"Encumber" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and Timothy Murphy testified the same, and to show the bloody disposition of this wretch, William Booth testified that Williams proposed afterwards to the company that if they took any more ships they should not encumber themselves with the men, having already so many prisoners that in case of a fight they should not be safe with them; but that they should take them and tie them, back to back, and throw them ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... voice Shall call my spirit, joyful in their choice; When, pois'd upon the gale, my form shall ride, Or, dark in mist, descend the mountain's side; Oh! may my shade behold no sculptur'd urns, To mark the spot where earth to earth returns! No lengthen'd scroll, no praise-encumber'd stone; [i] My epitaph shall be my name alone: [2] If that with honour fail to crown my clay, [ii] Oh! may no other fame my deeds repay! That, only that, shall single out the spot; By that remember'd, or ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... by the one possible means—if it withdraws all solicitude about the handicap this entails to women as a whole, introducing a spirit of laissez-faire competition between men and women, the women with sense enough to see the point will not encumber themselves with children. For each one of these who has no children, some other woman must have six instead of three. And some people encourage this in the ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... from the skies, Till they glance thro' the shade, and Come down to your brow Like—eyes of the maiden Who calls on you now— Arise! from your dreaming In violet bowers, To duty beseeming These star-litten hours— And shake from your tresses Encumber'd with dew The breath of those kisses That cumber them too— (O! how, without you, Love! Could angels be blest?) Those kisses of true love That lull'd ye to rest! Up!—shake from your wing Each hindering thing: The dew of the night— ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... am in favor of the amendment proposed by the gentleman from Pennsylvania. It is not proper or best to encumber these propositions with amendments ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... importance that our wagons should not be loaded with any thing but provisions and ammunition. All surplus servants, noncombatants, and refugees, should now go to the rear, and none should be encouraged to encumber us on the march. At some future time we will be able to provide for the poor whites and blacks who seek to escape the bondage under which they are now suffering. With these few simple cautions, he hopes to lead you to achievements equal in importance to those ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... lumber Useful bookshelves so encumber? I will tell thee; for thy question Of wonders brings me to the best one. There's a future wonder, may be— Sure a present magic baby; (Patience, friend, I know your looks— What has that to do with books?) With her sounds of molten speech Quick a parent's ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... contrary, means putting up one or two men whose names shall not encumber the ballot. Have you ever seen these ballots? They are a yard long and a yard wide. They have a hundred and twenty names on them and the people are expected to make a selection. They are to make a selection of ten ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... months of travelling in some of the roughest parts of the interior, I should advise a person in average health— and none other should travel in Japan—not to encumber himself with tinned meats, soups, claret, or any eatables or drinkables, except ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... little Benefit can be expected from it; nor indeed is much to be hoped from his famous Purse: That Purse, it is said, was never empty, and such a Purse, may be sometimes convenient; but as Money will not purchase Peace, it is not necessary for a Man to encumber himself with a great deal of it. Peace and Happiness depend so much upon the State of a Man's own Mind, and upon the Use of the considering Cap, that it is generally his own Fault, if he is miserable. One of these Caps ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous
... the first degree is to symbolize the struggles of a candidate groping in darkness for intellectual light, that of the second degree represents the same candidate laboring amid all the difficulties that encumber the young beginner in the attainment of learning and science. The Entered Apprentice is to emerge from darkness to light; the Fellow Craft is to come out of ignorance into knowledge. This degree, therefore, ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... when the stress is past, and the aid no longer necessary, overwhelming the sufferers with caresses. I will not stand by and see my fellow-man drowning, without stretching out a hand to help him, till he has, by his own efforts and presence of mind, reached the shore in safety, and then encumber him with aid. With suffering Greece, now is the crisis of her fate—her great, it may be her last struggle. Sir, while we sit here deliberating, her destiny may be decided. The Greeks, contending with ruthless oppressors, turn their eyes to us, and invoke us, by their ancestors, by their slaughtered ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... vortices do not pass centrally. This is true; yet only indicating that where the vortices are central, an unusual disturbance is taking place. But there is another cause, which was purposely omitted in considering the prominent features of the theory, in order not to encumber the question with secondary influences. By referring to Fig. 3, section 1, we see that the lateral vortices of the globe are continually passing off to the southward, in the northern hemisphere, in a succession of dimples, and continually reforming. We will ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... vibratory activities of the atoms and molecules in the cells, and of the cells in the organs and tissues of the body. The more rapid and vigorous this vibratory activity, the more powerful is the repulsion and expulsion of morbid matter, poisons and germs of disease which try to encumber or destroy the organism. ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... thus acquired might not long encumber the soldier, or blunt his ardour for farther enterprise, the usual means of dissipating military spoils were already at hand. Courtezans, mimes, jugglers, minstrels, and tale-tellers of every description, had accompanied the night-march; and, secure in the military reputation of the celebrated ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... not and could not say all that was in his mind, we can read between the lines that he had no use for the theories of ministers, and would obviously have liked to have said in brutal English, "Here I am, gentlemen, do not encumber me with your departmental jargon of palpable nothings. You continue to trust in Providence; give me your untrammelled instructions as to what you wish me to do, and leave the rest to me." Here is another letter from Lord Radstock: "No official news have been received ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... influence of mere rain and air must be attributed, I think, those vast deposits of boulder which encumber the mouths of all the southern glens, sometimes to a height of several hundred feet. Did one meet them in Scotland, one would pronounce them at once to be old glacier-moraines. But Messrs. Wall and Sawkins, in their geological survey of this island, have abstained from expressing ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... birds inhabit could hardly have been less than universal. If the deluge were local, and all the birds of these kinds in that district perished,—though we should think they might have fled to the uninundated regions,—it would have been useless to encumber the ark with them, seeing that the birds of the same species which survived in the lands not overflowed would speedily replenish the inundated tract as soon as the waters subsided." It will be found that the reasoning ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... in London that night, and, the next day, being singularly fine for an English summer, he resolved to go to Moleswich on foot. He had no need this time to encumber himself with a knapsack; he had left sufficient change of dress in his lodgings ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ordered all the prisoners to be transported on board the Karteria; and as he could ill spare any of his provisions, and could not encumber his vessel with enemies who required to be guarded, he resolved to release them immediately. He therefore informed the Turkish commandant that he would send him to Missolonghi in a monoxylon, or canoe used in the lagoons, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... the strange, calm bitterness that possessed my soul: "What value has life to you and your deformed one? Poor, widowed, sickly, and despised, why should you wish to live? Why encumber me?" ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... drew near to North Wilkesboro', where he proposed to make a first essay in railway journeying, Zeke seated himself under the shade of a grove of persimmon-trees by the wayside, there painfully to encumber his feet with the new shoes. As he laced these, he indulged in soliloquy, after a fashion bred of his lonely life, on a subject born of ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... work needs to be done over again. Of course one need hardly say that out of such a large collection of names a considerable number of the derivations are quite correctly stated, but those are mostly the easy and obvious ones, and even easy ones are often wrong, and it was quite useless to encumber the glossary with the hopeless derivations of eighteenth-century writers. But the interpretation of place-names is not so simple as it looks, and it is easier to criticise other people’s derivations than to find better ones, so that ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner
... mosses Underneath a tree that tosses Flakes of sunshine, and embosses Its green shadow with the snow— Drowsy-eyed, I sink in slumber Born of fancies without number— Tangled fancies that encumber Me with dreams of ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... heaven, as covetousness, pride, lust, or whatever else thy heart may be inclining unto, which may hinder thee in this heavenly race. Men that run for a wager, if they intend to win as well as run, they do not use to encumber themselves, or carry those things about them that may be a hindrance to them in their running. "Every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things"; that is, he layeth aside everything that would be anywise a disadvantage to him; as saith the apostle, ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... faults he avoided so perpetually upon our notice. He had no verbiage. We do not merely mean by this that he never used a superfluous word (which, in fact, he rarely did), but that he kept quite clear of the hazy, half-relevant ideas which encumber meaning and are the chief source of prolixity. He threw away every idea that did not decidedly help on his argument, and expressed the others in the fewest words that would make them clear. He began at once where the pith of his argument began; and had the secret, possessed ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... an exposed frontier, which has suffered severely from Indian wars, and other causes of depression. With the exception of divorce cases, there were really no bad laws passed; and no disposition manifested to excessive legislation, or to encumber the statute book with new schemes. Local and specific acts absorbed the chief attention during ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... and watch their motions. There is no saying when the party with Miss Percival may return; they may have arrived while we have been away, or they may come to-morrow. It will be better, therefore, not to encumber ourselves with more ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... forts of Matagorda and Puntales, affords generally good anchorage, and contains a harbour formed by a projecting mole, where vessels of small burden may discharge. The entrance to the bays is rendered somewhat dangerous by the low shelving rocks (Cochinos and Las Puercas) which encumber the passage, and by the shifting banks of mud deposited by the Guadalete and the Rio Santi Petri, a broad channel separating the Isla de Leon from the mainland. At the mouth of this channel is the village of Caracca; close beside it is the important naval arsenal ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... first Christians all suffer affliction, poverty, and martyrdom? How many centuries has it taken in the history of the world to induce it to denounce the not yet abolished theory of slavery? A throne, a lord, and a bishop still remain to encumber the earth! What right had I, then, as the first of the Fixed-Periodists, to hope that I might live to see my scheme carried out, or that I might be allowed to depart as among the first glorious recipients of ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... morning. This well was useful in case of fire or for the frequent baths ordered to keep the crew in health. In order to spare their fuel, they drew the water from a greater depth by means of an apparatus invented by a Frenchman, Francois Arago. Generally, when a ship is wintering, all the objects which encumber her are placed in magazines on the coast, but it was impossible to do this in the midst of an ice-field. Every precaution was taken against cold and damp; men have been known to resist the cold and succumb to damp; therefore both had to be guarded against. The Forward had been ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... published, that it is needless to encumber this short narrative with any minute enumeration of the qualities which constitute his station in literature; but I shall, as a part of my task, venture to refer to some of those which distinguish ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... on at once," interrupted George; "the third dog has turned tail, like a craven, luckily for us. Now slip the bight of the lanyard over your neck, and follow me. Leave the cane-knives; they will only encumber us, and perhaps throw us down the face of the precipice. Now, look ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... what his views were—as a careful study of the tract, particularly taken in connection with its Postscript, fails to bring any reader to a clear conception of them; and as its whole matter was altogether immaterial to my subject—I did not think it worth while to encumber my pages with it. So in respect to many other points, in treating which extended discussions might be demanded. If I had been governed by such notions as the Reviewer seems to entertain, my book, which he complains of as too long, would have been ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... made the matter considerably darker than it looked before,—that the only chance of acquiring the requisite knowledge was through the clear, crystal medium of a pure and virgin intelligence, like that of the fair Alice. Not to encumber our story with Mr. Pyncheon's scruples, whether of conscience, pride, or fatherly affection, he at length ordered his daughter to be called. He well knew that she was in her chamber, and engaged in no occupation that could not readily be laid aside; ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... this kind of friend! say I; the friend who will encumber himself with the responsibility of thinking what's to become of you, when you are down in the world. Those tender-hearted souls who can't bear to think of your misfortunes are a much more numerous part ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... respectable library, in which, among many valuable works, conspicuously selected with an eye to our special objects, I recall with amusement certain ancient encyclopaedias, contributed apparently by well-wishers from stock which had begun to encumber their shelves. Howbeit, like Quaker guns, these made a brave show if not too closely scrutinized, and spared us the semblance of poverty in vacant spaces. Every military man understands the value of an imposing front towards the enemy. When I arrived, I was the sole occupant ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... How much more they carry to battle than at reviews. The hay in those great nets must encumber them. [She turns and sees that her daughter has become pale.] Ah, now I know! HE has just gone by. You exchanged signals with him, you wicked girl! How do you know what his character is, or if ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... and ideality of the Gluck music-drama (to use a name now naturalized in art by Wagner) the keenest dramatic vigor. Though he had a strong command of effects by his power of delineation and delicacy of detail, his prevalent tastes led him to encumber his music too often with overpowering military effects, alike tonal and scenic. Riehl, a great German critic, says: "He is more successful in the delineation of masses and groups than in the portrayal of emotional scenes; his rendering ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... commenced. The impetuosity of the onset was irresistible. In a few moments the walls were scaled, the streets flooded with the foe, the pavements covered with the dead, and the city on fire in an hundred places. The conquerors did not wish to encumber themselves with captives. All were slain. Laden with booty and crimsoned with the blood of their foes, the victors dispersed in every direction, burning and destroying, but encountering no resistance. During the month they took fourteen cities, slaying all the inhabitants but ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... an ancient and noble stock. The family of Graham can be traced back in unbroken succession to the beginning of the twelfth century; and indeed there have been attempts to encumber its scutcheon with the quarterings of a fabulous antiquity. Gram, we are told, was in some primeval time the generic name for all independent leaders of men, and was borne by one of the earliest kings of Denmark. Another has surmised ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... encumber the descending levels of the Stratford-on-Avon Canal, and they kept Sam busy. In the intervals the boat glided deeper and deeper into a green pastoral country, parcelled out with hedgerows and lines of elms, behind which here and there lay a village half ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sixteeners, quite as tall and nearly as old as Tom Coper), and a poorer than all, as may be conjectured from the lamentable state of that patched round frock, and the ragged condition of those unpatched shoes, which would encumber, if anything could, the light feet that wear them. But why should I lament the poverty that never troubles him? Joe is the merriest and happiest creature that ever lived twelve years in this wicked world. Care cannot come near him. He hath a perpetual smile ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... air was stirring, they decided not to encumber the small boat with mast or sail, but to row leisurely across with just as much energy as suited their holiday humour. The channel was on the whole free from currents, and, as Roger knew the landing-places as well as the oldest sailor in the place, any ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... terms. If the same method were made use of in reasoning on other subjects, they would approach to the mathematics in simplicity and in truth, and the science of medicine in particular would be stripped of the heaps of learned rubbish which now encumber it, and would appear in true and native simplicity. Such is the method I propose to follow: I am certain of the rectitude of the plan; of the success of the reasoning it does not become ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... average to go to every other meeting. But it is grievous how often any change knocks me up. I will further pledge myself, as I told Lyell, to resign after a year, if I did not attend pretty often, so that I should AT WORST encumber the Club temporarily. If you can get me elected, I certainly shall be very much pleased. Very many thanks for answers about Glaciers. I am very glad to hear of the second Edition (Of the Himalayan Journal.) ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... encumber The hawthorn's crest: My thoughts have no number: You would not slumber If laid at my breast, Little sister, ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... was sending a loving gaze out of the open window, where nature and summer were revelling in their conjoined riches. Art shewed her hand too, stealthily, having drawn out of the way of the others whatever might encumber the revel. Across a wide stretch of wooded and cultivated country, the eye caught the umbrageous heights on the further side of the valley of the Ryth. Eleanor's gaze was fixed. Mrs. Powle's glance ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... praise and incense as the foundress of this community. It has been quite easy for her to found so vast an establishment with the treasures of France, since she herself had remained poor, by her own confession, and had neither to sell nor encumber ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... my father, as proprietor of Covent Garden Theater, in consequence of this lawsuit and the debts which encumber the concern, is liable at any time to be called upon for twenty-seven thousand pounds; which, for a man who can not raise five thousand, is not a pleasant predicament. On the other hand, Mr. Harris, our adversary, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... end of the first year, and we shall have certificates of study in intermediate, secondary, higher subjects. Between the agregation and the doctorat, there are four years, and naturally we shall want three examinations just to see how the future professor is getting on with his theses, to encumber him with assistance and to prevent him doing them alone; first examination called the Bibliography of the Theses for the Doctorat, second examination called the Methodology of the Doctorat, third examination called the Preparation for the Sustaining of the Thesis, and then ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... are necessary to explain phenomena to him: and if by pure head-work combined with results of physical observation he can construct his universe, he must be a very unphilosophical man who would encumber himself with a useless Creator! There is something tangible about my method, says he; yours is vague. He requires it to be granted that his system is positive and that yours is impositive. So ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... keeping in the armoury, where 'tis right they should be; for men of peace, as these most surely are, encumber not themselves ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... of SORIN'S house. Doors open out of it to the right and left. A table stands in the centre of the room. Trunks and boxes encumber the floor, and preparations for departure are evident. TRIGORIN is sitting at a table eating his breakfast, and MASHA is standing ...
— The Sea-Gull • Anton Checkov
... tobacco-pouch, and various articles of daily use. As for his iron pot, his smoked meat, his stock of skins, and bottles of seal-oil, he leaves them under the guardianship of Marimonda in the grotto which he will now make his store-house, his kitchen: he will not encumber ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... better not to encumber the address to working men with details. Firstly, because they would detract from whatever fiery effect the words may have in them; secondly, because writing and petitioning and pressing a subject upon members and candidates ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... fishery as practiced by the Kamchadales and Aleutians. These natives have harpoons with short lines to which they attach bladders or skin bags filled with air. A great many boats surround a whale and stick him with as many harpoons as possible. If successful, they will so encumber him that his strength is not equal to the buoyancy of the bladders, and in this condition he is finished with a lance. A great feast is sure to follow his capture, and every interested native indulges in ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... seemed satisfied that the traffic on the coast of Hudson's-bay could not be preserved without forts and settlements, which must be maintained either by an exclusive company, or at the public expense; and, as this was not judged a proper juncture to encumber the nation with any charge of that kind the design of dissolving the company was laid aside till a ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... "One book at a time." He would not encumber himself with books any more than he would with shoes. But that the mind might not go barefoot, he always bought a new book before destroying the one in hand. Destroying? Yes; for after reading or studying a book, he warms his hands upon its flames, this Khalid, or makes ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... of Frederica, and I am grateful for it as a mark of your friendship; but as I cannot have any doubt of the warmth of your affection, I am far from exacting so heavy a sacrifice. She is a stupid girl, and has nothing to recommend her. I would not, therefore, on my account, have you encumber one moment of your precious time by sending for her to Edward Street, especially as every visit is so much deducted from the grand affair of education, which I really wish to have attended to while she remains at Miss Summers's. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... place of the representations of Christian subjects, which had become blasphemous under the treatment of men like the Caracci. Gods without power, satyrs without rusticity, nymphs without innocence, men without humanity, gather into idiot groups upon the polluted canvas, and scenic affectations encumber the streets with preposterous marble. Lower and lower declines the level of abused intellect; the base school of landscape[23] gradually usurps the place of the historical painting, which had sunk into prurient pedantry,—the Alsatian ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... childhood she had looked with awful veneration. This girl was regarded with an unfavourable eye by all the competitors, honest Dinmont only excepted; the rest conceived they should find in her a formidable competitor, whose claims might at least encumber and diminish their chance of succession. Yet she was the only person present who seemed really to feel sorrow for the deceased. Mrs. Bertram had been her protectress, although from selfish motives, and her capricious ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... awhile no cares encumber Their minds diverted; the daily word is unspoken, The daily thoughts of labour and sorrow slumber At the sight of the beauty that greets them, for the ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... voluminous folds of gold-embroidered drapery encumber her supple limbs; but her skirts are of the scantiest, (what Miss Flora MacFlimsey would call skimped,) and pitifully mean as to quality. By no means have the imperial looms of Benares contributed to her professional costume a veil of wondrous fineness and a Nabob's price; but a narrow ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... it is in our power to take care of one thing, and apply ourselves to it, we choose rather to encumber ourselves with many—body, property, brother, friend, child, slave—and thus we are burdened and weighed down. When the weather happens not to be fair for sailing, we sit screwing ourselves and perpetually looking out for the way of ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... about to approach those ancient Religions which once ruled the minds of men, and whose ruins encumber the plains of the great Past, as the broken columns of Palmyra and Tadmor lie bleaching on the sands of the desert. They rise before us, those old, strange, mysterious creeds and faiths, shrouded in the mists of antiquity, and stalk dimly and undefined along the line which divides Time from Eternity; ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... the road to Chene before the enemy should learn of the movement, and forthwith the camp presented a scene of the greatest animation: trumpets sounding, officers hastening to and fro with orders, while the baggage and quartermaster's trains, in order not to encumber the rear-guard, were sent forward ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... many things to be considered in such a case. His clothes might encumber him; he might have the cramp; ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... arose with the dawn, and prepared to execute his design, hiding his upper garment, which might encumber him; he then proceeded to the Palace of Tears. He found it lighted up with an infinite number of flambeaux of white wax, and perfumed by a delicious scent issuing from several censers of fine gold of admirable workmanship. As soon as he perceived ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... said was the number,— Till I seemed to hear their trampling feet, The bugle blast and the drum's quick beat, The clatter of hoofs in the stony street, The cheers of people who came to greet, And the thousand details that to repeat Would only my verse encumber,— Till I fell in a reverie, sad and sweet, And then to a ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... a wild chorus swells the song: Oft have I listen'd, and stood still, As it came soften'd up the hill, And deem'd it the lament of men 140 Who languish'd for their native glen; And thought how sad would be such sound, On Susquehanna's swampy ground, Kentucky's wood-encumber'd brake, Or wild Ontario's boundless lake, 145 Where heart-sick exiles, in the strain, ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... talker is to encumber his ideas with such a plethora of words as frequently prove fatal to their sense. Some of this class employ fine words because they are fine, with perfect indifference to the signification: others do it from "that fastidiousness," as one says, "which makes some men walk on the highroad as if ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... him in a shrewd, gay, and natural style, and even with some degree of fidelity. But he inaugurates the pleiad of amateur, curious, and commercial travellers. He is the first of that prolific race of tourists who each year encumber geographical literature with numerous volumes, from which the savant finds nothing to ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... with the ground, for incendiaries have destroyed hundreds and hundreds of houses, and the Chinese commanders are favouring low-lying barricades, which are hard to pick out from the enormous mass of partially burned ruins which encumber the ground. Just as in South Africa we were reading only the other day, before this plight overtook us, that the hardest thing to see is a live Boer on the battlefield, so here it is the merest chance to make out the soldiery that ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... her dripping clothes dried of themselves, so as not to encumber her movements. By some happy chance her feet were well shod, and now, gathering her wits as she went, she put on the shawl—not the bonnet, her head burned so, and felt so wild Just then, far into the darkness, ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... our race have perished, and the empires of civilisation have crumbled like sand-castles in a horror of anarchy. Thousands upon thousands of unburied dead, anticipating the more deliberate doom that comes and smokes, and rides and comes and comes, and does not fail, encumber the streets of London, Manchester, Liverpool. The guides of the nation have fled; the father stabs his child, and the wife her husband, for a morsel of food; the fields lie waste; wanton crowds carouse in our churches, universities, palaces, banks and hospitals; we understand ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... breaking!' Nay, some tower Far eastward sendeth forth that light; We yet may spend another hour, Not yet shall end the precious night. May sleep, thou sun, thee long encumber, And waking may'st thou linger still, For Frithjof's sake may'st freely slumber Till Ragnaroek, be ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... workwoman will not encumber herself with too many tools; but she will not shirk the expense of necessary implements, the simplest by preference, and ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... travellers, who seem to have tasted it, and sometimes not to have liked it: a Russian ambassador, in 1639, who resided at the court of the Mogul, declined accepting a large present of tea for the Czar, "as it would only encumber him with a commodity for which he had no use." The appearance of "a black water" and an acrid taste seems not to have recommended it to the German Olearius in 1633. Dr. Short has recorded an anecdote of a stratagem of the Dutch in their second voyage ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... antislavery host think it unwise to avow any connection or sympathy with him. I refer to some of the leaders of the political movement against slavery. They feel it to be their mission to marshal and use as effectively as possible the present convictions of the people. They cannot afford to encumber themselves with the odium which twenty years of angry agitation have engendered in great sects sore from unsparing rebuke, parties galled by constant defeat, and leading men provoked by unexpected exposure. They are willing to confess, privately, that our movement produced ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... come;— Here, as before, never, so help you mercy, How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself,— As I, perchance, hereafter shall think meet To put an antic disposition on,— That you, at such times seeing me, never shall, With arms encumber'd thus, or this head-shake, Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase, As 'Well, well, we know'; or 'We could, an if we would';— Or 'If we list to speak'; or 'There be, an if they might';— Or such ambiguous giving out, to note That you know aught of me:—this ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... Elizur Wright's translation,—a meritorious one, still master of the field which, near fifty years ago, it entered as pioneer. Mr. Wright here expands La Fontaine's thirty-two verses to forty-four. The additions are not ungraceful, but they encumber somewhat the Attic neatness and simplicity of the original. We ought to say, that La Fontaine boldly broke with the tradition which had been making Alexandrines—lines of six feet—obligatory in French verse. He rhymes irregularly, at choice, and makes his verses ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... dress should be so well made that it can in no way encumber you, even in drawing ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... which truly resist the toil of men, and conspire against their fame; which are cunning to consume, and {112} prolific to encumber; and of whose perverse and unwelcome sowing we know, and can say assuredly, "An enemy ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... should have been too late," Count Charles replied. "We lost no time when your messenger came, Guy, but it took some time to rouse the men-at-arms and to saddle our horses. You must have made a stout defence indeed, judging by the pile of dead that encumber your passage." ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... here to be great boys, didn't we? I am sure you look a dozen years younger than when I last saw you, Mrs. Grandmother. By-the-by, it was a bold stroke to encumber yourself with that brat; what's ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Hakluyt Society should in some measure be disappointed, is only what might naturally be anticipated of all very sanguine expectation. Cheap editions are expensive editions to the publisher; and historical societies, from a necessity which appears to encumber all corporate English action, rarely fail to do their work expensively and infelicitously. Yet, after all allowances and deductions, we cannot reconcile ourselves to the mortification of having found but one volume in the series to be even tolerably ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... bottom sufficiently firm to carry us, although with considerable labour to the horses. Finding it was getting late, we determined to try and return to the camp round by the head of Nickol Bay, and succeeded in climbing over the rocks and boulders that encumber this portion of the coast, until we were within a quarter of a mile of the camp, when the tide came in upon us so quickly that, after having been repeatedly thrown down by the surf, we were compelled to leave the horses jammed ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... they go, Weaving slow Magic circles to encumber And imprison in their ring Olaf the King, As he helpless lies ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... airy hall, my fathers' voice Shall call my spirit, joyful in their choice; When, poised upon the gale, my form shall ride, Or, dark in mist, descend the mountain's side; Oh! may my shade behold no sculptured urns To mark the spot where earth to earth returns! No lengthen'd scroll, no praise-encumber'd stone; My epitaph shall be my name alone: If that with honor fail to crown my clay, Oh! may no other fame my deeds repay! That, only that, shall single out the spot; By that remember'd, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... That is a very characteristic right-about-face of the crowd, who one moment were saying, 'Hold your tongue and do not disturb Him,' and the next moment were all eager to encumber him with help, and to say, 'Rise up, be of good cheer; He calleth thee.' No thanks to them that He did. And what did the man do? Sprang to his feet—as the word rightly rendered would be—and flung away the frowsy rags that he had wrapped round him for warmth and softness of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... soon as it was dark, he intended to put them all on board the small vessel, when they could cast loose the men and do as they pleased. The Don and the ladies returned thanks, and went down to pack up their baggage; Mesty ordering two men to help them, but with a caution, that they were not to encumber themselves with any of the money, if there should happen ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... hundred mules in one of these gov'ment pack trains. An' in the lead, followed, waited on an' worshipped by the mules, is a aged gray mare. She don't pack nothin' but her virchoo an' a little bell, which last is hung 'round her neck. This old mare, with nothin' but her character an' that bell to encumber her, goes fa'rly flyin' light. But go as fast an' as far as she pleases, them long-y'eared locoed worshippers of her's won't let her outen their raptured sight. The last one of 'em, panniers, freight an' all, would go surgin' ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... there are a number Who stuff their homes with memories of dread; The ancient hat-stand in the hall encumber With Pickelhaubes and delight to slumber With heaps of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... retrograded. This was sufficient; a cry of terror broke from the whole group, and, without waiting for further evidence, they set off in the direction they came from, at full speed, Ned flinging the jug of holy water at the coffin, lest the latter should follow, or the former encumber him in his flight. Never was there so complete a discomfiture; and so eager were they to escape, that several of them came down on the stones; and I could hear them shouting with desperation, and imploring the more advanced not to leave them behind. I instantly disentangled myself from the ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... He grew by degrees less civil, put on more of the master, frequently found fault, was captious, and seem'd ready for an outbreaking. I went on, nevertheless, with a good deal of patience, thinking that his encumber'd circumstances were partly the cause. At length a trifle snapt our connections; for, a great noise happening near the court-house, I put my head out of the window to see what was the matter. Keimer, being in the street, look'd ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... and sandbanks which abound on the outside of the bay, continue to encumber the navigation after it is entered, and the fleet was in consequence compelled to anchor every night. This proceeding unavoidably occasioned much delay. The first day's sail carried us only to the mouth of the James river, and the second to the mouth of the Potomac; but, on both ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... on the shoulders of the people. An exhortation from the Pope was read to the multitude, granting remission of their sins to all who should join the Crusade, and directing that no man on that holy pilgrimage should encumber himself with heavy baggage and vain superfluities, and that the nobles should not travel with dogs or falcons, to lead them from the direct road, as had happened to so ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... homes of England, just as the New Year bonbons played havoc with the homes of France. Perhaps, of the two countries, France suffered less. The candy soon disappeared, leaving only impaired digestions in its wake. The books remained to encumber ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... winter, the Voles spread themselves about the steppe. Each hollows little pits around the roots he wishes to extract. After having bared them he cleans them while still in position, so as not to encumber his storehouses with useless earth. This preparatory labour having been completed, he divides the root into slices of a weight proportioned to his strength, and carries away the fragments one by one. Seizing each with his teeth, he walks backwards ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... have wanted to do all along, but it was the cowardly thing to do, after I had failed, for it was not as though I had conquered the desires, the desires conquered me. At any rate, I couldn't come to you to encumber you, to be a drag upon you. I felt that I must have something to offer you. I've got a plan, Maude, for my life, for our lives. I don't know whether I can make a success of it, and you are entitled to decline to take ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... on, have ever been to assimilate it to the other religions of the earth; to abate its spirituality; to relax its austere code of morals; to commute its proper claims for external observances; to encumber its ritual with an infinity of ceremonies; and, above all, to uncover the future and invisible, on which it left a veil, and add a purgatory into the bargain! Thus, whether contrasted with other religions or with its corrupted self, Christianity ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... figures as a very good specimen of his kind. It is not, either, that my heart is less touched by him than any other; that would be a schoolgirl's reason, which I consider quite beneath me. I actually love no one, sir; you know it, do you not? I do not then see why, without real necessity, I should encumber my life with a perpetual companion. Has not some sage said, 'Nothing too much'? and another, 'I carry all my effects with me'? I have been taught these two aphorisms in Latin and in Greek; one is, I believe, from Phaedrus, and the ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere |
