"Inhospitable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... writers, these people are descended from Chinese, Japanese, or Arabs; are typical Malay; are identical with the Igorot; are pacific, hospitable, and industrious; are inveterate head-hunters, inhospitable, lazy, and dirty. The detailed discussion of these assertions will follow later in the volume, but at this point I wish to state briefly the racial and cultural situation, as I believe it to exist in ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... a man of energy and character," said he. "I have not seen a man who, if he turns his talents that way, was more calculated to fill the gap left by the illustrious Moriarty. And now, my poor Watson, here we are, stranded and friendless in this inhospitable town, which we cannot leave without abandoning our case. This little inn just opposite Armstrong's house is singularly adapted to our needs. If you would engage a front room and purchase the necessaries for the night, I may have time to make a ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... been predicted, a council of war determined that it was unadviseable to proceed farther this campaign. It would have been almost impossible to winter an army in that position. They must have retreated from the cold inhospitable wilderness into which they had penetrated, or have suffered immensely; perhaps have perished. Fortunately, some prisoners were taken, who informed them of the extreme distress of the fort. Deriving no support from Canada, the garrison was weak; in great want of provisions; and had been deserted ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... tongue at once indicated the nature of the arrival; and Miss Pix, whispering loudly to Mrs. Manlius, "My musical friends," again rushed forward, and received her friends almost noisily; for when they went stamping about the entry to shake off the snow from their feet against the inhospitable world outside, she also, in the excess of her sympathetic delight, caught herself stamping her little foot. There was a hurly-burly, and then they all entered the parlor in a procession, preceded ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... he; "drink by all means so long as it amuses you. I had far rather you exceeded than that I should appear inhospitable." ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... many observers, among them Michael Drayton, of the Poly Olbion, who was, however, distressed less as a political economist than as the friend of the wood nymphs driven by the encroaching and devastating foundrymen from their native sanctuaries to the inhospitable Downs. Thus he writes, illustrating Lamb's criticism of him that in this work he "has animated hills and streams with life and passion above the ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... is the custom in every well-conducted war, Harmony was left in peace, only one mild attempt being made a few days after the occupation of Pretoria, by the officer in command of the Montmorency Scouts, to obtain entrance for himself and fellow officers at Harmony's inhospitable door. ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... Great King, Lord of Western Asia and of Egypt, conceived and entered upon the execution of vast designs of conquest, the far-reaching effects of which were destined to live long after he had passed away. Inhospitable steppes on the north, and burning deserts on the south, whose shifting sands within a period yet fresh in memory had been the grave of a Persian army, seemed to be the barriers which Nature herself had set for the limits of empire in these directions. ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... of death spread its cruel net around him. The stony wastes bore no fruit but briers and thorns. The dark ledges of rock thrust themselves above the surface here and there, like the bones of perished monsters. Arid and inhospitable mountain ranges rose before him, furrowed with dry channels of ancient torrents, white and ghastly as scars on the face of nature. Shifting hills of treacherous sand were heaped like tombs along the horizon. By day, the fierce heat pressed its intolerable burden on the quivering air; and no living ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke
... himself that it was hard to push them farther to the cold, inhospitable north, which would soon be the only hunting ground left them unless the unknown West ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... tearing over the Firth from Burntisland and the northern hills; I think I can hear it howl in the chimney, and as I set my face northwards, feel its smarting kisses on my cheek. Even in the names of places there is often a desolate, inhospitable sound; and I remember two from the near neighbourhood of Edinburgh, Cauldhame and Blaw-weary, that would promise but starving comfort to their inhabitants. The inclemency of heaven, which has thus endowed the language of Scotland with words, has also largely modified ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... our bathroom. There are three others in the house of which these new girls can have the use. As long as the bathroom opens into both rooms, I shall bolt the door leading into the room we give Miss Ward. That may appear a trifle inhospitable on the surface, but I wish to keep what is left of our apartment as secluded as possible," ended Grace, opening the door into the sitting-room. "Now, which shall ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... sooner or later, in their destined courses, and Monday dawned, fair and sunny and beautiful, as befitted the events that were to take place. There was a light summer haze on sea and land; and just a ripple of a breeze blown down as a message from the inhospitable hills. Father Letheby said early Mass at eight o'clock; and at half-past nine, the hour for the nuptial Mass, there was no standing or sitting-room in the little chapel. Of course, the front seats were reserved for the gentry, who, in spite of an academical dislike to Ormsby's ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... is a plant pioneer. Often it is the first plant to make a settlement or establish a colony on a barren or burned-over area. It is hardy, and is able to make a start and thrive in places so inhospitable as to afford most plants not the slightest foothold. In such places the kinnikinick's activities make changes which alter conditions so beneficially that in a little while plants less hardy come to join the first settler. The pioneer work done by the kinnikinick on a ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... property they carried in their hands, and were not, without difficulty, allowed to escape with the clothes on their backs. Can we blame these people for representing us as a barbarous, unfeeling, and inhospitable nation, however undeserving we may be ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... violated every sacred right in making him prisoner, that he should have been much better treated in Russia, Austria, or even Prussia; that he was sent to the horrible rock of St. Helena on purpose to die; that he had been purposely placed on the most uninhabitable spot of that inhospitable island, and kept six years a close prisoner, and that Sir Hudson Lowe was his executioner. He concluded with these words: "You will end like the proud republic of Venice; and I, dying upon this dreary rock, away from those I hold dear, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... do not leave my house thus. It will put me in the position of an inhospitable brute. I beseech you take ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... eternal sufferings can make adequate retribution!—Equally iniquitous is the practice of robbing that country of its inhabitants; and equally tremendous will be the punishment. The voice of injured thousands, who have been violently torn from their native country, and carried to distant and inhospitable climes—the bitter lamentations of the wretched, helpless female—the cruel agonizing sensations of the husband, the father and the friend—will ascend to the throne of Omnipotence, and, from the elevated heights of heaven, cause ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... was a high liver, and had a particular objection to being disturbed at his meals. When Grace haughtily demanded admittance, the warder not having a proper sense of the honor she was intending to do his master, sturdily refused. This surly, inhospitable reception so enraged the chieftainess, that she was quite ready to storm the castle, and slay the fat Earl at his own dinner-table, with all his guests and retainers. But she had not with her a sufficient ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... the blossom of a cactus—the "prickly-pear," as we call it in Eastern gardens, where we cultivate it for its oddity, I suppose. When the sojourner in this land of flowers sees, opening on all sides of this inhospitable-looking plant, rich cream-colored cups, the size of a Jacqueminot bud, and of a rare, satiny sheen, she cannot resist the desire to fill a low dish ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... of the Falling Wall country did not end with the red men. White men, too, have coveted the lands of the Falling Wall and fought for them. Among the blind the one-eyed are kings, and the Falling Wall basin lies amid inhospitable deserts, barren hills and landscapes slashed to rags and ribbons by mountain storms—regions that have failed to tempt even a white man's cupidity. The Indians fought for the basin with arrows, bullets, tomahawks and scalping ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... on religious grounds, the usual sacrifice to this domestic spirit. The first and second brewings failed, but the third succeeded; and thus, when Brownie lost the perquisite to which he had been so long accustomed, he abandoned the inhospitable house, where his services had so long been faithfully rendered. The last place in the south of Scotland supposed to have been honoured, or benefited, by the residence of a Brownie, was Bodsbeck in Moffatdale, which has been the subject of an entertaining tale by Mr. James ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... The antelope fleetly runs, and the coyote skulks away from the track, and the gray wolf howls afar off. It is for all the world, to one's fancy, as if a bit of civilization, a family or community, its belongings and surroundings complete, were flying through regions barbarous and inhospitable. ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... reached the Sandwich Islands, where he remained some ten days, and then set sail for Behring Strait and the Arctic Ocean. His instructions were to skirt along the North American coast as far as the state of the ice would permit. The Blossom made a halt in Kotzebue Bay, a desolate, forbidding, and inhospitable spot, where the English had several interviews with the natives without obtaining any information about Franklin and his people. At last Beechey sent forward one of the ship's boats, under command of Lieutenant Elson, to seek the intrepid explorer. Elson was, however, unable ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... the dales of Yorkshire it used to be considered very inhospitable not to leave the ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... that the neglected and roadless Spanish zone intervened between the French possessions and Tangier, which is the natural port of Morocco, one of the first preoccupations of General Lyautey was to make ports along the inhospitable Atlantic coast, where ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... and a company of miners, where sixty human beings work night and day, and hear the waves over their heads , sometimes regularly beating the Cornish cliffs, sometimes tossing the terrified mariner upon the inhospitable shore; where shipwreck is, even in these civilized days, considered as ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... sink it with all upon board. And if he found any folk of high quality aboard such a ship, that one he would seize and hold for ransom. So Sir Nabon made himself the terror of all that part of the world, and all men avoided the coasts of so inhospitable a country. Such was the land upon which Sir Lamorack had been ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... was cold enough, in fact, too cold for comfort, and we were obliged to put on all our furs. When fully wrapped I could have filled the eye of any match-making parent in Christendom, so far as quantity is concerned. The doctor walked as if the icy and inhospitable North had been his dwelling-place for a dozen generations, and promised to continue so a few hundred years longer. We were about as agile as a pair of prize hogs, or the fat boy in the side ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... sight when, escaping from the inhospitable domains of the mountain and the sandhill, we see stretched at our feet a great and luxuriant valley, forming in the freshness of its vegetation a singular contrast to the desert region around. In this valley, amid gardens ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... mesas that are much like the desert below, except that the nights are cool and the wind is not fanned out of a furnace, Casey fought sand and brush and rocks and found a trail now and then which he followed thankfully, and so came at last to a short range of mountains whose name matched well their inhospitable stare. The Starvation Mountains had always been reputed rich in mineral and malevolent in their attitude toward man and beast. Even the Joshua trees stood afar off and lifted grotesque arms defensively against them. But Casey was not easily daunted, and eerie places held ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... Sun sets, making wonderful colouring over the Desert and sea, the journey down the Red Sea is commenced. The Red Sea in December is shorn of its terrors and can be quite enjoyable. Aden is passed, two or three days steaming along the inhospitable coast of Southern Arabia and the entrance of the Persian Gulf is reached. The Straits of Ormuz have the reputation of being one of the hottest places on earth. The rocky, and wild Arabian coast looks very beautiful in the sunshine with its innumerable islands, and ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... the North of Europe are sufficiently memorable. In Sweden two princes died—Haken and Canute, half-brothers of King Magnus; and in Westgothland alone four hundred and sixty-six priests. The inhabitants of Iceland and Greenland found in the coldness of their inhospitable climate no protection against the southern enemy who had penetrated to them from happier countries. The plague wrought great havoc among them. In Denmark and Norway, however, people were so occupied with their own misery that the accustomed voyages ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... is your passport,' said Otto, turning to the Baronet. 'I regret it from my heart that you have met inhospitable usage.' ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gait of his companion. The rarely-occurring remarks of the latter were anything but explicit as to the state of his feelings in contemplation of an event, the possibility of which increased with every step—a night's lodgings in these inhospitable wilds. The sun was now evidently beneath the horizon; darkness came on with frightful rapidity; and they had, as yet, no reason to divest themselves of so disagreeable an anticipation. To one in the full glare of daylight, or with a sound roof-tree over his head and a warm fire at ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... marking his impatience that I should be gone. I attempted in vain to sooth him by presents, but though he did not refuse them, they did not alter his behaviour. Some of the young women, better pleased with us than was their inhospitable chief, dressed themselves expeditiously in their best apparel, and, assembling in a body, welcomed us to their village, by joining in a song, which was far from ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... has been said of English engravers. Here, as in art generally, England seems removed from the rest of the world; Et penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos. But though beyond the sphere of Continental art, the island of Shakespeare was not inhospitable to some of its representatives. Vandyck, Rubens, Sir Peter Lely, and Sir Godfrey Kneller, all Dutch artists, painted the portraits of Englishmen, and engraving was first illustrated by foreigners. Jacob Houbraken, ...
— The Best Portraits in Engraving • Charles Sumner
... they had any religion, and where dissenters would have been ill at ease. At the same time the immigrants in the Mayflower did not intend to land so far north as they did. The wearisome voyage, however, made them anxious to get on shore, the land could not be more inhospitable than the winter sea, and they had an abiding faith in God's goodness and providence which enabled them to face with resolution the hardships and dangers of the northern wilderness. The act which the men of the party signed on the Mayflower, previous ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... end, and the land will become drier, and therefore better fitted for Europeans, the nearer it approaches Mossamedes Bay. South of "Little Fish," again, a barren tract of white sand will show the "Last Tree," an inhospitable region, waterless, and ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... of the battle ground is one of the most famous in Europe, not even the plains of Belgium possessing a richer historical significance than that melancholy plain, the Champagne-Pouilleuse, upon whose inhospitable flats rested for centuries the curse of a prophecy, that there would the fate of France be decided, a prophecy of rare connotation of accuracy, for it refrained from stating what that fate should be. Yet the historic sense is amplified even more by remembrance than by prophecy, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... sumptuous. The table did not groan beneath a weight of viands, or gleam with glowing wines. Its poverty was such that a red-herring would have been a glorious treat, and a dose of physic an agreeable variety. Why then, you may ask, did I not quit this inhospitable hotel, and put up at another establishment? Because I was invited by her Majesty, and ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... support the farmer, or rather labourer, and his family decently, even in the best of years, and that any failure of crop must signify ruin and starvation. Any observation of this kind is ill received by the people, who cling to their inhospitable mountains as a woman clings to a deformed or idiot child. And in this astonishing perversion of patriotism they are supported in unreasoning fashion by their pastors, who seem to imagine that because a person is born on any particular spot he must remain there and insist on its maintaining ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... wished to thank me for my letter and to say that he would be pleased if I cared to come down to spend an afternoon with him at Beaconsfield. Mr. Walpole apologised very greatly for seeming so curtly inhospitable, but he was only in London for a short time and had difficulty in squeezing his engagements in. This week, too, was infernally complicated by Ascot. But couldn't I come round on Monday to lunch ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... walls, and for the fewness of their windows, many of which are covered by gratings. On the ground-floor there is usually a money-changer's shop, and the owner lives over it. Without as well as within, the houses seem inhospitable and mysterious—an impression which is difficult to explain, unless it has something to do with the actual architectural style. These houses are almost exclusively inhabited by ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Hester's eagle eye, supposing it could scan Rose's misdeeds from some coigne of vantage commanding this end of the street. She signalled to the cab-driver opposite, who put his head out of the cab window and signalled back that he had a fare besides himself at present ensconced in one of the inhospitable-looking houses. ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... when he opened his door; and one night an attempt was made to stone him in his house.[168] Popular hate shown with this degree of violence was too much for his fortitude, and after a residence of rather more than three years (September 8-10, 1765), he fled from the inhospitable valley to seek refuge he ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... My fingers became sore in busying themselves with the harsh and inhospitable stones. My feet slipped from the smooth and slimy masonry beneath the water; and several times my face came in rude contact with the wall, when my foothold gave way on the instant that I seemed to have found some diminutive rocky cleat upon ...
— The Man In The Reservoir • Charles Fenno Hoffman
... my wishes, to accomplish some object of his own, chose to mislead us all, and quietly took us straight into Sorombo to Kague, the boma of a sub-chief, called Mfumbi, where we no sooner arrived than the inhospitable brute forbade any one of his subjects to sell us food until the hongo was paid, for he was not sure that we were not allied with the Watuta to rob his country. After receiving what he called his dues—one barsati, two yards merikani, and two yards kiniki—the drums beat, and all ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... and that they landed "in the latitude of between 47 and 48 deg. South." But without charts and maps how can one possibly follow the journey of the four poor sufferers along the coast on that terrible march from Mount Misery (as they named the inhospitable promontory where they landed) to civilisation on the island of Chiloe? With my maps I can follow their every footstep, with my chart I may visit each inlet that their frail canoe entered. Nor need I refer to these aids whenever I may turn to the volume ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... its opposite neighbor, Pearl Hill, have witnessed the transformation of a rude, inhospitable wilderness into a beautiful and busy city. We of the present day, proud of our heritage, are striving to improve it by all means within ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... is appropriated to the eastern part of the system which originates at E. longitude 79 deg. near the Pangong lake in the Tibetan plateau a little beyond the boundary of Kashmir. Beyond the Karakoram pass (18,550 ft.) is a lofty bleak upland with salt lakes dotted over its surface. Through this inhospitable region and over the Karakoram pass and the Sasser-la (17,500 ft.) the trade route from Yarkand to Leh runs. The road is only open for three months in the year, and the dangers and hardships are great. In 1898 Dr Bullock Workman and ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... alongside. The boat was about fifteen feet long; she would be but a small boat for summer pleasuring in English July lake-waters, yet here was I in her in the heart of a vast ocean, many leagues south and west of the stormiest, most inhospitable point of land in the world, with distances before me almost infinite for such a boat as this to measure ere I could heave a civilized coast or ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... a book, the moment Gerald had departed, and tried to prove to herself that she was sufficiently in command of her nerves to read. For a long time reading had been her chief solace. But she could not read. She glanced round the inhospitable chamber, and thought of the hundreds of rooms—some splendid and some vile, but all arid in their unwelcoming aspect—through which she had passed in her progress from mad exultation to calm and cold disgust. The ceaseless din of the street annoyed ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... How anxious, how dismal, how long! There was an inhospitable smell in the room, of cold soot and hot dust; and, as I looked up into the corners of the tester over my head, I thought what a number of blue-bottle flies from the butchers', and earwigs from the market, and grubs from the country, ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... without, lighted only by one inhospitable lamp at a remote end, showed choked and yellowed with this same fog so characteristic of London in November. But nothing moved to right nor left of me. The New Louvre Hotel was in some respects yet incomplete, and the long passage in which ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... of new countries, but he acted in perfect ignorance of the Verrazzano discovery. If it were known to him, upon what rational theory would he have attempted new voyages of discovery in a cold and inhospitable region, on an uncertain search, instead of developing what had been found for him? What could he have expected to have accomplished by the new expeditions that had not been already fully effected by Verrazzano? And, especially after the way to Canada was found out by Cartier, ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... had served in ancient days, holding the villa safe in their protecting embrace from any uprising of the populace of Rome, while on the side toward the Campagna they had withstood more than one siege of the Goths. But high aloft, near the summit of this cliff of natural rock and hewn stone the inhospitable windowless expanse was broken by a row of arched openings, and silhouetted against the dark void of one of these he caught a glimpse of a face framed ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... of it! The grey, inhospitable skies, the rain-swept stage, the feeling of hopeless loneliness, as one traveller after another was greeted with loving exclamations, and borne away by friendly watchers; and then suddenly to feel your hand grasped, and laid tenderly on ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... are going to ask him to sit, can you, Ridgie? You see," explained Christine, "it's so inhospitable to leave him in the hall, and if he walks into the drawing-room and swishes his tail even contentedly, all the china ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... my child. I would not run the risk of postponing the pleasure of the Lord to that of inhospitable servants. I will look to you to keep a warm, comfortable, welcoming house, and such servants only as shall be hospitable in heart and behavior, and make no difference between the poor and ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... from England or Ireland since I left Yarmouth, nothing of Union, and nothing of you; but how can I till the summer, if the last ten days of soft weather will not unlock the inhospitable ice of the Elbe at Cuxhaven? We are all well. God send that you and yours are so. Love to Lord B. and George and Mary. The Major is, I trust, ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... approvingly. The way to the heart of the Chinese is not far to seek. They dote on children, and children the world over are much alike. More than once I have solved an awkward situation by ignoring the inhospitable or unwilling elders and devoting myself to the little ones, always at hand. Please the children and you ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... frozen regions of Lapland, there to enjoy the blessings of civilization and the charms of lunar philosophy, in much the same manner as the reformed and enlightened savages of this country are kindly suffered to inhabit the inhospitable forests of the north, or the impenetrable wilderness of ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... the rock looms up large like a frowning inhospitable islet, the stretch of the Neutral Ground being so low that one cannot detect it above the sea-level until almost right upon it. We left the Vinuesa and entered a boat with a couple of sturdy rowers, ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... be inhospitable, now called out the neglected pair in the oak parlour. She convoyed Donne past his dread enemy Tartar, who, with his nose on his fore paws, lay snoring under the meridian sun. Donne was not grateful—he never was grateful for kindness and attention—but he was glad of the safeguard. Miss Keeldar, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... in spite of its rounded, outstanding sash-windows, two on either side the glass door; the air of it holding, in permanent solution, an odour of leather-bound volumes. A place, in short, which, though not inhospitable, imposed itself, its qualities and traditions, to an extent impossible for any save the most thick-skinned and thick-witted wholly to ignore ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... structure for its times and for the natives of the southwestern region. Many other structures were mentioned or described by the Spanish explorers, but the impressions of these explorers were tinctured by previous experience in an inhospitable region, and their descriptions were tinged by the romantic ideas of the age; very few of these structures were within the limits of the United States, and nearly all of these situated in the neighboring republic of Mexico disappeared long ago; ...
— The Repair Of Casa Grande Ruin, Arizona, in 1891 • Cosmos Mindeleff
... rig that mast. From the outset the party suffered hardship. They were not too abundantly provisioned, and they were put on short rations, and for all the thick garments they had, they were but ill-equipped against the piercing wind and inhospitable violence of this wilderness. The first night was spent in darkness and without fires. The engines that had supplied power were smashed and dropped far away to the south, and there was never a match among the company. It had been death to carry matches. All the explosives had been thrown ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... country between Hillah and Bassorah is now little removed from a desert. Here and there rise a few tents or reed huts belonging to the Montefik Arabs, a tribe of savage nomads and the terror of travellers. Europeans have succeeded in exploring that inhospitable country only under exceptional circumstances.[63] And yet it was there, between two or three thousand years before our era, that the intermingling of ideas and races took place which gave birth to the civilization ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... absorbed in reading. It is a triumph of concentration. Donatello has enlisted every agency that could intensify the oblivion of the world around him. It is from this aloofness that the figure leaves a detached and inhospitable impression. One feels instinctively that this St. John would be friendless, for he has nothing to offer, and asks no sympathy. There is no room for anybody else in his career, and nobody can share his labours or mitigate his privations. In short, there is no link between ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... is your passport," said Otto, turning to the Baronet. "I regret it from my heart that you have met inhospitable usage." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... their returned children; brothers and sisters joined cordial hands and rushed into each other's embraces, and the placid grandparents danced the little ones on their knees, and traced resemblances to others. It would have been a cold and inhospitable greeting, to be invited, after listening to a two hours' sermon, to sit around a dinner not beyond the common. Not to such a feast did stout-hearted and hard-headed Jonathan invite his friends. He rightly understood that ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... argument he clearly shows that he considers the evidence to be satisfactory, and that the only intelligible explanation of the whole of the phenomena he so clearly sets forth is, that the inhabitants of Mars have carried out on their small and naturally inhospitable planet a vast system of irrigation-works, far greater both in its extent, in its utility, and its effect upon their world as a habitation for civilised beings, than anything we have yet done upon our earth, where our destructive agencies are perhaps more prominent ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace
... all this day we have been sailing among islands. The principal of these were Scio, Samos, and Cos, and even these form a desolate picture of bare, inhospitable mountains and desert regions. On the island of Cos alone we saw a neat town, with ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... generally some little attempt at cultivation; but a half-bred foal or two, straggling about with shackles on their hind legs, to save the trouble of enclosures, intimate the farmer's chief resource to be the breeding of horses. The people, too, are of a ruder and more inhospitable class than are elsewhere to be found in Cumberland arising partly from their own habits, partly from their intermixture with vagrants and criminals, who make this wild country a refuge ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... bishop. Thus StAugustine became the patron saint of this first town in the United States. Here slavery struck root, and here the Spanish Papist and the French Huguenot, brought out of civilized and Christianized Europe were set down blindfolded on the wild and inhospitable shores of Florida, like two game-cocks, to fight out their religious and implacable hatred. It was here that these 'children of the sun' showed the red men of the American forests that they too were human and mortal. Here, a few days ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... to persuade night to linger long into the hours of a dull day. When daylight finally came, dim and sulky, there was no rivalry among us which should light the fire. We did not leap, but trickled slowly forth into the inhospitable morning, all forlorn. Wet days in camp try "grit." "Clear grit" brightens more crystalline, the more it is rained upon; sham grit ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... ham, and broiled chicken. After all was on the table, a short conference was held, as to whether it would do not to invite the stranger to take supper. It was true, they had given him as much bread and bacon as he could eat; but then, as long as he was going to stay all night, it looked too inhospitable to sit down to the table and not ask him to join them. So, making a virtue of necessity, he was kindly asked to come in to supper, an invitation which he did not decline. Grace was said over the meal by Mr. Wade, and then the ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... crowd, weeping bitterly. These prisoners are condemned to exile for three, four, or five years—often for life. It requires from twelve to eighteen months of weary travel, all the way on foot, through barren wastes and inhospitable deserts, to enable them to reach their desolate place of exile. Many of them fall sick on the way from fatigue and privation—many die. Few ever live to return. In some instances the whole term of exile is served out on the journey to and from Siberia. On their arrival ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... oceanic basin of primary rock,—a Palaeozoic Hudson's or Baffin's Bay,—partially surrounded, mayhap, by bare primary continents, swept by numerous streams, rapid and headlong, and charged with the broken debris of the inhospitable regions which they drained. The graptolite-bearing grauwacke of Banffshire seems to have been the only fossiliferous rock that occurred throughout the extent of this ancient northern basin. The Conglomerate of Orkney, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... Harbour was a great sight—British and French battleships, hospital ships, transports, colliers, and all sorts of cargo ships down to the little native sailing boats, and the steam cutters which tore up and down all day looking very busy. The island itself looked very uninviting, stony, barren, and inhospitable, and a route march only confirmed our opinions—the race ashore in the ship's boats, however, compensated us—and ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... acquiring such a port. Here, then, was a strong inducement for Russian aggression in Korea. When the eastward movement of the great northern power brought it to the mouth of the Amur, the acquisition of Nikolaievsk for a naval basis was the immediate reward. But Nikolaievsk, lying in an inhospitable region, far away from all the main routes of the world's commerce, offered itself only as a stepping-stone to further acquisitions. To push southward from this new port ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Cabot, and his son Sebastian, in 1497. The Cabots were Venetians who had for some time been established at Bristol. They aimed for a north-west passage, and found Labrador and Newfoundland, cold, inhospitable, producing no wealth: the explorers who sailed under Spanish auspices struck the wealthy and entrancing regions of the south. There was little enough material inducement beyond the simple spirit of enterprise ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... article was beyond the sphere of his experience. As this happened about every quarter of an hour, he could not complain of a sedentary employment. A few days after this, migratory birds arrived in Cyprus upon the inhospitable shore opposite the Custom House in the shape of two Liberal M.P's. from England,—who visited the island specially to form an honest opinion free from all political bias. Whether these gentlemen were undervalued by the eccentric official to whom I have alluded, or whether ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... made a comfortable meal off of some of us. At the cry of 'Bears! bears!' we seized our muskets, and although they were loaded with shot merely, fired them at the animals, who were so stupefied at the inhospitable reception their friendly visit met with, that they allowed us time to load with ball. One of them had fallen at the first fire, and the two others made off in all haste. Pretty soon, however, they changed their minds, and coming back, dragged their dead comrade away with them ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... peak of 6,970 feet altitude, on treacherous Shelikof Strait, opposite Kodiak Island. It rises from an inhospitable shore far from steamer routes or other recognized lines of travel. Until it announced itself with a roar which was heard at Juneau, seven hundred and fifty miles away, its very existence was probably unknown except to a few prospectors, fishermen, geographers, and geologists. ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... the big-shouldered figure nodded a silent affirmative. Old Jerry drew himself up with an air of injured dignity at that inhospitable slight; he even took one step backward toward the door; but that one step, in the face of his consuming curiosity, was as far as he could force himself ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... Jewett's key-box, if you please," I requested; and when I had seen the thing done, and had verified the number of the box with my own eyes, I headed once more for the inhospitable streets. ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... down to the town again the very house-fronts seemed inhospitable, so that I must pass the time upon the quay. There are days at that season when Loch Finne, so calm, so crystal, so duplicate of the sky, seems like water sunk and lost for ever to wind and wave, when the sea-birds doze upon ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... the captain sadly; "but as far as we can make out there is no chance for a human being to exist there. Any one wrecked in such an inhospitable place would certainly have taken to a sheltered spot under the cliffs, where he would be protected from the ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... when it was very easy to catch them, on account of their exhausted condition. I also asked them what country they came from, when they shrugged their shoulders, and said that on the top of the great black precipice was stony inhospitable land, and beyond that were mountains with snow, and full of wild beasts, where no people lived, and beyond the mountains were hundreds of miles of dense thorn forest, so thick that even the elephants could not get through it, much less men. Next I asked them if they had ever heard of white people ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... for this especial possessor of it, a completely convenient medium of conversation, is more than I can say; at any rate Mr. Reinhart eventually reverted to Europe and settled in Paris. Paris had seemed rather inhospitable to him in his youth, but he has now fitted his key to the lock. It would be satisfactory to be able to express scientifically the reasons why, as a general thing, the American artist, as well as his congener ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... of the extensive, but defenceless plains of Scythia or Tartary, have been frequently united under the dominion of the chief of some conquering horde or clan; and the havock and devastation of Asia have always signalized their union. The inhabitants of the inhospitable deserts of Arabia, the other great nation of shepherds, have never been united but once, under Mahomet and his immediate successors. Their union, which was more the effect of religious enthusiasm than of conquest, was signalized in the same manner. If the hunting nations of America should ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... can't stay sweltering here," he decided; "let's try somewhere else—" and with a sense of relief Charity followed him from that scene of inhospitable splendour. ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... Isolated and Inhospitable Indian Island, At an enormous and disheartening distance ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... the produce of their lands, and out of whom they made the rents of their farms; and to be so cruel to the inhabitants of London, or to any of those by whom they gained so much, was very hard; and they would be loath to have it remembered hereafter, and have it told, how barbarous, how inhospitable, and how unkind they were to the people of London when they fled from the face of the most terrible enemy in the world; that it would be enough to make the name of an Epping man hateful throughout all the city, and to have the rabble stone ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... trade, where thrift and push have elbowed out all that fine gallantry and ease and ample hospitality of an earlier day—that hospitality which will ever remain a leading characteristic of the people. To be a Southern man or a Southern woman and to be inhospitable—that is not possible in the nature ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... her seat as she did so. 'You may tell the archdeacon that wherever I am I shall receive what letters I please and from whom I please. And as for the word disgraceful, if Dr Grantly has used it of me he has been unmanly and inhospitable,' and she walked off to the door. 'When papa comes from the dining-room I will thank you to ask him to step up to my bed-room. I will show him Mr Slope's letter, but I will show it to no one else.' And so saying ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the natural lines of movement for the people, commerce, and productions of half North America, concentrate around a single point. No other place has the same advantage of radial lines. Quebec is relatively on the Atlantic. The upper end of Lake Superior is comparatively on an inhospitable land. Chicago is at a lateral point on the south end of Lake Michigan,—three hundred miles from the main channel of commerce. At Mackinaw concentrate all the radial lines of water navigation in the upper lakes. Which will be seen, if we take the following distances of direct navigation from this ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... suffered heavily in men and morale. With the loss of his two generals, and the main portion of his army, Togan was lucky in himself escaping to China. Kublai wished to make another effort to subdue these inhospitable regions and their savage inhabitants, but Chinese public opinion proved too strong, and he had to yield to the representations of ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... down his file, took up his lanthorn, and hurried along to kick up a dust at home. The brute! may he have to sharpen saws with bad files for half an eternity! He swore—how awfully the fellow swore!—that I should be turned from his inhospitable roof immediately—and my gentle nurse, adding her tears to my squalls, through that dismal, sleety morning, which was then breaking mistily upon so much wretchedness, was compelled to carry me back ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... as ever the next day—or at the end of the walk, for that matter. They can afford the waste. Women cannot. If women succeed in achieving hard unyielding muscles in the wrong place they suffer atrociously in childbirth; for Nature, who is as old-fashioned and inhospitable to modern ideas as a Tory statesman, takes a vicious pleasure in punishing one sex every time it succeeds in approaching the peculiar level of the other, or which diverges from the normal in any way. Note how many artists, who are nine-tenths temperament and one-tenth ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... wonderful expedients which may be found out, even in the most dismal circumstances." "It is very true, indeed," answered Tommy; "but pray what became of these poor men at last?" "After they had lived more than six years upon this dreary and inhospitable coast," answered Mr Barlow, "a ship arrived there by accident, which took three of them on board, and carried them in safety to their own country." "And what became of the fourth?" said Tommy. "He," said Mr Barlow, "was seized with ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... April now; but even in April that bleak northern fell was very cold. Nothing more inhospitable than that road could be seen. It was unsheltered, swept by every blast, very steep, and mercilessly oppressed by turnpikes. Twice in those seven miles one-and-sixpence was inexorably ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... returned Dunham, lowering himself with some care among the projections of the inhospitable rock. "I'm sure you both patronize mirrors for the pure pleasure of it. In the minute I stood waiting and watching up there I expected to see you turn into—who ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... and the menials shrank back at his tread, stalked across the inhospitable hall, and vanished. When he had gained the street, he turned and looked up at the house. His dark and hollow eyes, gleaming through the long and raven hair that fell profusely over his face, had in them an expression of menace almost preternatural, from ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... tin basin which stood in the sink near to the pail, with the gourd swinging in the top, and wiped her face on the rolling towel and combed her hair before the clock, which served the double purpose of looking-glass and timepiece. When company came—and Mrs. Markham was not inhospitable—the east room, where the bed stood, was opened; and if the company, as was sometimes the case, chanced to be Richard's friends, she used the west room across the hall, where the chocolate-colored paper and Daisy's picture hung, and where, upon the high mantel, there was a plaster image of little ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... The gray, inhospitable-looking pile proved to be one of the old coach-inns, which, with its score of vacant chambers and huge stable-court, was left stranded upon the deserted highway of travel. It stood a little space back from the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... iron-grey sky; this starving soil, empurpled only here and there by the bleeding flower of the buckwheat; that these roads, bordered with stones placed one on top of the other, without cement or plaster; that these paths, bordered with impenetrable hedges; that these grudging plants; these inhospitable fields; these crippled beggars, eaten with vermin, plastered with filth; that even the flocks, undersized and wasted, the dumpy little cows, the black sheep whose blue eyes had the cold, pale gleam that is in the eyes of the Slav or of the tribade; had perpetuated ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... few days since the painful business in front of the Louis Quinze. Where he had been and what doing no one asked, for he was mysterious in his movements, and always uncommunicative, and people did not care to tempt his inhospitable tongue. When Pomfrette was so far recovered that he might be left alone, Parpon said to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... had not now to fight with men, he was not exempted from doing fierce battle with the elements of these inhospitable climes. For hundreds of miles he travelled along the east coast of Hudson's Bay and the southern shores of the Straits, now driven ashore by the storm, anon interrupted by drift-ice, and obliged to carry his ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... degraded a people as any on the face of the earth, with just intelligence enough to maintain themselves by hunting and fishing, by the help of dogs, which, it is said, they prize so much that they would rather, in time of scarcity, eat up an old mother than a dog; and they are churlishly inhospitable to strangers, although with an unusual facility for imitating their language, nor had any one ever ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... describe the physical and moral sufferings to which he is exposed who undertakes without proper preparation to cross this inhospitable district. To the weakness caused by lack of air soon succeeds an insurmountable lassitude. The feet sink in a soft, tenuous dust which every step sends up in clouds; it covers you, penetrates your skin, and parches your mouth even more than ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... legs of his master. Far back stretches a prospect singularly unlike those rich-toned studies of sub-Alpine regions in which Titian as a rule revels. It has an august but more colourless beauty recalling the middle Apennines; one might almost say that it prefigures those prospects of inhospitable Sierra which, with their light, delicate tonality, so admirably relieve and support the portraits of Velazquez. All this is unusual, and still more so is the want of that aristocratic gravity, of that subordination of mere outward splendour to inborn dignity, which mark Titian's greatest ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... for a moment, that he might hear the well-remembered sound of the Fall of Linter. Though the night was dark and wintry, a dismal damp November night, he would have crept out of the house and made his way up to the top of the brae, for the sake of auld lang syne, had he not feared that the inhospitable mansion would be permanently closed against him on his return. He rang the bell once or twice, and after a while the old serving man came to him. Could he have a cup of tea? The man shook his head, and feared that no boiling water could be procured at that late hour of the night. ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... was a branch of the great Aryan family, whose original settlements are supposed to have been on the high table-lands of Central Asia east of the Caspian Sea, probably in Bactria. They emigrated from that dreary and inhospitable country after Zoroaster had proclaimed his doctrines, after the sacred hymns called the Gathas were sung, perhaps even after the Zend-Avesta or sacred writings of the Zoroastrian priests had been begun,—conquering or driving away Turanian ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... Japan's position in Manchuria rather than Russia's must be self-evident. In the first place, the territory embraced in her sphere of influence is more important and contains two thirds the population. Then again: Northern Manchuria being cold and inhospitable, Japan's sphere not only covers the fairer and more favored section agriculturally, but from the standpoint of military strategy (as a mighty war taught all the world) Japan is vastly better placed. With Port Arthur in her possession, and the new broad-gauge line ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... Quakers gradually changed from the introspective state of seeking their own welfare into the altruistic mood of helping those who shared with them the heritage of being despised and rejected of men. After securing toleration for their sect in the inhospitable New World they began to think seriously of others whose lot was unfortunate. The Negroes, therefore, could not escape their attention. Almost every Quaker center declared its attitude toward the bondmen, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... service. Another and another followed. At last the good captain entreated Mr Paget to perform the painful duty for him. How every one longed for a breeze to carry the fever-stricken ship out of that inhospitable region! It was supposed that the disease must have been brought on board, and had only now developed itself, as the poor woman who had just died had been ill when she ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... turning from the road when Johnnie turned, and went with her up the steep, rocky gulch where the door of a deserted cabin flung to and fro on its hinges. At sight of the smokeless chimney, the gaping doorway and empty, inhospitable ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... point, and I saw her inhospitable inhabitant no more. Then I watched the sun and the blazing firmament around, for there was at the same time broad day and midnight for me. The sunlight, being no longer diffused by an atmosphere, did not conceal the face of the sky, and I could see the stars shining close to the orb of ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... when spirits walk the earth, Meet the three Cantons of the mountains here, Upon the lake's inhospitable shore? What may the purport be of this new league We here contract ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... them it was dusk. Above him, on the narrow canyon top, gleamed the wonder of the desert stars. There was a glow of firelight on the rocks about him. Enoch sat up. It was an inhospitable spot for a camp. The roar of the falls was harsh and menacing. The canyon walls shot two thousand feet into the air on either side of the sliding waters. Enoch was suddenly oppressed by a vague sense of suffocation. ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... the younger Julia's misconduct to wreak the full measure of his long-standing indignation against the poet, whose evil counsels had helped to lead astray not only her but his daughter also. He banished him to Tomi, an inhospitable spot not far from the mouth of the Danube, and remained deaf to all the piteous protestations and abject flatteries which for ten years ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... their favourite maxim, that no man is naturally indebted to another; that he is not, therefore, obliged to bear with any imposition, or unequal treatment. [Footnote: Charlevoix] Thus, in a principle apparently sullen and inhospitable, they have discovered the foundation of justice, and observe its rules, with a steadiness and candour which no cultivation has been found to improve. The freedom which they give in what relates to the supposed duties of kindness and friendship, serves ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... water, food, human companionship (imagine Abdul Ghani a human companion!—but he had not seen a human face for three weeks, nor heard nor uttered a word), and safety, after suffering the unpleasant experience of wandering in circles, lost in the most inhospitable desert on the earth. Vultures! He had not realized there were so many in the world. Hour after hour, a post at every few yards, and on every post a vulture—a vulture that opened its eyes as he approached, regarded him from its own point of view—that ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... man, doctor," said the squire, as the former shook hands to go, after giving orders for his patient to be kept quiet, and assuring the squire that the young fellow would be none the worse for the adventures of the night—"I'm not an inhospitable man, but one has to think twice before asking a hundred such to have a mug of ale. I should have liked to do it, and it was on my lips, but the barrel would have ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... through the Straits of Magellan. Just, however, as we were entering them, a strong south westerly gale sprang up, which prevented us from making the attempt. We accordingly stood into a sheltered bay in Terra del Fuego. The shore looked very inhospitable—dark rocks rose up at a little distance from the water and seemed to form a barrier between the sea and the interior. There were a few trees, all stunted and bending one way as if forced thus by the wind. Still, John and Arthur and I had a fancy ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... clusters of reeds. Dark clouds scud across the sky, and the moon only shows itself at intervals. It is an intensely wild and lonely spot, and the cold, dank air blowing across the barren wastes renders it all the more inhospitable. No one, no living thing, no object is visible save the ash. Suddenly it moves its livid trunk, sways violently, unnaturally, backwards and forwards—once, twice, thrice; and there comes from it a cry, a most piercing, agonising cry, half human, half animal, that dies away ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... more to the Balkan Mountains. Snow covers alike the valley and the hill. It is the depth of that inhospitable season when combative men were wont, in former days, to retire into winter quarters, repose on their "laurels," and rest a while until the benign influences of spring should enable them to recommence the "glorious" ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... and inhospitable even in the sunlight. The rock walls rose sheer, the roofs slanted rakishly, the signs scratched on the rock by facetious riders were pointless and inane. Lone picked his way through the crooked defile that was marked MAIN STREET on the corner of the first huge boulder and ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... tell your German hosts that you like and wish to be by yourself sometimes; and if you say that you are used to it in England you won't impress them. The English are so inhospitable and unfriendly, they will say, for that is one of the many popular myths that are believed about us. I have been told of a German lady who has lived here most of her life, and complains to her German ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... has proved inhospitable to you for a time," he said, "she is now ready to make atonement. Your good friend, Mr. Pollock, will ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... under no circumstance could have been cold or inhospitable, received the intimation that Deleah was to stay until Reginald came home with less than ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... questionable truthfulness there is a singular anecdote recorded by the biographers of Chief Justice Hale, who, whilst riding the Western Circuit, tried a half-starved lad on a charges of burglary. The prisoner had been shipwrecked upon the Cornish coast, and on his way through an inhospitable district had endured the pangs of extreme hunger. In his distress, the famished wanderer broke the window of a baker's shop and stole a loaf of bread. Under the circumstances, Hale directed the ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... days the stone floors and bare walls were very inhospitable, but he would sometimes find a new passage to loiter in or a window-ledge to loll over and look from as he watched the rain drip from the carved nose of an ugly old monk whose ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... we started at daybreak, and made another long day of nearly twelve hours. It is necessary to hurry over these inhospitable tracts. After two hours we got among some sand-hills, and continued all day over the same kind of ground—hill and valley alternating, with here and there a huge, isolated, granite, rock rising up like an island. Pebbles strewed the surface of the sandy valleys. I scarcely remember to ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... on some barrier reef, which guarded at a distance the desolate and inhospitable shore, just at the very moment everything was deemed secure and all danger past! And, as she stranded, the thick-falling white snow which had already covered the decks seemed to be busy wreathing a shroud for the ill-fated ship, while the surges sang her requiem in their dull, ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... bad news, dear friends, and it has made me feel quite ill. It is something I cannot speak about. I hope you will not think me thoroughly inhospitable, if I go to my room for a while.' They all told her she must certainly go and lie down, and that they would leave immediately. She begged them not to hurry, but of course they saw that it wasn't best to stay, since she wouldn't let them do anything for her. So, fifteen ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... Connecticut was then a most formidable and inhospitable wilderness, strenuous efforts were already being put forth by the Colony to encourage its settlement. For, strange as it seems to us now, at that time, owing to imperfect modes of cultivation and the difficulty of subduing the wilderness, the settled portions of the Commonwealth ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... Monsieur Jausion cast a malicious glance at him over his spectacles as Clarissa Mirabel, decked in lace, rustled in, bowed smiling to the gentlemen, and then swept her gaze with cheerful calmness over the inhospitable room. From a frame in the centre of the wall the fat and ill-humored face of the King looked down upon her, as ill-humored as if each one of his subjects were especially repugnant to him. She forgot that it was only a picture ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... rolling country, now waste and barren, but formerly covered with wealth and supporting an abundant population, evidences of which are found in the buildings everywhere scattered over the hills. On and on we toiled in the heat, over this inhospitable wilderness, and though we knew Aleppo must be very near, yet we could see neither sign of cultivation nor inhabitants. Finally, about three o'clock, the top of a line of shattered wall and the points of some ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... first place, her Student series was proving to be quite as much of a Noah's Dove as the first set of sketches which had so signally failed to find a permanent roosting-place in an inhospitable world. Only yesterday the familiar parcel had made its appearance on the front-entry table, that table which, for a year past, she had never come in sight of without a quicker beating of the heart. If she ever did have a bit of success, she often reflected, that piece of ancestral mahogany ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... not fair. I had not begged; I had sung. In five minutes I had left behind me this inhospitable, but well guarded, village. My dogs followed me with their heads lowered, and their tails between their legs. They certainly knew that some bad luck had befallen us. Capi, from time to time, went ahead of us and turned ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... NOSSIS; but all that is intellectually repugnant within me is stirred by this treatment of my brother, who is no PHILODEMUS to find in Mr. DROOD his PISO; and sometimes I feel as though, like another SIMONIDES, I could fly with him from this inhospitable Northern house of SCOPAS, to the refuge of some more generous DIOSCURI. In the present macrocosm, to which we have come from our former home's microcosm, my brother is persistently maligned, even by Mr. BUMSTEAD, who may yet, if I am any judge, meet the fate of ANACREON, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... ships were hiring in the north to transport men. The fairness of Dr. Cameron's character, compared with the severity he met from a government most laudably mild to its enemies, confirmed this report. That Prussia, who opened its inhospitable arms to every British rebel, should have tampered in such a business, was by no means improbable. That King hated his uncle: but could a Protestant potentate dip in designs for restoring a popish government? Of what ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... difficulties on his return to Italy. It was the fashion to scoff at his claims, but I recall reading one of his works—his only one, I believe—in which he described a new continent in the south seas, a continent made up of 'some strange metal' which attracted the compass; a rockbound, inhospitable coast, without beach or harbor, which extended for hundreds of miles. He could make no landing; nor in the several days he cruised about it did he see sign of life. He called it Caprona and sailed away. I believe, sir, that we are looking upon the coast of Caprona, uncharted and forgotten ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Snow lay thick upon the ground and still fell in great flakes. A sheet of ice covering some small lakes formed part of the country upon which the armies were encamped, but was thick enough to bear their weight. It was a chill, inhospitable country to which the demon ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... begin the homeward march from Ilala. Illness of all the men. Deaths. Muanamazungu. The Luapula. The donkey killed by a lion. A disaster at N'kossu's. Native surgery. Approach Chawende's town. Inhospitable reception. An encounter. They take the town. Leave Chawende's. Reach Chiwaie's. Strike the old road. Wire drawing. Arrive at Kumbakumba's. John Wainwright disappears. Unsuccessful search. Reach Tanganyika. Leave the Lake. Cross the Lambalamfipa range. ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... quarters, the rival Warden was esteemed a natural enemy, and went by the name of "Old Bess," so that his recommendation went for worse than nothing, and a dash at Spring was made by the inhospitable young savages. Stephen stood to the defence in act to box, and the shy lad stood by him, calling for fair play and one at a time. Of course a fight ensued, Stephen and his champion on the one side, and two assailants ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... that they didn't invite us to sit down and have a bite," he said. "I call that kind of inhospitable." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... washed ashore. She was the only living creature out of all that had so lately breathed and moved on board the doomed ship. The wind was howling their requiem over the inhospitable coast. For a few minutes she slept peacefully, but soon she awoke and uttered groans of pain; she cast up her beautiful eyes towards heaven, and said a few words, but no one there could ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... no power to prevent it, sir, if he wishes it. Besides," he continued with annoying blandness of tone, "it would be inhospitable; and I am too ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... as he saw it was useless to remain, and left the drunken man lying on the pavement fast asleep, outside that inhospitable door. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... "if you fellers think you've spent enough time droolin' 'round here swapping lies, I think I'll go to bed," which inhospitable and injurious remark was by no means taken in bad part, for Dick said, ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... of his superior wisdom, was the first law-giver; and, by virtue of his sanctity of person and elevation of mind became their first, primitive king, a patriarchal monarch, whose scepter and symbol of power was the shepherd's peaceful crook; just as among the ruder nomads of the inhospitable North, we find the greatest hunters invested with the dignity of chief, whose significant symbol and scepter of royalty, upon their Nimrod thrones, was the trusty, successful spear. And the times in which we ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... No, sir; your oppressions planted them in America! They fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated and inhospitable country, where they exposed themselves to all the evils which a wilderness, filled with blood-thirsty savages, could threaten. And yet, actuated by true English love of liberty, they thought all these evils light in comparison ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer |
