"Abortive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... jumped up, crying, "Wait a moment!" and returned triumphantly with a huge mass of rock-candy — the remains of one of Clifford's abortive ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... in multiplying crude sketches, or finishing their unintelligent embryos of the study, would render them masters of every science that modern investigations have organized, and familiar with every form that Nature manifests. Martin, if the time which he must have spent on the abortive bubbles of his Canute had been passed in working on the seashore, might have learned enough to enable him to produce, with a few strokes, a picture which would have smote like the sound of the sea, upon men's ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... lodge, why you came, how long you mean to stay; with twenty more inquisitive speeches, which to a subject of more liberal governments must necessarily appear impertinent as frivolous, and make all my hopes of bringing home the most trifling presents for a friend abortive. So there is an end of that felicity, and we must sit like the girl at the ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... district, however, and its conversion into a royal demesne had clipped off a large section of his estate, while other parts had been confiscated as a punishment for his supposed complicity in an abortive Saxon rising. The fate of the ancestor had been typical of that of his descendants. During three hundred years their domains had gradually contracted, sometimes through royal or feudal encroachment, and sometimes through such gifts to the Church ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... philosophies in the looms of Germany during the last sixty and odd years, trusting merely to the unrestrained instincts of keen mother-wit—whence should Hazlitt have had the materials for great thinking? It is through the collation of many abortive voyages to polar regions that a man gains his first chance of entering the polar basin, or of running ahead on the true line of approach to it. The very reason for Hazlitt's defect in eloquence as a lecturer, is sufficient also as a reason why he could not have been a comprehensive ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... making it viable in modern conditions. The assemblage of the States in one Union was never intended to put one State at the mercy of another. If, however, well considered programs of legislation are rendered abortive in a State in consequence of the flow of commerce into it from other States, then it becomes the duty—certainly it is within the discretion of Congress—which alone can govern commerce among the States, to supply the required relief. ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... before the Bourbons scuttled out of Paris in 1814, Bourrienne was made Prefet of the Police for a few days, his tenure of that post being signalised by the abortive attempt to arrest Fouche, the only effect of which was to drive that wily minister into the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... World Wars, Lithuania was annexed by the USSR in 1940. In March of 1990, Lithuania became the first of the Soviet republics to declare its independence, but this proclamation was not generally recognized until September of 1991 (following the abortive coup in Moscow). The last Russian troops withdrew in 1993. Lithuania subsequently has restructured its economy for eventual integration into Western ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... kinds of leaves are neither so conspicuous nor so numerous as the foliage leaves. At the base of shoots occur abortive leaves which are really rudimentary sheaths. These are called scales. The third kind of leaf is a modified structure called the prophyll or prophyllum. (See fig. 12.) It is the first leaf occurring in every branch on the side next to the main shoot ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... equally true that the greatest successes grow out of great failures. In numerous instances the result is better that comes after a series of abortive experiences than it would have been if it had come at once. For all these successive failures induce a skill, which is so much additional power working into the final achievement. Nobody passes at once to the mastery, ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... Yes, it was quite as bad as that—death at her own hands was preferable. Balked, outwitted, the plans of the criminal coterie, of which Danglar appeared to be the head, rendered again and again abortive, and believing it all due to the White Moll, all of Danglar's shrewd, unscrupulous cunning would be centered on the task of running her down; and if, added to this, he discovered that she was masquerading as Gypsy Nan, one of their own inner ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... favorable in efforts to carry these institutions into more complete and prosperous operation, than in plans for changing them, or substituting others in their stead. Were it not that such a course would be unjust to individuals, a long and melancholy catalogue might easily be made out, of abortive plans which have sprung up in the minds of young men, in the manner I have described, and which after perhaps temporary success, have resulted in partial or total failure. These failures are of every kind. Some ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... attained to nearly the full measure of what might have been his faculties. But he recovered enough of them partially to light up his character, to display some outline of the marvellous grace that was abortive in it, and to make him the object of no less deep, although less melancholy interest than heretofore. He was evidently happy. Could we pause to give another picture of his daily life, with all the appliances ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Wirz was one of the terrors of an abortive attempt to escape. When recaptured prisoners were brought before him he would frequently give way to paroxysms of screaming rage, so violent as to closely verge on insanity. Brandishing the fearful and wonderful revolver—of which I have spoken in such a manner as to threaten the luckless ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... and Marjorie were invited. Lily Pearl's and Helen's attentions to Peggy and Polly having proved abortive, they contrived ways and means of their own to reach the Land o' Heart's Desire. Helen's old bachelor uncle, a queer, dull old gentleman, whose mind was certainly not active, and whom Helen could, figuratively ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... enough to keep us alive. The party who had tried to sink a well had invariably been stopped by hard limestone rock in every place they had tried, and all their attempts to penetrate it by means of a cold chisel and pickaxe had proved abortive. The party which had been out with me searching for water had not seen the slightest sign which indicated its presence on the island: we had taken a spade with us, but wherever we dug had come down upon the solid rock. Under these circumstances ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... she was much perplexed as to Henchard's motives in opening the matter at all; for in such cases we attribute to an enemy a power of consistent action which we never find in ourselves or in our friends; and forget that abortive efforts from want of heart are as possible to revenge as ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... their design had proved abortive, went directly to their place of rendezvous, and told his troop that they had lost their labor, and must return to their cave. He himself set them the example, and they all ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... was conciliatory. He wrote a pleasant letter to the town and despatched a councillor thither, who would, he assured them, arrange matters to their satisfaction. But an abortive coup d'etat on the part of the Burgundians, which would have given them possession of Basel, destroyed the effect of these reassuring phrases. The burghers were warned in time, looked to their defences, and banished from their midst every individual suspected of Burgundian sympathies. ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... 'tis so, my dear friend; I am at Besancon, while you thought I was traveling. I would not tell you anything till success should begin, and now it is dawning. Yes, my dear Leopold, after so many abortive undertakings, over which I have shed the best of my blood, have wasted so many efforts, spent so much courage, I have made up my mind to do as you have done—to start on a beaten path, on the highroad, as the longest but the safest. I can ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... BROOK FARM, an abortive literary community organised on Fourier's principles, 8 m. from Boston, U.S., by George Ripley in 1840; Nathaniel Hawthorne was one of the community, and wrote an ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... some ground for thinking that this volume was utilized, or to be utilized, for the process of the canonization of Henry VI which proved abortive. ...
— Henry the Sixth - A Reprint of John Blacman's Memoir with Translation and Notes • John Blacman
... the valley, in the mountains around, and the country outside were visited by soldiers or spies—every spot likely to harbour the fugitives. Pickets were placed everywhere and patrols despatched, riding the roads by night as by day, all proving abortive. ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... it was necessary to find additional help, to escape in safety, and not bring both him and myself to destruction. At length we came to the following determination, which, however, after eight months' incessant labour, rendered my whole project abortive. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... Protector and Council had been commensurate. The projected Overton revolt in Scotland and the Wildman-Sexby plot in England having been brought to nothing, the Royalists had to act for themselves. Two abortive risings in March, 1654-5, exhausted their energy. One was in Yorkshire, where Sir Henry Slingsby and Sir Richard Malevrier appeared in arms, but were immediately suppressed. The other was in the West, and was more serious. On the night ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... (for his forethought extends thus far), he proportions it solely to their moral and religious attributions (overlooking, by the way, even their medical); and leaves nobody with any time to cultivate the sciences, except abortive candidates for the priestly office, who having been refused admittance into it for insufficiency in moral excellence or in strength of character, may be thought worth retaining as "pensioners" of the sacerdotal order, on ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... have been caught by the hand. Neither was it surprising that innumerable shots were fired, by both sportsmen, without a single bird being a whit the worse for it, or themselves much the better; the energetic efforts made to hit being rendered abortive by the very eagerness which caused them to miss. And this was the less extraordinary, too, when it is remembered that Harry in his haste loaded several times without shot, and Charley rendered the ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... had seen his obituary notice in a New York paper with a horrible relief. He had died quite suddenly in one of the pneumonia winters. But Gladys Mann and her possession of the secret troubled her. Gladys Mann, as she remembered her, had been such a slight, almost abortive character. She asked herself if she could keep such a secret, if she would have sense enough to do so. Gladys had married, too, a man of her own sort, who worked fitfully, and spent most of his money in carousing with John Dorsey and her father. ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... reverse to this picture? Are there no drawbacks to this success? Is there no chapter of abortive plans, of unfaithful agents, of surgeons and attendants appropriating or squandering charitable gifts? These are questions which are often honestly asked, and the doubts which they express or awaken have cooled the zeal and slackened the industry of many an earnest worker. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... of the baptismal charge across the line of white posts, had been the first out of the redoubt on to the glacis in that abortive effort, living up to the bronze cross on his breast. He was one of the half dozen out of the score that had started to return alive. The psychology of war had transformed his gallantry; it had passed from simulation to reality, thanks to his established conviction that he led a charmed ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... that Sedgwick had full possession of the town, and Gibbon and Howe had returned from their abortive attempt to turn the enemy's flanks, the sun was some two hours high. As the works could not be captured by surprise, Sedgwick was reduced to the alternative of assaulting ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... pursuit was abortive. Colonel Lewis, with his two battalions, followed a line of advance which led south of the zeriba, and just before reaching the river bank found and fired upon a few Dervishes retreating through the scrub. All the cavalry ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... whole was the flayed caricature of a man done so cunningly that through the abortive hideousness of its outlines, its ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... thing, I—Coocooroo—Keekee-ree—And the theory? The dynamic theory? Cock-a—I am all tangled up in schools and rules and rubbish! If he reduced his flight to a theory, what eagle would ever soar? Co—[Trying again, and ending in a raucous, abortive crow.] Co—I cannot sing any more, I, whose method was not to know how, but be quite certain why! [In a cry, of despair.] I have nothing left! They have taken everything from me, my song and everything else. How shall ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... sagacity. When the Southern States were on the eve of secession and the temper of the country was on trial, he had, though with honest intentions, shown signs of irresolution and vacillation. When he was betrayed into the ill-advised and abortive peace negotiations with Southern commissioners at Niagara, he had displayed the lack of tact and penetration which made the people doubt the solidity and coolness of his judgment. His methods of dealing with the most intricate problems of finance seemed experimental and rash. The ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... Company. These patents expire in about two months, and the lecturer explained that an attempt made by the German manufacturers to further monopolize this industry (even after the expiry of the patent) proved abortive. He also stated that alizarine, 20 per cent. quality, is sold to-day at 2s 6d. per lb., but that if the price were reduced by one-half there will still be a handsome profit to makers, and that the United Kingdom is the largest consumer, absorbing one-third ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... insults. The climax came when Nerba refused to give back my mother's ring, which he had upon him. In a passion I seized a knife that was lying by me, and leaped upon Nerba, the ruffian who, besides, had fired at me and had held me by the hair while my eyes were being burnt prior to my abortive execution. Wilson and Karak Sing seized and disarmed me, but there was a general stampede of the Tibetan officers, and thus our interview and negotiations were ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... of the pardon has proved abortive and ridiculous, and since the fact of his breach of the 'word of honour' can no longer be denied, their tone is changed. As usual, I am abused, not for the wrong I did, but for the wrong which has been ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... not seeing, apparently, that individualized women, old maids, and individualized men, old bachelors, though they may be useful in certain minor ways, are, after all, to speak with the relentlessness of science, fragmentary and abortive, so far as the great scheme of the universe is concerned, and often become, in addition, seriously detrimental to the right progress of society. The man and woman united in marriage form the unit of the race; they alone rightly wield the self-perpetuating ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... friend, your abortive attempt prithee stop," Quoth Jekyll, intent on a joke, "How can you expect to insure, while your shop Is rolling out ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various
... investment, he bequeathed the aggregate amount to the nearest of blood, bearing the name of Ellison, who should be alive at the end of the hundred years. Many attempts had been made to set aside this singular bequest; their ex post facto character rendered them abortive; but the attention of a jealous government was aroused, and a legislative act finally obtained, forbidding all similar accumulations. This act, however, did not prevent young Ellison from entering into possession, on his twenty-first ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... "county of Illinois" to the National domain in 1784. Jefferson's effort to provide for the exclusion of slavery from the new Territory at that date proved abortive. Consequently, when James Lemen arrived at the old French village of Kaskaskia in July, 1786, he found slavery legally entrenched in all the former French possessions in the "Illinois country." It had been introduced by ...
— The Jefferson-Lemen Compact • Willard C. MacNaul
... multitudinous forms they assume. It has been calculated, I need hardly say by a German professor, that the possible number of derivatives from one given name is 6, 000, but fortunately most of the seeds are abortive. ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... and convicted. And by degrees the desire for vengeance slackened as the desire for gain resumed its sway. Many men have threatened to spend a property upon a lawsuit who have afterwards felt grateful that their threats were made abortive. And so it was with Mr. Mason. After remaining in town over a month he took the advice of the first of those new lawyers and allowed that gentleman to put himself in communication with Mr. Furnival. The result was that by the end of six months he again ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... true to Christian experience. But repentance—which is sorrow for sin in the light of the Cross—is abortive and merely results in spiritual paralysis unless it issues in confession—that is, frank and open acknowledgment before GOD, and if need be also before His Church—and the seeking and finding of reconciliation and forgiveness as ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... been a general belief that Jaime would take the opportunity of avenging his father's death at Muret. However, no Spanish help was forthcoming; the allies were defeated at Saintes and at Taillebourg and this abortive rising ended in 1243. Guillem de Montanhagol says in a sirventes upon this event, "If King Jaime, with whom we have never broken faith, had kept the agreement which is said to have been made [118] between him and us, the French would certainly ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... civilisation be of a kind to invite such reflection? It will be, if the present movement is not altogether abortive, a civilisation of security, equity, and peace; where there is no indigence, no war, and comparatively little disease. Such society, certainly, will not offer a field for much of the kind of Art that has been or is now being produced. The primitive folk-song, the epic of war, the novel ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... examination into the real facts of the case beforehand; and if the only count allowed—excessively difficult as it continually is to secure perfect accuracy—should prove defective in point of law, the prisoner, though guilty, must either escape scot-free, or become the subject of reiterated and abortive prosecution—a gross scandal to the administration of justice, and grave injury to the interests of society. If these observations be read with attention, and borne in mind, they will afford great assistance in forming ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... Boanerges Cranfill, the champion leg elongator of the universe, finds it hard work to keep fat in the Baptist field—must add professional beggary to his schemes of predacity. You may tie your abortive little paper to the tail of the "Ape," but that animal is too weak in the hinder legs to pull it out of a financial hole. Go plug yourself. Shuck your long-tailed hand-me-down Albert Edward, trade your paper for a double-shovel plow, gird up your yarn galluses and ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... terror-haunted days. A shock, a cry Whose echoes ring the globe—the spectre's laid. Hurled o'er the abyss, see the crowned martyr lie Resting in peace—fear, change, and death gone by. Fit end for nightmare—mist of blood and tears, Red climax to the slow, abortive years. ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... bodies to us lies in the question, What is their history? Can they have been once a single planet broken up? or are they rather an abortive attempt at a planet never yet ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... or later a man's talents, and if not his talents, his tastes, appear through the mists of youth, and henceforth they lead him. Willy's efforts in society had resulted in abortive dinner- parties, his efforts in sport had been cut short by nerves, his efforts in dissipation had left him with a tolerably well-filled wardrobe, his efforts in love had brought him tears and a commonplace mistress, whom he kept in the necessaries ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... American action on German violations of her submarine agreement was suspended. What was the use of a diplomatic rupture with Germany on the eve of peace? But Germany knew that her official "peace kite" was making an abortive flight. Peace she really did not expect, knowing it was not within reach; but she was anxious to preserve friendly relations with the United States, although daily flouting it in her conduct of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... must confess that this religious pursuit of the Life of Reason has been singularly abortive. Those within the pale of each religion may prevail upon themselves to express satisfaction with its results, thanks to a fond partiality in reading the past and generous draughts of hope for the future; but any one regarding the various religions at once ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Easterfearn in Beauly Cathedral concluded this abortive attempt to take the Seaforth estates within the scope of a law sanctioned by statesmen, but against which the natural feelings of ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... is delivered of some one birth or another, and no creature can open its womb sooner, or shut it longer, than the appointed and prefixed season. There is no miscarrying as to him whose decrees do properly conceive them though to us they seem often abortive. Now, join unto this, to make the allusion full, as long as they are carried in the womb of time, they are hid from all the world. The womb is a dark lodging and no understanding nor eye can pierce into it, to tell what is in it, till it break forth, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... deal. Had altitude longitude by then 143 degrees 13 minutes 40 seconds, these agree with the dead reckoning within 3 or 4 miles. Latitude 39 degrees 12 minutes 33 seconds. This weather has again rendered abortive my plan of getting the direct line of bearing and distance between Cape Farewell and Cape Albany Otway. I shall only observe that I never experienced such length of bad weather at any time of year or in any country since ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... be obliged to return now to America, I much fear that all which he has acquired would be rendered abortive. It is true he could there paint very good portraits, but I should grieve to hear at any future period that, on the foundation now laid, he shall have been able to raise no higher superstructure than the fame of a portrait-painter. I do not intend here ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... object. But the analysis of the perception of matter yields as its result, a remote as well as a proximate object. The proximate object is the perception—the remote object is the reality. And thus the analysis of the given fact necessarily renders abortive every endeavour to construct a doctrine of intuitive perception. The attempt must end in representationism. The only basis for a doctrine of intuitive perception which will never give way, is a resolute forbearance from all analysis of the fact. Do not tamper ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... defensive armour of any sort; but on the much-browsed-over suburban commons and in similar exposed spots, where only gorse and blackthorn stand a chance for their lives against the cows and donkeys, it has developed a protected variety in which some of the branches grow abortive, and end abruptly in stout spines like a hawthorn's. Only those rest-harrows have there survived in the sharp struggle for existence which happened most to baffle their ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... Ammocoetes.... At a later period the basis cranii of vertebrate animals contains three parts analogous to the bodies of vertebrae, the most anterior of which, in the majority of animals, is generally small, and its development frequently abortive, whilst in man and mammiferous animals the three are very distinct. These parts are developed by the formation of three distinct points of ossification, one behind the other, in ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... waited restlessly, a week of weary sightseeing and abortive attempts at holiday making. No answer came. On the eighth day he moved on to Vienna and ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... subtle qualities of design. And yet, in the cloisters of St. John Lateran at Rome, you have Greek work, if not contemporary with this at Pisa, yet occupying a parallel place in the history of architecture, which is abortive, and monstrous beyond the power of any words to describe. Vasari knew no difference between these two kinds of Greek work. Nor do your modern architects. To discern the difference between the sculpture of the font of Pisa, and the spandrils of the Lateran cloister, requires thorough training ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... death of Theodosius the Younger, and the accession of Marcian, the husband of Pulcheria, Attila threatened, in 450, both empires. An incursion of his hordes into Gaul was rendered abortive by the conduct of the patrician, AEtius, who, uniting all the various troops of Gaul and Germany, the Saxons, the Burgundians, the Franks, under their Merovingian prince, and the Visigoths under their king, Theodoric, after two important battles, induced the Huns to retreat from the field of Chalons. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... less than four attempts were made to steal the stone from the Paternostros; but as they had learned caution from their unfortunate predecessor's death—to the extent, at least, of keeping such treasure in bank—these attempts were abortive. ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... of Richelieu had been realized at last; and their efforts to throw off the insolent coercion of the great feudal lords had been crowned with complete success. The monarchy could hardly have conjectured how strong it had become but for the abortive resistance and hostility it ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... times, And our deceased grandsires lisp'd thy rhymes; Yet we can sing thee too, and make the lays Which deck thy brow look fresher with thy praise. * * * * * Though these, your happy births, have silent past More years than some abortive wits shall last; He still writes new, who once so well hath sung: That Muse can ne'er be old, which ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.02.23 • Various
... doubt at all, for those who put metre in its proper place, that a very large, perhaps the much larger, part of the appeal of the Lay was metrical. The public was sick of the couplet—had indeed been sickened twice over, if the abortive revolt of Gray and Collins be counted. It did not take, and was quite right in not taking, to the rhymeless, shortened Pindaric of Sayers and Southey, as to anything but an eccentric 'sport' of poetry. What Scott ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... the previous night. I softened down, as much as I could, the fleshiness of Captain Vauvenarde and the rolls of fat at the back of his neck, but I portrayed the villainous physiognomies of his associates very neatly. I concluded by repeating my assertion that our project had proved itself to be abortive. ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... little of everything. How many times have I regarded with poignant compassion that sad work of nature, mutilated by society! How many times have I followed in the darkness the pale and vacillating gleams of a spark flickering in abortive life! How many times have I tried to revive the fire that smouldered under those ashes! Alas! her long hair was the color of ashes, and we ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the perfections of the Deity; that God, being infinitely benevolent, must have desired the happiness of all his offspring; that his infinite wisdom would enable him to form a perfect plan, and his almighty power will secure its accomplishment. They contend that the mission of Christ is abortive on any other plan, and that nothing short of the "restitution of all things" can satisfy the ardent desires of every pious soul. On this system alone can they reconcile the attributes of justice and mercy, and secure to the Almighty a ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... misses fire completely, so that it is no jest at all, but only a jocular intention, they laugh just as heartily. Leave out the point of your story, get the word wrong on the duplicity of which the pun that was to excite hilarity depended, and they still honor your abortive attempt with the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... wretchedly stay at their own miserable homes, destitute of their well-beloved daughters, the fathers cursing the days and the hours wherein they were married, and the mothers howling and crying that it was not their fortune to have brought forth abortive issues when they happened to be delivered of such unfortunate girls, and in this pitiful plight spend at best the remainder of their time with tears and weeping for those their children, of and from whom they expected, (and, with good reason, should have obtained and reaped,) in these latter days ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... ending pieces de resistance were occupying the table, what were called French dishes were, for custom's sake, added to the solid abundance. The French, or side dishes, consisted of very mild but very abortive attempts at Continental cooking, and I have always observed that they met with the neglect and contempt that they merited. The universally adored and ever popular boiled potato, produced at the very earliest ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... source of every kind of evil; they render abortive the most useful enterprises, in like manner as the tares stifle the good grain; they have introduced, even into the hearts of families, dissension, confusion, and hatred. But the pontiff comprehends the grand design of his czar; God alone ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... conclusion. Although the enemy, in more or less force, had been viewed practically every day, it had always been impossible to bring him to close quarters, and the policy of wearing out infantrymen's hearts, tempers, constitutions, and boots in abortive pursuits of mounted enemies was, and in the light of all that we now know still is, open to question, for a reference to the Times history of the war shows that all our wanderings and meanderings are summed up in very few sentences, the most pregnant of which ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... abolish it among the blacks, who are struck with the pomp of our religious ceremonies: they would be much more inclined to the Catholic religion, if it tolerated polygamy, a habit which will inevitably render all the efforts of the Missionaries abortive, as long as they commence their instruction by ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... weeks the abortive Bloemfontein Conference had been holding its useless sessions; the political world seemed so unsettled, and war appeared so exceedingly likely, that we decided to return to Cape Town, especially as Mr. Rhodes, who was expected out from England almost immediately, had cabled asking us to stay ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... is more than a personal interest attached to these writings of Mrs. Shelley's. The fact that the same mind which had revelled, a few years earlier, in the fantastical horrors of Frankenstein's abortive creation, could now dwell on the melancholy fate of Proserpine or the humorous disappointment of Midas, and delight in their subtle poetical or moral symbolism—this fact has its significance. It is one of the earliest indications of ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... London better than John Steele: its darksome streets and foul alleys, its hovels and various habitations. And this knowledge he utilized to the best advantage, always to find that his efforts came to naught. The snares he set before possible hiding-places proved abortive; the artifices he employed to uncover the quarry in maze or labyrinth were fruitless. The man had appeared like a vision from the past, and vanished. Whither? Out of the country, once more? Over the seas? Had he taken quick alarm at Steele's words, ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... emphasis and significant eyes—as that Bampton preacher not long ago, who assured us, apropos of the resurrection of the body, that 'all attempts to resuscitate the inanimate corpse by natural methods had hitherto been experimentally abortive.' I go into the place where degrees are given—the Convocation, I think—and there one hears a deal of unmeaning Latin for hours, graces, dispensations, and proctors walking up and down for nothing; all in order to keep up a sort of ghost of things passed away for centuries, ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... her and went back,—not to the study in which he was wont, when at Matching, to work with his private Secretary,—but to a small inner closet of his own, in which many a bitter moment was spent while he thought over that abortive system of decimal coinage by which he had once hoped to make himself one of the great benefactors of his nation, revolving in his mind the troubles which his wife brought upon him, and regretting the golden inanity of the coronet which in the very ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... of some alleviation in no long time opened upon me; but this my usual ill fortune rendered abortive. The keeper once more made his appearance, and with his former constitutional and ambiguous humanity. He pretended to be surprised at my want of every accommodation. He reprehended in strong terms my attempt to escape, and observed, that there must be an end of civility ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... "Silence" and the "Unknown." She was the wife of Count de Valmont, and mother of Florian, "the foundling of the forest." In order to come into the property, Baron Longueville used every endeavor to kill Eugenia and Florian, but all his attemps were abortive, and his villainy at length was brought to light.—W. Dimond, The ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... the leadership among the river towns. As early as 1839 there had been a project for a highway bridge; and we are told that "the city fathers stood aghast" at an estimated cost of $736,600. In the following years there were several more abortive schemes for bridging, one of which, it is even said, would have been carried out, had not its projector died. Perhaps it is as well that he never lived to try it, for until Eads no one seems to have realized how enormous the undertaking was. ...
— James B. Eads • Louis How
... now, especially in dramatic, or, as they term it, stage-poetry, nothing but ribaldry, profanation, blasphemy, all license of offence to God and man is practised. I dare not deny a great part of this, and am sorry I dare not, because in some men's abortive features (and would they had never boasted the light) it is over-true; but that all are embarked in this bold adventure for hell, is a most uncharitable thought, and, uttered, a more malicious slander. For my particular, I can, and from a most clear conscience, affirm, that ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... and untenable theories regarding the resurrection of our Lord are cited as examples of the numerous abortive attempts to explain away the greatest miracle and the most glorious fact of history. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is attested by evidence more conclusive than that upon which rests our acceptance of historical events in general. Yet the testimony ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... of the fort was at last cleared of snow. It was now ready, waiting for the elements to render abortive in a few short hours the labour of many days. Julyman and Steve had spent the brief daylight in setting up a snow-break before the open sheds which housed the sleds and canoes. Oolak was at the quarters of the train dogs at the back of the store. These were his charge. He drove ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... and Harman, were reserved to fates not less abortive and wretched. The first entered the navy as surgeon-mate, but was discharged for drunkenness. He died in penury, an outcast. Harman became a portrait painter in New York, but he lost his strength of body and mind, and finally perished in an almshouse on Blackwell's Island. His body lies ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... of the story was now known, to ascertain that it came from Robertson; and from the date, it appeared to have been written about the time when Andrew Wilson (called for a nickname Handie Dandie) and he were meditating their first abortive attempt to escape, which miscarried in the manner mentioned in ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... in the desert, reducing us to save our lives by the speed of our horses;—not that he had stirred up the Maronites to attack us upon this very occasion, had I not brought up unexpectedly so many Arabs as rendered the scheme abortive;—not for any or all of these crimes does he now lie there, although each were deserving such a doom;—but because, scarce half-an-hour ere he polluted our presence, as the simoom empoisons the atmosphere, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... reprisals are fair in an enemy's camp, I proceeded to strip the slain; and with some little difficulty—partly, indeed, owing to my unsteadiness on my legs—I succeeded in denuding the worthy alderman, who gave no other sign of life during the operation than an abortive effort to "hip, hip, hurra," in which I left him, having put on the spoil, and set out on my way the the barrack with as much dignity of manner as I could assume in honour of my costume. And here I may mention (en parenthese) ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... was written; but the manuscript, thrown aside, was mentioned in the Dedicatory Preface to "Our Old Home" as an "abortive project." As will be found explained in the Introductory Notes to "The Dolliver Romance" and "The Ancestral Footstep," that phase of the same general design which was developed in the "Dolliver" was intended to take the place of this unfinished ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... necessity, however, of subordinating everything to the supreme purpose of this book, which is to endeavour to show how light can be let into the heart of Darkest England, compels me to pass rapidly over this department of the subject, merely glancing as I go at the well-meaning, but more or less abortive, attempts to cope with this great and ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... on the spots steadied for the moment, dodged moving logs, trod those not yet under way, and so arrived on solid ground. The jam itself started with every indication of meaning business, gained momentum for a hundred feet, and then plugged to a standstill. The "break" was abortive. ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... no root sprouts or suckers to spring up since such a condition prevents the bearing of nuts. I followed his advice with my two Jones hybrids and removed all surplus sprouts. This resulted in more abundant flowers and some abortive involucres but still no nuts developed. In the spring of 1940, I systematically fertilized numerous pistillate flowers of these plants with a pollen mixture. On the branches so treated, a fairly good crop of nuts similar to those ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... of 6,000 killed. The same night they attacked positions corresponding at the villages of Guzow, Radziwillow, Msczonow, and Rawa. In every place they were beaten back with heavy losses. The estimates from various sources, some official, state that their losses for the single night's abortive fighting, giving them nowhere an advance of a single yard of territory, were assuredly not fewer than 30,000 dead on the ground and three times as many wounded or dead within their ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... by the ears, using his gray-seal device both as an added barb and that no innocent bystander of the underworld, innocent for once, might be involved—he had meant to laugh at them and puzzle them to the verge of madness, for in the last analysis they would find only an abortive attempt at crime—and he had succeeded. And then he had gone too far—and he had been caught—by HER. That string of pearls, which, to study whose effect facetiously, he had so idiotically wrapped around his wrist, and which, ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... Univ. Studies, XVII.)] had gained great impetus under the efforts of those who wished to turn the tide of western commerce to the Potomac River. The innate difficulties of the task, even more than the opposition of Baltimore, rendered abortive the efforts of the Potomac Company to make the river navigable above tide-water. But in 1823 public interest in Virginia and Maryland was aroused by the plan of a great canal to run alongside of the Potomac to its upper streams, and thence to connect with the Monongahela or Youghiogheny in ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... Washington as practically closing the submarine controversy, and the German war-cloud, which had assumed serious proportions, gradually passed away. ABORTIVE REVOLT ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... pressure may vary greatly, from 10 to 20 mm. or more, and a ventricular contraction may not be of sufficient power to open the semilunar valves. Such beats will show an intermittency in the blood pressure reading as well as in the radial pulse. The succeeding heart beats after abortive beats or after a contraction of less power have increased force, and consequently give the highest blood pressure. Kilgore urges that these highest pressures should not be taken as the true systolic blood pressure, but the average of a series of these varying ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... case of nerves divided in an amputation, there is an active, although necessarily abortive, attempt at regeneration, which results in the formation of bulbous swellings at the cut ends of the nerves. When there has been suppuration, and especially if the nerves have been cut so as to be exposed in the wound, these bulbous swellings may attain ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... frightened me with your 'Shepherds-tell-me' air and tone. Lead me to one of your garden-seats: out of hearing to Dr. Middleton, I beg. He mesmerizes me, he makes me talk Latin. I was curiously susceptible last night. I know I shall everlastingly associate him with an abortive entertainment and solos on big instruments. We ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... arrogant, egotistical, overweening, vainglorious; nugatory, fruitless, ineffectual, frustrate, unavailing, bootless, futile, abortive, ineffective, empty; delusive, chimerical, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... beyond their means. The physicians asserted that the demands of the drug-vendors were extortionate, and were not reduced to meet the finances of the applicants, to the end that the undertakings of benevolence might prove abortive. This was, of course, absurd. The apothecaries knew their own interests better than to oppose a system which at least rendered drug-consuming fashionable with the lower orders. Perhaps they regarded the poor ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... France especially she kept an eye of deep distrust. When, in 1541, Cartier and Roberval essayed to plant a colony in the part of ancient Spanish Florida now called Canada, she sent spies and fitted out caravels to watch that abortive enterprise. Her fears proved just. Canada, indeed, was long to remain a solitude; but, despite the Papal bounty gifting Spain with exclusive ownership of a hemisphere, France and Heresy at length took root in the sultry forests of ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... Yeas. The Ministers gave in their Arguments yesterday, else it had hardly gon, because several have married their wives sisters, and the Deputies thought it hard to part them. 'Twas concluded on the other hand, that not to part them, were to make the Law abortive, by begetting in people a conceipt that such Marriages were not against the ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... miles above Albany. Here his progress was interrupted by the American army, being halted and reinforced a little below him. This circumstance, with the following events, have continued that interruption, and bid fair to render abortive, at least, the great advantages expected by our enemies from their ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... dinner-tins were put away quickly. On deck we discussed the incident in whispers. Some showed a chuckling exultation. Many looked grave. Wamibo, after long periods of staring dreaminess, attempted abortive smiles; and one of the young Scandinavians, much tormented by doubt, ventured in the second dog-watch to approach Singleton (the old man did not encourage us much to speak to him) and ask sheepishly:—"You ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... high and low, the municipal officers, and the military commanders had all become extremely remiss in their duty, and presuming upon this impunity showed a pernicious indulgence to the rebels and their adherents which rendered abortive all the regent's measures of coercion. This general indifference and corruption of so many servants of the state had further this injurious result, that it led the turbulent to reckon on far stronger support than in reality they had cause for, and to count on their own side all ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a very welcome interruption. And, upon the whole, she liked her grandson. She had paid his gambling-debts twice, she had taken the greatest interest in his various duels, and sided passionately with him in one abortive love-affair. ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... swinging the hammer with a will, discharged a smashing blow on his own knuckles. With admirable presence of mind he crushed down an oath and substituted the harmless comment, "Butter fingers!" But the pain was sharp, his nerve was shaken, and after an abortive trial he found he must desist ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... if it were to be first rased from his book (as just so much of nothing to the purpose) how little would remain to give the trouble of an answer! To which let me add, that the spirit or genius, which animates the whole, is plainly perceived to be nothing else but the abortive malice of an old neglected man,[8] who hath long lain under the extremes of obloquy, poverty and contempt; that have soured his temper, and made him fearless. But where is the merit of being bold, to a man that is secure of impunity to his person, and ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... son, thy father favours him. Richard, that vile abortive changeling brat, And Fauconbridge, are fallen at Henry's feet. They woo for him, but entreat my son Gloster may die for ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... been happening in the world of London since the discovery of that abortive Gunpowder Treason; and, in the first panic, the name of Trevlyn had freely been whispered abroad. Sir Richard's friends had trembled for him, and had counselled him to keep perfectly quiet and let the evil whisper die a ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... It would take up a larger volume than this whole work is intended to be, to set down all the contrivances I hatched, or rather brooded upon, in my thoughts, for the destroying these creatures, or at least frightening them so as to prevent their coming hither any more: but all this was abortive; nothing could be possible to take effect, unless I was to be there to do it myself: and what could one man do among them, when perhaps there might be twenty or thirty of them together, with their darts, or their bows and arrows, with which they could shoot as true to a mark as I could ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... the facts are eminently illustrative of the history of Ireland at that period, and of the character and abilities of one of her most distinguished sons, I shall relate the circumstances. Several Protestant gentlemen in the neighbourhood of Doneraile, had been making those abortive efforts to "convert" their tenants from Popery, which usually end in no small amount of ill-feeling on both sides; another of these gentlemen, with equal zeal and equal want of common sense and common humanity, had devoted himself to hunting out real or ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... Confederation. The absolute refusal of Massachusetts to enter on such an undertaking so prolonged the discussion that the war was over before a decision was reached; but Connecticut seized the Dutch lands at Hartford, and Roger Ludlow, who had moved to Fairfield from Windsor after 1640, began an abortive military campaign of his own. The situation remained unchanged as long as the Dutch held New Netherland, and the region between Greenwich and the Bronx continued to be what it had been from the beginning of settlement, a territory occupied only by Indians and a few straggling emigrants. There ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... attract foreign Protestants, were laid out on the great rivers of the colony. As they were located in the middle region, east of the fall line, among pine barrens, or in malarial lands in the southern corner of the colony, they all proved abortive as towns, except Orangeburg[96:5] on the North Edisto, where German redemptioners made a settlement. The Scotch-Irish Presbyterians who came to Williamsburg, on Black River, suffered hardships; as did the Swiss who, under the visionary leadership of Purry, settled in the deadly ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... head wife of the late chief, Secocoeni. This tribe, it will be remembered, was the one which successfully resisted the Boers under President Burger and Commandant Paul Kruger—a successful resistance which was one of the troubles leading directly to the abortive annexation of the Transvaal. The Secocoeni tribe were afterwards conquered by British troops, and handed over to the tender mercies of the Boer Government upon the restoration ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... to add here, of other subsequent attempts of the same nature, that no real hope for the complete resurrection of Ireland could be looked to from such abortive and stillborn conspiracies; especially when the alliance entered into by some of them with the revolutionary party of European socialists and atheists is taken into account, men from whom nothing but disorder, anarchy, and crime, can be expected. Thus, ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... the New-York Gazette of Sept. 18) declares that "the plot has been entirely exploded, which was shallow; and, had the attempt been made to carry it into execution, but little resistance would have been required to render the scheme entirely abortive." But it is necessary to remember that this is no more than the Charleston newspapers said at the very crisis of Denmark Vesey's formidable plot. "Last evening," wrote a lady from Charleston in 1822, "twenty-five hundred of our citizens were under arms to guard our property ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the expedition abortive in its principal object, but most materially affected the condition of each particular ship, and none so fatally as the Wager, who being an old Indiaman, bought into the service upon this occasion, was now fitted out as a man of war: But being made to serve as a store-ship, was deeply ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... they mark off the hours that weigh so heavily and seem never-ending, or the happy hours that go all too quickly. I love clocks so much myself that it always astonishes me to go into a room where there is none, or, if there is, it is one of those abortive, exaggerated, gilded clocks that are falsely labeled "French" and sold at a great price in the shops. Somehow, one never expects a clock of this kind to keep time—it is bought as an ornament and if it runs at all it wheezes, or gasps, or makes a dreadful noise, ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... a head?' asked I. But I knew he meant an abortive sketch of Phillis, which had not been successful enough for him to complete it ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... estate in the country. His character was mild and pleasing, his deportment correct and faultless. By his eloquence everyone was charmed, and many were persuaded, but even his great and subtle powers in argument were abortive here. Through his daughter, Polly Carroll, he became associated afterwards with the most dignified circles of the British aristocracy. In the year 1809 two of his grand-daughters were celebrated beauties in the most exclusive social circles of Washington and Baltimore. The eldest, during a tour ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... disqualified from voting under these special enactments, even though this bill became a law at this very session. Charters have been created with that provision retained, and they would make this bill abortive and largely inoperative. A still more objectionable feature, and one deliberately inserted, is the clause debarring women from the right to hold office. If the word "male" had been stricken out of the code, and no other action taken, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... other religious bodies, in so far as they have claimed authority for their teaching, have consciously or unconsciously attempted to be likewise; only the Catholic Church represents success, where the others represent failure: and thus these, from the Catholic stand-point, are abortive and incomplete Catholicisms. The Bethesda of human faith is world-wide and as old as time; only in one particular spot an angel has come down and troubled it; and the waters have been circling there, thenceforth, in a healing vortex. Such ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... partial risings have marked French life. Why none of them should have culminated I will consider in a moment. Meanwhile, the foreign observer will do well to note the character of these movements, abortive though they were. It is like standing upon the edge of a crater and watching the heave and swell of the vast energies below. There may have been no actual eruption for some time, but the activities of the volcano and its nature are certain to you as you gaze. The few days that passed two ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... them is proved by the desperate but abortive attempts they made to break through in the second ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... Thuc. iv. 58 foll. as the chief agent in bringing the Sicilian States together in conference at Gela B.C. 424, with a view to healing their differences and combining to frustrate the dangerous designs of Athens. In 415 B.C., when the attack came, he was again the master spirit in rendering it abortive (Thuc. vi. 72 foll.) In 412 B.C. it was he who urged the Sicilians to assist in completing the overthrow of Athens, by sending a squadron to co-operate with the Peloponnesian navy—for the relief of ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... Emperor first turned his attention in 777, when he was invited by the discontented emirs on the north of the Ebro to free them from the Caliph of Cordova. The next year saw his abortive march through the pass of Roncesvalles to the walls of Saragossa—an expedition immortalised in the Chanson de Roland, the earliest and most famous epic of the Charlemagne cycle, but fabulous from first to last, except in recording the fact that there was ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... so far elapsed, and the horrid situation so truly loathsome, that Mr. Lithgow waited with anxious expectation for the day, which, by putting an end to his life, would also end his torments. But his melancholy expectations were, by the interposition of Providence, happily rendered abortive, and his deliverance obtained from ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... communication with provinces of the extreme south. His object was to tap the rice-fields of Central China and obtain a food supply which could not be interfered with by those daring sea-robbers, the redoubtable Japanese, who had destroyed his fleets and rendered abortive his attempt at conquest. Of the Great Wall, it may be said that the oppression inseparable from its construction hastened the overthrow of the house of its builder. The same is probably true of the Grand Canal. The myriads of unpaid labourers who were drafted by corvee ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... luck, and declared he would never forgive himself for having advised the young man to embark in the cursed speculations. But Sheldon begged him not to be unnecessarily distressed, as it was no fault of his that the schemes proved abortive; and the good doctor finally coincided, and settled down to his oranges with ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... imagined Frances did not know of her mother's efforts to tidy Gilbert, but very early in their engagement she began her own abortive attempts to make him brush his hair, tie his tie straight and avoid made-up ones, attend to the buttons on his coat, and all the rest. It would seem that for a time at any rate he made some efforts, but evidently simply regarded the whole thing as ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... imagine how I should be able to support myself, unless I fed upon snails and other insects, which they offered, by many learned arguments, to evince that I could not possibly do. One of these virtuosi seemed to think that I might be an embryo, or abortive birth. But this opinion was rejected by the other two, who observed my limbs to be perfect and finished; and that I had lived several years, as it was manifest from my beard, the stumps whereof they plainly discovered through a magnifying glass. They would not allow me to be a dwarf, ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... This abortive attempt to make a skyrocket out of Lindsley's cabin wrought only good to Emilia at first. The father was now wholly in love with the trapper. He praised ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... commanded the winds, he healed the sick,—all in direct opposition to human philosophy and so-called natural science. He annulled the laws of matter, showing them to be laws of mortal mind, not of God. He showed the need of changing this mind and its abortive laws. He demanded a change of consciousness and evidence, and effected this change through the higher laws of God. The palsied hand moved, despite the boastful sense of physical law and order. Jesus stooped not to human consciousness, ...
— Unity of Good • Mary Baker Eddy
... Smith, who had frequently visited them, an outlet must surely be found. The choice of this crew, little accustomed to discipline, could not be doubtful. In order not to render the outlay of the Company completely abortive, Hudson was obliged to make for the Faroe Islands, to descend southward as low as 44 degrees, and to search on the coast of America for the strait, of the existence of which he had been assured. On July 18th, he disembarked on the continent, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... gesture whisked a couple of attentive waiters to the table, and in the twinkling of an eye—even an American eye—a place was laid for the Prince, with duplicates of all our abortive wine glasses. ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... grass for a long distance, and you find them not, and will be surprised when your western friend tells you that these are the voices of the prairie hens, miles away, holding their annual convention, the queer cuckooing not being loving sounds, but notes of war—abortive attempts at crowing, which the rival males set up as they prepare to ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... children who were born just before 1870 grew up in an atmosphere of patriotic mourning and amidst the discouragement of defeat. National life, such as it became reconstituted after that terrible shock, revealed to them on all sides nothing but abortive hopes, paltry struggles of interest, and a society without any other hierarchy but that of money, and without other principle or ideal than the pursuit of material enjoyment. Literature ... reflected these same tendencies; it was ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... that we are not wrong in believing in our own existence or that of an external world, or did we attempt to establish the trustworthiness of our faculties by resolving it into the veracity of God, our effort must needs be as abortive as it is superfluous, since it involves the necessity not only of proving the fact, but of proving the proof itself, and that, too, by the aid of the very faculties whose trustworthiness is in question! There are ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... winged with joy, had been the expedition of Delvile to open to him his plan, than was his own, though only goaded by desperation, to make some effort with Cecilia for rendering it abortive. Nor could all his self-denial, the command which he held over his passions, nor the rigour with which his feelings were made subservient to his interest, in this sudden hour of trial, avail to preserve his equanimity. The refinements of hypocrisy, and the arts of insinuation, ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... Dublin, for burial. "When they laid him on the ground," the narrative continues, "the coffin was observed to stir, on which he was taken up, and by giving him some nourishment he came to himself, and is likely to do well." Whether this sailor was ever pressed, either before or after his abortive decease, we are not informed; but there is on record at least one well-authenticated instance of that calamity overtaking a person who had passed the bourne whence ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... eloquent and ferocious invective had contributed to the sudden death of Lord Stanhope, and who had since that time devoted himself to the service of James Stuart on the Continent, and actually fought as a volunteer in the ranks of the Spanish army at the abortive siege of Gibraltar. It is to the credit of the sincerer and better supporters of the Stuart cause that they would not even still consent to regard it as wholly lost. They kept their eyes fixed on England, and every murmur of national discontent ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... speak to a god. Even after he had grown up, his mother had continued to treat him like a baby. She had never got over examining his face and his ears and his fingernails to make sure that he had cleaned them properly. He couldn't so much as comb his hair to suit her; all through his abortive attempt at college, and later at a job, she ...
— Divinity • William Morrison
... her abortive attempt to break away, Gyp, with much heart-searching, wrote to Daphne Wing, telling her of Fiorsen's illness, and mentioning a cottage near Mildenham, where—if she liked to go—she would be quite comfortable and safe from all curiosity, and finally begging to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Boers and fervent Imperialism, and I was therefore always a little doubtful as to his real sentiments. He came very kindly on this occasion to pay a friendly call, but also to inform me that he was playing a prominent part in the abortive peace negotiations which at that stage of the war were being freely talked about. Whether he had acted on his own initiative, or whether he had actually been employed by the authorities, he did not state; but he seemed to be full of importance, and proud of the fact that ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... the frailties of all mankind and the Court in particular, I should say as thou art her rightful guardian and the suitor chosen of her father, and 'twas thy wish for her immediate espousal, 'twould best serve thee to use all manner of means to gain her consent, and if this prove abortive, I would abduct the maid and have thy Chaplain ready to marry thee to her; and after he pronounces thee man and wife, what can she do but love thee straightway for thy strong handling; 'tis the way of women. I would marry such a beauty in haste, ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne |
