"Obstreperous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... But teaching the Lindsay district school is distinctly NOT exhilarating—at least in such a well-behaved school as this, where the pupils are so painfully good that I haven't even the traditional excitement of thrashing obstreperous bad boys. Everything seems to go by clock work in Lindsay educational institution. Larry must certainly have possessed a marked gift for organizing and drilling. I feel as if I were merely a big cog in an orderly machine that ran itself. However, I understand that there ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... we'll land in a town of this size," declared Roy indignantly, as he helped the constables shove back an obstreperous individual who insisted on examining ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... hardihood to glance toward the great man until the indistinct stockman had had his wish, and Mrs. Clarkson, in her fine new raiment, had both sung and acted a coy ditty of the previous decade, wherein every line began with the word "somebody." It was an immediate success; the obstreperous stockman led the encore; but Miss Bouverie, who duly accompanied, extracted solace from the depressed attitude in which Sir Julian Crum ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... times, ladies and gentlemen, brings to the fore the most pushing and obstreperous blackguards. We have amongst us persons who, under the thin disguise of patriotism, do not scruple to bring hideous charges against public men. Such but serve the blood-stained cause of our common enemies. Conscious of the purity of our private lives, we do ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... feet. I picked it up, and gave it back to a worried-looking little mother who was endeavouring to arrange the wrapping in the perambulator with one hand, while with the other she clutched firmly at the arm of an obstreperous person of three. She smiled at me in wan acknowledgment, and I said, "May I help?" and tucked in one side of the shawl. Two mornings later I met the same trio returning from their morning's walk, a third time I picked the small boy out of a puddle, and helped to wipe off the mud. That broke the ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Suzanne and her husband were reconciled, and all the improprieties of the earlier acts carefully smoothed away. "The Freedom of Suzanne" itself, however, did not matter very much. Sledge-hammer criticism could pulverize it. Poor little play! It did not merit any obstreperous handling, for it kept its audience in a state of unreasoning merriment, and it encased Miss Tempest like the proverbial glove. There is nothing more fascinating than perfect comedy acting. It is a tonic, the exhilarating effect of which ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... only connive at his obstreperous Approbation, but very cheerfully repair at their own Cost whatever Damages he makes. They had once a Thought of erecting a kind of Wooden Anvil for his Use that should be made of a very sounding Plank, in order to render his Stroaks more deep and mellow; but as this might ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... lie down, dogs!' and with an obstreperous bound, Fly flew to the new-comer, a young man in the robust strength of eight-and-twenty, of stalwart frame, very broad in the chest and shoulders, careless, homely, though perfectly gentleman-like bearing, and hale, hearty, sunburnt face. It was such a look and such an arm as would win ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... may hear me in civilness; if not, we must handle that rod which was laid down for the use of obstreperous. If you had come in a peaceable manner, like our brothers, the English, we would not have been against your trading with us as they do; but to come, fathers, and build houses upon our land, and to take it by force, is what ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... person altogether, one whom his ministers were finding it difficult to recognize and still more difficult to reconcile to their plans. Only when the effects had died down towards the end of each day did the King become himself again. Obstreperous till noon, he would then quiet down by degrees till, at six o'clock, his spirits had reached a strange nadir of depression. Had Brasshay only caught him then, in that period of reaction, he would ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... there was a greater delay in complying with the gentle hint; but the Hell-cats getting obstreperous, the tea was at length furnished and divided among the women. This gracious office devolved on the wife of Tummas who soon found herself assisted by a spontaneous committee of which the comely dame was the most prominent and active ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... bundles of hay, and all manner of rubbish with which they intended to plug up his mouth and nostrils, so that he might perish for lack of breath. These last, however, could by no means perform their appointed duty; inasmuch as the enemy's breath rushed out of his nose in an obstreperous hurricane and whirlwind, which blew the Pygmies away as fast as they came nigh. It was found necessary, therefore, to hit upon some other method ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that the infant (whose programmes were always somehow arranged in advance, and were in his mind absolutely unalterable) could spell the most obstreperous words. Quite conceivably he could spell better than his father, who still showed an occasional tendency to write "separate" with three "e's" and only ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... many packages, her fingers were numb with cold, and again and again the string slipped just at the crucial time. Finally this school girl, who was an attractive, well-dressed girl, reached over and placed her nicely gloved finger on the obstreperous knot. There was a grateful smile from the troubled woman and a hearty "Thank you." The next stop was the girl's home. As she went to the end of the car she passed a school friend who had watched the little incident. She said to her, "I see you belong to the helping hand society." "No," ...
— The Children's Six Minutes • Bruce S. Wright
... the nature of vice to force itself upon notice, both in the act and by its consequences. Drunkenness, cruelty, brutal manners, sensuality and impiety, thoughtless prodigality and idleness, are obstreperous while they are in the height and heyday of their enjoyment; and when that is passed away, long and obtrusive is the train of misery which they draw after them. But on the contrary, the virtues, especially those ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... place, and dinner was served while we were quiescent at the wharf. The stewardess hunted up all the females in the ship, and, preceding them down stairs, placed them at the head of the table; then, and not an instant before, were the gentlemen allowed to appear, who made a most obstreperous rush at the viands. There were about 200 people seated in a fetid and dimly-lighted apartment, at a table covered over with odoriferous viands— pork stuffed with onions, boiled legs of mutton, boiled ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... obstreperous talking critics,—the impertinent guides of the pit,—who will not give a plain man leave to enjoy an evening's entertainment, but, with their frothy jargon and incessant finding of faults, either drown his pleasure quite, or force him in his own defence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... what it done. I knowed I could use it on him, ef he got too obstreperous, an' dat's what he done. But I were goin' to fight him wif mah bresh, ef he'd made ...
— Tom Swift and his Airship • Victor Appleton
... what with thy whole world-wide wandering, What with my search drawn out through years, my hope Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope With that obstreperous joy success would bring,— I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring My heart made, finding ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... pluck of several Atlanta policemen these Negro ex-soldiers would have done serious mischief at the depot. Those who undertook to make trouble were very promptly clubbed into submission, and one fellow more obstreperous than the rest, was lodged in the ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... Unable to proceed, we come to a stand-still, and simply occupy ourselves in protecting the bicycle from the crush, and reasoning. with the mob; but the only satisfaction we obtain in reply to anything we say is " Bin bacalem." One or two pig-headed, obstreperous young men near us, emboldened by our apparent helplessness, persist in handling the bicycle. After being pushed away several times, one of them even assumes a menacing attitude toward me the last time I thrust his meddlesome ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... the business. Nothing could be done with them. They were immune to all schemes of discipline. Like the MYSTERIOUS NOISES they could not be controlled, and by general consent they were abolished. In place of the noisy and obstreperous boy came the docile, ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... of time in the house without his knowing it. Young and Tess were hiding someone! At bed time he decided that the next day he would find out who was the other man in Young's house. It might give him a hold on his obstreperous brother-in-law and ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... same handwriting interested Tom particularly, because of his interest in gas engines—the result of his many tussles with the obstreperous motor of the troop's cabin launch, Good Turn. Skimming hastily over some matter about the receipt of money through some intermediary, his interest ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... countenance, but even disordered his brain to a very dangerous degree of delirium; so that, instead of allowing himself quietly to be undressed and put to bed by his wife, he answered all her gentle admonitions and caresses with the most opprobrious invectives and obstreperous behaviour; and, though he did not tax her with infidelity to his bed, he virulently accused her of extravagance and want of economy; observed, her expensive way of living would bring him to a morsel of bread; and unfortunately recollecting the attempt of the ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... what had he to do up there? Could it be possible that they also were in his toils? That indeed would be bad, for Leimann had, in spite of all, remained something like an aid and help to him in becoming surety for payments promised or in calming obstreperous creditors. ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... had passed away, loud became the noise made by the kings, all exclaiming, 'Array! Array!' With the blare of conches and the sound of drums that resembled leonine roars, O Bharata, with the neigh of steeds, and the clatter of car-wheels, with the noise of obstreperous elephants and the shouts, clapping of arm-pits, and cries of roaring combatants, the din caused everywhere was very great. The large armies of the Kurus and the Pandavas, O king, rising at sunrise, completed all their arrangements. Then when the Sun rose, the fierce weapons of attack ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... was just on the point of entering the house, with my heart full of filial piety and a contrite speech upon my lips, when I heard a burst of obstreperous laughter from my father, and a loud titter from ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... but half an hour's sail of the latter place, provided you have a fair wind, and may be distinctly seen from the city. Nay, it is a well-known fact, which I can testify from my own experience, that on a clear still summer evening, you may hear, from the Battery of New York, the obstreperous peals of broad-mouthed laughter of the Dutch negroes at Communipaw, who, like most other negroes, are famous for their risible powers. This is peculiarly the case on Sunday evenings, when, it is remarked by an ingenious and observant philosopher who has made ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... diffuse, bustling with rough modulations and wild harmonies, destitute of melody, forced in expression, noisy, and fearfully difficult," even as England at the same time frowned down his immortal works as "obstreperous roarings of modern frenzy." Berlioz's clear, stern voice would often be heard, when liberties were taken with the score, loud above the din of the instruments. "What wretch has dared to tamper with the great Beethoven?" "Who has taken upon ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... Fay, however, refused to budge, and when the meekly salaaming ayah attempted to take her, made her strong little body stiff, and screamed vigorously, clinging so firmly to her aunt that Jan had herself to carry the obstreperous baby to the nursery, where she left her lying on the floor, still yelling with all the strength of her ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... fair wind, and may be distinctly seen from the city. Nay, it is a well known fact, which I can testify from my own experience, that on a clear still summer evening you may hear from the battery of New York the obstreperous peals of broad-mouthed laughter of the Dutch negroes at Communipaw, who, like most other negroes, are famous for their risible powers. This is peculiarly the case on Sunday evenings, when, it is remarked by an ingenious and observant philosopher, who has made great discoveries in the ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... by Daniel. Daniel was in an obstreperous mood ... he cried out that I must be his "telegraph pole," that he would be a lineman, and climb me. I felt an affection for him that I had not known before. I played with him, letting ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... could not be allowed to pass by my people without a tremendous quarrel. Our blacks seemed to be in a peculiarly excitable state. Ali, especially, who has distinguished himself for several days in the obstreperous line, has had a regular turn-to with his father-in-law; and not satisfied with this, nearly strangled Moknee's son. The Mandara black threw himself on the ground and called out,—"Load my pistol, O Chaouch; I must shoot this ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... passed since Jill Carden, the English girl, had first tried her 'prentice hand upon the obstreperous camel. She had ridden out into the desert under the stars with her desert lover; she had, strong in a great love, fearlessly climbed the high wall of racial distinction crowned with the spikes of custom and convention; she had ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... own; and these only are the pure uncorrupt judges of the truth. For as the air in the ears, unless it be still and void of noise in itself, without any sound or humming, does not exactly take sounds so the philosophical judgment in disputations, if it be disturbed and obstreperous within, is hardly comprehensive of what is said without. For our familiar and inbred opinion will not allow that which disagrees with itself, as the number of sects and parties shows, of which philosophy—if she deals with them in the best manner—must maintain one to be right, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... after a masquerade. About me were my friends, richly costumed, on all sides young men and women, all sparkling with beauty and joy; on the right and on the left exquisite dishes, flagons, splendor, flowers; above my head was an obstreperous orchestra, and before me my ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... was to come, said "Gee! Suppose we are to climb up this again?" But apprehension was soon lost in the interest of the town we now entered, whose great buildings (in which each squad threatened to leave its most obstreperous member) had been visible for some distance. Dannemora seems to be a town whose prosperity, in this out of the way place, depends solely upon the great prison that stands in its midst. We marched along beneath the huge wall that forms one ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... obstreperous, go to the coffee-house and call for your glass. It is an excellent cure for her complaint, and you will get the latest news retailed in the most engaging manner, with the pleasure of knowing she is biting her lips ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various
... made prohibiting the passing of drays through King Street during certain hours of the day, he told the constables that he, the King's brewer, cared nothing for the order of the House of Lords. The example proved infectious. Other brewers' draymen became obstreperous too, one calling the beadle that stopped him "a rogue" and another vowing that if he knew the beadle "he would have a touch with him at quarterstaff." But all these fiery spirits of King Street were brought to their senses, and are found expressing sorrow ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... this fault often hides itself and escapes attention. The selfish child may be quiet, clean, and under ordinary circumstances, obedient. He may not even be quarrelsome; and may therefore come under a much less degree of discipline than his obstreperous, impulsive, rebellious little brother. Yet, in reality, his condition calls for much more careful attention than does the condition of the ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... abundant; the authority of the Heads was unquestioned in their own colleges; not only undergraduates, but Fellows also had to be submissive. No junior Fellow would then have dared to oppose his Head at college meetings. If there was by chance an obstreperous junior, he was easily silenced or requested to retire. The days had not yet come when a Master of Trinity ventured to remark that even a junior Fellow might possibly be mistaken. Colleges seemed to be the property of the Heads, and in some of them the Fellows were really chosen ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... on the inside by a raised platform, covered with mats or cushions, on which the Turks sit cross-legged. On one side are musicians, generally Greeks, with mandolins and tambourines, accompanying singers, whose melody consists in vociferation; and the loud and obstreperous concert forms a strong contrast to the stillness and taciturnity of Turkish meetings. On the opposite side are men, generally of a respectable class, some of whom are found here every day, and all day ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... take a hack at the impertinent solicitation of the driver, he will unquestionably curse you." "The telegraph operator grabs your message and eyes you as if you were a pickpocket." Now, Mr. PUNCHINELLO does not offer himself as an apologist for the abusive and obstreperous hackman, but he wishes to say that in the course of his active and eventful career he has had various conferences with those servants of the sidewalk, and he has never yet been unquestionably cursed by any one of the whole bad lot. Only yesterday he had occasion to intimate to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... controversy. No possible logic will lead a man ahead of his own intelligence; neither will any take from him the persuasions which correspond to his mental condition. A good logical pose may sometimes serve to lower the crest of an obstreperous sophist, as boughs of one species of ash are said to quell the rattlesnake; but with both these sinuous animals the effect is temporary, and the quality of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... complexion and fully developed nose. Here, too, is Thomas's cousin, Adam Rutledge, fresh from an adventure at Carlisle, where he has tasted the luxury of Doomsdale, a noisome dungeon reserved for witches and murderers, but sometimes tenanted by obstreperous drunkards. Of a more reputable class here is Job Leathes, of Dale Head, a tall, gaunt dalesman, with pale gray eyes. Here is Luke Cockrigg, too, of Aboonbeck Bank; and stout John Jackson, of Armboth, a large and living ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... wife, Jim Shirley, and his shepherd dog, Pilot. Jim and I have done several things together besides that. We were boys together back in Cloverdale. We went to the war together to fight you obstreperous Rebels." There was a twinkle ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... room reading, writing, or drawing. This room of mine soon became a Mecca for the most irrepressible and loquacious characters in the ward. But I soon schooled myself to shut my ears to the incoherent prattle of my unwelcome visitors. Occasionally, some of them would become obstreperous—perhaps because of my lordly order to leave the room. Often did they threaten to throttle me; but I ignored the threats, and they were never carried out. Nor was I afraid that they would be. Invariably I induced them ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... brother to a lawyer: [so fond of each other were they,] that they would hear nothing but the mere praises of each other: insomuch, that the latter appeared a Gracchus to the former, the former a Mucius to the latter. Why should this frenzy affect the obstreperous poets in a less degree? I write odes, another elegies: a work wonderful to behold, and burnished by the nine muses! Observe first, with what a fastidious air, with what importance we survey the temple [of Apollo] vacant for the Roman poets. In the next place you may ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... to be aware of all the remarkable shots at long words which he bawled out at the top of his voice, and I refrain from recording, lest they should haunt others as they have done by me all my life. Now and then Chapman caught up a long switch and dashed out at some obstreperous child to give an audible whack; and towards the close of the litany he stumped out—we heard his tramp the whole length of the church, and by and by his voice issued from an unknown height, proclaiming—'Let us sing to ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and irrisibility however, are confined to their sober hours. When indulging their insatiate thirst for spirit, they are boisterous and rude, and by their obstreperous laughter, their demoniacal shrieks and turbulent vociferations, produce an appalling discord, such as might well be expected to proceed from a company of infernal spirits at their fiendish revels; and exhibit a striking contrast ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... was a spoiled and obstreperous puppy of three months or so, Lady was stricken with distemper and was taken to a veterinary hospital. There, for something more than three months she was nursed through the scourging malady and through the chorea and pneumonia ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... upon the praise of plains and mountains and the scorn of cities and civilization. These romances, much value as they have as documents and will long continue to have, must be said to exhibit the frontier as self-conscious, obstreperous, given to insisting upon its difference from the rest of the world. In ordinary human intercourse such insistence eventually becomes tiresome; in literature no less than in life there is a time to remember local traits and a time to forget them ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... "They've better ways at night. One plan is no supper or breakfast; but the champion scheme is the doctor's. On complaint by the askaris that a man on the chain has shirked his work, or answered back, or been obstreperous, the doctor serves him out a handful of strong pills and sees him swallow them. They don't unchain them at ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... over there didn't send out a second fire alarm. Miss Fairlie was much relieved to know her charges were safe and sound here, and I obtained a leave of absence for you for the remainder of the night," she finished. The very much perturbed matron had no idea of being left alone with a flock of obstreperous freshmen. ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... obstreperous! Manda's mom would like to sell the farm and move to Lancaster to a little house. Then she wouldn't need ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... were, I turned upon Mr. Watt, and especially upon Mr. Stewart. The latter did not appear for a length of time to have visited the light-room. On asking the cause—did Mr. Watt and him (sic) disagree; he said no; but he had got very bad usage from the assistant, "who was a very obstreperous man." I could not bring Mr. Watt to put in language his objections to Miller; all I could get was that, he being your friend, and saying he was unwell, he did not like to complain or to push the man; that the man seemed ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... than that, all of you, all the people of your sort,"—pursued the obstreperous Mikhalevitch:—"are erudite triflers. You know on what foot the German limps, you know what is bad about the English and the French,—and your knowledge comes to your assistance, justifies your shameful laziness, your disgusting inactivity. Some men will even pride themselves, ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... languor of inglorious days Not equally oppressive is to all. Him, who ne'er listened to the voice of praise, The silence of neglect can ne'er appal. There are, who, deaf to mad Ambition's call, Would shrink to hear th' obstreperous trump of Fame; Supremely blest, if to their portion fall Health, competence, and peace. Nor higher aim Had He, whose simple tale ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... ready to bandy jokes with any one, and particularly ready to enter into conversation with the girls, who, however, held themselves aloof, not in a shy, but rather in an independent way, assuming an indifferent manner to the noisy wit or obstreperous compliments of the lads. Here and there came a sober, quiet couple, either whispering lovers, or husband and wife, as the case might be; and if the latter, they were seldom unencumbered by an infant, carried for the most part by the father, ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the Mother Country, and the duty of upholding the old traditions of the Flag. All that was taken for granted, as it had been taken for granted when this tall fellow in brand new khaki with nice- smelling belts of brown leather, was a bald-headed baby on a lace pillow in a cradle, or an obstreperous boy in a big nursery. The word patriotism is never spoken in an English household of this boy's class. There are no solemn discourses about duty to the Mother Country. Those things have always been taken for granted, like the bread and butter at the breakfast table, and the common decencies ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... terrible passage home from New York. The Captain told us he "knew every drop of water in the Atlantic personally"; and he had never seen them so uniformly obstreperous. The ship rolled in the trough; Charles rolled in his cabin, and would not be comforted. As we approached the Irish coast, I scrambled up on deck in a violent gale, and retired again somewhat precipitately to announce to my brother-in-law that we had just come in ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... let go his arms he would throw them up with new energy, trying to get at Ralph again, until at last it was found necessary to go to the constables' desk; get out the only pair of handcuffs in Dalton, and put them on the wrists of the obstreperous official. ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose
... the War ended, but the teacher had gone, and no one else seemed available for the job. John was sober and studious, and besides was so well grown for his age that they banked on his ability to "lick" any negro boy that got obstreperous. ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... sheepishly. The subject was dropped. Mrs. Halford was a quiet little woman who seldom scolded, but she had a way with her that silenced even obstreperous Katy. ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... I must have been stark mad to let the anchor go! for the effect upon me of that shocking obstreperous hubbub, breaking in upon all that cemetery repose that blessed morning, and lasting it seemed a year, was most appalling; and at the sudden racket I stood excruciated, with shivering knees and flinching heart, God knows: for ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... ranged themselves, and at the word of the starter plunged into the water with that downward plunge so incomprehensible to the uninitiated. A short, sharp struggle followed, the competitors swimming with the sidelong movement and obstreperous puffing which likens the swimmer so closely to the traditional grampus. Eventually one of the group is seen heading the others, and breasting the water with calm and equable stroke in the old-fashioned style. He reaches the flag a ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... was a large, handsome, heavy man, over six feet high; and having understood that the first, second, and third prerequisite in oratory was action, the boys he put in training were encouraged to most vehement and obstreperous manifestations. Let me give an example, and one that weighed heavily on my conscience for many years after the poor ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... to be the third rider with each couple in alternation. Miss Josephine was very much concerned about Mr. Turner's accident, very happy to know how lucky he had been to come off without a scratch, except for the tear in his coat, and very solicitous indeed about any further handling of the obstreperous gray team; and, forgiving him readily under the circumstances, she renewed her engagement to drive with ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... unknown, even in the household. Jennie especially was often saucy and obstreperous. Jane Clemens, with more strength of character than of body, once undertook to punish her for insolence, whereupon Jennie snatched the whip from her hand. John Clemens was sent for in haste. He came at once, tied Jennie's wrists together with ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... formerly entertained, recurred with additional strength. Hayraddin had, that very morning, promised to him more modest and discreet behaviour than he was wont to exhibit, when they rested in a convent on their journey, yet he had broken his engagement, and had been even more offensively obstreperous than usual. Something probably lurked under this, for whatever were the Bohemian's deficiencies, he lacked neither sense, nor, when he pleased, self command, and might it not be probable that he wished to hold some communication, either with, his own horde or some ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... gained the confidence of the North-West partners, his policy began gradually to unfold itself. One obstreperous North-Wester was sent to the Columbia; another to the Montreal department, where "their able services could not be dispensed with;" and thus in the course of a few years he got rid of all those refractory spirits who dared to tell him ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... to visit her own family, the care of little Pen fell upon her. He was in a state of "deplorable grief" for his nurse, "and after all," laughed Mrs. Browning, "the place of nursery maid is more suitable to me than that of poetess (or even poet's wife) in this obstreperous London." ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... freely; he was always arguing. Being unable to read or write, he developed an astonishing memory for things he had heard and faces he had seen; he brought them up at inconvenient moments. He grew factious, obstreperous, declaring that there was much in the constitution of the Holy Russian Church which ought to be amended and brought up to date. What people wanted, he said, was a New Jerusalem. A violent altercation ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... tucked inside her mosquito-curtains, was nearly asleep. Punch had been allowed to stay up for dinner. Many privileges had been accorded to Punch within the last ten days, and a greater kindness from the people of his world had encompassed his ways and works, which were mostly obstreperous. He sat on the edge of his bed and swung ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... renewed intrigues to employ force against the obstreperous deputies and their allies, the populace of Paris. This time it was planned to bring royal troops from the garrisons in Flanders. And on the night of 1 October, 1789, a supper was given by the officers of the bodyguard at Versailles in honor of the arriving soldiers. Toasts were drunk liberally ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... finally swayed to his feet, he was seized by the collar and trousers in the grip known to "bouncers" everywhere, hustled to the door, which someone obligingly opened, and hurled from the moving train into the snow. The conductor did not care a straw whether the obstreperous Jack lit on his head or his feet, hit a snowbank or a pile of ties. Those were rough days, and the preservation of ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... head. "It doesn't obstruct mine," she said. "Have you been reading what the papers are saying about your friend Mr. Blithers and his obstreperous Maud?" ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the pilot-house stairs, with a moon that dipped and swam in a turgid sea of drifting clouds. The rest had been rattle and bang of jazz and chatter, and bumping about on a hot, swaying floor into obstreperous shoulders, and the smell of sweetened popcorn and fresh paint and sickly perfume. Wednesday they went for a ride again and ended up at the "Ferry" and danced and drank lemonade. And they passed a table where sat old Mrs. LeMasters with a youngish ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... by their greater adaptiveness that women are better linguists than men; it is by their more delicate organisation, their more subdued identity, and their less obstreperous temperaments, which are consequently less egotistical, less redolent of the one individual self. And what is it that makes the men of mark or note, the cognate signs of human algebra, but these same characteristics; ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... little boy having his face washed. Our host was a merry bachelor, and to the rosiness of a priest might, for aught I knew, have added the paternity; but I had never heard of it, and still less expected to find a child in his house. More obvious and obstreperous proofs, however, of the existence of a boy with a dirty face, could not have been met with. You heard the child crying and objecting; then the woman remonstrating; then the cries of the child snubbed and swallowed up in the ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... adroitly informed these thirsty men of his readiness and his ability to furnish them with all the liquor they might need. Strange as his speech seems to us, it was adapted to the occasion, and was received with roars of laughter and obstreperous applause. ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... 'eighties, which was kept by Bismarck from undue adventurousness. But when the Diet proved difficult to manage, they reverted to an earlier phase of Bismarck's career for an example to imitate. The Prussian Landtag (incredible as it may seem) was vigorously obstreperous at the time when Bismarck first rose to power, but he tamed it by glutting the nation with military glory in the wars against Austria and France. Similarly, in 1894, the Japanese Government embarked on war against China, ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... as the Rue Mouffetard. But under the government of the Septennat the work has been resumed in some degree. The double purpose is hereby served of letting in light on the dark spots of the town, and of giving employment to the needy blousards, who might get into obstreperous moods again if crowded too hard by poverty and want. It seems at first sight an awful destruction of property, this work of demolition, but I believe it has been proved that the rise in value of the real estate ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... be a truer description. You may not be informed, also, that the "institution" is frequently used in lunatic asylums and penal establishments as an instrument of torture and correction, being known to operate most efficaciously on obstreperous and hardened criminals, when all other means ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... keep on having a soul in it, by keeping it (that is, his soul) tossed back and forth—now in one place where souls are lost, and now in another? Is it your fault, or mine, Gentle Reader, that we are obliged to live in this undignified, obstreperous fashion in what is called civilisation? I cannot believe it. Nearly all the best people one knows can be seen sitting in civilisation on the edge of their chairs, or hurrying along with ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... our first lord of the Treasury), Gadsden (he of "the Gadsden Purchase"), Marion, Sumter (both of Revolutionary fame), Carteret, Columbus, Stanton, Colfax, Greeley, Chase, Sherman, Seward, Fillmore, Harlan (Senator), Butler (Ben), Johnson (obstreperous "Andy"), Grant (our chiefest military hero), Polk (General), Brown (John Brown, of Ossawatomie), Thomas (General), Sheridan, Wallace (General), St. John (Prohibitionist, Republican governor of Kansas), Lane (Jim ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... the most notorious and malicious and cantankerous female in Lochlann, the Black Hag. Now the Black Hag was not only those things that have been said; she was also whiskered and warty and one-eyed and obstreperous, and she was notorious and ill-favoured in many ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... lady on the little pony. They had at first suffered great amazement at the voluntary presence of the old lady, but she was there really because she knew no better. Her colossal ignorance took the form, mainly, of a most obstreperous patriotism, and indeed she always acted in a foreign country as if she were the special commissioner of the President, or perhaps as a special commissioner could not act at all. She was very aggressive, ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... is never noisy, obstreperous or excited. In fact, I never hardly noticed him in a fight, unless I happened to want him, or he had something to report, when he was always in the right place, and his information was always ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... a minute, but Kathleen was so completely sure of herself that I knew it was better to be silent. She disposed of that obstreperous individual most summarily. Who is he, Miss Reynolds?" Grace turned grave eyes upon Mary. "We shall have to know all about him if we are to ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... to permit; so Grace took them by the hands, and lured them home with promises of an introduction to certain white rabbits at the lodge. After their departure, their brothers became infinitely more obstreperous. Whether it were that Conrade had some slight amount of consideration for the limbs of his lesser followers, or whether the fact were—what Rachel did not remotely imagine—that he was less utterly unmanageable with her ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... obstreperous ones were in bed and everything quiet Philip and Margery sat together in the hammock, lovers still after eight years of strenuous married life and discussed Larry's last letter, which had contained the rather astonishing request that he be permitted to bring the little ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... daughter of Chaos has now enveloped our hemisphere (which a short time since was enubilous of clouds) in the grossest blackness. The drowsy god reigns predominantly, and the obstreperous world is wrapped in profound silence. No sounds gliding through the ambient air salute my attentive auricles, save the frightful notes which at different intervals issue from that common marauder ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... rose-colored spectacles; and disillusioned, discontented, cynical, selfish, and, of course, most horribly bored. He was gun-shy of women; he suspected them of wanting to marry him. He was wary of men; he suspected them of wanting to exploit him. He loathed children, who were generally obstreperous and unnecessary editions of parents he didn't admire. He didn't even trust the beautiful works of men's hands. They, even they, were too often faked! If you had dug up the indubitable mummy of the first Pharaoh from under the oldest of the pyramids, ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... and load, as it were, this rare moment of abandonment with the whole amount of life and animation which had been kept back, and which ought to have been equally diffused over the whole. Hence their convulsive and obstreperous violence. In bravura they take care not to be deficient; but they frequently lose sight of the true spirit of the composition. In general, (with the single exception of the great Talma,) they consider ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... continually interrupting witnesses, contradicting their testimony, and swearing at the justice. It soon became evident that he must be silenced or the trial adjourned. The justice's patience at length gave way. He ordered the constable to take the obstreperous culprit to a creek, which ran near the office, "and duck him until he was sober enough to be quiet and respect the court!" This operation the constable alone could not perform, but in due time he brought the ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... an excellent jurisconsult, an able physician, a great philosopher, and a successful alchymist. The world at last took him at his word; and thought that a man who talked so big, must have some merit to recommend him,—that it was, indeed, a great trumpet which sounded so obstreperous a blast. He was made secretary to the Emperor Maximilian, who conferred upon him the title of chevalier, and gave him the honorary command of a regiment. He afterwards became professor of Hebrew and the belles lettres at the University of ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... and pupil came up to London together to seek their fortunes. But although Garrick became the first of comic actors, he produced nothing literary but a few indifferent farces. The same may be said of Foote, who was also a celebrated wit in conversation. Johnson said, "For loud, obstreperous, broad-faced mirth, I know not ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... migration of Androgyne's soul (we shall mention them further on), the latter has to give an answer why he has 'shifted his coat in these days of reformation,' and why his 'dogmatical silence' has left him. He replies that an obstreperous 'Sir Lawyer' had induced him to do so. From this it may be concluded that Bacon had some influence on Shakspere's 'Hamlet.' Are not, in poetical manner, the same principles advocated in 'Hamlet,' which Bacon promoted in ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... actual life; because its tragedy is enhanced by dramatic contrasts, the splendour of the bright, breezy, sunlit garden contrasting with the road of ashen spiritual desolation the soul must take; the splendour of the gorgeous stiff brocade and the futility of the blank, soft, imprisoned flesh; the obstreperous heart, beating in joyous harmony with the rhythm of the swaying flowers, changed by one written word into a desert of silence. It is the sudden annihilation of purpose and significance in a body and mind ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... it must be confessed, an inexcusably obstreperous scholar; but Tora would not have exchanged her husband, her Gunner, the fast friend of her promising "brother Karl," for the meekest or the wisest man ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... I, a little animal called a man—a bit of vitalized matter, one hundred and sixty-five pounds of meat and blood, nerve, sinew, bones, and brain,—all of it soft and tender, susceptible to hurt, fallible, and frail. I strike a light back-handed blow on the nose of an obstreperous horse, and a bone in my hand is broken. I put my head under the water for five minutes, and I am drowned. I fall twenty feet through the air, and I am smashed. I am a creature of temperature. A few degrees one way, and my fingers and ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... through. The art of self-reflection which appeals to us as so eminent and so human, is it after all much more than a vaporous vanity? We name its subject "human nature"; we give it a raiment of timeless generalities; but in the end the show of thought discloses little beyond the obstreperous bit of a "me" which has blown all the fume. The "psychologist's fallacy," or again the "egocentric predicament" of the philosopher of the Absolute, these are but tagged examples of a type of futile ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... page, let him not be inconsolable, but remember that no blots are so bad as those made by ambitious inflation. We have not that horror of "fine writing" which leads The Saturday Review and Company to such obstreperous exclamation, and can endure the worst that Americans are guilty of in this matter quite as well as that affectation of off-hand ease and nonchalance which enhances the native clumsiness of many among the later English writers, and, to our mind, mars extremely the poetry of Browning. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... in repairing to the spot with three highly-trained elephants, two of which were females; the third was a well-known fighting male, a tusker named Moota Gutche, who was usually employed to dominate the obstreperous wild elephants when refractory in the keddah enclosures. The necessary ropes and chains were prepared, and the small but experienced party started, Mr. Sanderson being armed only with a long spear, and riding on the pad, well girthed upon ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... attempting to push on farther. When, however, he recognized in the sturdy old man who strode along in the midst of the new company, no more distant acquaintance than the father of Marcia, he was conscious of a strong revulsion. Better the continued buffeting with an obstreperous mob than the embarrassments he foresaw in such a rencontre; but it was too late to avoid it: the interests and perils of the two parties were too nearly identical, and he heard the gruff voice of his old friend ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... great pleasure in giving the offender "a good paddling," to use his own forcible expression. This official is a strong advocate of corporal punishment. He claims that a "little loosening up of the hide" of an obstreperous prisoner does the said prisoner a vast amount of good. Among the convicts the deputy warden is austere. He is never seen sauntering about the prison enclosure with his long arms entwined about any of "the boys ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... Science, Dawning at the end of the Nineteenth; Comparative Speed of Light and Electricity; Wonderful Photography; Wooden Cloth; The Phylloxera; Falling Rents; Boston Civilization; Psychic Blundering; Beecher's Mediumship; A Scientific Cataract; Obstreperous and Pragmatic Vulgarity; Hygiene; Quinine; Life and Death; Dorothea L. Dix; The Drift of Catholicism; Juggernaut The Principal Methods of Studying the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... something in it, one of Phil's letters to Marjie, who knows? And that was why that letter did not get far enough back from her thievin' fingers. Oh, I'm mighty glad Kathleen Morrison give me the mitten for Jess Gray, one of them Red Range boys. How can a man as good and holy as I am manage the obstreperous girls? But," he added seriously, "this is too near to sin and disgrace ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... She longed to say, "I'm not going to account for myself to you," but she remembered her mother's injunction. She had been on her very best behavior all Sunday, Monday, and up to now on Tuesday, but her fit of goodness was coming to an end. She was in the mood to be obstreperous, naughty, and wilful; but the thought of her mother, who was so gently following in the path of the humble, ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... firlot. With some persuasion, however, there being but small difference in the value of the cloths, the one being a west of England bottle-green, and the other a Manchester blue, I caused them to niffer, and hushed up the business, which, had they been obstreperous, would have made half the parish ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... hour's roystering at the Fleur-de-Lis the party of gentlemen returned to the Taverne de Menut a good deal more unsteady and more obstreperous than when they came. They left Master Pothier seated in his chair, drunk as Bacchus, and every one of the rest of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the shape of a cigar, or diest away in sweet perfume enshrined in the meerschaum bowl; I love thee with more than woman's love! Thou art a companion to me in solitude. I can talk and reason with thee, avoiding loud and obstreperous argument. Thou art a friend to me when in trouble, for thou advisest in silence, and consolest with thy calm influence ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... apparently. The procurator, as I look back on that deadly winter, seems to have accepted all my peculiarities without question. If I would remain content and quell obstreperous beasts when spring opened as I had until autumn ushered in winter, I might do and be anything I pleased. If I pleased to mope in my quarters, pace under the arcades of the courtyard, lie abed from early dusk till after sunrise, what mattered that to him? Such, ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... midshipmen, there is no knowing what their mammas would have said to their conduct in Rio. Three of them drank a good deal too much; and when they came on board, the Captain ordered them to be sewed up in their hammocks, to cut short their obstreperous capers till sober. ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... credit to the Wild Man himself, and galloped down the rocky gorge at a pace that threatened a sudden and total smash to horse and man. Had any of his old comrades or friends witnessed that burst, they would certainly have said that March Marston was mad—madder, perhaps, than the most obstreperous March hare that ever marched madly through the wild ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... the turn of our party from Durracombe, who were trying to keep up one another's spirits behind the scenes. The audience, owing to long sitting still, was growing a little obstreperous. The chairman had to keep constantly ringing a bell and reminding people to be quiet. The noise at the back waxed so violent that his voice could hardly be heard, and the occupants of the front seats had to turn round and shout, 'Order!' 'You'll be turned ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... quorum requisite is present. Now the Speaker calls for the vote. Massively and stiffly, as at a word of command the "ayes" rise in their seats. There is a round of applause; the bill has been carried almost unanimously. That, however, is not always so. When there is an obstreperous mood abroad, the House will decline to proceed with the agenda, and a dozen men will rise at a time and speak from behind their desks, trying to talk each other down. The Speaker stands patiently wrestling with the problem of procedure—and often failing since practice is ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... its preceptor—lives and dies, having no desire to do anything that somebody has not done before! Is it any wonder that such a man as W. C. Brann should fall a victim to such a populace? He was hounded to his death—mobbed, spat upon, shot and murdered, by several thousand pin-headed obstreperous patrons and followers of a little pee-wee college, that turns young ladies out enceinte almost yearly and hires its professors for less salaries than ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... impression," he said, in the heavy way almost invariably affected by weak masters in their dealings with the obstreperous, "I was distinctly under the impression that I had ordered you to retire immediately to your dormitory. It is possible that you mistook my meaning. In that case I shall be happy to repeat what I said. It ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... College." West laughed at the editorial, but he was a sensitive man to criticism and the sarcastic gibes wounded him. When the attorneys for the college advised a settlement out of court by paying the obstreperous Young three hundred dollars in cash, James Winter was outspoken in his remarks. A resolution restraining the president from making any changes in the faculty, without the previous consent and approval of the board, was defeated, after ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... host of my deductions to the deuce in a moment. This unknown personage could not be an old gentleman; for old gentlemen are not apt to be so obstreperous to chamber-maids. He could not be a young gentleman; for young gentlemen are not apt to inspire such indignation. He must be a middle-aged man, and confounded ugly into the bargain, or the girl would not have taken the matter ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... Phoebe only felt herself, clasped, clung to, kissed, fondled with a sudden gasping, tearful eagerness. Then as if striving to recall the ordinary tone, Lucilla exclaimed—'There—I beg your pardon for such an obstreperous greeting, but I am a famished creature here, you see, and I did not expect such kindness. Luckily some of my pupils are driving out with their mamma, and I have sent the others to the nurse. Now then, take ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was a counterpart to this story for Mrs Rowland. She fancied that Mrs Grey's friends, the Andersons, must have looked rather foolish on occasion of their great syllabub party. She hoped the Miss Andersons trained their pupils better than their cows: they had a sad obstreperous cow, she understood. Some of the young ladies had lured it up the lawn with a potato, and got it to stand still to be milked; but, when somebody began to sing (she had no doubt it was Miss Ibbotson who sang) the poor animal found the ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... "You will have me as theatre-god, then, "J'arrive pour te denouement? "Swoop in, and produce the catastrophe? "Qu'aux Anglais, aux Pandours, a ce peuple insolent, "J'aille donner la discipline?— "Tame to sobriety those English, those Pandours, and obstreperous people? "Mais examinez mieux ma mine; "Examine the look of me better; "Je ne suis pas assez mechant! "I have not ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... get speech of my comrades. But so obstreperous was the crowd, that it was next to impossible. Jarl was still in his perch in the air; his enthusiastic bearers not yet suffering him to alight. Samoa, however, who had managed to keep out of the saddle, by-and-by contrived to draw nearer to ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... which the obstreperous Locos were subjected, and neither their general disposition, nor their particular temper of mind at the time, was such as to induce them to bear the infliction with Christian resignation. Accordingly, they repaired in a body to the head-quarters of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... every vender in a different dress, illustrating at one view the peasant costumes of every village in the vicinity. As for tobacco, the air is like a gust from some gigantic pipe. Here is the entrance to Franconi's Circus, though not yet open for public entertainment. Blasts of obstreperous music rush upon you from every door; the shrill squealing of a flageolet ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... to keep her face a blank, her mind was busy. Surely not since the gay women of Barras's court laughed at the megalomaniac ravings of a noisy, badly dressed, dirty young lieutenant named Buonaparte, had there been a vanity so candid, so voluble, so obstreperous. Nor did he talk of himself in a detached way, as if he were relating the performances and predicting the glory of a human being who happened to have the same name as himself. No, he thrust upon her in every sentence that he, he himself and none other, had said ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... of Susie except what Peter has told me, that she is not yet nineteen, that she is intelligent, but obstreperous, and much wiser than she pretends to be, that the machinery of life has always run much too smoothly about her for her own good, and that a couple of months of prairie life might be the means of introducing her to her ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... individual citizen to keep him in order most of the time. It doesn't, or anyhow it shouldn't, attempt to deal with trifling peccadillos; it generally couldn't. It merely says that if a man's conscience and idea of fair play aren't enough to make him behave himself, why, then, when he gets too obstreperous we'll lock him up. And different generations have had entirely different ideas about what was too obstreperous to be overlooked. In the early days the law only punished bloodshed and violence. Later on, its scope was increased, until thousands ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... Adj. violent, vehement; warm; acute, sharp; rough, rude, ungentle, bluff, boisterous, wild; brusque, abrupt, waspish; impetuous; rampant. turbulent; disorderly; blustering, raging &c. v.; troublous[obs3], riotous; tumultuary[obs3], tumultuous; obstreperous, uproarious; extravagant; unmitigated; ravening, inextinguishable, tameless; frenzied &c. (insane) 503. desperate &c. (rash) 863; infuriate, furious, outrageous, frantic, hysteric, in hysterics. fiery, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus |
