.  "A roundabout paragraph" , "Hear in a roundabout way that her ex-husband was marrying her best friend"
2.
Deviating from a straight course.  Synonyms: circuitous, devious.  "A long and circuitous journey by train and boat" , "A roundabout route avoided rush-hour traffic"



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"Roundabout" Quotes from Famous Books



... information might come from the head clerk. Blossom, in the mind of Dr. Lambert, was a person of not much strength of character. There had been certain episodes in his life, information as to which had come to the physician in a roundabout way, that did not reflect on him very well; though, in truth, he felt that the man was ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele

... path from Mwaro has water, and must go early to-morrow morning, and so avoid the roundabout by Morefu. We shall thus save two days, which in this hot weather is much for us. We hear that Simba has gone to fight with Fipa. Two Banyamwezi volunteer. 12th September, 1872.—We went by this water till 2 P.M., then made a march, and to-morrow get to villages. Got a buffalo ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... mother," said Lord C—- coming between them, and slipping Mary's hand on to his arm. "We are both sorry to have had to go about the thing in this roundabout way, but we wanted to avoid a fuss. I think we had better be getting away. I'm afraid Mr. Hodskiss is going to ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome

... Government and the Government at Washington had their last important correspondence during the war. The United States stood firm for the idea that when goods were ultimately intended for the Confederacy, no matter how roundabout the journey, they could be considered as making a single continuous voyage and were liable to capture from the day they left Liverpool. Early in 1865, the Supreme Court of the United States fully developed the principle of continuous voyage in ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... young man had just arrived and was fatigued by the trials and perils of his trip, for he must have come by some roundabout way; and very likely he felt nervous and uneasy in the midst of people who were loyal to the government and the Union. Captain Passford decided to say nothing more to his nephew at present as to the occasion and ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... brethren of them which belong unto that house. The most part of the lands, towns, and villages which are within forty miles of it belong unto the same. They showed me the church, wherein were as many images as could hang about, or upon the walls of the church roundabout; and even the roof of the church was painted full of images. The chief image was of Our Lady, which was garnished with gold, rubies, sapphires, and other rich stones abundantly. In the midst of the church stood twelve wax tapers of two yards long, and a fathom about in bigness. ...
— The Discovery of Muscovy etc. • Richard Hakluyt

... do, then. As long as I asked him direct questions he could answer falsely. I must trip him up in some roundabout way. ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells

... probable that these divisions were intended for service at this point, and also to reenforce General von Kluck's army, but that, by the quick offensive assumed by General Joffre on the Ourcq, and, owing to the roundabout nature of the German means of communication, these expected reenforcements had not arrived. The German official dispatches point out that General von Buelow's retreat was necessitated by the retreat of General von Kluck. Of this there is no doubt, but even military necessity does not quite explain ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... one-quarter cents, the final break to eight and one-quarter cents occurring late in March of the following year. At that time, there was no direct cable communication with Brazil; and as a result of a temporary break in the roundabout service by way of Portugal, the New York and Baltimore agents of the Brazilian syndicate were unable to put up additional margins in this market, and their accounts were closed out. This happened on ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... spirit I like to see," he answered. "We shall do, depend upon it. I've no great fancy for being caught by the Spaniards and clapped into prison; and they are certain to be looking for us all along the western coast. We shall have to go rather a roundabout way, but that can't be helped. Now, from what I hear, the Indians have pretty well cleared the country of the white men to the south of this, so we shall have little to fear from the Spaniards; and as you say the Indians are your friends, if we fall in with them, it ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston

... possible, did he see, even in his wildest flights of fancy, that the book of travels which he was destined to write, would be translated into French by the order of Napoleon the First, for the express purpose of being studied by Marshal Bernadotte, with the view of enabling that warrior to devise a roundabout and unlooked-for attack on Canada—in rear, as it were—from the region of the northern wilderness—a fact which is well worthy of record! [See Appendix for an interesting letter ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne

... these agreements the former, certainly, and presumably the latter, would be flagrantly illegal in the United States. If, moreover, an attempt were made in America to arrive at the same ends in some roundabout way which would avoid technical illegality, the outburst of popular indignation would make it impossible. Personally I sympathise with the English view and believe both agreements to be not only just and proper but in the public interest; but it is certain that ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... troop, my good Humphrey," he said, when the serving-man had finished. "Lady De Aldithely did well to trust thee with this lad. But now to my news once more. The king, in his wrath, will scour the country roundabout, and thou mayest not escape from him as thou didst from thine other pursuers. What dost thou elect to do?" And he ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger

... this to his friend in a rather roundabout fashion, for he had not found Peters on the shore, as he had expected, and where he could have stated his errand in a few words. He had found instead that all the village was astir with the news of a tea-meeting, ...
— A Sailor's Lass • Emma Leslie

... honour to see you." "I believe," said Madam de Cleves in a very unconcerned manner, "that anything you may give yourself the trouble of telling me, will be to little purpose; you had better go to the Queen-Dauphin, and plainly tell her, without using these roundabout ways, the interest you have in that letter, since she has been told, as well as I, that it belongs ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette

... Paris as he had been in Munich; he did not seek stimulus from without so much as freedom to develop the ideas that were teeming in his mind. When he left Hamburg, however, he was destined never to return thither except as a visitor, and started on the long, roundabout way to an unforeseen new home in Vienna. He had been but little over a month in Paris when he learned of the death of the little son that Elise had borne him three years before. He was deeply grieved both for himself and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... contestants, it appears, for there were no hostelries in old Olympia in which the visiting multitudes could be housed, and the athletes and spectators who came from all over the land were accustomed to bring their own tents and pitch them roundabout, many of them on the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various

... the children through a maze of small streets by a roundabout way to the Cathedral, and there they were met at the entrance by the Verger, who gazed at them with sad surprise. "You've been out in the street during the bombardment," he said reproachfully. ...
— The French Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... down the silent cypress aisles came shapes even me to scout, Mocking the lean flanks of my mare, my boy's patched roundabout, And saying: 'Have these starveling boors, thy congregation, souls, That on their dull heads Heaven and thou pour forth ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... "It seems a roundabout way, but I think you would find it far the safest, for there are no armies operating upon that line. The population, at any rate as you get south, are for us, and there are, so far as I have heard, very ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty

... her mistakes—once they had gone a certain length—that was perhaps chief among the inevitabilities of the abjection of love. Loyalty was of course supremely prescribed in presence of any design on her part, however roundabout, to do one nothing ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James

... something too long and sharp for a woman's. She was not the beautiful creature her courtiers made out; but she was well enough, and no doubt looked all the better for coming after the dark and gloomy Mary. She was well educated, but a roundabout writer, and rather a hard swearer and coarse talker. She was clever, but cunning and deceitful, and inherited much of her father's violent temper. I mention this now, because she has been so over-praised by ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens

... bedroom was immediately overhead, we had to pass through the mill to reach it, and the journey was a roundabout one. The lame miller was our guide, and on our way we learnt the cause of his lameness. About a year before he had been caught up by some of his machinery and mangled in a frightful manner. We came to a brick wall plastered over, and a little below a shaft that ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... By a roundabout road of self-surrender she had come to the same destination that she might have reached by the straight path of self-indulgence. She was perilously near to resolving that she had been a fool not to have taken happiness, physical happiness, first. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... for another young citizen, on the same occasion, gave the following: "The first families of Virginia—like stars seen in the ocean, they would not be there but for their bright originals in heaven." It is evident from this, although there is no roundabout tedious effort to prove the thing, that the "first families" of Virginia are not only as the stars of heaven in number—not only as thick as stars, but that like the stars they are absolutely in heaven, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... a more roundabout relationship than that between Aunt Alvirah Boggs and me. Poor old soul, she is nobody's relation, as she often says, ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson

... "It's rather a roundabout way," answered the girl, "but you can go, of course. You will have to walk quite a way down a country lane, then turn to your left, and it will bring you to the other ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade

... could not be thought of, and the roundabout way Princess Mary was obliged to take through Lipetsk, Ryazan, Vladimir, and Shuya was very long and, as post horses were not everywhere obtainable, very difficult, and near Ryazan where the French were said to have ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... call this, holding the mirror up to Nature, yet, in a curious roundabout way, the stage seems to justify itself and become true after the event. There was a rather bitter discussion some time ago between an author and a critic; the latter had remarked that the language of the dramatist's people did not sound true, that it seemed ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... cherries like those in Silas Berry's orchard in all the country roundabout. There was no competition, and for many years he had had it all his own way. The young people's appetite for cherries and their zeal for pleasure had overcome their indignation at his usury. But at last Silas's greed got the better of his financial shrewdness; ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... the theater's statues or columns. Nor did I come out of my stupor until Milo, my host, himself approached and clapping me on the shoulder, drew me away with gentle violence, my tears now flowing freely and sobs choking my voice. He led me back to the house by a roundabout way through the least frequented streets, doing his best meanwhile to soothe my nerves and heal my wounded feelings. But nothing he could say availed to lessen my bitter indignation at having been made so undeservedly ridiculous. But all at once the magistrates themselves, still wearing their ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... our party have gone to England, intending to take a roundabout course and rejoin the vessel at Leghorn or Naples several weeks hence. We came near going to Geneva, but have concluded to return to Marseilles and go up through Italy ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... sole grounds that they were suspected of hoping for the arrival of Napoleon's troops. Some days before the battle of Moscow, the Cossacks having captured about a hundred sick Frenchmen, Koutousoff sent them by a roundabout road to the governor of Moscow, who, regardless of their condition, left them for forty-eight hours without food and then paraded them triumphantly through the streets, where a number of these unfortunates ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... Like as not he's off on some law scrape now. That's just it, for Court's a settin' all this week. Well I hope Mr. Lawson will get a good share of the pickins, for he's as honest as the sun, and when a fellar goes to him for advice he gets it in good English law, and no runnin' roundabout way that would puzzle a chap till his hair would ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... if I can swallow that pill," said Henry Smith, "how well soever it may be gilded. The knave has a shrewd eye for a kirtle, and knows a wild duck from a tame as well as e'er a man in Perth. He were the last in the Fair City to take sour plums for pears, or my roundabout cousin Joan for this piece of fantastic vanity. I fancy his bearing was as much as to say, 'I will not see what you might wish me blind to'; and he is right to do so, as he might easily purchase himself a broken pate by meddling with ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... at the bicycle, he pays me a ceremonious visit at the chapar-khana half an hour later. In this visit he is preceded by his farrash, and he walks with a magnificent peacock strut that causes the skirts of his faultless roundabout to flop up and down, up and down, in rhythmic accompaniment to his steps. Apart from his insufferable conceit, however, he tries to make himself as agreeable as possible, and after tea and cigarettes, I give him and the people a ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... truth which led her to shrink from producing it on poor occasions. So she didn't say, "Dear me, Adeline, what humbug! you know you hate Verena and would be very glad if she were drowned!" She only said, "Well, I see; but it's very roundabout." What she did see was that Mrs. Luna was eager to help her to stop off Basil Ransom from "making head," as the phrase was; and the fact that her motive was spite, and not tenderness for the Bostonians, would not make her assistance less welcome if the danger ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James

... "All roundabout environed With fire she is illumined: And in the middes there doth appeere, Like to some boy, a visage cleere; Whose eies to us doe seem in view, Of colour grayish more than blew: The browes and forehead tender seeme, The cheeks all ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... increased, because once more Fahey had got past the front door with the mail, whereas each night I had promised myself to waylay him and change his roundabout method of delivery. "If I live till tomorrow," I said crossly, "I'll see if he can't climb those steps and hand us the ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... but he hated to be ridiculed. At first he tried to give up Meeting, but this disobedience gave him, he says, 'a feeling of misery.' When the next Sunday came he tried another plan. He went to the Meeting-house by roundabout ways 'through fields and over fences, ashamed to be seen by any one on the road.' When he reached the Meeting-house by these by-lanes, the door was closed. No Meeting was to be held there that day. The Friends happened to have gone to another place. Stephen, therefore, sat down, 'in a retired ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... asked herself. Had it really come at last? She had known that it must come, and yet—and yet she had always hoped that it would not. Why had she hoped? Had not she herself sent him away? Had not she herself suggested this very thing in a roundabout way? It had come now. What must she do? Stay here as a pensioner? The idea was objectionable to her. And yet he had set aside a goodly sum to be hers absolutely. In the hands of a trust company in La Salle Street were railway ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser

... leaping, red flame of his passion for Bertha Haney. She represented to him the mysterious potency and romance of the West—typifying its amazing resiliency, its limitless capability of adaptation. In a way that seemed roundabout and strange, but which was, after all, very simple and very direct, she had lifted her family as well as herself out of poverty back into the comfort which was their right. Odd, masculine, unexpected of phrase, ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... already started on their roundabout way to the rear of the Palace. Clay gathered up his reins, and telling his men to keep close to the walls, started forward, his soldiers following on the sidewalks and leaving the middle of the street clear. As they reached a point a hundred yards below the Palace, a part ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... see, gentlemen, why God should be sending his message to me by so roundabout route as the sinful city of Chicago. I trust that in the freedom with which I have canvassed your views and expressed my own, I have not in ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon

... any of the traps which he would lay to catch her, and to make her, by some chance word or other, or even by a slightly displeased or resigned expression, give his bad humour an excuse for breaking out. She had to weigh every word she uttered, and to take the most roundabout methods of avoiding his sensitiveness, and after all, she would perhaps commit herself when she least expected it; upon which a scene would immediately ensue, that would be all the more unpleasant from his never expressing himself directly. Sometimes ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie

... it or seek to contravene it, we are destroyed. But Nature in her universal procedures is not rational, as I am rational when I weed my garden, prune my trees, select my seed or my stock, or arm myself with tools or weapons. In such matters I take a short cut to that which Nature reaches by a slow, roundabout, and wasteful process. How does she weed her garden? By the survival of the fittest. How does she select her breeding-stock? By the law of battle; the strongest rules. Hers, I repeat, is a slow and wasteful process. She fertilizes the soil by plowing ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... that when I wrote last I had just returned from visiting the Cullingworths at Avonmouth, and that he had promised to let me know what steps he took in appeasing his creditors. As I expected, I have not had one word from him since. But in a roundabout way I did get some news as to what happened. From this account, which was second-hand, and may have been exaggerated, Cullingworth did exactly what I had recommended, and calling all his creditors together ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro

... deny it!" said The Chobb. "I hate roundabout stories. I am a gentleman. Was it a joke or not? Will you pay me a good ten-pound note ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... and cotton hose, I found this precaution needless; indeed, according to my experience, it is both refreshing and salutary to wear wet clothes, during an uniformly high temperature; besides which, one is thereby spared many a spring over ditches, and many a roundabout course to avoid puddles, which, being already wet through, we no longer fear. After having waded over eight other little rivers we were obliged to leave the shore and pursue the road to Colasi along steep, slippery, forest paths, the place lying ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... familiar redolences of naphtha and horse-dung and trodden turf. These were far away: they had quite forsaken her, or at best floated idly across her dreams. What held her to fortitude had been the drone and intermittent hoot of a steam-organ many streets away. It belonged to a roundabout, and regularly tuned up towards evening; so distant that Tilda could not distinguish one tune from another; only the thud of its bass mingled with the buzz of a fly on the window and with the hard ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... minutes the woman had talked round her subject. Intuitive, she scented danger; usually fearless, her whole being was sick with apprehension; desperate, she dug her nails into her flesh and essayed to reach her goal by a roundabout way. ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest

... family— at this very time a few of the leading creditors of the Wishwash and Longstop Railway assembled in the old office of that bankrupt undertaking, and decided to accept an offer from the Grand Roundabout Railway to buy up their undertaking at half-price, and add its few hundred miles of line to ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... up the path, as Coast must have done a few nights before. The housekeeper was in the pantry and there Peter sought her out. He noted the startled look in her eyes at the moment he entered the room and then the line of resolution into which her mouth was immediately drawn. So Peter chose a roundabout way ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs

... three started for Nelly Green's place of business, taking a roundabout course to get there, for the purpose of avoiding the crowd; and by doing this they met another of their acquaintances whom they were rejoiced to see, even though he ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis

... eighteenth century setting relieves the effect and one does not feel that the author is speaking with that direct earnestness one encounters in "Pendennis" and "The Newcomes." The many essays, of which the "Roundabout Papers" are a type, exhibit almost exclusively the sunnier and more attractive side of Thackeray's genius. Here and there, in the minor fiction of this experimental period, there are premonitions of he more ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... been makin' a big roundabout 'ithout gainin' a great deal by it. Sartin them redskins hev stopped at the river, an' thar mean squatting for the remainder o' this night. That'll suit our purpiss to a teetotum. We kin capter 'em in thar ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... dozen of you, with a supply of makeup for the blue patches. And you'd separate, and take ships that went various roundabout ways, and arrive on Weald one by one, to see what could be done there to...." He stopped. "When did you find out positively that there ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster

... of this startling fact, according to a newspaper account, came in a very strange, roundabout way to a man living on the outskirts of the vast area of made ground where the great city had spread over what was formerly the Newark meadows ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss

... her best, and, so that the neighbours shouldn't see her, went up a passage between some model lodging-house buildings, and in this roundabout way got into the Westminster Bridge Road, and soon found herself in front of ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham

... two hours with papa—papa had sent for him, I find. What is it makes me think that man is no true friend to Alfred in his advice? I don't like these roundabout speakers: the ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... here admit that away down in his heart he did permit a little flame of hope to smolder that in a roundabout way he might some day secure the whole of it practically, and something with the fortune more precious to him than the gold and ...
— A Successful Shadow - A Detective's Successful Quest • Harlan Page Halsey

... pleased, but I'm tired of doing marvellous things, and so I'll keep within the bounds of every-day business just for variety's sake. Besides, there is no use in scaring the little children for a mile roundabout, though 't is true I'm ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... too, that Dickens' godfather, Huffam, a rigger and sailmaker, lived, and with whom Dickens was so fond, when a boy, of making excursions roundabout the "Hole" and the "Reach" with their "foul and ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun

... which we would, if we could, soon displace for the railway engine. Ploughmen with their buffaloes and their biblical ploughshare, raked over the red ground; women, with babies on their backs, picked produce already ripe; children played roundabout, and those old enough helped their fathers in the fields; coolies bustled along with exchanges of merchandise with neighboring villages, quite content if but a couple of meals each day were earned and eaten; the official, the ruler of these peaceful people, passed with old-time pomp—not ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... trouble of doing so in your roundabout way, I will. You intended to run away with Miss Collingsby. You deceived her, lied to her, and thus induced her to come on board of your yacht. You asked me only because she would ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic

... o'clock this morning; at Albano procured an ancient rural cicerone, a boy, and two donkeys, and set out on the grand giro of the place. The road over the Campagna is agreeable, because the prospect roundabout is so fine, and the aqueducts stretching over the plain so grand. After climbing up to the Capuchin Convent, close to which are the remains of what is called Domitian's Theatre, we came to the lake, which is beautiful, but does not look ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... leave nothing but the bare seams, by way of a skeleton, on my back. It became unspeakably unpleasant, when we got into rather cold weather, crossing the Banks of Newfoundland, when the only way I had to keep warm during the night, was to pull on my waistcoat and my roundabout, and then clap the shooting-jacket over all. This made it pinch me under the arms, and it vexed, irritated, and tormented me every way; and used to incommode my arms seriously when I was pulling the ropes; so much so, that the mate asked me once if ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... then, nothing final about a logical rendering of experience. Its value is not contained in itself; its significance is that of standpoint, outlook, method. It intervenes between the more casual, tentative, and roundabout experiences of the past, and more controlled and orderly experiences of the future. It gives past experience in that net form which renders it most available and most significant, most fecund for future experience. The abstractions, generalizations, and classifications ...
— The Child and the Curriculum • John Dewey

... language the thieves talk, and I solemnly believe it. That's one thing. Now, here's another. You'll excuse me, my dear fellow. In course you know more than I do, but I must say that you have got sometimes a very roundabout way of coming to the pint. I mean no offence, and I don't blame you. It's all along of the company you have kept. You are—it's the only fault you have got—you are oudaciously fond of hard words. Don't let the young uns larn 'em. That's all ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... that first morning, was rather a roundabout one, by way of Lindhoek, taken, as explained by our guide, because it was less exposed to enemy observation than a much shorter road which we used when moving at night. When a short distance out from town, we passed in front of one of our howitzer batteries which decided that then ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride

... two or three utterly sleepless nights the most enthusiastic traveller will sigh for grey English skies, pattering drops and undisturbed sleep. At sea, you may escape both blinding glare and mosquito bites. A boat is also the only means of realizing the beauty of the coast. Most beautiful is the roundabout sail from Cannes to the Ile St. Marguerite: I say roundabout, because, if the wind is adverse, the boatmen have to make a circuit, going out of their course to the length of four or five miles. Every tourist knows the story of the Iron Mask; few are perhaps aware that in the ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... the Rover boys stepped out of sight in the building. They saw him re-enter the Hall, and then they took a roundabout course which soon brought them to the campus, where they joined Fatty ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield

... off his uniform and donned some old clothes belonging to Richard. With a staff in his hand and a bundle on his back, Richard now led the way, while the Count and Marguerite followed. In order to allay all suspicion, Richard took a roundabout ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne

... "Roundabout trip, rather. The Bordeaux route is safer just now and quicker, too. Why not have gone that way? And how long are you planning to ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... getting it. It's no use writin' to those scoundrels of lawyers of hers and telling them. She'd only think it was a trap; or she'd think I'd caved in, and be so cockahoop we should never get any forrader. Then I got the idea. It looks a bit roundabout, but I believe it'll work, I do really. But it'll take a lot of working, and I'm wondering whether that little housekeeper of yours—what's her name—Mary ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson

... after the others, too. Fru Kongstrup never interfered unkindly in anything, either directly or in a roundabout way; and yet everything became stricter. People no longer moved freely about the yard, but glanced up at the tall windows and hurried past. The atmosphere had once more that oppression about it that made one feel slack and ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... alight at his quarters from the stage, and immediately went in and closed their door. Mrs. Stannard had been with them awhile the evening previous. Ray was entirely out of danger and was sitting up again, but very quiet and weak. Gleason, it seems, had taken a roundabout way on his return, and had stopped two days at Fort Laramie, from which post he did considerable telegraphing. The mail coming direct from Fetterman brought those letters (which were sent by the sergeant) three days ahead of him, and ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... the talk of the village for several weeks. It was to be an unusually large one. People were coming from all the towns roundabout. Burr Gordon had been one of the ringleaders of the enterprise. All day long he worked over the preparations, dragging out evergreen garlands from under the snow in the woods, cutting hemlock boughs, and trimming the ball-room in the tavern. Towards night he heard a piece of news which threatened ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... roundabout course to avoid submarines and came into the Straits of Gibraltar from the south-west keeping well south of the Rock. We hugged the north coast of Africa, and passed a Greek tramp who signalled to us to stop as a large enemy submarine was ten miles east of us. ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie

... it, you know," put in Mrs. Harmon, viewing her benignly. "We heard in a roundabout way that Mr. Brown was paying attention to ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart

... long portage, such as had been made on the last day but one of the journey, would bring them to a river which a few miles away joined the river on the bank of which he had been left to shift for himself. Studying the disposition of the country carefully, he reached the conclusion that by a roundabout journey he had been brought to the river on the upper reaches of which he had his permanent camp; and as the conviction grew upon him, he made his way back to the canoe, and began to work his ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns

... for approaching the ideal of its kind is therefore only a roundabout way of specifying its intrinsic merit and expressing its direct effect on our sensibility. If in referring to the ideal we were not thus analyzing the real, the ideal would be an irrelevant and unmeaning thing. We know what the ideal is because we observe ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana

... for a moment decline Your feats in the rhubarb and ipecac line; While you shut up your turnpike, your neighbors can go The old roundabout road ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... there be in his efforts and approaches? Would she be sinning in the flesh, if she allowed the intrusions of one who was always roaming about her? Would that be sheer adultery?" Such was the sly roundabout way in which sometimes he stayed and weakened her resistance. "If I am only a breath, a smoke, a thin air, as so many doctors call me, why are you afraid, poor fearful soul, and how does it ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... the coveted ground at the cost of a slippery circuit. For no crag juts out so high, but they can reach its crest by fetching a cunning compass. For when they first leave the deep valleys, they glide twisting and circling among the bases of the rocks, thus making the route very roundabout by dint of continually swerving aside, until, passing along the winding curves of the tracks, they conquer the appointed summit. This same people is wont to use the skins of certain beasts for ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... Gordonsville road fork—the left fork leading to Charlottesville—and about a mile beyond the fork Hampton had taken up and strongly intrenched a line across both roads, being reinforced by Fitzhugh Lee, who, as before related, had joined him about noon by a roundabout march. Torbert soon hotly engaged this line, and by the impetuosity of his first attack, gained some advantage; but the appearance of Fitzhugh Lee's troops on the right, and Hampton's strong resistance ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan

... the musical improvement and general mental development of my pupils. The advancement will unquestionably be rapid, for it proceeds step by step, and one thing is founded upon another; the pupil learns every thing quietly, thoughtfully, and surely, without going roundabout, without any hindrances and mistakes to be unlearned. I never try to teach too much or too little; and, in teaching each thing, I try to prepare and lay the foundation for other things to be afterwards learned. I consider it very important not to try ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck

... and death, it accomplishes perhaps just as much as the truth itself could achieve if we possessed it. Don't take offense at its unkempt, grotesque and apparently absurd form; for with your education and learning, you have no idea of the roundabout ways by which people in their crude state have to receive their knowledge of deep truths. The various religions are only various forms in which the truth, which taken by itself is above their comprehension, is grasped and realized ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer

... the statement was prepared and was ready for promulgation before the destruction of the Lusitania on Friday. Several days usually have been required for messages to come to Washington from Ambassador Gerard, by roundabout cable relay route, and it is believed that this dispatch is no ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... lost at sea. Rudolf in particular would have liked to know whether it was a hurricane or sharks or pirates or a nice desert island that had been the end of that little boy, and he was about to begin his questioning in a roundabout manner by asking whether sea serpents had often been known to swallow ships whole, when the door opened, and in came Betsy, Aunt Jane's old servant. She had the lamp in one hand and the great brass warming-pan, with which she always ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels

... order through the French ambassador, I might be gratified: that the ambassador would address the landamann, and the landamann would apply to the canton of Vaud, who would immediately send M. Schlegel from my house. By making despotism go this roundabout, I might have gained ten days, but nothing more. I then wished to know why I was deprived of the society of M. Schlegel, my own friend, and that of my children. The prefect, who was accustomed, like the greater part of the emperor's agents, ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein

... along all night, up hill and down dale. The sun rose, the dawn blossomed, the dew dried on the blueberry; it was morning. Still we kept up our fierce gait. Would our leader never come to his destination? By what roundabout route was he guiding us? The sun climbed up in the blue sky, the heat quivered; it was noon. We panted as we pelted on, parched and weary, faint and footsore. The excitement of the stampede had sustained us, and we scarcely had noted the flight of time. We had been walking ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... a minute it was still in the consultery, save for the soft swish of the leaves overhead and roundabout. Then Jot broke out—a minute was Jot's utmost ...
— Three Young Knights • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... go that roundabout way by the road, and get to Lanesport two or three hours late. There was nothing else to be done, however, so I went up the wharf once more, and started along the road. At the turn, just beyond the house, I found Mr. Snider, walking up and down with ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson

... a roundabout way which threatened long detention. In a minute or two Buckland had gathered enough to interrupt her with the ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... surprised to find that just when we were on the point of overtaking them they were always able to flutter a few yards farther, until they had led us about a quarter of a mile from the nest; then, suddenly getting well, they quietly flew home by a roundabout way to their precious babies or eggs, o'er a' the ills of life victorious, bad boys among the worst. The Yankee took particular pleasure in ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir

... in vain. Weeks passed. In June began an exodus from the Black Hills to the Coeur d'Alenes that soon became a stampede. With an exasperation that he found it difficult to control, Packard heard of the thousands that were taking the roundabout journey by way of Pierre or Miles City. He might, he knew, be running every north-bound coach full from front to hind boot and from thorough-brace to roof-rail; and for once the Marquis might make some money. He pleaded for funds in person ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... back to the tree in the orchard where Mitch was. Then we walked clear to the back of the orchard, clumb the rail fence, walked through the meadow a roundabout way and came to the road on the other side of the Tate farm. So here we struck out for Atterberry, so as to walk the railroad to Havaner. We thought we could make Oakford ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters

... of Notre Dame, which remind you of a still earlier period; the faded royalist, with a countenance saddened by the recollection of former days; the ex-militaires, whose looks own no friendship with "the world or the world's law;" the old bourgeois riding in the same roundabout with his grandchildren, and enjoying the jeu de bague as cordially,—revolve in succession like the different figures in a magic lantern, while the place of Punch and Pierrot is supplied by a host of laborious drolls and gens a l'incroyable. The various members ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes

... have been! But I don't suppose you are worse than I was at Doncaster. I will have nothing to do with such people as Comfort and Criball. That is the sure way to the D——! As for telling Moreton, that is only a polite and roundabout way of telling the governor. He would immediately ask the governor what was to be done. You will see what I have done. Of course I must tell the governor before the end of February, as I cannot get the money in any other way. But that I will do. It does seem hard upon ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... by making his task as difficult as she could. If she detected him in time lying in wait in the bushes by the front of the Pavilion, she would slip out at the back, and reach her favourite haunts by a roundabout path screened by yew hedges, while he imagined her to be still indoors. He was really such an unsuspicious spy that there was hardly any fun in baffling him. She had done so with the usual success one hot afternoon, and was making for a tree under which she often sat. ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey

... derived from the Latin, wherein lies the difficulty in the way of the teacher explaining to his pupils the meanings of the parts of English words which are of Latin origin, without the necessity of the pupil's acquiring the same knowledge by the roundabout process of learning one thousand words he will never need, for one that may at some time be to him of ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands

... everything—everything except a withered rose-bud, which years before, when but a boy, he had twined among the heavy braids of her hair, and which she had given back to him, playfully fastening it in the button-hole of his roundabout! How well he remembered that day. She was a little romping girl, teasing him unmercifully about his flat feet and big hands, chiding him for his negro slang, as she termed his favorite expressions, and with whatever else she did, weaving her image into his heart's best and noblest ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes

... rainy and wet, but towards evening the sky cleared up, and Carmen led little Frieda home from the school-house. On her return she took a roundabout path, and slackened her usually fleet steps to enjoy the fresh, balmy spring air. She passed into a lonely lane, bordered on either side with beautiful gardens, whose hedges were unfolding their first blossoms, filling the air with ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus

... excitement was over, Runi, who had maintained a dignified calm, made some roundabout remarks, apparently with the object of eliciting an account of what I had seen and heard in the forest of evil fame. I replied carelessly that I had seen a great many birds and monkeys—monkeys so tame that I might have procured one if I had had a blow-pipe, ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson

... registered 108 deg. in the shade. What a climate Natal has! For fickleness it beats anything we have to grumble about in England. At night the temperature went down to 65 deg., and the brilliant summer weather broke up suddenly in a fierce thunderstorm. For a time every object roundabout would be blotted out by inky blackness, and for the next two or three minutes the lowering angry clouds would pulsate with dazzling light that leaped upward like life-blood from the throbbing heart of the storm. Each thundering peal was followed by ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse

... the fall gales were blowing in earnest that "The Fang" had made a coward of Terry Lute. There was a gray sea that day, and day was on the wing. There was reeling, noisy water roundabout, turning black in the failing light, and a roaring lee shore; and a gale in the making and a saucy wind were already jumping down from the northeast with a trail of disquieting fog. Terry Lute's spirit failed; he besought, he wept, to be taken ashore. "Oh, I'm woeful scared o' ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... is calculated to lead to wholesale breakage of the Eighth Commandment. Certainly, my Baronite, reading the fascinating record of a roundabout tour, feels prompted to steal away. Mary Stuart Boyd, who pens the record, has the great advantage of the collaboration of A.S.B., whose signature is familiar in Mr. Punch's Picture Gallery.... A ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd

... homage, and this man was the ideal bartender, above all vulgar passions, untouched by commonplace sympathies, himself a lover of the liquid happiness he dispenses, and filled with a fine scorn of all those lesser felicities conferred by love or fame or wealth or any of the roundabout agencies for which his fiery elixir is the cheap, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... classes, it is my profound conviction that a reasonable selflessness is very far from uncommon, very far from being confined to the "converted" of any religion. For forty years I have watched it growing and spreading before my very eyes. Reading the other way The Roundabout Papers, I was greatly struck by the antiquated cast of the manners therein described. Of course Thackeray, in his day, was reputed a cynic, and supposed to have an over-partiality for studying the seamy side of things. But ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer

... Virgo, vis, Will you join the polka, miss? Liberius—most willingly, Sic agimus—then let us try: Nunc vide, Skip with me, Whirlabout, roundabout, celere. ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... moment to the Emperor, if he has not gone to bed, or else the very first thing to-morrow morning. Remember, you must seem to have consulted no one. Make him read this letter; watch him as closely as you can; but, whatever happens, show that you hate these roundabout methods, and tell him again that you will never listen to anything but a ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... the country should be committed to their hands. With a small force, complete in itself, at the disposal of such men, more could be effected at the moment for the honour and interests of the country than by long and roundabout despatches, passing through so many hands that one fool in authority nullifies all, as a bad link in an otherwise good chain renders the whole useless. Omitting the other portions of the correspondence, the following letter from Major-general D'Aguilar, dated Hong-Kong, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... trading in the life-blood of their brothers—are reached and scotched. As for myself, I am past praying for; but thousands of others could and ought to be saved—by drastic measures and a stern exposure. The fellows in this business are as cunning as the devil; the stuff arrives by roundabout channels and from the most surprising quarters. Now and then they allow a consignment to be seized, but as a mere blind, a sop, and trade flourishes; there is no business to touch it in ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... further stimulated at this time by the congenial society of the Semi-Colon Club, a little social circle that met on alternate weeks at Mr. Samuel Foote's and Dr. Drake's. The name of the club originated with a roundabout and rather weak bit of logic set forth by one of its promoters. He said: "You know that in Spanish Columbus is called 'Colon.' Now he who discovers a new pleasure is certainly half as great as he who discovers a new continent. Therefore if Colon discovered a continent, we ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... generalities, and sees only the glimmering shadows of things reflected from the minds of others. Nature puts him out. The impressions of real objects, stripped of the disguises of words and voluminous roundabout descriptions, are blows that stagger him; their variety distracts, their rapidity exhausts him; and he turns from the bustle, the noise, and glare, and whirling motion of the world about him (which he has not an eye to follow in its fantastic changes, nor an understanding ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... the trip during the night, if we can make the get-away," he told her. "We'll have to take a roundabout way at first, edging the valley along the foothills on this side until we're well past the ranch house, then cut across the shortest way and pick up the trail on the other side. We can take enough water in our milk tins to last us, especially ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory

... is going to New Zealand. I had a letter from him this morning. Here it is. "I heard yesterday that H. W. is dead. She died a fortnight ago, and a letter from her mother has only just reached me in a roundabout way. She had been ailing for some time. They suspected drains, and had workmen in, with assurance that all had been put right. Since H.'s death the drains have again been examined, and it was found that the men who came before so bungled and scamped their work that an abominable state of ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... close to Young that officers from Camp Floyd called on Governor Cumming to secure his cooperation in arresting Young should that step be decided on. The governor refused with indignation to be a party to what he called "creeping through walls," that is, what he considered a roundabout way to secure Young's arrest; and, when it became rumored in the city that General Johnston would use his troops without the governor's cooperation Cumming directed Wells, the commander of the Nauvoo Legion, who had so recently been in rebellion against the government, to hold his militia ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... to bear! But, with a strange and sickening sense of dread, he found himself longing, most of all, to hear of Harry—to know if he were sorry, or remorseful, or only thankful to be spared! Then, at last, in some roundabout way the news ...
— Brave and True - Short stories for children by G. M. Fenn and Others • George Manville Fenn

... a roundabout road and rested some nights on the way, for I had business at Glasgow—a great and notable professor to visit at the college, and in the library several manuscripts to consult. So Irma remained ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... but neither Dick nor I would agree to this in toto. Dick argued that while we were killing time in the roundabout advance we should be leaving Margery wholly at the mercy of the baronet, and that every hour of delay was full of hideous menace to her. Hence he proposed that three of us should carry out the hunter's ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... at me," said he, taking the eldest daughter's hand and laughing himself. "You think my ambition as nonsensical as if I were to freeze myself to death on the top of Mount Washington only that people might spy at me from the country roundabout. And truly that would be a noble ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... has led me, after a roundabout fashion, to what became for some time the chief delight of my Winters—an employment, moreover, which I have taken up afresh at odd times during my life. It came about thus. My uncle had made me a present of an old book with pictures ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... was "Major" Galahad Shaughnessy. I imagine I can see him, in his white duck, brass-buttoned roundabout, with his sabreless belt peeping out beneath, all his boyishness in his sea-blue eyes, leaning lightly against the door-post of the Cafe des Exiles as a child leans against his mother, running his fingers over a basketful of fragrant ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable

... which belongs to the world of mere phenomenal change seem great to him who is "the spectator of all time and all existence"? "For the excellency" of such knowledge as that, we might say, he must "count all things but loss." By fear of punishment in some roundabout way, he might indeed be compelled to descend into "the cave," "to take in hand the wrongs of other people to set them right"; but of course the part he will take in your sorry exhibition of passing ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater

... "It's a rather roundabout cow-path," he objected. "The Overland Short Line is a good bit more direct; not to mention the service, which is ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde

... the earlier hours of the same day, Miss Grierson took the roundabout way between the Raymer plant and Mereside, making the circuit which took her through the college grounds and brought her out at the head of upper Shawnee Street. The Widow Holcomb was sitting on her front porch, placidly crocheting, when the phaeton ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... mother, a tall, smiling boy with a clean collar and his best roundabout. It was the first tea-party he ever remembered, and he was delighted. He was so polite and watchful of his mother that it really went ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas

... rapped, and entered. He was more neatly dressed than when Marcus saw him on the occasion of his first visit. His patched and threadbare coat was replaced by a neat roundabout jacket; his greasy, visorless cap, by a flat felt hat, of which the brim was symmetrically turned up; his tattered shoes by great cowhide boots. The boy was of that age when the human frame grows with vegetable-like rapidity; and he seemed to hare increased ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... bridge and up through Atrisco to the sand hills which is the beginning of the desert off that way. But another automobile, bigger and more powerful and black, slipped out of this same enclosure upon another street, and turned eastward instead of west. This machine made for the mesa by a somewhat roundabout course, and emerged, by way of a rough trail up a certain draw in the edge of the tableland, to the main road where it turns the corner of the cemetery. From there the driver drove as fast as he dared until he reached the hill that borders Tijeras ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower

... speech from producing its effect. Although Presburg was only six hours' journey from Vienna, the route had been made so difficult that the news of anything done in the Hungarian Diet had hitherto reached Vienna in a roundabout manner, and had sometimes been a week on ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... night and that we were there to defend it. Selecting a strong position on a hill, a camp was started, but no fires were allowed after dark. Vigilance was not relaxed, but no enemy appeared, and on the following day we went on a scout through all the region roundabout without encountering a single armed confederate. The air was full of rumors. Nobody could tell their origin. Fitzhugh Lee was a few miles away, coming with a big force. "Stonewall" Jackson had started on another raid, and any moment might see his gray "foot-cavalry" swarming into the ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd

... absolutely beyond Leyden's influence; free as the air, she knows everything now; Mrs. Goring is with her, and they know they are surrounded by friends too strong for Leyden to combat. Leyden is now making his way by a roundabout track to the stream where he left his steam launch, believing he has escaped my line. He intends to overtake the schooner here, lift the gold dust out of the Barang, and board his own schooner, which cleared direct from ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... thought it was heathenish for Barbara to let Georgina dress up in some little knickerbockers and a roundabout which had been stored away with other clothes worn by Justin as a small boy. But her disapproval was beyond words when Barbara herself appeared at the back door one morning, so cleverly disguised as a gypsy, that Mrs. Triplett ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... for the loss of his bachelor freedom. Anstruthers began to discover this fact before he had been many weeks in New York. He reached the realisation of its existence by processes of exclusion and inclusion, by hearing casual remarks people let drop, by asking roundabout and careful questions, by leading both men and women to the innocent expounding of certain points of view. Millionaires, it appeared, did not expect to make allowances to men who married their daughters; young women, it transpired, did not in the least realise that a man should be liberally ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... from his father that Nina had spoken to her aunt about the title-deeds of the houses in the Kleinseite, and that thus, in a roundabout way, a demand had been made for them. "Of course, they will not give them up," he had said to his father. "Why should they, unless the law makes them? They have no idea of honour or honesty to one of us." The elder Jew had then expressed his opinion that Josef Balatka should be ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope

... is perpetually exploring the pockets of her apron. Francine, who wore a roundabout apron of a white and crackling nature, adorned her conversation by attending to the hem of hers. When she asked about my last interview with her father, she ironed that hem with the nail of her rosy little thumb; when ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... verbatim to her husband, who repeated it again to her. It was thus all rehearsed four times over, in a tone loud enough to be heard by the whole party of auditors. The response came back by the same roundabout route, beginning at the ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... the open but roundabout way of the well-tilled Wadi Farah and take a shorter, steeper path toward Shechem, through a deep, narrow mountain gorge. The day is hot and hazy, for the Sherkiyeh is blowing from the desert across the Jordan Valley: the breath of Jehovah's displeasure with His people, "a dry wind of ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke

... as tobacco. There is then, finally, the great cotton manufacture, which clothes half the people of The Desert. Whole caravans of these cottons arrive together, and they are even conveyed from Ghat to Timbuctoo, this extremely roundabout way from Soudan. The colour is mostly a blue-black, sometimes a lighter blue, and glazed and shining. But the indigo is ill-prepared, and the dyeing as badly done, and the consequence is, the cottons are very begriming in the wearing. The indigo plant is simply cut, and thrown into a pond ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... a fat old fellow with a red nose and white hair, seemed utterly dejected; while the woman, a little roundabout, fat woman, with shining cheeks, looked at the agent of the authorities who had arrested ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... of Langres, we set a roundabout course for Paris. There is one great pleasure about automobiling that is considerably curtailed if one sets out to follow precisely a preconceived itinerary, and for that reason we were, in a measure, going where ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... symbolism because the theory was obviously absurd to a man of the world, and to common sense. He believes that Homer was deliberately conveying an allegory: and an allegory, whether of Homer or of Spenser, is a roundabout and foolish way of expressing the truth. A philosopher—and a poem is versified philosophy—should express himself as simply and directly as possible. But, as soon as you begin to appreciate the charm of ancient poetry, ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... splendid gum-trees, for any distance, as it became hidden by the high sandhills. I was very reluctant to cross, on account of the frightfully boggy bed of the creek, but, rather than travel several miles roundabout, I decided to try it. We got over, certainly, but to see one's horses and loads sinking bodily in a mass of quaking quicksand is by no means an agreeable sight, and it was only by urging the animals on with stock-whips, to prevent them delaying, that we accomplished the crossing without loss. ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... the isle, Haply, what this Red Disk may be, he guards. 'T is the bright blotch, big as the Royal seal, Branded beneath the beard of every Jew. These vermin so infest the isle, so slide Into all byways, highways that may lead Direct or roundabout to wealth or power, Some plain, plump mark was needed, to protect From the degrading ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

... visitors cared for him. The Connoisseur was placing his eye occasionally close to the paintings, or removing to short distances, right and left, to catch them in the most judicious lights, and making remarks on his catalogue with a pencil; and Mrs. Roundabout, from Leadenhall, who had brought her son Dicky to see the show, as she called it, declared it was the 'most finest sight she ever seed, lifting up her hand and eyes at the same time as Dicky read over the list, and charmed her by reciting the various scraps of poetry inserted in ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... old fellow with a red nose and white hair, seemed utterly dejected; while the woman, a little roundabout individual with shining cheeks, looked at the official who had arrested them, ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... past few months the telephone service in the neighborhood of Dexter's Corners had been greatly improved and the lines could be connected with nearly all of the villages and towns roundabout. ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer

... wait up and have a bite if you don't keep me too long. You see I mean to make a roundabout trip into that stretch of woods you told us about I'd like the worst kind to get a crack at a deer. That would be worth ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen

... 7. "Man shall enter into the house of his eternity, and the mourners shall go roundabout in the street.... And the dust shall return to the earth from whence it was, and the spirit shall return to God who ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various

... never could trust myself so far as that, nearly. You might be pretty nigh it one way and all wrong another, for you have to consider length and breadth and roundabout. I will tell you the best way for you to do. Set the doll standing on a bit of paper, and draw a pencil all round her foot with the point close to it on the paper. Both feet will be better, for it would be a mistake to suppose they must be of the same size. That will give you the size ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald

... differentiation; he has also learnt the futility of desire, and by continuous practice manages to postpone his aspirations, until they can be granted in some roundabout method by a change in the external world. For this reason it is rare for him to have his wishes realized during sleep in the short psychical way. It is even possible that this never happens, and that everything which appears to us like a child's dream ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud

... deal of it," returned Carton excitedly, "The story is to be, as I understand it, that the fake pictures were among those stolen from me and that in a roundabout way they came into the possession of someone in the organization, without their knowing who the thief was. Of course they don't know who took them and the original plates or films are destroyed, but they've concocted some means of putting a date on ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve

... Sypher's quixotism in his roundabout fashion. He concluded by showing her how it had been ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke



Words linked to "Roundabout" :   indirect, route, ride, road, merry-go-round, junction



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