"Bugbear" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his wife, as if resenting the word. "But you make such a bugbear of the least little matter that there's no encouragement to ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... rebellion that we associate likin, a tax which has for years past been the bugbear of the foreign merchant in China. The term means "thousandth-part money," that is, the thousandth part of a tael or Chinese ounce of silver, say one cash; and it was originally applied to a tax of one cash per tael on all sales, said to have ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... that in both places there was danger of Guy's being led into mischief by his musical connections. Therefore he did his best, for Amabel's sake, to turn them from their purpose, persuaded in his own mind that the fever was a mere bugbear, raised up by Arnaud; and, perhaps, in his full health and strength, almost regarding illness itself as a foible, far more the dread of it. He argued, therefore, in his most provoking strain, becoming more vexatious as the former annoyance was revived at finding the impossibility of ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "the usual masculine ones! Misgivings, for example, about stepping out of the routine. Routine that makes slaves of men!" with an accent slightly mocking. "And stepping into what? Society! The bugbear of so many men! Poor Society! What flings it has to endure! By the way, did ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... colonies be proportionately represented in that executive. The Cabinet seems to me the adaptable body we can operate upon to this end. That body would then be actually, as well as legally, the empire's executive. Nothing should—nothing need—prevent the attainment of this grand end. The tariff bugbear concerns only commerce, and need not arrest nor even interfere with the empire's political unity. All other matters of the common interest can be leisurely settled by mutual consent, as the empire, in its united state, ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... used by me in this compilation - is in the duodecimo form, exceedingly well printed, and garnished with wood-cuts, in which Satan, - for the author had a full measure of the ancient credulity, - with his usual bugbear accompaniments, frequently appears in bodily presence. In the Preface, Cieza announces his purpose to continue the work in three other parts, illustrating respectively the ancient history of the country under the Incas, its ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... four things that are never satisfied, lays special stress upon two which are, so to say, the beginning and end of all things, the alpha and omega of human philosophy—viz., the grave and the womb;[179] the latter the bait as well as the portal of life, the former the bugbear and the goal of all things living. The idea, no less than the form, is manifestly Indian. Birth and death constitute the axis of existence; the womb is the symbol of the allurement that tempts men to forget their sorrows, to keep the ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... statesmen like Longlee, Stafford, and Walsingham, were beginning to lose their fear of the great bugbear by which England had so long been haunted. It was, therefore no deep stain on the Queen's sagacity that she, too, was willing to place credence in the plighted honour of Alexander Farnese, the great prince who prided himself on his sincerity, and who, next to the King his master, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... fantastic pictures. Here J.P. Lyser, a painter by profession, but a poet as well, and a musician besides. Here Carl Bauck, the indefatigable, yet unsuccessful composer of songs,—now, in his capacity of critic, the paper bugbear of the Dresden artists. He had just returned from Italy, and believed himself in possession of the true secret of the art of singing, the monopoly of which every singing-master is wont to claim for himself. C.F. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... you with matters that can as little obtain admission into a mind like yours: such as the fear, or pretence of fear, that, in spite of your own power and the trifling power of Great Britain, you may be conquered by the Pope; or that this commodious bugbear (who is of infinitely more use to those who pretend to fear than to those who love him) will absolve his Majesty's subjects from their allegiance, and send over the Cardinal of York to rule you as his viceroy; or that, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Needless, or Too much Retirement. Where was it, that the Devil fell upon our Lord? it was when he was Alone in the Wilderness. We should all have our Times to be Alone every Day; and if the Devil go to scare us out of our Chambers, with such a Bugbear, as that he'll appear to us, yet stay in spite of his teeth, stay to finish your Devotions; he Lyes, he dare not shew his head. But on the other-side by being too solitary, we may lay our selves too much open to the Devil; You know who says, ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... Mallaing;) and on the 8th about noon I arrived at Kolor, a considerable town; near the entrance into which I observed, hanging upon a tree, a sort of masquerade habit, made of the bark of trees, which I was told on inquiry belonged to MUMBO JUMBO. This is a strange bugbear, common to all the Mandingo towns, and much employed by the Pagan natives in keeping their women in subjection; for as the Kafirs are not restricted in the number of their wives, every one marries as many as he can conveniently maintain; and as it frequently ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... causeways. A poor woman in a remote hamlet, untouched by tourist or guide-book, has shown me the ash-tree under which Monmouth was seized after Sedgemoor; a Suffolk peasant, equally innocent of book-knowledge, has pointed Out "Bloody Mary's lane," through which that bugbear of Protestants passed three hundred years before on her way to Framlingham. The abbey immortalised in Carlyle's "Past and Present," and still the wonder of Eastern England, is surrounded now by the same villages that ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... slow and constipation accompanies it. Sometimes there is neuralgia of the stomach. The sexual organs are seemingly affected, many men are "almost scared to death" and they use all sorts of quack remedies to restore their sexual vigor. Spermatorrhea is their bugbear. They usually get well if they stop worrying. In women there is the tender ovary and the menstruation may be painful or irregular. The condition of the urine in these patients is important. Many cases are complicated with lithaemia (sand-stone in the urine). It is sometimes ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... his head, having received a scratch, was frighted: it gave him first a puke, then a fever, and then he died, that was all. And how could Belton help that? —But sickness, a long tedious sickness, will make a bugbear of any thing to a languishing heart, I see that. And so far was Mowbray a-propos in the verses from Nat. Lee, ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... in the winter is like a wine, so exhilarating is its effects on the system; while its extreme dryness and elasticity prevents any discomfort from the cold which is such a bugbear to many. The extreme cold does not last but for a few days, and should the invalid choose to be domiciled during this brief interval, no great harm would come; but we apprehend that, once there, they could not be kept ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... here at Middle Plantation who earnestly do wish the good of Virginia. It was a bold test! Not only should they covenant to give no aid to the whilom?? Governor against this new general and army, but if ships should bring the Red Coats they were to withstand them. There is little wonder that "this bugbear did marvellously startle" that body of Virginia horsemen, those progressive gentlemen planters, and others. Yet in the end, after violent contentions, the assembly at Middle Plantation drew up and signed a remarkable paper, the "Oath at Middle ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... the statement of a monk—of a man who resembles an echo—repeating simply what he hears. I understand that Mazarin is at this very moment extremely uneasy as to the state of affairs; that his orders are not respected like those of our former bugbear, the deceased cardinal, whose portrait as you see hangs yonder—for whatever may be thought of him, it must be allowed ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... their uncle and Miss Ainslee were sitting under a great tree, but each time that they appeared Uncle Dick would say in a strong voice: "I want to inquire about Molly's marks, Miss Ainslee. How is she getting on with her arithmetic?" As this was Molly's bugbear, she would move off hastily whenever the study was mentioned while Uncle Dick looked after her with a twinkle in his eye. He politely took his leave after recess was over, though some of Molly's friends clamored for him to stay and tell them stories ...
— Three Little Cousins • Amy E. Blanchard
... reaches its brow,— He has past it,—and now Having once gained the summit, and managed to cross it, he Rolls down the side with uncommon velocity; But, run as he will, Or roll down the hill, That bugbear behind him is after ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... Dog" would immediately roll over on his back, with his legs in the air, and yelp piteously; in fact, he combined the "lay" of insanity with that of starvation in a most ingenious and skilful manner. He was a familiar sight and a bugbear to the police, who were constantly arresting him; but, as he never asked for money, they had great difficulty in doing anything with him. Usually the magistrate sent him to the "Island," for thirty days ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... composition. She cannot scold her servants—the mildest approach to it that she ever makes is by saying, 'Mr. Brandon does not like such a thing,' or that 'Mr. Brandon would be displeased if they do not attend to such another.' The idea of making a bugbear of me is very ingenious, but I fear not very efficacious, for I know they see through it. As for me, a penitent recollection of a conversation in an English railway carriage has stopped her mouth for ever, and she never ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... the tricks of the trade. It would be far better for them to wait till the present generation of honest mediocrities died out, and a new and differently educated generation were ready to take hold. University-trained Labour—that bugbear of Barnes'—if there is any hope for the British Constitution, which probably there is not, I believe it lies there. It is a very small one, at the best. Anyhow, it certainly did not, at this period, lie in the parliamentary Labour ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... But his bugbear returned next morning, as the Frank emerged from breakfast, claiming praise for his devotion in coming through such weather. The wady to the north of the town was now a raging torrent, he informed them. With his own eyes he had seen ten righteous men torn off their feet and carried clean ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... urged against this mode of operating, the fear lest the thickened, brawny, and often ulcerated textures in the neighbourhood of a diseased knee-joint, would not make a good covering. This, however, is no longer a bugbear, as we see in cases of resection, where the diseased joint alone is taken away, how very soon all swelling and disease departs, ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... necessary to that balance of interests and sentiments without which, as he believed, free governments should not exist. This work, which reproduced more at length and in a more obnoxious form the fundamental ideas of his 'Defence of the American Constitution,' made Adams a great bugbear to the ultra-democratic supporters of the principles and policy of the French revolutionists; and at the second presidential election in 1792, they set up as a candidate against him George Clinton, of New York, but Mr. Adams was re-elected by a ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... revolutions and conspiracies. I am not made to sit upon a throne as the feared and thundering goddess of cowardly slaves, causing millions to tremble at every word and glance! I will not be empress, not the bugbear of a quaking, kneeling people, I will be a woman, who has nothing to do with the business and drudgery of men; I will not be plagued with labor and care, but will enjoy and rejoice ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... he trusts that the mother's interviews with the Doctor, and a knowledge of the kindly influences under which Adele has grown up, may lessen the danger of a religious altercation between mother and child, which has been his great bugbear in view of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... walked over to the Rectory one Sunday morning early in December—a few weeks only after he had been ordained. He had taken a great deal of pains with his sermon, which was on the subject of geology—then coming to the fore as a theological bugbear. He showed that so far as geology was worth anything at all—and he was too liberal entirely to pooh-pooh it—it confirmed the absolutely historical character of the Mosaic account of the Creation as given in Genesis. Any phenomena which at first sight appeared ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... to curse for being the cause of my misfortune. Let us to the ban dog's kennel, and explain to him what is to be done in every view of the question. If we can persuade him to stand the bier ordeal, it may be a mere bugbear, and in that case we are safe. If he take the combat, he is fierce as a baited bear, and may, perchance, master his opponent; then we are more than safe, we are avenged. If Bonthron himself is vanquished, ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... give them the same opportunity for enterprise and improvement." Their only sin, it appears, after all, is being "guilty of a skin not colored like our own." I may observe, in passing, that amalgamation, the bugbear of anti-abolitionists, is the necessary result of slavery, ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... FEVER, however, has for many years been the most terrible bugbear, and to prevent its introduction into the seaports of Europe and the United States has been the chief end and aim of the absurd and ridiculous quarantine regulations to which I have referred. It has never been regarded ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... relief to you to know at once that there will not be any statistics in this series of talks. We want instead just now to get broad and general, but distinct, impressions. Statistics are burdensome to most people. They are a good deal of a bugbear to the common crowd of us every-day folks. They are absolutely essential. They are of immense, that is, immeasurable, value. You need to have them at hand where you can easily turn for exact information, as you need it, to refresh your memory. And an increasing amount of it will ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... that ever handled a brush. In spite of many pangs of conscience, I seize this opportunity to wreak a lifelong abhorrence upon the poor, blameless man, for the sake of that dreary picture of Lear, an explosion of frosty fury, that used to be a bugbear to me in the Athenaeum Exhibition. Would fire burn it, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Cours Sauvaire, he had published, in the "Independant," a terrible article on the intrigues of the clergy, in response to a short paragraph from Vuillet, who had accused the Republicans of desiring to demolish the churches. Vuillet was Aristide's bugbear. Never a week passed but these two journalists exchanged the greatest insults. In the provinces, where a periphrastic style is still cultivated, polemics are clothed in high-sounding phrases. Aristide ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... Baptists. Like other Nonconformists, these were inclined to the Liberal side in politics, and, at least in the beginning, regarded Buonaparte as a deliverer. From the time of his joining the Spearmen, Thomas Smith became in consequence a bugbear to his brethren in the faith. "They that take the sword shall perish with the sword," they told him; they gave him "no rest"; "his position became intolerable"; it was plain he must choose between his political and his religious tenets; and in the last years of his life, about 1812, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ever since my conversation with Mr. T. about the Malstrom, to have called in at Loffoden Islands on our way south, and ascertain for myself the real truth about this famous vortex. To have blotted such a bugbear out of the map of Europe, if its existence really was a myth, would at all events have rendered our cruise not altogether fruitless. But, since leaving Spitzbergen, we had never once seen the sun, and to attempt to make so ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... a glance from head to foot, rapid as an instantaneous exposure. "Tramps" were a permanent bugbear to the ladies of Cullerne, and a proper dread of such miscreants had been instilled into Anastasia Joliffe by her aunt. It was, moreover, a standing rule of the house that no strange men were to be admitted on any pretence, unless there was some man-lodger at home, to grapple with them if ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... of Party Government" in the Fortnightly Review for June, 1900. Mr. Lilly complains bitterly that the infallible oracle in politics to-day is "the man in the street." He asserts that all issues are settled "by counting heads, in entire disregard of what the heads contain." His bugbear is the extension of the franchise. "Representative institutions, for example," he asks, "what do they represent? The true theory unquestionably is that they should represent all the features of national life, all the living forces of society, all that makes the country what it is; and that ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... the middle-class can never obtain full social and political power over the nation except by the help of the working-class. Thus a gradual change came over the relations between both classes. The Factory Acts, once the bugbear of all manufacturers, were not only willingly submitted to, but their expansion into acts regulating almost all trades, was tolerated. Trades' Unions, hitherto considered inventions of the devil himself, were now petted and patronised as perfectly legitimate institutions, and as useful means ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... mask before its eyes, it is afraid of death. But its fear is only because of its lack of understanding. If it knew, it would by no means be afraid or shudder at death. Our reason is like a little child who has become frightened by a bugbear or a mask, and cannot be lulled to sleep; or like a poor man, bereft of his senses, who imagines when brought to his couch that he is being put into the water and drowned. What we do not understand ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... of, that makes men "all their lifetime subject to bondage" (Heb 2:14,15). For though Christ will deliver thee indeed at last, thou having embraced him by faith, yet thy life will be full of trouble; and death, though Jesus hath abolished it, will be always a living bugbear to thee in all thy ways and thoughts, to break thy peace, and to make thee to draw thy loins heavily ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... an air of pleasant detachment, "I see. You are in a first-rate fix. I was always prepared for that. Coke told me about Bulmer—warned me off, so to speak. I forgot his claims at odd times, just for a minute or so, but he is a real bugbear—a sort of matrimonial bogey-man. If all goes well, and we enter Pernambuco without being fired at, you will be handed over to the British Consul, and he will send a rousing telegram about you to England. Bulmer, of course, will ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... Miss Burkham's bugbear. She was always endeavoring to instill into the minds of her charges, that a lady never attracts undue attention. The word had been in use so frequently that it had become a by-word ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... thing—they are going to get it, and without delay. Although there was some grumbling among the marketmen, the provision stores were soon put through such a course of scrubbing and whitening as to make the old-fashioned "spring house-cleaning," which has been the bugbear of pater familias and one of the chief assets of the paragrapher for so many years, a process of incomparably mild flavor. At the abattoir it had not been so easy to effect a reform, but with such women as Mrs. Bateman, Mrs. Albert Turner and the Reverend Martha Kendall coming down there to ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... that there were 2,000 of them sick in Philadelphia. The editor of a leading white paper in Jackson, Mississippi, made the remark that he feared that the result of the first winter's experience in the North would prove serious to the South, in so far as it would remove the bugbear of the northern climate. The returned migrants were encouraged to speak in disparagement of the North and to give wide publicity to their utterances, emphasizing incidents of suffering reported through ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... my audience, and then, after my course of lectures is over, I will join the Gypsies. But pray pardon me, mother. I had no idea I should thus lose my temper. I should not have lost it so entirely had I not witnessed how you are suffering from the tyranny of this blatant bugbear called "Society."' ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... case was due almost entirely to this cause, and to the school of literalism in which he had been trained; but, however this may be, we both of us hated being made to say our prayers—morning and evening it was our one bugbear, and we would avoid it, as indeed children generally will, by every artifice which we could employ. Thus we were in the habit of feigning to be asleep shortly before prayer time, and would gratefully hear ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... Court at Washington against the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 has had its effect, and to-day we find the Negro more discriminated against in his civil than in any other class of rights. Then, too, the social bugbear has had much to do with this discrimination. However, progress has been made. It has been slow, of course, because of the channel (public opinion) through which it has been compelled to come. In many sections of the country the Negro enjoys the most of his civil rights. ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... him very high patronage, precisely because he had asked for none. He was appointed major in the National Guard, although he was utterly incapable of giving the word of command. In 1815 Napoleon, always his enemy, dismissed him. During the Hundred Days Birotteau was the bugbear of the liberals of his quarter; for it was not until 1815 that differences of political opinion grew up among merchants, who had hitherto been unanimous in their desires for public tranquillity, of which, as they knew, business affairs stood ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... the human heart, than the pitiable and touching condition of helpless little beings left to the tender mercies of a stepmother; who, with her traditional severity, may be called a kind of standing bugbear of the popular imagination. The Danes have a beautiful ballad, in which the ghost of a mother is roused by the wailings and sufferings of her deserted offspring, to break with supernatural power the gravestone, ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... direction, and every mile that she now travelled was so much to the good, increasing our chances of getting across the Line and making our escape from the awful region of equatorial calms which constitute such a ghastly bugbear to those who go down to the sea in sailing-ships. Our self-congratulations proved, however, to be premature, for the breeze lasted only about half an hour when it died away again, leaving us as completely becalmed as before. But during that half-hour we had succeeded ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... manifest to everyone who studies it, that up to the commencement of the present century the progress of science in general, and of natural history in particular, was seriously retarded by what may be termed the Bugbear of Speculation. Fully awakened to the dangers of web-spinning from the ever-fertile resources of their own inner consciousness, naturalists became more and more abandoned to the idea that their science ought to consist in a mere observation of facts, or tabulation ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... throws off as so much prejudice what it has hitherto held, and, as if waking from a dream, begins to realise to its imagination that there is now no such thing as law and the transgression of law, that sin is a phantom, and punishment a bugbear, that it is free to sin, free to enjoy the world and the flesh; and still further, when it does enjoy them, and reflects that it may think and hold just what it will, that "the world is all before it where to choose," and what system to build up as its own private persuasion; when this ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... ever grumbling and growling, but with his weather-eye open in the hope of catching sight of some passing sail. It must be owned that the whole party were far from sorry to be relieved of his presence; his uncomely figure and repulsive countenance was a perpetual bugbear. He had given out in plain terms that he did not intend to part with any of his property, except for current money, and Servadac, equally resolute, had strictly forbidden any purchases to be made, hoping to ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... to confess, that I have often thought the habit of debt to be our national inheritance—from that bugbear of out-of-place men, the Sinking Fund, to the parish-clerk, who mortgages his fees at the chandler's; and that my countrymen seem to have resolved to increase their own enjoyments at the expense of posterity, with whose provision, even ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... knowledge, could ever suggest their own interpretation, without the action on them of the living mind, without the initiative of an idea. In truth he was so afraid of assumptions and "anticipations" and prejudices—his great bugbear was so much the "intellectus sibi permissus" the mind given liberty to guess and imagine and theorise, instead of, as it ought, absolutely and servilely submitting itself to the control of facts—that ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... BUGBEAR OF THE "UNKNOWABLE."—It is very important to recognize that we must not go on talking about appearance and reality, as if our words really meant something, when we have quite turned our backs upon our experience of appearances ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... Russia was the bugbear of two generations of Englishmen; and classical scholars, who interpreted modern politics by the light of ancient Greece, saw in the absorption of Athens by Macedon a convincing demonstration of the fate which the modern barbarian of the north ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... bugbear of English spelling was dealt with by a method which, so long as our present monstrous orthography continues, seems to me the best possible. During the last half-hour of every day, each scholar was required to have before him a copy- ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... someone had sent his mother a long anonymous letter to warn her that he was "ruining himself with a married woman," and the good lady at once conjuring up the eternal bugbear of families, the vague pernicious creature, the siren, the monster, who dwells fantastically in depths of love, wrote to Lawyer Dubocage, his employer, who behaved perfectly in the affair. He kept him for three quarters of an hour trying to open his ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... the presidential term to, say, six or seven years, without any chance of a re-election. If this proposal were adopted, the President would be more free and independent, he would not be haunted by the bugbear of losing his position by temporarily displeasing his political friends, he could give his undivided attention, as he cannot do now, to federal affairs, and work without bias or fear, and without interruption, ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... been the custom of all cathedrals since the Reformation, it is not to be altered without a law.'[1178] Exaggerated dread of Popery suspected latent evils, it scarcely knew what, lurking in this kind of worship. Perhaps, too, it was thought to border upon 'enthusiasm,' that other religious bugbear of the age. A paper in the 'Tatler' speaks of it not with disapproval, but with something of condescension to weaker minds, as 'the rapturous way of devotion.'[1179] In fact, cathedrals in general were ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... with delight to a continuous picnic a month long. Soon every vestige of human habitation disappeared, and we were alone in the midst of one of the loneliest lands in the world. Sahara itself, that bugbear of childhood, could not be much more desert than this. Fort Laramie, distant nearly one hundred miles, two long days' journey toward the north, was our first point of destination. Over ridge after ridge of the vast rolling plains, clothed with thin brown grass, we rode: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... room was her bugbear. She had dignified it with the name of "studio," but it looked what it was—a workshop. Winslow Whitney, considered in clubdom as a dilettante and known to scientists as an inventor of ability, frowned impatiently as he observed his wife's air ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... future threats of Ashanti invasion, and make security more secure. The political officers of the Protectorate will be the best judges of the steps to be taken; and, if they are active and prudent, we shall hear no more of the Kumasi bugbear. ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... number of the priests of Italy are infidels. They no more believe in the Pope than they believe in the pagan Jupiter. But then, were they to speak out their disbelief, and to say that purgatory is a mere bugbear for frightening men and getting their money, they know that a dungeon would instantly be their lot; and infidelity has little of the martyr spirit in it. These men, like Leo the Tenth, as thorough an infidel as ever lived, hold that it would be the height of folly to ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... as one in ten thousand. Cui bono, then I ask—where is this moral machinery which I sometimes dreaded? I cannot perceive its operations. It has no existence; it is a mere chimera; like many another bugbear, the foul offspring of credulity and fear on the one side—of superstition and hypocrisy on the other. No; life is merely a thing of chances, and its incidents the mere combinations that result from its evolutions, just like the bits of glass in the kaleidoscope, which, when viewed naked, have ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... since, with Mr. Webster's change of position on this question. It has been held up as a monument of inconsistency, and as indicating a total absence of deep conviction. That Mr. Webster was, in a certain sense, inconsistent is beyond doubt, but consistency is the bugbear of small minds, as well as a mark of strong characters, while its reverse is often the proof of wisdom. On the other hand, it may be fairly argued that, holding as he did that the whole thing was purely a business question to be decided according to circumstances, his course, in ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... not the thoughts of the gallows," said Turpin to Peter. "More fools they. A mere bugbear to frighten children, believe me; and never yet alarmed a brave man. The gallows, pshaw! One can but die once, and what signifies it how, so that it be over quickly. I think no more of the last leap into eternity than clearing a five-barred gate. A rope's end for it! So let us be merry, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... 1st of July, Bressant sat at his table, with his books and papers about him. He was in an excellent humor, for he had just arrived at the conclusion that he might, and would, safely encounter his bugbear Cornelia. If the professor invited him to tea, and to spend the evening, he was resolved to accept; and, at that moment, he felt a hand laid upon his shoulder, and, turning quickly round, recognized the sombre figure of ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... the domestic bugbear it used to be, when one mighty spasm of cleanliness shook the house from garret to cellar and threw its inmates into a fever of discomfort and dismay. The modern house-cleaning season is one of indolence and ease compared with what it once was, when not only the cleaning and living problem, but ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... said Anne cheerfully, "abroad if possible; but I have become a bugbear to Daisy, and it is best ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... baron inspired universal terror with his gloomy character, his eccentricities, and more especially by the fearful appearance of his face. The children were quite panic-stricken in his presence. Parents and nurses used him as a bugbear ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... drawing-room, and I had the pleasure of five minutes' conversation alone with her. Oddly, it came out that she had a fine picture in the room, given to her by Mr. Legge, who inherited Aston Hall, which Mr. Legge I used to hear of continually ages ago as a sort of bugbear, being the heir-at-law to Sir Thomas Holte and Lady Holte's property. "Very natural they could never bear the name of Legge," said Mrs. Howley, "but he was my relative and excellent friend;" and she pointed to an inscription in grateful honour of him under the picture. How ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... Constitution From fierce partisans and wranglers. Owsley's firm administration, From the bench and bar judicial, In the governor's chair of power, Comes in heraldry unsullied, On the banner of the contest, Of the pen and diction contest, Mightier than the sword of battle. He reduced the annual bugbear, The state debt, so long amassing, And devoted all his efforts To the Commonwealth's advantage. In eighteen hundred two and sixty, He laid down his useful manhood, In the dust of lasting greatness, At ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... victory of the war in the Battle of Tannenberg. He won it because the ground was exceedingly difficult, and because he knew the ground far better than any other man on earth. He was entitled to very high credit. He got it. He became the idol of the German populace, and the bugbear of the Allied countries. But he has done nothing since. Soon after Tannenberg he made a fool of himself on the Russian frontier, and showed that success had got into his head. He subsequently initiated several terrific attempts, all of which were excessively costly ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... to the atheists—the true and irredeemable atheists—who deny the reality of progress. Specious, but quite insubstantial; for we can analyze the terrestrial conditions which led to that catastrophe, and assure ourselves that the bugbear of their recurrence is nothing more than a bugbear. The printing-press alone is an inestimable safeguard. If the Greeks had hit upon the idea of movable types—and it is little to the credit of the Invisible King that they ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... its uncanny aspect. In its wider bed it could spread itself out comfortably; and on the western reaches of its sea-green mirror the travelers saw the reflection of Orsova on its island—for them the fourth, and greatest, bugbear. ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... an' set 'em down, an' carry home the booty. 'T was then the merry times began, the blunders, an' the laffin', The nudges an' the nods an' winks an' stale good-natured chaffin'. Ole Uncle Hiram Dane was there, the clostest man a-livin', Whose only bugbear seemed to be the dreadful fear o' givin'. His beard was long, his hair uncut, his clothes all bare an' dingy; It wasn't 'cause the man was pore, but jest so mortal stingy; An' there he sot by Sally Riggs a-smilin' an' a-smirkin', An' all his children lef' to home a diggin' an' a-workin'. ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... gone upon the principles of slavery in all your proceedings; you neglect in your conduct the foundation of all legitimate government, the rights of the people; and, setting up this bugbear, you spread a panic for the very purpose of sanctifying this infringement, while again the very infringement engenders the evil which you dread. One extreme naturally leads to another. Those who dread republicanism fly for shelter ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... of God! Believe it, fellow-creature, There's no such bugbear: all was made by Nature. We know all came of nothing, and shall pass Into the same condition once it was By Nature's power, and that they grossly lie That say there's hope of immortality. Let them but tell us what a soul is: then We shall adhere ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... thrust out of active life and forced to make up my mind to perfect passiveness, I have become a bugbear to myself. I cannot endure the thought of ever being the peevish egotist, the exacting tyrant, which men are apt to become when they are thrown upon woman's love and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... say! Was it Christian Science? Did you dare, Eloise Evringham, did you dare spoil your life—my life—our future, by scaring Dr. Ballard with that bugbear?" The angry ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... society,' the poor daughter's bugbear," I said to myself. "Certainly," I remarked aloud—I admit, rather perversely—"if you have lived a great deal in pensions, you must have got acquainted with lots ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... roasted at the stake, to our country, and I do not deem it too serious to say, to conscience and to God. We are answerable, and if duty be anything more than a word of imposture, if conscience be not a bugbear, we are preparing to make ourselves as wretched ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... TROLL (HEINE tells us) "danced nobly." Pride swells us To think our young guest is a true ATTA TROLL; No Bugbear, though shaggy, a trifle breech-baggy, And not altogether a dandyish doll; No Afghan intrigue, dear, or shy Native league, dear, Has brought Bruin's foot o'er our frontier to dance: He comes freely, boldly—don't ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., February 7, 1891 • Various
... of Glencoe; and all who have, are pained by its manifestation of his failing powers. In fact, his was an unfinished fame—a brilliant beginning, but no continuance. Sir Walter Scott has touched it with a needle, when he says, "Campbell is in a manner a bugbear to himself; the brightness of his early success is a detriment to all his after efforts. He is afraid of the shadow which his own fame casts before him." Byron placed him in the second category of the greatest living English poets; but ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... not look much like quiet," said Rose. "However, it is not quite such a bugbear as it used to be; don't ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... souls full of its shipwrecks and disasters—top-sails cautiously reefed, and everything guardedly snug—these strangers at first unexpectedly encountering a tolerably smooth sea, rashly conclude that the Cape, after all, is but a bugbear; they have been imposed upon by fables, and founderings and sinkings hereabouts ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... at my ease. I was in the presence of a knight; but he was first and last a man. Straight to the point he went. He never puts a man through that bugbear of the soldier, a host of seemingly inconsequential questions; he has the particulars of each man who is likely to come under his direction long before he ...
— Through St. Dunstan's to Light • James H. Rawlinson
... me tell him once for all, through you, that I will come into and go out of this place as often as I like, so long as he keeps Nell here; and that if he wants to be quit of me, he must first be quit of her. What have I done to be made a bugbear of, and to be shunned and dreaded as if I brought the plague? He'll tell you that I have no natural affection; and that I care no more for Nell, for her own sake, than I do for him. Let him say so. I care for the whim, then, of coming to and fro and reminding her of my existence. I WILL see her ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... which a vote was taken related to the election for a borough. The ministers carried their point by six voices, [764] In an instant every thing was changed; the spell was broken; the Club, from being a bugbear, became a laughingstock; the timid and the venal passed over in crowds from the weaker to the stronger side. It was in vain that the opposition attempted to revive the disputes of the preceding year. The King had wisely authorised Melville to give up the Committee of Articles. The Estates, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... delicate, or properly behaved—these men of her imagination! What matter? She loved adventures! And moving like a king among the rest, she saw the thin, travel-beaten, eccentric form of Lord Philip—the hated, adored, pursued; Society's idol and bugbear all in one; Lord Philip, who shunned and disliked women; on whom, nevertheless, the ambitions and desires of some of the loveliest women in England were, on that account alone, and at this moment of his political triumph, the more intently and ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Not many Englishmen mastered the language, or indeed knew anything of it; that huge empire was a mere blank to be filled up by the imaginings of prejudice and hostility. Was it not a task worth setting before oneself, worth pursuing for a lifetime, that of trying to make known to English folk their bugbear of the East? ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... that bugbear Love!" he said shortly. "And so you'd lose a good friend for a dead lover? I' faith, I'd befriend thee well if thou wert my ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... not say all this to Lord Etherington?" said Mowbray; "wait until he propose such a terrible bugbear as matrimony, before you refuse to receive him. Who knows, the whim that he hinted at may have passed away—he was, as you say, flirting with Lady Binks, and her ladyship has a good deal of address, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... laid an undue stress on what may be termed the minor morals, the small proprieties, and lesser virtues that lie on the surface of things and give life its polish, Audrey was for ever riding full-tilt against prejudices or raising a crusade against what she chose to term 'the bugbear of ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... control is indeed a vital need, but should not be made a bugbear to be greatly feared. Most students make breathing and breath control a difficult matter, when it should be a natural and easy act. They do not need the large amount of breath they imagine they do, for a much smaller quantity ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... have money in the banks that would maintain the whole working classes, with aid in kind that will come, for six weeks, and that will do the business. And as for force, why there are not five soldiers to each town in the kingdom. It's a glittering bugbear this fear of the military; simultaneous strikes would baffle all ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... been a great bugbear with the ill-informed, bit it is not nearly so deleterious as some careless or unscrupulous writers would have us believe. In the first place there is a very insignificant quantity of tannin in properly ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... many from escaping, while they knew not which way to run for safety. Rigby in the nick of time galloped up to this awful and hostile appearance, crying out to his troops that he would soon demolish the bugbear. This saying encouraged some of the runaways, who followed him to the combat. Approaching within a sword's length, for he was not deficient either in hardihood or valour, he made a furious stroke right in the face of this flaming apparition, when down it fell, revealing ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Montague's opponents made the most of it. Now, this gentleman, from certain circumstances which need not be explained, was satisfied that Mr. Medway had trotted out this skeleton and held it up as a bugbear to the people, and he hated his rival with all his mind, ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... Alas, poor wretch! a poor capocchia! hast not slept to-night? Would he not, a naughty man, let it sleep? A bugbear take him! ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... understanding with him. He went straight to the superintendent-inspector of police, and sat down in his cabinet to concert with him on the best way to suppress, without scandal, the dangerous emissary from ever-restless Poland, lodged in consultation with the Jew, the bugbear of the monarchies ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... at the whole," replied Sheridan, "as a bugbear. I have no fear of France as either a schoolmaster, or a seducer, of England. France is lunatic, and who dreads a lunatic after his first paroxysm? Exhaustion, disgust, decay, perhaps death, are the natural results. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... those among the newspapers that had resumed publication were howling for measures of extermination. A threatening crowd surrounded the prisoners and was particularly violent against the woman, in whom the excited bourgeois beheld one of those petroleuses who were the constant bugbear of terror-haunted imaginations, whom they accused of prowling by night, slinking along the darkened streets past the dwellings of the wealthy, to throw cans of lighted petroleum into unprotected cellars. This woman, was ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... water is a worry! And doubtless, if the iron glove Should meet us here in Kent or Surrey, Its clasp might soften into love; We might despatch him with a grey grin, And all the German Scribes would vow "Our bugbear is the Montenegrin; We do ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... When she returns Thornfield Hall is quit of all its guests, and Mr. Rochester and she resume their former life of captious cordiality on the one side, and diplomatic humility on the other. At the same time the bugbear of Miss Ingram and of Mr. Rochester's engagement with her is kept up, though it is easy to see that this and all concerning that lady is only a stratagem to try Jane's character and affection upon the most approved Griselda precedent. Accordingly ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... room full of those ornaments which belong, almost exclusively, to lodging-houses everywhere. Briefly, he is always there—ready to burst into flames at any moment, ready to misunderstand everything anybody does or says, a perpetual bugbear; and not even the emotional repentances, which are often the only partially saving grace of bad-tempered people, can atone for the atmosphere of disturbance which they always inflict. And the man or woman who loses his temper whenever anything goes in the slightest bit wrong—well, ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... the car's musical siren, though; a fascinating bugbear, supposed to warn children, chickens, and other light-minded animals that something important is coming, and they'd better look alive. It has two tunes, one grave, one gay. I suppose we would use the grave one if the ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... and make a bugbear of aunt Shaw' said Margaret, laughing. 'Edith picked up all sorts of military slang from Captain Lennox, and aunt Shaw never took any ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... both of hues and material. Her hands are always cold and seldom clean; and she has sundry uncomfortable notions about damping the spirits of youth and checking the exuberance of its gaiety which render her a perfect terror and bugbear to the rising generation. When I was a little thing, laughing, prattling, and giggling, as children will, an admonishing look from my aunt, with a gaunt finger held aloft, and a cold "Kate, don't be silly, my dear," was always sufficient to make me ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... name of Drake Was a Bugbear to fright Children; Nurses still'd Their little Spanish Nynnyes when they cryde ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... do I! But let's reconnoiter and try to spot our bugbear. I wonder if it wouldn't be appropriate to call her by another name? We've got to share our rooms with her even if we haven't got to share our bed. Why didn't the Empress tell us her name? the stubborn ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... to any station. My dear, you are young, and know so little about this world, which is such a bugbear to you. Why, there is very little that will be greatly unlike this. At first you might be a little bewildered, but I shall be by you all the time, and you shall feel and fear nothing, and gradually you will learn what little ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... even as she grew older, had much time to spend outdoors, there were many tasks about the house and farm she had to perform. The chest was soon filled with quilts and that bugbear was gone from her life. But there was continual scrubbing, baking, mending, and other household tasks to be done, so that much practice caused the girl to develop into a capable little housekeeper. Aunt Maria frankly admitted that Phoebe worked cheerfully and well, a matter she found consoling in ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... primitive political instincts would find expression in a pogrom in the shape of a peasant-war, of a religious war, of witch-trials, or Jew-baiting. Our blatant patriotism bore the plainest signs of such a temper; half nationalism, half aggression against some bugbear or other; never a proud calm, an earnest self-dedication, a struggle ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... established at Montgomery. Nor did the secession movement secure any strong measure of approval. In fact, the people of Virginia, owing to their closer proximity to, and to their more intimate knowledge of, the North, were by no means inclined to make of the Black Republican President the bugbear he appeared to the States which bordered on the Gulf of Mexico. Whilst acknowledging that the South had grievances, they saw no reason to believe that redress might not be obtained by constitutional means. At the same time, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... which unite the confederate states are strengthened by the increasing manufactures of the Americans; and the union which began to exist in their opinions, gradually forms a part of their habits: the course of time has swept away the bugbear thoughts which haunted the imaginations of the citizens in 1789. The federal power is not become oppressive; it has not destroyed the independence of the states; it has not subjected the confederates ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... somewhere said that "inconsistency is the bugbear of little minds." The Spanish politician has evidently not a little mind, for he has no fear whatever of inconsistency, nor, in fact, of making a volte-face whenever he sees any reason for doing so. There are Conservatives, Liberals, Republicans, Radicals, ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... criers went. They put on their Sabbath face concerning the declaration of war, and told with approval how the Royal hand had trembled in committing itself to the form of signature to which its action is limited. If there was money to be paid, there was a bugbear to be slain for it; and a bugbear is as obnoxious to the repose of commercial communities as rivals ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... it; and I don't know that I understand it now you tell it me," replied the major, just a little crossly, for he did not like poetry; it was one of his bugbear humbugs. "But one thing is plain: you must not expose yourself to what in such a ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... familiar with his exploits in the exaggerated reports of their country-men. They had been taught to regard him with mingled feelings of fear and hatred, and could scarcely credit their senses, as they beheld the bugbear of their imaginations distinguished above all others for "the majesty of his presence, the polished elegance of his discourse, and manners in which dignity was blended with ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... had always been Susy Branch's bugbear; they were still, and more dangerously, to be Susy Lansing's. She detested them, detested them doubly, as the natural enemies of mankind and as the people one always had to put one's self out for. The greater part of her life having been passed among them, ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... either. I recommended them to send him to Tripoli, to the English doctor there, but they heard of the proposal with horror. None of these Berkat people have ever visited Tripoli. The Turks are their bugbear. They were not extremely friendly; rude and ignorant villagers as they were, they could not understand why I wanted to go to Soudan. I observed they were all well clothed and seemed to live in Saharan affluence. ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... "It was awfully sweet of her. Evidently she'd been bullied about her unseemly behaviour when she was small, till you, and I, and Brockhurst, had been made into a perfect bugbear. She's quite amusingly afraid of you still. But she's no notion what really happened. Of course she can't have, or she could not have mentioned the subject to me." Richard shrugged his shoulders. "Obviously it ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... your bugbear," laughed his wife. "Don't worry, Robert! It isn't like you. Winship isn't bothering ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... Reformation did in his eyes determine that men were responsible to God alone, and not to priests or Churches, for their opinions and their deeds. It also decided that the Church must be subordinate to the State, not the State to the Church. This is called Erastianism, and is the bugbear of High Churchmen. But there is no escape from the alternative, and the Church of Rome has never abandoned her claim to universal authority. Against it Henry VIII. and Cromwell, Elizabeth and Cecil, set up the supremacy of the law, made and administered by laymen. As Froude said at the ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... country, the conflict of interests in its different sections, the State organizations and semi-sovereignty, and the consequent lack of that strong centralization of administrative powers and functions which, however much of a bugbear to many people's imaginations, is indispensable to a complete nationality—has threatened us in the past and may be expected to threaten us in the future. The latter ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... monstrous mountains, and the water is tempered by warm currents that flow in from the gulf stream. The national apprehension of both Norway and Sweden that Russia covets one of their seaports has existed a good many years. The bugbear has appeared at intervals for half a century, and a great deal of money has been expended in preparations to meet it. The people are, therefore, cordially patriotic in their support of the army, although many of them emigrate to the United States ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... proved that they were short in numbers. It was considered that the speech in which Mr. Daubeny reviewed the long political life of Mr. Mildmay, and showed that Mr. Mildmay had been at one time a bugbear, and then a nightmare, and latterly simply a fungus, was one of the severest attacks, if not the most severe, that had been heard in that House since the Reform Bill. Mr. Mildmay, the while, was sitting with his hat low down over his eyes, ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... took their turn and gave their visitors a radio concert that was wonderful in its variety and beauty. The night happened to be unusually free of the annoying static that is the bugbear of the wireless, and every note of the music was as clear and sweet as though the performers were only a few yards away. Tim and Larry listened as though they were entranced, and when the concert was finished they were as enthusiastic "fans" ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... the movement would be mutually beneficial, that it would induce white immigration, relieve the congested overproduction of the staples of the Southern States, introduce a higher class of industries, and simplify the so-called problem by removing the bugbear of Negro domination by ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... Crust is the bugbear of all runners and is out and away the most difficult to tackle. It may be hard, and then with nothing apparent on the surface to warn you, the Skis break through and catch in the crust and down you go. When crust is about, let someone else lead, and then ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... ground glass, put there for titillating purposes. What appears to be ground glass is only the little crystals or small particles of alkali that have not been dissolved. So that fastidious snuff-takers may dismiss this bugbear at ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... that this maligned name [Lowe] was an offence. We were to hold the owner in abhorrence. Speak to him, never! Look at him, sit in the same room with him, never! None were louder than I, more vehement; yet here was I beside my bugbear and perfectly satisfied with my position. It was a ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... become associated in the mind of the public with persons who beat their breast, tear their hair, and declaim blood-curdling episodes. A decade or more ago, the drawing-room reciter was of this type, and was rapidly becoming the bugbear of social gatherings. The difference between the stilted reciter and the simple story-teller is perhaps best illustrated by an episode in Hans Christian Andersen's immortal "Story of the Nightingale." The real Nightingale ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... sit by the fire might be dangerous, but as long as people were careful, it was all right, and Agatha had already assisted in some experiments at Rock Quay, which had shown her to be thoroughly understanding and trustworthy, and capable of keeping off the amateur—the great bugbear. ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... was evident that a gloom and disquietude was upon the assembly. There was a distinct impression of fear, though a vague notion as to its cause—a sort of extempore superstition—a power which hath most hold on the mind in proportion as its limits and operations are least known or understood. The bugbear owing its magnitude and importance to obscurity and misapprehension, becomes divested of its terrors when it can be surveyed ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... sometimes for 30 or 40 yards we lose them under drifts, but then they reappear quite clearly raised above the surface. If the light is good there is not the least difficulty in following. Blizzards are our bugbear, not only stopping our marches, but the cold damp air takes it out of us. Bowers got another rating sight to-night—it was wonderful how he managed to observe in such a horribly cold wind. He has been ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... Tom Staple was not a happy man; university reform had long been his bugbear, and now was his bane. It was not with him, as with most others, an affair of politics, respecting which, when the need existed, he could, for parties' sake or on behalf of principle, maintain a certain amount of necessary zeal; it was not ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... formed me a bugbear to the sight, and inspired me with a soul as vicious as my body was detestable, perhaps I might have enjoyed particular marks of your affection and applause; seeing you have persecuted me with such unnatural aversion, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... instead of being dragged down, as was most feared, their enfranchisement has tended to elevate them. Under our system of the Australian ballot, they have found that the contaminating influence of which they had been told was but a bugbear, born of fright, produced by shadows. They learned that to deposit their vote did not subject them to anything like the annoyance which they often experienced from crowds on "bargain days," while their presence ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... the rock. The water we pumped out was fresh, not salt. There, my dear Jollivet, pray don't raise a bugbear that might scare the men and make them nervous. They are bad enough with what they fancy about goblins and evil spirits haunting the mine. Even Hardock can't quite divest himself of the idea that ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... the room. She fidgetted at the sink. The music was a bugbear to her, because it prevented her from saying what was on her own mind. At length it ended, her father was turning over the various books and sheets. She looked at him ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... combatant or the other. But she had as yet shown no military power outside her own bounds, either by land or sea; and England looked with scorn on the threats of a state which possessed neither army nor fleet. "America," Lord Sidmouth wrote at this time, "is a bugbear: there is no terror in her threats!" Canning indeed saw in the embargo only a carrying out of his policy by the very machinery of the American Government. The commerce of America ceased to exist. ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... so dear, They scorn their laws or governors to fear; So bugbear'd with the name of slavery, They can't submit to their own liberty. Restraint from ill is freedom to the wise! But Englishmen do all restraint despise. Slaves to the liquor, drudges to the pots; The mob are statesmen, and their ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... only five full vowels and three[1] diphthongs, which can be explained to every speaker in terms of his own language. All the modified vowels, closed "u's" and "e's," half tones, longs and shorts, open and closed vowels, etc., which form the chief bugbear in correct pronunciation, and often render the foreigner ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... truly an enemy; if maliciously so, not a man. I cannot love my enemy; for my enemy is not a man, but a beast. And if I have any, I can love him as a beast, and wish to beat him." No equivocation here, surely. On superstition he comments,—"It has been long a bugbear, by reason of its having been united with hypocrisy. But let them be fairly separated, and then superstition will be honest feeling, and God, who loves all honest men, will lead the poor enthusiast in the path ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... to the core Who, beckoned by the forward-leaning wave, First left behind him the firm-footed shore, And, urged by every nerve of sail and oar, Steered for the Unknown which gods to mortals gave. Of thought and action the mysterious door, 250 Bugbear of fools, a summons to the brave: Strength found he in the unsympathizing sun, And strange stars from beneath the horizon won, And the dumb ocean pitilessly grave: High-hearted surely he; But bolder they who first off-cast Their moorings from the habitable ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... march on to the capital, take it by storm, and annex the whole province to Connecticut. The name of Yankee became as terrible among the Nieuw Nederlanders as was that of Gaul among the ancient Romans, insomuch that the good wives of the Manhattoes used it as a bugbear wherewith to frighten their ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... with Mr. Adams shows to Europe that Mr. Seward imitated the rebels, and tried to frighten England with the bugbear of King Cotton; and also that he has no solid and abiding convictions whatever. Now, he preaches emancipation, yet, at the beginning of his great diplomatic activity, he openly sided with slavery; aye, he is still willing to save it for the sake of the Union, and, above all, and ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... himself forward on a staff of fifty ells' length, with a pace as swift as a bird's flight. Once when my father was out hunting he was charmed by an ogress who lived in a cave under a waterfall, and with her he begat this bugbear. The island is one-third of my father's realm, but his son finds it too small for him. My father had a ring the greatest gem, which each of us would have, sister and brother, but I got it, wherefore he has been my enemy ever since. Now I will write him a letter and send ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... problem to successive chiefs of scouts, a bugbear to the reservation Indians, and a terror to Arizona. If a man was killed or a woman missed, the Indians came galloping and the scouts lay on his trail. If he met a woman in the defiles, he stretched her dead if she did not please his errant fancy. ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... messenger's refreshment, and the poor fellow had been ill for twenty-four hours at Luckie Sma'trash's, in consequence of dining upon "saut saumon and sour drink." So that the existence of a correspondence betwixt the Marquis and his distressed kinsman, which Sir William Ashton had sometimes treated as a bugbear, was proved beyond the ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... later, and won't be such a bugbear as you think. If you were not worried into a morbid condition over all this trouble, you would not look so seriously upon a thing which I regard as a piece of mere night prowling, with a possible spice ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... there is nothing but what every man has heard, and imagines himself to know. But who would not believe that some wonderful novelty is presented to his intellect, when he is afterwards told, in the true bugbear style, that "the ares, in the former sense, are things that lie between the have-beens and shall-bes. The have-beens are things that are past; the shall-bes are things that are to come; and the things that are, in the latter sense, are things ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... been our nursery bugbear, to apprehend a Russian invasion on the Indus. This, by testimony from every quarter (the last being that of Sir Roderick Murchison, who had travelled over most of the ground), is an infinitely impossible chimera; or at least until the ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... One sees love in a cottage on a national scale here. That terrible lion of expense, the furnishing of a house, that stands ever in the way of so many loving pairs desirous of marriage and a home of their own, is a bugbear not known in Japan. A chest of drawers for clothing, a few mats, two or three quilts for a bed on the floor, some simple kitchen utensils, and the house is furnished. Why should we litter these neatly matted rooms, why cover with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... house of some other rich man where better food and better accommodation might be expected. There is nothing that a Corean fears so much as that people should speak ill of him, and especially this is the bugbear under which the nobleman of Cho-sen is constantly labouring, and upon which these black-mailers and "spongers" work. High officials, whose heads rest on their shoulders, "hung by a hair," like Damocles' sword, suffer very much at the hands of these marauders. Were they to refuse their hospitality ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... you mean? My dear Cole, don't trouble to perjure yourself. I don't mind, believe me. They're easily shocked, these country clergy, and no doubt I'm a bugbear to 'em. Yet, I could have sworn I'd never seen this one before. Let's ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... candidly, and with such an air of treating the whole business as the bugbear of a timid monarch, that I really ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... this age, when nations are breaking up all around us, when unions are dissolving, when dynasties disappear before the light like ghosts at cock-crowing, and when emperors and kings rely upon universal suffrage, once so terrible a bugbear in their eyes, for the titles to their crowns. Opinion is rapidly formed, and is as rapidly dismissed. We may be as much astonished now at the peace of Villafranca as we were on the day when first it was announced, and while looking upon it only as a ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... and questioned him of the cause, which he told them; whereupon quoth the abbot, 'Marry, thou art no child nor art thou new to the church that thou shouldst thus lightly take fright; let us go see who hath played the bugbear with thee.' Accordingly, kindling several lights, the abbot and all his monks entered the church and saw that wonder-rich and goodly bed and thereon the gentleman asleep; and what while, misdoubting and fearful, they gazed upon the noble jewels, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... and so does the force of suggestion act, till the central figure himself plays his part in the scene, of which he feels himself the controller and director, and climbs to bed. But if there has been a hitch anywhere, if the bugbear of negativism has appeared, if he has been scolded or coaxed or repressed too much and there have been tears and struggles, then going to bed is a poor preparation for instant ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron |
