"Fretted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that name painted clear across her belly," Johnny fretted. "But if I went and painted it out it would all be black, and that would be just as bad. And if I took off the letters with something, I'm afraid I'd eat off the sizing too, or weaken the fabric or something. I ought to recover the wings, but ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... If the delay fretted the Maid's spirit, she never spoke with anger or impatience; much of her time was spent in a little chapel in the crypt of the church at Vaucouleurs, where stood an image of Our Lady, before which she would kneel sometimes for hours together in rapt devotion. ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... glass, rare porcelains, medals, rough metal work, manuscript, a scroll of music, a pot of growing flowers, and—and—(this seemed oddest of all) a row of electric buttons, which Mr. Gryce no sooner touched than the light which had been burning redly in the cage of fretted ironwork overhead changed in a twinkling to a greenish glare, filling the room with such ghastly tints that Mr. Gryce sought in haste another button, and, pressing it, was glad to see a mild white radiance take the place of the sickly hue which ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... old high-pitched roof, shaking the water from her black locks as she ran, like a Skye terrier escaped from his bath. This attic was Maggie's favorite retreat on a wet day, when the weather was not too cold; here she fretted out all her ill humors, and talked aloud to the worm-eaten floors and the worm-eaten shelves, and the dark rafters festooned with cobwebs; and here she kept a Fetish which she punished for all her misfortunes. This was the trunk of a large wooden doll, which once stared with the roundest of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... on the shoulder with a familiar air and say to him: "Do you notice that enchanting smile? It is a grin of hatred." And then the demon would strut about like one of the captains in the old comedies of Hardy. He would twitch the folds of a lace mantle and endeavor to make new the fretted tinsel and spangles of its former glory. And then like Rabelais he would burst into loud and unrestrainable laughter, and would trace on the street-wall a word which might serve as a pendant to the "Drink!" which was the only ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... Wrinkles fretted through some oaths. "How in thunder do I know?" The divan creaked as he turned his face to ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane
... prodigious to them than the grandest remote episode in the world's history which they had got at second hand and by hearsay. It amuses me now when I recall how our elders talked then. They fumed and fretted in a ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... are still left to expect mainly of Nature not only the germs of capacity, but the maturing of them; the latter, a work which Education surely ought to be competent to. Meanwhile, like a wearied and fretted pedagogue, Education complains of the bad materials Nature gives her, when she ought to be questioning whether she has yet learned to bring out the excellence of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... confederates. Men seemed to hold their breath, as if absorbed in the expectation of some great catastrophe. The day was magnificent. A light breeze, still adverse to the Turks, played on the waters, somewhat fretted by contrary winds. It was nearly noon; and as the sun, mounting through a cloudless sky, rose to the zenith, he seemed to pause, as if to look down on the beautiful scene, where the multitude of galleys, moving over the water, showed like a holiday spectacle rather ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... of mind might, indeed, be summed up by a thing that he once said to me in a period of political calm in the middle of August in the 'nineties. "Strachey, I wish something dramatic would happen." He went on to explain how he was fretted almost beyond endurance by the dullness of the world. And yet I often wonder whether even he might not have found the last six years almost too highly "accidented" even for him. But I know one thing. If he had the anxious mind developed to the highest point, he was essentially a brave ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... honour from pursuing his own advantage. He was a merchant and was open to be dealt with. What was offered to him was not much; but, when more was not to be got, he accepted it, and sought to forget the ambition that fretted him, and his chagrin at occupying a position so near to power and yet so powerless, amidst his always accumulating piles of gold. But the conference at Luca changed the state of matters also for him; with the view of still ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... solitary hearth. A drear, single man's room it was, from wall to wall, despite its fretted ceilings and official pomp of Bramah escritoires and red boxes. Drear and cheerless—no trace of woman's habitation—no vestige of intruding, happy children. There stood the austere man alone. And then with a deep ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... issues smiling from the fatal door, And buys with lavish hand his yearly store Till his small borrowings will yield no more. Aye, as each year declined, With bitter heart and ever-brooding mind He mourned his fate unkind. In dust, in rain, with might and main, He nursed his cotton, cursed his grain, Fretted for news that made him fret again, Snatched at each telegram of Future Sale, And thrilled with Bulls' or Bears' alternate wail — In hope or fear alike for ever pale. And thus from year to year, through hope and fear, With many a curse and ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... transportation assumed a greater importance than at the present moment. The colonists are fretted by the vacillation of her Majesty's government, but they are anxious to know that their honor and happiness are compatible with their present political relations. The plantation of new colonies in our ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... regular temper. She buried her face in the clothes, and though I tried pinching her, and pulling her, and petting her even, not another word would she utter. Now, you must see for yourself, Gwin, that if this sort of thing goes on I shall have to return home, and then the old dad will be fretted, and he will think that I don't want to learn manners nor to get learning into me. Oh dear, I don't want to fret him, although I hate England. I have just been wondering if you would speak ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... heavy pallid ghost, for we two also are all white. I had placed my shoulder-bag on the other side of the parapet, and it looks as if wrapped in paper. In the bottom of the hole a little snow floats, fretted and gray in the black foot-bath. Outside the hole, on the piled-up things, in the excavations, upon the crowded dead, snow ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... except that he was helping Madge, Gregory, like a man in a dream, was pulling with her on the halyards of both sails. The wind thundered in them as they rose; the main boom jerked violently at the sheet and lashed to and fro the width of the deck; the anchor chain fretted and sawed in the hawse hole; the whole schooner strained and creaked and shook to the keelson. Gregory, in amazement, asked Madge ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... see that Clyffurde had every attention, every care, every comfort that human sympathy can bestow. What more could he do? He would have done no good by going out with the ambulance himself—surely not—he would have missed seeing Crystal—and she would have fretted and been still more anxious . . . his first duty was to Crystal . . . and . . . and . . . St. Genis only thought of Crystal and of himself and the voice ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... of sublimity, too, looking over and beyond the cedars to the bay, and down the length of the winding stream that fretted at its feet ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... either side formed the trough of the brook, vegetable life was evidently more delicate and luxuriant than elsewhere, in the season when it had sway. Even now, when the reign of the frost held all such life in abeyance, this grave of the dead summer lacked neither fretted tomb nor wreathing garland; for above, the bittersweet hung out heavy festoons of coral berries over the pall of its faded leaves, and beneath, on frond of fern and stalk of aster, and on rough surface of lichen-covered rock, the frost had turned the spray of water to white crystals, and the ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... wonderful than any of these grave images is the Maid of the Kaaterskill Falls, in the Catskill Mountains. With the mellow light of sunset falling obliquely upon the thin layer of water flowing over a sharp ledge worn and fretted by the continual wear of the current for ages, rock and spray together making up the illusion, is to be seen the fairy-like form of an Indian maid, with flowing hair and robes. So clearly does she appear that the beholder has at first the startling ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... exist before Sir Walter Raleigh put it to its unnatural use—had at last been exhausted on Pitcairn Island, and the mutineers had to learn to do without it. Some of them said they didn't care, and submitted with a good grace to the inevitable. Others growled and swore and fretted, saying that they knew they couldn't live without it. To their astonishment, and no doubt to their disgust, they did manage to live quite as healthily as before, and with obvious advantage to health and teeth. Two there ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... is that we can more easily bear up against a real evil than against suspense! Let it not be supposed that Amine fretted at the thought of her approaching separation from her husband; she lamented it, but feeling his departure to be an imperious duty, and having it ever in her mind, she bore up against her feelings, and submitted, without repining, to what could not be averted. There was, however, one circumstance, ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... with your children, and meet a constant run of company more choice than at a watering-place, and all without any expense. When your cousin comes back to town, be sure to let me know, that I may call upon her. Susan Goldsborough is fretted enough that she was not apprised of her being here, and so are some of the Longacres; they ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... they flew open at his touch, and he saw a wonderful, large, and spacious hall that seemed to him to be as long and as broad as the green hill itself. The roof was supported by pillars wide and lofty beyond the pillars of a cathedral; and they were of gold and silver, fretted into foliage, and between and around them were woven wreaths of flowers. And the flowers were of diamonds, and rubies, and topaz, and the leaves of emerald. And the arches met in the middle of the roof where hung, by a golden chain, an immense lamp made of a hollowed pearl, ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... three-weeks-old boys on the cold, wet grass, while she washed out their clothes in the stream. The clothing was the merest rags, all scrambled up in a damp bundle. She had heard her old mother was ill in Milltown and had "fretted" about her till she could bear it no longer, so had started to walk ten miles to her. I hailed a boy with a jaunting-car—told her to wait and I would take her home—got my luncheon—fed the boy's horse, bought lunch for boy and woman—and off we ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... aloud in his surprise, "the same man sat in this same club, before this same window, and"—he paused, while his hand ran along the arm of the chair as he glanced down at it,—"in this very chair. He fretted because life could not give him enough of excitement and contest—could not give him love. Well, to show him that her resources were boundless, Life gave him all he wanted—then took back her gifts." Relapsing into silence again with a heavy sigh, he ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... continually fretted by the carelessness or the rascality of the servants in whom he was obliged to trust. He writes in his diary: "Nancy is too uneducated for a housekeeper—indeed, quite a beast." "My precious servants were ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... those men who rather wish to believe in themselves than do it. He was always on the look-out for flaws upon his mettle. He thought that Gudrid was unapproachable, and when he found that she was not, fretted to make her so. But Gudrid herself was not at all unapproachable. She liked the company of her equals in age, and saw no reason why young men should not be anxious to talk to her, or why, if they hung about with the generality at the lower end of the hall, they should not ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... superstitious Rome, but it would seem that He was near only to a poor monk creeping up Pilate's staircase. Though the wealth of the world should combine to build a colossal church, filling it with every sacred emblem and symbol, and causing its fretted roof to resound with unceasing choral service, it would not be such a claim upon the great Father's heart as a weak, pitiful cry to Him from the least of His children. Though Edith knew it not, that Presence without which all temples are vain had come to her as freely, as closely, as ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... to left and up and down, like a prisoner questioning if he were indeed at liberty. Having viewed the sky and the benches, and filled his deep chest with ample draughts of fresh air, suddenly Tamerlane noticed the monk. The head rose higher, the ears erected, and, snuffing like a hound, he fretted his shaggy mane; his yellow eyes changed to coals alive, and he growled and lashed his sides with his tail. A majestic figure was he now. "What is it?" he appeared asking himself. "Prey or combat?" Still in a maze, he stepped out into the arena, and shrinking close to the sand, inched forward ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... imagination work the spell it longed to work, and make of me some humble character gliding shadow-like, but ever observant, through tale after tale of the "Arabian Nights." In just such a palace as this had the Seven Calenders lost each an eye; behind any one of these fretted arches might one come upon a king, half man, half jet-black marble. The most captious of genies could have found no fault with the Hall of the Ambassadors save the absence of the roc's egg; and despite my impatience the storied enchantment ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... mysterious emotion held him mute, and he was only aware of a vague irritation that fretted him without any seemingly adequate cause. Dr. Dean meanwhile pursued his investigations with the lighted taper, and presently, turning round on the assembled little group of bystanders, ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... little agaynst one that is resolved to cheat. 'Tis noe Goode complayning to a Man; he will not see, even though unafflicted like Father, who cannot. Men's Minds run on greater Things, and soe they are fretted at domestic Appeals, and generallie give Judgment the wrong Way. Thus we founde it before, poor motherlesse Girls, to our Cost; and I reallie believe it was more in Kindnesse for us than himself, that Father listened to the Doctor's Overtures in behalfe of Miss ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... certain mother with several unconverted children. She was a fretting, chafing woman, and by her impatience, fault-finding, and nagging she fretted and vexed the whole family. When she got the blessing she became so even in her disposition that she was kept in such 'perfect peace' that, by the power of the Holy Ghost, the domestic circle became like a little ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... Naturally he fretted under the forced inactivity; he became impatient, and when at length he could limp from his room to the veranda, he wanted to mount a horse and ride along to the forest clearing to superintend the building ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... my face; my name is Might-have-been; I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell; Unto thine ear I hold the dead sea-shell Cast up thy Life's foam-fretted feet between; Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell Is now a shaken shadow intolerable, Of ultimate things unuttered ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... trifles. The suffering likewise softened the whole body of the people into a degree of pliability, which laid the principal foundation-stone of union, order, and government; and which, at any other time, might only have fretted and then faded away unnoticed and unimproved. But Providence, who best knows how to time her misfortunes as well as her immediate favors, chose this to be the time, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... she said, "one must expect to be tired." He went on eating without verbally questioning her; it was an assertion to which she always held firmly. But in his soul something stirred vaguely, as if mutinous currents fretted there. ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... never taken it. The shop had tied him up for eleven months in the year, and the twelfth had always found him settled decorously with his wife in some seaside villa. He had not fretted, for he was content with dreams. He was always a little tired, too, when the holidays came, and his wife told him he was growing old. He consoled himself with tags from the more philosophic of his authors, but he scarcely needed consolation. For ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... horse and laying him on the great table in the kitchen. Silvine ran and got the bolster from her bed and slipped it beneath the head of the wounded man, who was still unconscious. But it irritated the old fellow to see the man lying on his table; he grumbled and fretted, saying that the kitchen was no place for him; why did they not take him away to the hospital at once? since there fortunately was a hospital at Remilly, near the church, in the old schoolhouse; and there was a big room in it, with everything ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... second? Come with me, and you will never ask that question again. Get under the shade of St. Hilda's— see once those fretted roofs and those painted windows. Listen but once to that angel choir, and then dare to ask me what chapel I mean when I invite you to come and taste of ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... Each pleasant fruit in endless store. No check was there from jealous guard, No door was fast, no portal barred; Only a sweet air breathed to meet The stranger, as a host should greet A wanderer of his kith and kin And woo his weary steps within. He stood within a spacious hall With fretted roof and painted wall, The giant Ravan's boast and pride, Loved even as a lovely bride. 'Twere long to tell each marvel there, The crystal floor, the jewelled stair, The gold, the silver, and the shine Of chrysolite and almandine. There breathed the fairest blooms of spring; There flashed ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... it was tried in harness, from what the natives believe to be "broken heart,"—certainly without any cause inferable from injury or previous disease.[1] It is observable, that till a captured elephant begins to relish food, and grow fat upon it, he becomes so fretted by work, that it kills him in an incredibly short space ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... required freedom, and chafed and fretted under restraint. Insanity returned upon her with redoubled force, soon after. She used blasphemous and indecent language, and cut up her blankets to make pantaloons. She picked the lock of her room, and tried various plans of escape. When Friend Hopper went to see her again, some weeks ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... thin wisp of colorless mustache sheltered, without concealing, the irritability of his mouth. Under his high, sallow forehead, his eyes, once so spiritual, looked out on his surroundings with more indifference than discontent. His soul fretted him no longer; it had passed beyond strenuousness to the peace of dulness. Only the sounds made by his wife and children had power to ...
— The Judgment of Eve • May Sinclair
... ye Proud, impute to these the fault If Memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise, Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault, The pealing anthem swells ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... She had long ago forgotten her pique against Jennie for being "so easy fretted," and jumping her down ...
— Dotty Dimple's Flyaway • Sophie May
... first; A name to all succeeding ages cursed: For close designs and crooked counsels fit; Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit; Restless, unfixed in principles and place; In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace: A fiery soul, which, working out its way, Fretted the pygmy body to decay.... A daring pilot in extremity, Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high He sought the storms: but for a calm unfit, Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit. Great ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... was there in the flesh, with her arms aloft, balancing the well-sweep, while he stooped with his lips at the bucket; but in spirit she was unapproachable. He felt, with disgust at his own persistence, that she even grudged him the water! He grew savage and restless, and fretted over the subtle changes which he counted in Dorothy, as the summer waned. She was thinner and paler,—perhaps with the heats of harvest, which had not, indeed, been burdensome from its abundance. Her eyes were darker and shyer, and her voice more languid. Was ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... once more all about his story-book home and then his eyes strayed away to Petersen's Woods, fairy green and already full of deep shadowed aisles, full of fretted beauty and solemnity. Beyond them lay the creek, a pool of silver draped ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... became embarrassed, and was finally compelled to dispose of his elegant house and furniture, and retire to a life of obscurity and poverty. But the city was growing around it rapidly; in a few more years it would be hemmed in and walled around by streets and houses. Mr. Stillinghast fretted and chafed; then calculated its increased value, and grew almost savage at the idea that he would be dead and forgotten when heaps of gold would be paid down for the few feet of earth ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... the money, some thirty thousand dollars, was as nothing compared to the chagrin over the fact that those who committed the theft were enabled to cover their work so completely the law could not reach them. He fretted that they robbed him at the end of his long ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... the Welsh hills; the Peregrine had sheered her way through a hundred miles or more of fretted waters before her captain, in his hammock slung for the nonce near the men's quarters, stirred from his profound sleep—nature's kind restorer to healthy brain and limbs—after the ceaseless fatigue and emotions of the last ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... of stone, high walls of brick, fretted away by time, porticoes covered with parasitical vegetation, stand out boldly from the sheet of silver light which blends the horizon with the limpid blue of the heavens. Some rays of the moon, gliding through the opening on one of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... voices sweet— Built like a temple, where pilasters round Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid With golden architrave; nor did there want Cornice or frieze, with bossy sculptures graven; The roof was fretted gold. Not Babylon Nor great Alcairo such magnificence Equalled in all their glories, to enshrine Belus or Serapis their gods, or seat Their kings, when Egypt with Assyria strove In wealth and luxury. Th' ascending pile Stood fixed ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... the wall. The bathing-rooms, close at hand, were of the most beautiful description, the principal apartment and the antechamber having roofs which might serve as models for all erections of the kind. These were fretted in small compartments, light being admitted by a thick piece of ground-glass in the centre of each, thus securing the utmost privacy, together with one of the most ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... was afraid to take Sloman into council lest the panic should infect our men. I asked W. what he thought, and he consolingly observed that his digestion was so bad that death had no terrors for him! I went and looked at the place; at the rafters, walls, pillars, and so forth; and fretted myself into a belief that they really were slight! To crown all, there was an arched iron roof without any brackets or pillars, on a new principle! The only comfort I had was in stumbling at length on the builder, and finding him a plain practical north-countryman with a foot rule in his ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... and of great power; his understanding is infinite." That infinite understanding watches over, and arranges, and directs all the affairs of His Church and of the world. We are perplexed at every step, embarrassed by opposition, lost in confusion, fretted by disappointment, and ready to conclude, in our haste, that all things are against our own good and our Master's honor. But "this is our infirmity"; it is the dictate of impatience and indiscretion. We forget the "years of the right hand ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... holding it above her head. Its rays fell upon a little hollow in the floor, where I had seen the leaping flame, but the fire was out now. They fell upon the white form stretched there beneath its wrappings upon its bed of stone, upon the fretted carving of the tomb, and upon another shelf of stone opposite the one on which the body lay, and separated from it by the breadth of ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... not been down in the valley for five months, and higher than her house she had never been and would never go; no, thank you, not she! She let her husband fetch what they required for the house; she herself sat and fretted all through the Winter; life then was almost more ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... she stifled all feelings of resentment, and wrote as she had never written before, as she never could write again, but all in vain; the letter was returned, and in her weakened state Nea would have fretted herself to death over that unopened letter if it had not been for her husband's tenderness ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... one in the hotel, in the Casino, or on the beach; the whole town being in the act of climbing the further cliff, to reach the downs on which the races were to be held. The green hillside was black with trudging spectators and the long sky line was fretted with them. When I say there was no one at the inn, I forget the gentleman at the door who informed me positively that he would give me no breakfast; he seemed to have staid at home from the races expressly to give himself this pleasure. But I went further and fared better, and procured a meal of ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... the excuses for Dorothy's vacant place at table which Mrs. Hanway-Harley offered; for all that he read the reason of her absence, and his pride fretted under it ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... was to suggest the saddle to them, without letting the cowboys understand, and by good luck I thought I had the means. Albert had complained to me the day we had ridden out to the Indian dwellings at Flagstaff that his saddle fretted some galled spots which he had chafed on his trip to Moran's Point. Hoping he would "catch ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... "Pageant of fretted roofs that cluster* On hill and knoll in the branches green, Ye are but shadows, and not the luster, Garment, ye, of a ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... stick. A second has more the appearance of a guitar: the hollow gourd is covered with skin; it has a bridge, and there are two strings; it is played with the finger. Another of the same class is played with a bow; it has but one string, but is fretted with the fingers. All these are called Gourmis. There were, besides, drums made of the hollow trunks of trees, four or five feet long, closed at one end with wood, and covered with skin at the other. In playing these, the drummer lays his instrument ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... the notice of my father when he was in that part of the State in 1861. He was never known to tire, and, though quiet and sensible in general and afraid of nothing, yet if not regularly exercised, he fretted a good deal especially in a crowd of horses. But there can be no better description of this famous horse than the one given by his master. It was dictated to his daughter Agnes at Lexington, Virginia, after the war, in response to some artist who had asked for a description, ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... I could see it fretted him worse than anything since we came back, but he filled himself up with the idea that we'd be sure to get the gold all right, and clear out different ways to the coast, and then we'd have something worth while leaving off with. Another thing, we'd been all used to having what money we wanted ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... wrong. Mrs. Salisbury fretted over it a few weeks, then confided her concern to her husband. But Kane Salisbury would not listen to the details. He scowled at the introduction of the topic, glanced restlessly at his paper, murmured that Lizzie might be "fired"; and, when Mrs. Salisbury had resolutely ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... Adderley, in rather an inapropos fashion it must be owned; but then he had been fretted beyond endurance by his pupil striding up and down his room, reviling Diane, and describing Eustacie, while he was trying to write these uncomfortable tidings to ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... spring of that year Anne and Colin were still together at the Manor Farm. He was stronger. But, though he did more and more work every year, he was still unfit to take over the management himself. Responsibility fretted him and he tired soon. He ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... of 1882 Isabel spent without her husband, as he was absent on the Guinea coast. She fretted very much at his long absence, and made herself ill with disappointment because she was not able to join him. The following letter shows inter alia how much she felt ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... shoe, and by the time a smith was found and his work done, an hour had been wasted. Before the end of the first stage the horse collapsed; there was considerable difficulty in getting a remount, and the animal procured was a sorry beast for pace. Martin fretted at the delay, and cursed the adverse fates which so hindered him. Once he was within three miles of the coach, and then his horse went dead lame. Hours were lost before he could get another horse and resume the journey, and during those hours ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... huge 710 Rose like an Exhalation, with the sound Of Dulcet Symphonies and voices sweet, Built like a Temple, where Pilasters round Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid With Golden Architrave; nor did there want Cornice or Freeze, with bossy Sculptures grav'n, The Roof was fretted Gold. Not Babilon, Nor great Alcairo such magnificence Equal'd in all thir glories, to inshrine Belus or Serapis thir Gods, or seat 720 Thir Kings, when Aegypt with Assyria strove In wealth and luxurie. Th' ascending pile Stood fixt her stately highth, and strait the dores ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... fretted and fearful man; afraid of himself and his propensities, afraid of colds and fevers, afraid of treading on serpents or ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Calhoun fretted. Sector Twelve was in very bad shape. A conscientious Med Service man would never have let the anti-blueskin obsession go unmentioned in a report on Weald. Health is not only a physical affair. There is mental health, also. When mental health goes a civilization can ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... pride. It is the legitimate result of the courage and fidelity of the hardy pioneers of Kansas in 1856, who dared to face the blandishment of power and the arrogance and brutality of slavery when compromisers trembled, and Northern sycophants of an oligarchic despotism, then, as now, scowled and fretted at ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... the great Colbert. It was well for France, it was well for the artistic industry whose history occupies our attention, that these things happened; but we, nevertheless, feel a weakness towards the man of genius and energy caged and fretted by prison bars, for he had shown initiative and daring, qualities of which the world has ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... soul, which, working out its way Fretted the pigmy body to decay, And o'er informed ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... Caligula's face what the faces of some maniacs are—the bloated ruin of what was once a living witness to the soul within—I could fancy that death may have sanctified it with even more beauty than this bust of the self-tormented young man shows. Have we not all seen the anguish of thought-fretted faces smoothed out by the hands of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... essentially good-natured, that even his most provoking words call forth rather a smile of compassion than a frown of resentment. Those who know his character and position will yield him the widest allowance. His fiery nature prompts him to energetic speech on all occasions. But when his temper has been fretted, as it frequently is, by the boisterous whims of his Greek students in that most boisterous of universities, it is not surprising if his expressions become splenetic even to rashness. The ingenuous ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... his family—as soon as he learned of the first attack, to come and remain by the side of his dear comrade Feodor. He had done this after each attack, without forgetting one. He was a faithful friend. But he fretted because they might not go bear-hunting as in their youth. 'Where, he would ask, are there any bears remaining in Courlande, or trees for that matter, what you could call trees, growing since the days of the grand-dukes ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... it," the lawyer said. "Of course Cuthbert ought to know, but may be the Squire will keep it entirely to himself. I should say there is nothing that would upset him more than the thought of being fretted over, and I am not sure that he is not right. Of course I shall ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... horrible, yet content to be abhorred, splendid, because so strong and lonely. But the prospect was not comfortable. Little as he knew of his father, Richard could make no mistake here. The old King was in a picksome mood, fretted by rage: angry that his son should kneel there, more than angry that he ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... three quarters of a mile in the deep Echo River, whose waters are peopled with the blind fish; crossed the streams "Lethe" and "Styx"; plied with music and guns the echoes in these alarming galleries; saw every form of stalagmite and stalactite in the sculptured and fretted chambers,—the icicle, the orange-flower, the acanthus, the grapes, and the snowball. We shot Bengal lights into the vaults and groins of the sparry cathedrals, and examined all the masterpieces which the four combined engineers, water, limestone, gravitation, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... are, and what has become of, you? I have received no letters for these two years, and I have fretted myself to death. I received your letter about the rascally court-martial; but perhaps you have not heard that the little scoundrel is dead. Yes, Peter; he brought your letter out in his own ship, and that was his death-warrant. I met him at a private party. He brought up your name— I allowed ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... the bed, as though they had fallen from the tired hands of sleep, and tall reeds of fluted ivory bare up the velvet canopy, from which great tufts of ostrich plumes sprang, like white foam, to the pallid silver of the fretted ceiling. A laughing Narcissus in green bronze held a polished mirror above its head. On the table stood ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... became a chain instead of a union, while the poor lass fretted her heart out over his dark looks and short answers. He was shallow, Katje, shallow; he had the mere capacity for love, but it was a short way to the bottom of it. You will see by and by that the men who deserve least always ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... from a medal of the time of Augustus—a crown of fretted oak-leaves, the reward given by the Romans to him who saved the life of a citizen; and the motto, "Ob cives servatos." By the system upon which business is conducted in Lloyd's, information is given to ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... smiled scornfully as he spoke, but still the sweat burst out upon his brow, and red flecks came over his checks, but that was not his wont. Grim was silent and bit his lip. Helgi made no sign, and he said never a word. Hauskuld went off with Bergthora; she came into the room again, and fretted and foamed much. ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... page of text did he turn to the more entrancing labor of the capitals and borders and ornaments. He mused long over the Lombardic letters, as glorious in their way as a cathedral, and trained his hand to execute the bold and flowing lines; and then there was the art of the border, blossoming in fretted splendor all about the page. His cousin, Miss Deacon, called it all a great waste of time, and his father thought he would have done much better in trying to improve his ordinary handwriting, which was both ugly and illegible. Indeed, there seemed but ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... Its starlit walls were Fretted; its flowers shone Wide at the portal, Full-blown and fading, Their last ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... the City Hall before the record room was open, and he fretted and stamped in the corridor until a youthful clerk with spats, pimples, and an imitation diamond scarf-pin condescended to listen to his wants. In twenty minutes he was away again, and he was lucky enough to catch Judge Barklay before ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... in dreams That chapel wild with shadowy gleams And prismy colours of the moon? Shrined like a rainbow in a mist Of flowers, the fretted amethyst Arches rose to a mystic tune; And never mortal art inlaid Those cloudy ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... in the house of A. Popinot and Company, the repayment of the hundred and sixty thousand francs thrown upon the market, which necessitated either a traffic in promissory notes (of which his wife would disapprove), or else some unheard-of success in Cephalic Oil, all fretted the poor man by the multiplicity of ideas which they involved; he felt he had more irons in the fire than he could lay hold of. How would Anselme guide the helm? Birotteau treated Popinot as a professor of rhetoric treats a pupil,—he ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... awaken once more his sleeping hope? Through the long night he tossed in fevered unrest in his narrow berth. Again he went over the awful scenes of that one hour of horror. The roar of the guns, the crash of splintered timbers, the groans of the wounded men, rang in his fretted ear. They seemed to rise before him, those gallant officers and men, the hardy, bold sailors, veterans of the sea, audacious youngsters with life long before them, Bentley, his old, his faithful friend,—lost—all lost. Was there ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... wondering what she should wear at Mrs. Stuyvesant Square's next party and at Mrs. Astor House's sociable. She fretted the choice whether she should take a letter from her church to St. Bartholomew's or to Grace or St. John's the Divine's. And all the while she was pouring tea for the wives of harness makers and druggists, dentists ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes
... 2,800 feet in the middle opposite the great temple. The walls are from 30 to 35 feet in height, and the rock immediately below them is steeply, but irregularly, scarped all round the hill. The long line of battlements which crowns the steep scarp on the east is broken only by the lofty towers and fretted domes of the noble palace of Raja Man Singh. On the opposite side, the line of battlements is relieved by the deep recess of the Urwahi valley, and by the zigzag and serrated parapets and loopholed bastions which flank ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... wanted. I was high bred and had a great deal of spirit, and was very wild, no doubt, and gave them, I dare say, plenty of trouble, but then it was dreadful to be shut up in a stall day after day instead of having my liberty, and I fretted and pined and wanted to get loose. You know yourself it's bad enough when you have a kind master and plenty of coaxing, but there was nothing ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... into the wood now and found it again spotted with gold, although it was too late for primroses. It was all soft and dark with pillars of purple light that struck through the fretted blue, and the dark shadows of the leaves. All hushed and no living thing—save the hesitating patter of some bird among the fir-cones. He struck through the wood and came out on to the Common. You could smell the sea finely here—a true Glebeshire smell, ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... he never reconciled himself to life in gaol, He fretted and he pined, and grew dispirited and pale; He was numbered like a cabman, too, which told upon him so That his spirits, once ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... the day go on well like, and settled a body's mind, when I fretted for what could not be helped. But I try not to fret after it now, and Mr. Hazlewood said, if I did my best wherever I was, the Lord would still join our ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... of a spirit which, timidly and with the hope of some reincarnation in life, had come to claim my vows. I believed that I knew well enough why Julianna, if it were she, had planned to avoid a sudden disclosure of our betrothal to the Judge, but, none the less, I fretted at the sluggishness of time, which, like a country horse, will not go faster for the ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... have fretted at my late breakfast, and having to try Mr. Marshman's favourite mare, if I had known what good purpose the delay was to serve. I wish I could have ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... rugged characters. They might as well say that they prefer square, plain, unornamented houses made from square blocks of stone. St. Peter's is none the less strong and solid because of its elegant columns and the magnificent sweep of its arches, its carved and fretted marbles of matchless hues. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... new field, with some applause, He cleared hedge, ditch, and double post, and rail, And never craned[711] and made but few "faux pas," And only fretted when the scent 'gan fail. He broke, 't is true, some statutes of the laws Of hunting—for the sagest youth is frail; Rode o'er the hounds, it may be, now and then, And once o'er several ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... agreed, nothing loath to enjoying one another's company. There is nothing like a day spent together in waiting for an event, to bring out the characteristics of individuals. Mrs. Wyndham fretted and talked, and fretted again. Joe grew silent, pale, and anxious as the morning passed, while Sybil and Ronald seemed to enjoy themselves extremely, and talked without ceasing. Outside the snow fell thick and fast as ever, and the drifts rose ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... stretched out, feet to the fire. Gale found that he could not sleep. His eyes were weary, but they would not stay shut; his body ached for rest, yet he could not lie still. The night was so somber, so gloomy, and the lava-encompassed arroyo full of shadows. The dark velvet sky, fretted with white fire, seemed to be close. There was an absolute silence, as of death. Nothing moved—nothing outside of Gale's body appeared to live. The Yaqui sat like an image carved out of lava. The others lay prone and quiet. Would another night see any of them lie that way, ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... teaching up t' the harbour school and he with her. They got married and she went away with him. He was a good enough sort of chap. I know that now, though once I wasn't disposed to think much good of him. But 'twas a mistake all the same; Rachel couldn't live away from the shore. She fretted and pined and broke her heart for it away there in his world. Finally her husband died and she came back—but it was too late for her. She only lived a month—and there was Paul, a baby of two. I took him. There ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... remember that anything of importance happened after grandmother's death till Jack went to sea. We missed him very much, and Mary was always asking after him, wondering when he would come back. Still, if I had gone away, she would, I think, have fretted still more. Perhaps it was because we were twins that we were so fond of each other. We were, however, not much alike. She was a fair, blue-eyed little maiden, with flaxen hair and a rosy blush on her cheeks, and I was a broad-shouldered, ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... timidity under such circumstances and threw himself whole-heartedly into anything the gang suggested. He even ventured to climb the mast of a ship as far as the foretop. When at last reluctantly he turned homeward, he felt like a hero, but when he caught sight of the tear-stained, fretted face of his mother, he knew at once that even such exaltation was not worth the price to ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... himself. This wretched fact the Fenwicks already knew as to poor Gilmore's Mary; and yet, though he had come down there, hoping for some comfort, he did not dare to face them. He went back all alone, and tumbled and tossed and fretted ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... Knight's visitors brought with them large, old-fashioned work-bags, from which the ends of the polished knitting-needles were discernible; while another apologized for the magnitude of her work, saying that "her man had fretted about his trousers until she herself began to think it was time to finish them; and so when she found Miss Mason wasn't to be there, she had just ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... she was a little vain of my beauty, and the disregard of her looks, which she thought these words indicated, fretted her. ...
— The Talkative Wig • Eliza Lee Follen
... dared not oppose. We mounted, and Andrews drove, for the first three miles, with some moderation. He then began to play tricks; took a high quarter and a low one, where he could find them, to shew his dexterity; whipped and fretted the horses, increased their rate, and at last put them into a ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... more incompetent than when Watson asked him to take out a balance. He could just as easily have "taken out" a degree at the Toronto University. While he fretted his still pounding head, Bill rode the round-up of registers, supplementaries and totals. Long drawn out exclamations reverberated in whatever corner of the office he happened to ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... too often hoped that God and Auntie had noticed that I prayed very nicely—a vanity certainly not intended to be fostered by the pious exercise. On the whole, the somewhat Calvinistic teaching tended, I think, to make me a little morbid, especially as I always fretted silently after my mother. I remember she was surprised on one of my home-comings, when Miss Marryat noted "cheerfulness" as a want in my character, for at home I was ever the blithest of children, despite my love of solitude; but away, there was always an aching for ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... is a fearful thing Beneath the tempest's beating wing To struggle, like a stricken hare When swoops the monarch bird of air; To breast the loud winds' fitful spasms, To brave the cloud and shun the chasms, Tossed like a fretted shallop-sail Between the ocean ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... afraid. He wanted to change the subject, to take her by the arm and hold her fast. For she was drifting away from him. Her voice sounded remote and troubling, like a little old tune that he could not quite remember. Its emotion fretted his overstrained nerves. He wanted to close his ears against it. It was a trivial tune ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... staying at the Murch farm he fell sick with a heavy cold, and while he lay in bed he fretted constantly about his traps. At last he offered Billy Murch, who was then fourteen years old, half of all the animals that might be in them if he Would go out and fetch them home. The line of traps, he said, began at a large pine-tree near the head of Stoss Pond ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... Foundry, which was a private property of Mr. Masters's, and no company, was the next visitor. He was a tall lank Scotchman with a hardy countenance and a soft heart when not fretted by the roll of the Machine. The question he brought was concerning the selling of some land in the neighbourhood of the works, for ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... may ever come, but may only beat like rain against its crystal walls, yet the souls of Merimna's heroes were half aware of some sorrow far away as some sleeper feels that some one is chilled and cold yet knows not in his sleep that it is he. And they fretted a little in their starry home. Then unseen there drifted earthward across the setting sun the souls of Welleran, Soorenard, Mommolek, Rollory, Akanax, and young Iraine. Already when they reached Merimna's ramparts it ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... shivering with cold and sat near the stove all day. While Heidi lived with Ursula, she had always been obliged to keep in the house, where the old woman could see her. Being deaf, Ursula was afraid to let Heidi go outdoors, and the child had often fretted in the narrow room and had longed to run outside. She was therefore delighted to find herself in her new home and hardly could wait to see the goats again. Jumping out of bed, she put on her few things and in a short time went down the ladder and ran outside. Peter was already there with his ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... blessed her with only one child, a daughter was surely the most fitting companion for a widowed mother. The house Mrs. Meadowsweet lived in fitted her requirements to perfection. In short, she was fat and comfortable, both in mind and body; she never fretted, she never worried; she was not rasping and disagreeable; she was not fault-finding. If her nature lacked depth, it certainly did not lack affection, generosity, and a true spirit of kindliness. If she were a little too well pleased with herself, she was also ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... all the Britons, which even Acts of Union have not torn asunder. The nearest name for it is insecurity, something fitting in men walking on cliffs and the verge of things. Adventure, a lonely taste in liberty, a humour without wit, perplex their critics and perplex themselves. Their souls are fretted like their coasts. They have an embarrassment, noted by all foreigners: it is expressed, perhaps, in the Irish by a confusion of speech and in the English by a confusion of thought. For the Irish bull is a license ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... earth, hurling its boom into the still air. The sound rushed over us, rattling in the timber like a fall of rocks. Something went quivering in me. It seemed as if my vitals had gone into a big lump of jelly that trembled every step I took. We quickened our pace; we fretted, we complained. The weariness went out of our legs; some wanted to run. Before and behind us men were shouting hotly, 'Run, boys! run!' The cannon roar was now continuous. We could feel the quake of it. When we came over a low ridge, in the open, we could see the ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... return then became extreme. In vain he fretted, fumed, and cried "Allah! Allah!" It did not make the slave retum a minute the sooner, who, good man, would have gone quietly to rest had he not been called upon ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... almost to remember in our after-years; he who made that famous soliloquy on life, who gave the advice to the players, who thought "this goodly frame, the earth, a steril promontory, and this brave o'er-hanging firmament, the air, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours;" whom "man delighted not, nor woman neither;" he who talked with the grave-diggers, and moralised on Yorick's skull; the school-fellow of Rosencrans and Guildenstern at Wittenberg; ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... to his horse. Blue Smoke pitched across the clearing under the spur and rein that finally turned him toward the south. Pete's sombrero flew off as he headed for the timber. Andy, reining 'round his horse, that fretted to follow, swung down and caught up Pete's hat on the run. Pete had pulled up near the edge of the timber. Andy, as he was about to give Pete his hat, suddenly changed it for his own. "For luck!" he cried, as Pete slackened rein and Blue Smoke shot ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... herculean labor. But on that day he could not concentrate, and because of a trifle! He felt like a giant disabled by a grain of dust in the eye—yes, a mere grain of dust! "I must love Josephine even more than I realize, to be fretted by such a paltry thing," thought he. And after patiently enduring the client for half an hour without being able to grasp the outlines of the project, he rose abruptly and said: "I must get into my mind the points you've given ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... employest, And in chastest beauty joyest, Forms most delicate, pure, and clear, Frost-caught star-beams, fallen sheer In the night, and woven here In jewel-fretted tapestries. ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... praise sounded sweet in my ears also; but that was nothing by comparison with what stood on the other side. I detested distinctions that were connected with mortification to others; and, even if I could have got over that, the eternal feud fretted and tormented my nature. Love, that once in childhood had been so mere a necessity to me, that had long been a reflected ray from a departed sunset. But peace, and freedom from strife, if love were no longer possible, (as so rarely it is in this world,) was the clamorous ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... hanging about me all day, and night too, when I was stretched on my back; and you, like a blackhearted wolf as you are, kept yourself aloof,' said Sikes. 'We was poor too, all the time, and I think, one way or other, it's worried and fretted her; and that being shut up here so long ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens |
