"Unenviable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of, and rival bookseller to, Gaine in seventeen hundred and sixty was James Rivington. Mr. Hildeburn has given Rivington a rather unenviable reputation; still, as he occasionally printed (?) a child's book, Mr. Hildeburn's remarks ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... slipped away without that end being achieved he became worried and perplexed. His own position was an unenviable one, and his thoughts were far from pleasant. He felt that he had failed badly, and that his standing with his superiors in Scotland Yard was under a cloud in consequence. But he could not see where he had actually been at fault. It was such a damned amazing case. In most crimes the trouble was ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... very unenviable men. My Lord, my Lord, don't corrupt the pupil you bring to me." Harley smiled, and took his departure, and left Genius at ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... human agency, and a very guilty agency, too. Inspector, I am but a child in your estimation, and I feel my position in this matter much more keenly than you do, but I would not be true to the man whom I have unwittingly helped to place in his present unenviable position if I did not tell you that, in my judgment, this cry was a spurious one, employed by the gentleman himself as an excuse for ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... I had another unenviable experience. When I had finished washing the dishes, I cleaned the cabin stove and carried the ashes up on deck to empty them. Wolf Larsen and Henderson were standing near the wheel, deep in conversation. The sailor, Johnson, was steering. As I started toward the weather side I saw him ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... respect that the Japanese formed an almost exaggerated conception of the civil influence wielded by the religionists. It further appears that in those early days the Portuguese seamen refrained from the riotous excesses which had already won for them a most unenviable reputation in China. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... tour, untrammelled by a governor; at the Hague his ambition for the applause awarded to adventure made a gamester of him, and at Paris he began, from the same motive, that worship of the conventional Venus, the serious inculcation of which has earned for him the largest and most unenviable part of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... sounded the 'assembly,' when all the boys below came rushing up the hatchway near us, trooping onwards by the ladder above to the upper deck. They jostled and shoved past each other, I thought, as if Old Nick were after them, none wishing to occupy the unenviable position of last man, ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... was the last of the statesmen of the middle period of our history whom it was my fortune to meet. As a whole, and as individuals their fortunes were unenviable. They struggled against the order of things. They accomplished nothing, unless it may be said of them, that they kept the ship afloat. Their memories deserve commiseration, possibly gratitude. No effort of theirs could ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... same afternoon from a long walk that I had taken—for my mood was of that unenviable sort that impels a man to be moving—when I found a travelling-chaise drawn up in the quadrangle as if ready for a journey. As I mounted the steps of the chateau I came face to face with mademoiselle, descending. I drew aside that she might pass; and this she did with her chin in ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... proceed on my journey, being exhausted with illness, fatigue and want of food, for scarcely anything is to be obtained. But I return God thanks and glory for being permitted to undergo these crosses and troubles for His Word's sake. I would not exchange my present situation, unenviable as some may think ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... which he worked on the survey"; and it seemed to Harry that Sir Philip's estimate of the way in which he worked on the survey would be almost entirely based upon Mr Butler's report. Now it was known that, in addition to possessing the unenviable attributes already mentioned, Butler was a most vindictive man, cherishing an undying enmity against all who had ever presumed to thwart or offend him, and he seemed to be one of those unfortunately constituted individuals whom it was impossible to avoid offending. It is therefore not to ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... of the difficulties which beset the new Prime Minister brings home a sense of his unenviable position. Ireland was on the verge of starvation and revolt; everywhere in Europe the rebellions which culminated in 1848 were beginning to stir, seeming then more formidable than they really were in their immediate consequences; in England the Chartist movement was thought to threaten Crown ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... history of the Chicago club had any of its teams ever started a pennant race so badly as did the Chicago "Colts" in 1894. They finished the April campaign with the unenviable record of eight defeats out of nine games played, they then being a bad tail-ender in the race, with the poor percentage figures of .111 only. They remained in the last ditch up to May 10th, by which ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... Paesti—have supplied the theme of every Roman poet from Vergil to Ausonius. Yet in spite of its apparent prosperity, the seeds of coming decline had already been sown. Strabo tells us that even in early Imperial days the city was obtaining an unenviable reputation for malaria: a circumstance that was due to the over-flowing of the unwholesome streamlet, the Salso, whose reeking and fever-bearing waters began to impregnate the earth. Engineering works on a large scale were planned to remedy this drawback, but ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... I could foresee a catastrophe which would for ever unsettle the two towns, and give the valley an unenviable reputation. I was certain that, if Roscoe or Mr. Devlin were present, a prohibitive influence could be brought to bear; that some one of strong will could stand, as it were, in the gap between them, and prevent a pitched battle, and, possibly, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... voces divinas. His memory was prodigious, his eloquence in the Latin language studied and yet forcible, his knowledge of Greek literature and philosophy far from contemptible. He enjoyed the society of Sophists and distinguished rhetoricians, and so far affected authorship as to win the unenviable title of Graeculus in his own lifetime: yet he never neglected state affairs. Owing to his untiring energy and vast capacity for business, he not only succeeded in reorganising every department of the empire, social, political, fiscal, military, and municipal; but he also held in ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... then opened fire on the Turkish line. Whether the Turk imagined he was being attacked or not is doubtful, but he did not reply with any considerable fire until one hour had elapsed; then he kept it up for about fifty minutes. The next night "B" Company undertook the unenviable task of bringing in the dummy figures and found the ridge on which they lay occupied by the enemy in ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... passed them in review. It had been a very happy life and she had been a very fortunate person—this was the truth that seemed to emerge most vividly. She had had the best of everything, and in a world in which the circumstances of so many people made them unenviable it was an advantage never to have known anything particularly unpleasant. It appeared to Isabel that the unpleasant had been even too absent from her knowledge, for she had gathered from her acquaintance with literature that it was often a source of interest and even of instruction. Her father ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... with half-a-dozen friends in the chess-room at Very's, about eleven o'clock on the night of the twentieth of December, talking over some of the marvellous successes which had been won by Paul Morphy when in Paris, and the unenviable position in which Howard Staunton had placed himself by keeping out of the lists through evident fear of the New-Orleanian, when Adolph Von Berg came behind me and laid his ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... occurred, was an unenviable one, for he was placed in the cruel dilemma of either remaining in a home where his presence was not agreeable to the host and hostess, or abruptly leaving without having an understanding with the one he so dearly loved. ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... by our Officers from a neighbourhood which has, by reason of the atrocities perpetrated in it, obtained an unenviable renown, even among similar districts ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... declared it was incompatible with their honor to hold any manner of correspondence or intercourse with him. His title of Governor arose from his being at one time governor of Pensacola. He had a most unenviable reputation in the English navy. (See Charnock's ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... philosophers and statesmen of the West had long been vainly struggling. "The nations of the West"—such was the substance of innumerable discourses which I had heard—"are at present on the high-road to political and social anarchy, and England has the unenviable distinction of being foremost in the race. The natural increase of population, together with the expropriation of the small landholders by the great landed proprietors, has created a dangerous and ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... blushing and looking down, wondering how on earth he was to endure this stark publicity. He was there poised bleakly for all to see, an unenviable position. And there was no escape. He must stand there, because it was his job, and recover from the nervousness that had come from finding himself so abruptly thrust on to this veritable pillar of Stylites in the midst of an interested ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... praise is probably only so far deserved that he does not beat his wife nor starve his children; but, supposing even he treated them as he should do, and, moreover, entertained his ten-times removed cousins to dinner every Sunday, what is that to me who do not enjoy his unenviable hospitality? Let his cousins speak well of him by all means; but let the rest of the world speak as they find. I protest against the theory that the social virtues should limit themselves to the home circle, and ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... she is doing or the essential character of the means she is employing, she runs wild and soon earns an unenviable reputation, which she either cannot live down or which she feels obliged to live up to in order to satisfy her craving for attention. Many a girl has gone wrong simply because she felt that it was up to her to make good her reputation for ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... truth, I had forgotten my sweet companion for a moment. 'I am sorry,' said I, taking her hand, 'very sorry, that you think the United States so unenviable a place of residence. I hope, dear lady, to persuade you to make it ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... the scourge first makes its appearance, is to plunge into the nearest river, by which they think to purify themselves. This course, however, in reality, tends to shorten their existence. When the small pox rages among the Aborigines, a most unenviable position is held by their "Medicine Man." He is obliged to give a strict account of himself; and, if so unfortunate as to lose a chief, or other great personage, is sure to pay the penalty by parting with his own life. The duties of the "Medicine Man" ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... her thronging came, Some with a sense of self-rebuke and shame, Envying the unenviable; and others Making the joy which should have been another's 30 Their own by gentle sympathy; and some Sighing to think of an unhappy home: Some few admiring what can ever lure Maidens to leave the heaven serene and pure Of parents' smiles for life's great cheat; a thing 35 Bitter to taste, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Extraordinary. I'm supposed to be an engineer myself; I say supposed, because in the seven years since my graduation, my father hasn't given me much opportunity to prove it. He has a strong sense of value of time, and I'm cursed with the unenviable quality of being late to anything and for everything. He even asserts that the occasional designs I submit are late Jacobean, but that ...
— The Ideal • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... Sterling Hopkins, the volunteer hangman of Casey, of the Vigilance police, came up and attempted the arrest of Reub. Maloney, a notorious politician, whose impudence of speech and reckless ways in partisan devices had made him an unenviable reputation. His bravery was in his mouth; his mouth beyond his own control. Judge David S. Terry, then of the State Supreme Court, interposed to prevent the lawless arrest, and in the struggle he drew a knife and dangerously wounded Hopkins. In a few ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... world. To make or to refute such a statement implies so wide a knowledge of contrasted civilizations that to most of us the words have no significance. It is true that certain communities have earned for themselves in the course of centuries an unenviable reputation for discourtesy. The Italians say "as rude as a Florentine"; and even the casual tourist (presuming his standard of manners to have been set by Italy) is disposed to echo the reproach. The Roman, with the civilization of the world at his back, is naturally, ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... either Philip, or, after him, Louis, succeeded, by linking the Catholic cause to his personal ambition, in realizing his dream of universal monarchy, Europe would most likely have been plunged into a political and social condition as unenviable as that into which old Asia has been plunged for these four hundred years; and it may well be believed that it was Providence that raised and directed the tempest that scattered the Grand Armada, and that gave victory to the ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... that he had used them before in another connection. He retained the name Frothi, which appears so often in the Danish line of kings that its reappearance would cause no difficulty; and his retention of Frothi as the slayer of his brother is additional evidence that to him, not to Ingjald, was this unenviable rle first assigned. Ingjald, whom he has in his story about Hrolf Kraki, he also retained, but in a different relationship from that in his second book. It will be observed that Saxo merely shifted the name Halfdan from father ...
— The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf • Oscar Ludvig Olson
... self-sacrifice which are as rare as they are great in these days of pretense and hypocritical virtue, and she had paid the full price for her idealism. She did not repine or regret. She only suffered, not alone because of her unenviable notoriety, but because Death had taken her loved one from her. Surely this was indeed an evidence of real love in an unreal civilization, which should have brought out the fearless sympathy and approval of every good woman in the land. It should have ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... in 1702. He wrote the bulk of the second part of Absalom and Achitophel with a wonderfully close imitation of Dryden's manner, besides several dramatic pieces and poems. Between Tate, Shadwell, Eusden, and Pye lies the unenviable distinction of being the worst of the laureates of England. Brady was a clergyman who, after the pleasant fashion of that day, was a pluralist on a small scale, for he had the living of Richmond for thirty years from 1696, and while holding ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... companion and intimate of the old widow, who never took any step of importance without first consulting her dear Agnes. The "dear Agnes" improved her intimacy and played her cards so well, that although she never paid her board, she was never requested to do so, and thus enjoyed the unenviable advantage of being enabled to live rent free. Having accomplished her first object, she now undertook to achieve her second. One day she sought the widow, and in a fit of gushingly-tender confidence revealed to her sympathizing friend her heart ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... two all will be changed; the people owning summer homes will themselves own and use automobiles; the horses will see so many that little notice will be taken, but the pioneers of the sport will have an unenviable time. ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... old cannot converse on the same common topics; and of the old that survive, there are few one can commence a friendship with, because one has probably all one's life despised their heart or their understandings. These are the steps through which one passes to the unenviable ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... employment of one particular club, his caddie thrust another before him? Feeling that there must be something good in the caddie's recommendation, he has been tempted in spite of himself to use it. How frequently are the consequences disastrous in such circumstances as these, and how unenviable are the golfer's after reflections upon his own weakness! Yes, decidedly the girl caddie excels. I have seen her on many links up and down the country, and she is always good. In one of my last matches last season—at Luton—I had one to carry for me, and she was as good as any. Perhaps ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... desperate as to make his name dreaded even in Paris. On one occasion, at a cafe, he had cut a bullying hussar's head clean off with his own sabre for knocking a woman down; and in another duel, where he had detected a French count cheating him at cards, he shot his nose off for a bet. With this unenviable reputation, and at the urgent solicitations of his agent, after years of absence he returned to his ancestral home. We met as of old—it was Paul and Henry—and though still the same restive, hot-headed spirit as he had ever been, he yet always listened patiently to what I said, and I ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... he was in an unenviable situation. Nappy Martell was thoroughly angry, and evidently Slugger Brown and Codfish were present to aid him in anything ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... have enjoyed a very unenviable notoriety as taking pleasure in ill-assorted marriages, and encouraging them by his own example in the ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... occasionally practised; but he nowhere found things so bad as in England. In Holland the prisons were so neat and clean as to make it difficult to believe that they were prisons: and they were used as models for the legislation of 1779. One cause of this unenviable distinction of English prisons had been indicated by an earlier investigation. General Oglethorpe (1696-1785) had been started in his philanthropic career by obtaining a committee of the House of Commons in 1729 to inquire into the state of the gaols. The foundation ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... people, and the census estimate made from figures of the city directory in 1904 gave it then a population of 485,000, probably a considerable exaggeration. In it are mingled inhabitants from most of the nations of the earth, and it may claim the unenviable honor of possessing the largest population of Chinese outside of China itself, the ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... generally condemned for it, her woman's prerogative was recognized nevertheless. But for a lady, and ward of a priest, to dance in public and for money, was a thing unheard of; and gossip was fast giving her an unenviable reputation. This latest escapade, as it was generally termed, had nearly cost her her position in the school. When, however, it was taken into consideration that her services were gratuitous and that it would be impossible to replace her by any one else half as competent, the ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... his skin, he must accommodate himself to current dogmas and refrain from truthful comments and conclusions. He has the choice of being a chronologer or a ballad-monger-obsolete and unimportant occupations. Unenviable fate of those who aspire to be teachers of mankind, that they themselves should be studied with a kind of antiquarian interest, stimulating thought not otherwise than as warning examples! Clio has ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... the soldiers under prosecution. This had the effect of exasperating the populace still more. They saw that the soldiers would be acquitted—which was actually the case, and rewarded likewise—and the exploit was named by the unenviable denomination of "The Massacre of St. George's-fields." Exciting papers were stuck up in every part of the metropolis, and even on the very walls of St. James's-palace. The mansion-house was assailed so frequently that a constant guard of soldiers was necessary to defend ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... was certainly in a most unenviable frame of mind. She considered that Vivian had treated her unfairly in assuming her to be guilty without making any ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... into the deserted street, lighted only by the brilliant moon. They began now to feel that their position was critical, and Bert, who more easily yielded to the depressing effects of circumstances, bemoaned his fate and all the series of events that had led up to their present unenviable plight. He was inclined to blame Harry for the ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... In an unenviable humor I stumbled across the room, tripping and barking my shins over various malignant hassocks, tables, and chairs. Finding the switch at last, I flooded the room with light, and saw myself in the mirror, ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... nations of the world the United States stands to-day in an unenviable light. It is a false light. Since the days of William Penn and Benjamin Franklin our people have led in much of the march upward from the slough of weltering strife. Many a stumbling block to progress we have removed from the rugged pathway, but for fifteen years our government has refused ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... navigator and admiral, born at Plymouth; was rear-admiral of the fleet sent against the Armada and contributed to its defeat; has the unenviable distinction of having been the first Englishman to traffic in slaves, which he carried off from Africa and imported into the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... one o'clock, when silence had reigned for a quarter of an hour, there entered with much bustle the last occupant of the bedroom. She was a young woman with a morally unenviable reputation, though some of her colleagues certainly envied her. Money came to her with remarkable readiness whenever she had need of it. As usual, she began to talk very loud, at first with innocent vulgarity; exciting a little laughter, ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... Semyonitch,' she protested with heat, 'you were the death of your wife, Anfisa Karpovna, but you shan't worry me into my grave!' 'Indeed?' 'No! you shan't.' 'Indeed?' 'No! you shan't.' They kept it up in this fashion for some time. My position was, as you perceive, not merely an unenviable one: it was positively idiotic. I couldn't conceive what had induced Kolosov to bring me.... I have never been a good card-player; but on that occasion I was aware myself that I was playing excruciatingly badly. 'No!' the retired lieutenant repeated continually,' you can't hold a candle to ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... servants of the crown at this time were men whose names have justly acquired an unenviable notoriety. We must take heed, however, that we do not load their memory with infamy which of right belongs to their master. For the treaty of Dover the King himself is chiefly answerable. He held conferences on it with the French agents: he wrote many letters concerning it with his own hand: he ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in Committee of the Whole, having been concurred in, etc., the Joint Resolution, as originally reported by the Judiciary Committee, was at last passed, (April 8th)—by a vote of 38 yeas to 6 nays—Messrs. Hendricks and McDougall having the unenviable distinction of being the only two Senators, (mis-)representing Free States, who voted against this ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... (October 2nd, 1894) explains and (as I think) amends his position:—"If I had said time instead of the public, I should have expressed myself exactly. It is impossible for me to work up any enthusiasm for the service done to literature by criticism as a whole. I have, no doubt, the unenviable advantage over you of having wasted three mortal months in reading all the literary criticism extant of the first quarter of this century. It would be difficult to express my sense of its imbecility, its blundering, and its bad passions. But the good books it assailed are not ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... early and late, the lake had been her favourite haunt. Caribou Lake enjoys an unenviable reputation for weather; Bela thought nothing of crossing the ten miles ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... but Frank did not second the proposal, and Morris was inveterate. The consequence was that, before the table was broken up, Lord Ballindine had lost a sum of money which he could very ill spare, and went to bed in a very unenviable state of mind, in spite of the brilliant prospects on which his friends ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... when poor Charlie went sick, and we had two in hospital. A most unenviable condition, where no sort of comforts can be got. By digging into the bank of the creek we made a sort of couch, and rigged flies over it for a shade. Bad as the days were, the nights were worse; for myriads of ants followed ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... conspirators would seize the city and commence hostilities, and, in the event of their success, everything hitherto achieved would be lost. Or again, the destruction on his part of many fellow-creatures and allies was a terrible alternative, which would place the Spartans in an unenviable light with regard to the rest of Hellas, and render the soldiers ill-disposed to the cause in hand. Accordingly he took with him fifteen men, armed with daggers, and marched through the city. Falling in with ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... There is doubtless a limit to the virtue of allowing ourselves to be imposed upon, but there is little fear that the individual who opens the question will err in this direction. It behooves him rather to consider the danger of his occupying the unenviable position ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... bile of Swift, it is terrible to think what a repertory of biting sarcasms and envenomed repartees he might have transmitted for the study and imitation of cynics and sneerers. Bitterer enemies no man ever had to contend against; and unenviable indeed must have been their disappointment at finding themselves wholly impotent to discompose his sage and large-hearted serenity. So impressive, withal, is his spirit of toleration and benevolence that a diligent reader of his pages is, as it were, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... younger brothers, as now of the Blue Coat Boys, and of other Blue Schools in the country. Women used to do penance in blue gowns. Is it not unseemly that blue which has hitherto been the colour of so many unenviable distinctions, should be the adopted emblem of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... act of gathering himself up as soon as the unpleasant novelty of his uncle's apparition had died away, and as each succeeding moment forced on him, with his returning consciousness, the awful reality of his condition, he began to feel that unenviable sensation of distraction, which is almost akin to despair. He tried to shape things so as they might form some excuse, but it was miserably vain. Matters were decidedly against him. He had told his uncle that he would not go out, and the next thing, he is found stumbling in a back ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... "The unenviable reputation, throughout the length and breadth of the land, in regard to the divorce law, has heaped ignominy on the State of Nevada. A few unscrupulous members of the legal fraternity, little better than outcasts at home, have come to Reno and besmirched the good name of a great State by their ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... our legs. The ship was running before the wind, and rolling considerably, and the motion, aided by the wine and the act of plucking aside the flag, might have precipitated the captain into his unenviable situation; he thought otherwise. No sooner was he placed upon his feet, and his mouth sufficiently clear from the salt water decoction of hog-wash, than he collared the poor victim of persecution, and spluttered out, "Mutiny—mu—mu—mutiny—sentry. ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... one, Mr. Gifford; I won't call it, as it seems at first sight, wildly improbable, but it is at any rate an almost incredible coincidence. With your knowledge of the law I need scarcely remind you that the facts as you have just recounted them place you in a rather unenviable position." ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... weeks of pleasant comradeship, Cuthbert found himself in the unenviable position of standing rival to his friend in the affections of Cherry, and the more he thought about it the less he liked the situation. He could not give Cherry up—that was out of the question; besides, had he renounced her twenty times over, that would not ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... will not hold true that America is either disinterested or indispensable. The unenviable position of the indispensable belongs to the United Kingdom, and carries with it the customary suspicion of interested motives that attaches to the stronger party in a bargain. To America, on the other ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... to hear so unfilial a speech from the lips of a young girl. Colonel Hathaway's face showed that he, too, considered it unmannerly to criticise a parent in the presence of strangers. But both reflected that Alora's life and environments were unenviable and that she had lacked, in these later years at least, the careful training due one in her station in society. So they deftly changed the subject and led the girl to speak of Italy and its delightful scenery and romantic history. Alora knew little ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... rare biographical details which, as has been explained, may "force the consigne" here, is that Beyle in his youth, and almost up to middle age, was acquainted with an old lady who had the very unenviable reputation of having actually "sat for" Madame ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... to dance without being acquainted with the figures, makes himself ridiculous, and places his partner in an embarrassing and unenviable position. There is no need for him to know the steps. It is enough if he knows how to walk gracefully through the dance, and to conduct his partner through it like a gentleman. No man can waltz too well; but to perform steps in a quadrille is ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... no rhyme for it. I thought about it all the time I was dressing—it's dreadfully bad for one to think whilst one's dressing—and all lunch-time, and I'm still hung up over it. I feel like those unfortunate automobilists who achieve an unenviable motoriety by coming to a hopeless stop with their cars in the most crowded thoroughfares. I'm afraid I shall have to drop the aasvogel, and it did give such lovely ...
— Reginald • Saki
... first, ready to condescend and accommodate, he is equally prompt when matters require that peculiar turn which southerners frequently find themselves turned into,—no more tick and a turn out of doors. At times, Mr. O'Brodereque's customers have the very unenviable consolation of knowing that a small document called a mortgage of their real and personal property remains in his hands, which he will very soon ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... be called under the care—of a "reduced old lady," dwelling in Camden Town, who must have been a clever and prophetic old lady if she anticipated that her diminutive lodger would one day give her a kind of indirect unenviable immortality by making her figure, under the name of "Mrs. Pipchin," in "Dombey and Son." Here the boy seems to have been left almost entirely to his own devices. He spent his Sundays in the prison, and, to the best of his ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... the so-called "Industrial Workers of the World," whose policy may be summed up in the words, "I Want to Wreck," and who in derision are termed the "I Won't Works," the "Imported Weary Willies" and the "Wobblies," enjoy the unenviable reputation of being classed among the most insurrectionary, impious and infamous workers of the world to-day. This industrial union, also known as the One Big Union, is the bitter rival of the American Federation of Labor. Joseph J. Ettor, in his I. W. W. pamphlet, "Industrial Unionism," ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... power under Ivan III., who married the daughter of the Greek Emperor, and succeeded in expelling the Tartars, and making himself master of their city Kazan. He was followed by his son Vasilii, who was succeeded by Ivan IV., who has gained a very unenviable reputation on account of his cruelties. Already the yoke of the Tartars had begun to have a very deteriorating effect upon the Russian character, and the more sanguinary code of the Asiatics had effaced the tradition of the laws of Yaroslav. ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... for his nephew, Ignacio Borgia. He had been emboldened to this step by the fact that her only protector was her brother, Filippo di Santafior, whom they had sought to coerce. It was her brother, who, seeing himself in a dangerous and unenviable position, had secretly suggested flight to her, urging her to repair to her kinsman Giovanni Sforza at Pesaro. Her flight, however, must have been speedily discovered and the Borgias, who saw in that act a defiance of their supreme authority, had ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... eighteenth and nineteenth century phenomena, and in discussing the part which their leaders have taken in healing we may well include the experience of Wesley. As a mere incident in his revival work, John Wesley (1703-1791), the great founder of Methodism, appeared in the rather unenviable role of exorcist. It is to his credit that he was not led away from his primary purpose by this experience, but returned to his preaching without any effort to add healing to his gifts. The account of his encounter ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... anew, and the interview ended. Public feeling among the drummer-boys rose to fever pitch and the lives of Jakin and Lew became unenviable. Not only had they been permitted to enlist two years before the regulation boy's age—fourteen—but, by virtue, it seemed, of their extreme youth, they were allowed to go to the Front—which thing had not happened to acting-drummers within the knowledge of boy. The Band which was to accompany ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... a drunken father, a slatternly mother. Brought up in a comfortless, poverty-stricken home, without any religious teaching or influences, what wonder that they became addicted to most of the petty vices,—that they acquired an unenviable reputation for mischief, mendacity, and thieving in ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... In this unenviable state of mental anxiety, and corporeal lassitude, was our justly renowned hero, at the period of those preparations being completed, which were calculated to display him, in the view of an enraptured people, as the greatest and most ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... The first execution that ever took place there was that of Sarah Simpson and Penelope Kenny, for the murder of an infant in 1739. The sheriff was Thomas Packer, the same official who, twenty-nine years later, won unenviable notoriety at the hanging of Ruth Blay. The circumstances are set forth by the late Albert Laighton in a spirited ballad, which is too long to quote in full. The following stanzas, however, give the pith of ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... part of Tinker's education was the careful cultivation of his faculty of observation. Sir Tancred himself had a natural gift of understanding his fellow-creatures, which, along with his finer brain, little by little placed him in the noble but unenviable position of being the first person to whom his friends flew to be extricated from their scrapes. He had found that his gift stood him in such good stead in his varying fortunes that he spared no pains to equip Tinker with the ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... the Standard Oil Company, however, was not due solely to the alliance with the railroads, although this advantage came at a strategic time when it was fighting for supremacy. Its marketing department gave it an unenviable reputation, but achieved amazing success. The department was organized to cover the country, find out everything possible about competitors, and then kill them off by price-cutting or other means. The great resources ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... Irish family has not its Family Ghost? A banshee—the heritage of Niall of the Nine Hostages—is still the unenviable possession of his descendants, the O'Donnells, and I, who am a member of the clan, have both seen and heard it several times. As it appears to me, it resembles the decapitated head of a prehistoric woman, and I shall never forget my feelings one night, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... was unenviable. He had been brought all the way across France, leaving his wife and family; he had, it seems, been met by no letters from his noble friends, who may well have ceased to expect him, so long was his delay. He was not at ease in his conscience, for, to be plain, he was not sure that he was ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... I was in an unenviable state of mind when he left me. I had an impulse to send for Miss McCoy and ask her if she had understood what Krebs was "driving at," but for reasons that must be fairly obvious I refrained. I read over again that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Erech. He builds the wall of Erech, [114] and we may assume that the designation of the city as Uruk supri, "the walled Erech," [115] rests upon this tradition. He is also associated with the great temple Eanna, "the heavenly house," in Erech. To Gilgamesh belongs also the unenviable tradition of having exercised his rule in Erech so harshly that the people are impelled to implore Aruru to create a rival who may rid the district of the cruel tyrant, who is described as snatching sons and daughters from their families, ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous
... to have taken a desperate step. Miss Jane Marston, Della's sister-in-law, had always been the superfluous member of her family. Such unenviable tasks as amusing or teaching the younger children, sewing, or making up whist sets, had, as is usual with the odd members in a family, fallen to her share. All this Miss Marston hated in a slow, rebellious manner. From always having just too little money to live independently, ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... pieces and burning. She was much further off, and we made her out less distinctly. On the Japanese side not one ship had sunk as far as we had seen, and though the flagship and some of the smaller craft were in an unenviable state, the attack was kept up with immense spirit, and prompt obedience was paid to signals, which were frequent, whereas we looked in vain for any sign of leadership on the part of the Celestials. Later in the action another of their best ships, the Chih-Yuen, came to ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... this extremely, Mrs. Tarbell," he said. "It places me in a very unenviable position. It was done," he continued, with a brazen front, "it was done without my knowledge. My advice was not asked: the company acted on their own responsibility and of their own motion. It is, at best, a poor compliment to me as an officer ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... army and navy. To those who are acquainted with the arbitrary habits of military and naval officers, and with the iron despotism which they exercise among the soldiers and sailors,[B] the bare mention of this fact is sufficient to convince them of the unenviable situation of the apprentice. It is at best but a gloomy transfer from the mercies of a slave driver, to the justice of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... still expecting a sudden retractation. What was the good? Supposing he took it upon himself to extenuate the old man's statements, Morestal was the sort of uncompromising man who would give him the lie in public. And then the government would find itself in an unenviable plight indeed! ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... by J. W. THOMAS, is quite common amongst the Easterns even at the present day. I remember, when at Malta, in March, 1848, whilst walking in company of the most accomplished Arabian of the day, the conversation turned upon a certain individual who had since acquired a most unenviable notoriety in the annals of British jurisprudence, my companion abruptly turned upon me, whilst at the shore of the Mediterranean, and said, in his fascinating Arabic, "Behold this great sea! were all its water turned into ink, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... town in England seems to have enjoyed so unenviable a reputation for some centuries for the folly and stupidity of its inhabitants, that I am induced to send you the following Query (with the reasons on which it is founded) in the hope that some of your readers may be able to help one to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various
... were "thieves and knaves."[300] La Vente, cure of Mobile, joined in the cry against Bienville, and stirred soldiers and settlers to disaffection; but the bitterest accuser of that truly valuable officer was the worthy matron who held the unenviable post of directress of the "King's girls,"—that is, the young women sent out as wives for the colonists. It seems that she had matrimonial views for herself as well as for her charge; and she wrote to Ponchartrain that Major ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... the Recollets at this time was unenviable. The agents of the merchants were not better disposed towards them than the interpreters. Some of these agents were demoralized, and the reproach that they received from the fathers caused them to avoid their presence. The conduct of some of these agents was so bad that even the Indians, who ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... the Dindings, a lovely group of small islands ceded to England by the Pangkor Treaty, and just now in the height of an unenviable notoriety. The sun was low and the great heat past, the breeze had died away, and in the dewy stillness the largest of the islands looked unspeakably lovely as it lay in the golden light between us and the sun, forest-covered to its steep ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... called the "Culloden Massacre," caused the whole civilized world to stand aghast. The order of the Duke of Cumberland to grant no quarter to prisoners placed him foremost in the ranks of "British beasts" that have disgraced the pages of history, and earned for him the unenviable title of "The Butcher of Culloden." It has been suggested in extenuation of his fiendish conduct that His Grace was "deep in his cups" the night before the battle, and that the General to whom the order was given, realizing the condition ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... who, on receiving payment of the printing expenses, made over the remainder of the impression to the author. One of the trustees was Mr Blackwood, afterwards the celebrated publisher of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. Hogg had now attained the unenviable reputation of a literary prodigy, and his studies were subject to constant interruption from admirers, and the curious who visited the capital. But he gave all a cordial reception, and was never less accessible ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... consequence it was only by paying the keenest attention that he could detect those who from sheer incapacity were relaxing their strain on the traces. And his position was not pleasant even when he knew, for to tell any of these brave people that they must turn back was a most unenviable [Page 165] task. Thus it came about that all six of them marched on, though Scott was sure that better progress would have been made had ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... Elliott fullback stepped through the doorway and pushed the door shut after him, nervously. He came over toward the man who had been forced into the unenviable role of trying to fill Coach Brown's great shoes, and stood—fumbling with his cap. There was an awkward moment, broken finally by ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... comparatively thrown into the shade. Religion and marriage became a mockery, and every form of impure and vindictive passion walked abroad, with the consciousness that public opinion did not require them to assume even a slight disguise. The fish-women of Paris will long retain an unenviable celebrity for the brutal excess of their rage. The goddess of Reason was worshipped by men, under the form of a living woman entirely devoid of clothing; and in the public streets ladies might be seen who scarcely ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... midnight. And I just want to say, Jane, that the big country girl, Shirley Duncan, is the only one not terrified. But I suppose country girls are accustomed to wild things." Everyone seemed loath to add further criticism to Shirley's rather unenviable reputation. ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... Pavlovna had asked for the first quarter's allowance. Then worse and worse rumors began to reach him; at last, a tragic-comic story was reported with acclamations in all the papers. His wife played an unenviable part in it. It was the finishing stroke; Varvara ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... State, with 80,000 inhabitants and 18,000 voters, and so thoroughly was it organized by Miss Martin that I believe she could address every voter by his first name. I felt like a fifth wheel. All the work appeared to be finished and hung aside to season by the time I arrived and I was in the unenviable position of being sandwiched between Dr. Shaw, who had just preceded me, and Miss Addams, who immediately followed me. I went over the desert, however, and into mines, and spoke in butchers' homes and at meetings that wound up with a supper and a dance and came away with the certainty that Miss Martin ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... another head rises; that of Chaucer's great friend, John Gower. Unlike Chaucer in this, Gower hated and despised common people; when he allows them room in his works, the place assigned to them is an unenviable one. He is aristocratic and conservative by nature, so that he belongs to old England as much as to the new nation, and is the last in date of the recognisable representatives of Angevin Britain. Like the latter, Gower hesitates between several idioms; he is not ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... continued to increase, Captain Markham was not the man to put back into port as long as he could possibly keep the sea. He had a good deal of the Flying Dutchman spirit about him, without the profanity of that far-famed navigator, which has so justly doomed him to so unenviable a notoriety. ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... through the necessity of defending, for fifteen years, an unenviable position between Isobel and Gyp, developed an unusual amount of assertiveness, was what his uncle fondly called "quite a boy." But the dignity of his first long trousers, at one glance, fell before the boyish ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... generous-hearted men thought it would be much better to make some kind of effort to elevate the Negro than to grieve about what was already done. So the idea of a manual training-school was advanced by two gentlemen, one of whom is a stanch Southerner, who for a long time had the unenviable reputation of believing and openly advocating the strange and illogical theory that the Negro has no soul; the other is a minister of Southern birth, but of Northern education. Infatuated with the prospects of ultimate success, and having, ...
— American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 9, September, 1896 • Various
... in every way unsuitable. Aymer was illiterate, ignorant of the English language, and wholly secular in his mode of life. Upon his head was concentrated the whole of the popular indignation against the foreign favourites; and he seems to have deserved this unenviable distinction. At the parliament of Oxford (1258) he and his brothers repudiated the new constitution prepared by the barons. He was pursued to Winchester, besieged in Wolvesey castle, and finally compelled to surrender and leave the kingdom. He had ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... of rolling when sailing before the wind, and each time the boat rolls from side to side she is liable to dip the end of her heavy boom in the water and "trip herself up." When a boat trips up she does not necessarily go down, but she is likely to upset, placing the young sailors in an unenviable, if not dangerous, position. Fourth, when the craft begins to swagger before the wind she is liable to "goose neck," that is throw her boom up against the mast, which is another accident fraught with ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... in a most unenviable frame of mind for a year or more, and then the former one day happened to think of the barrel which old Jordan had told him was hidden in the potato-patch. He spoke of it while the family were at dinner, and announced that he and Dan would begin the work of unearthing ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... the squirrels and weasels and bats. It is not surprising that, their author being so inartistic with regard to their object, his verses themselves should be harsh and unmusical beyond the worst that one would imagine fit to be called verse. He enjoys the unenviable distinction of having no rival in ruggedness of metric movement and associated sounds. This is clearly the result of indifference; an indifference, however, which grows very strange to us when we find that he can write a lovely verse and even an ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... figure that name about says it all. The Solar League ambassador to the Lone Star Planet has the unenviable task of convincing New Texans that a s'Srauff attack is imminent, and dangerous. Unfortunately it's common knowledge that the s'Srauff are evolved from canine ancestors—and not a Texan alive is about to be scared of a talking dog! But unless he can get them ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... transgressions and corruptions of language are supposed to originate in that unclassic section, while the truth is that the laws of polite English are as much violated on Fifth Avenue. Of course, the foreign element mincing their "pidgin" English have given the Bowery an unenviable reputation, but there are just as good speakers of the vernacular on the Bowery as elsewhere in the greater city. Yet every inexperienced newspaper reporter thinks that it is incumbent on him to hold the Bowery up to ridicule and laughter, so he ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... English poetry offers no more interesting case between poet and critic than that of John Keats. The imputed influence of a savage critique in hastening the death of the poet has given the Quarterly Review an unenviable notoriety which clings in spite of the efforts of scholars to establish the truth. To many students, Keats, Endymion, and Quarterly are practically connotative terms; and this is a direct result of the righteous but misguided indignation ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... Maille de Breze, Princess de (wife of the Great Conde), married at thirteen to the Duke d'Enghien, who yielded only to compulsion, 80; the unenviable light in which she was held by her husband and relatives, 80; a fair estimate of her qualities, 81; her fidelity to her husband during adversity, 81; her zeal during the Woman's War, 81; her truly deplorable existence from earliest childhood, 82; ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... gave way to despair. There are few conditions in life so utterly unenviable as penury and love—to be next door to starving, and at the same time in love. Day after day Shiel, who was thus afflicted, had revelled in Gladys's company, and had intoxicated himself with her ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... him the scandal such a measure would give rise to, and urged him not to place himself in such an unenviable position, but he insisted that he was willing to let society have its fling, and that if I would consent to the child's adoption, he would take ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... ye offspring of prolific Thetys, and daughters of Ocean your sire, who rolls around the whole earth in his unslumbering stream; look upon me, see clasped in what bonds I shall keep an unenviable watch on the ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... hour, but presently there came the distinct dip of oars. In spite of my unenviable position I felt excited. I thought there were two boats. Naturally there would be. The dinghy was small; crew and confederates could not have ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... which forcibly illustrates the political position of that body in those times. milianus proposed to resign the whole civil administration into the hands of the senate, reserving to himself only the unenviable burthen of the military interests. His hope was, that in this way making himself in part the creation of the senate, he might strengthen his title against competitors at Rome, whilst the entire military administration ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... of itinerant exhorters. The Spanish alliance was disastrous to English fortunes abroad and distasteful to all patriotic Englishmen at home. And finally, the violent means which the queen took to stamp out heresy gave her the unenviable surname of "Bloody" and reacted in the end in behalf of the views for which the victims sacrificed their lives. During her reign nearly three hundred reformers perished, many of them, including Archbishop Cranmer, by fire. The work of the queen was in vain. No heir was born to ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... further legislation along the lines advocated in my Message to the preceding Congress. The practice of putting the entire burden of loss to life or limb upon the victim or the victim's family is a form of social injustice in which the United States stands in unenviable prominence. In both our Federal and State legislation we have, with few exceptions, scarcely gone farther than the repeal of the fellow-servant principle of the old law of liability, and in some of our States even this slight modification of a completely outgrown principle ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... Bay of Bengal, about six hundred miles from the Hoogly mouth of the Ganges, lie the Andaman Islands. The savages inhabiting these islands have the unenviable reputation of being, in common with several other tribes, the nearest approach to primeval man in existence. These islands and their inhabitants have been known and feared since time immemorial; our old friend Sinbad the Sailor, of "Arabian ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... King, at this moment, was unenviable. He was shut up in the little round turret room. On the other side of the door, in the chamber, swords were clashing, feet were stamping. James knew that he had four defenders, one of them a lame medical man; who or how many their opponents might be, he could not know. The air rang ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... merits of the engines submitted to test. It was for the judges to do this. We maintain that nothing that the public will accept as a decision has been reached, and on behalf of the public we protest that the managers have not only placed themselves in a very unenviable position by their action in the premises, but have done a lasting injury to the American Institute, the results of which will be disastrously felt ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... the Elegies, composed during his banishment to a town on the Euxine, near the mouth of the Danube, where he died, A.D. 18. Niebuhr places him after Catullus the most poetical among the Roman poets, and ranks him first for facility. He did not direct his genius by a sound judgment, and has the unenviable fame of having been the first to depart from the canons of correct Greek taste.] the inimitable felicity and taste of Horace, the gentleness and high spirit of Virgil, and the vehement declamation of Juvenal, but, had the verses of Lucretius perished, we should never have known that it ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... fine story). Ordinarily they begin, as do our own, with the formula, "once upon a time there was." The ending is also a variable formula, often a couplet referring to the happy termination of the tale and the relatively unenviable condition of the listeners. The Sicilian ending ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... Chapel did not come to his appointment, and some person in the congregation had to take the vacant place, and conduct the service as well as he might be able without any previous preparation. Now it appears that Abe found himself placed just in this very unenviable position. The congregation were all in the chapel; the hour of service had come, and passed, yet no preacher arrived; the people were whispering and looking at the clock; one brother went to the door to see if there were any sign of the preacher's coming; two or three of the leading ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... the troubles and afflictions incident to the unenviable office of Governor of a colony. Those innocent country gentlemen who have expended the better part of their property on contested elections, and now weary heaven and Her Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State for colonial appointments, little know what they invoke upon themselves. ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor |
