"Irregular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stained black inside, he would hunt up something like what he wanted and get it darkened inside with shoe-blacking; he did not care to have glass covers made for tumblers in which he germinated seeds, but used broken bits of irregular shape, with perhaps a narrow angle sticking uselessly out on one side. But so much of his experimenting was of a simple kind, that he had no need for any elaboration, and I think his habit in this respect was in great measure due to his desire to husband his ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... thoughts, but he had, apparently, no inclination to invent and observe—except, indeed, in the most negative of senses—any style of his own. The "style of Sterne," in short, is as though one should say "the form of Proteus." He was determined to be uniformly eccentric, regularly irregular, and that was all. His digressions, his asides, and his fooleries in general would, of course, have in any case necessitated a certain general jerkiness of manner; but this need hardly have extended itself habitually to the structure of individual ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... from an unnamed sender. For days, be it said in all solemnity, Mr. Hamshaw waited and watched for glimpses of the young ladies—princesses he was calling them down in the neighbourhood of his rejuvenated heart. He neglected his business, ate at the most irregular hours, and finally gave himself up to the astonishing habit of walking up and down five flights of stairs. Sago and Ellen, united in worrying over these idiosyncrasies, were troubled deep down ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... the present by Mrs. Barclay. Whenever a confidential person shall be going from hence to London, I shall send my letters for you to the care of Mr. Trumbull, who will look out for safe conveyances. This will render the epochs of my writing very irregular. There is a proposition under consideration, for establishing packet-boats on a more economical plan, from Havre to Boston; but its success is uncertain, and still ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... though Lord BERESFORD had particularly invited him) to repudiate the agitation conducted by the honourable Member for DUNDEE, a few newspapers and twenty sandwichmen. Lord LANSDOWNE subsequently noted that this most irregular digression appeared to be "not wholly distasteful" to the peers assembled. Turning to Lord MONTAGU'S proposal he pointed out that the Government had gone some way to meet it by setting up Lord DERBY'S Committee. But, though prepared to see the Cabinet ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... lies the main ship channel, varying in width from seven hundred and fifty yards, three miles outside, to two thousand, or about a sea mile, abreast Fort Morgan. Nearly twenty-one feet can be carried over the bar; and after passing Fort Morgan the channel spreads, forming a hole or pocket of irregular contour, about four miles deep by two wide, in which the depth is from twenty to twenty-four feet. Beyond this hole, on either side the bay and toward the city, the water shoals gradually but considerably, and ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... north 85 degrees west and the partial chains into which it separates on the westward generally follow the same direction. It is less a Cordillera or a continuous chain in the sense given to those denominations when applied to the Andes and Caucasus than an irregular grouping of mountains separated the one from the other by plains and savannahs. I visited the northern, western and southern parts of the Sierra Parime, which is remarkable by its position and its extent of more than 25,000 square leagues. From the confluence ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... recruits, and the robbers whom he had fined and whose forts he had destroyed forsook the pursuits of peace and declared themselves ready to follow him to the gates of hell if necessary. Of them he chose out those who already had relatives or fellow-clansmen in his irregular corps to accompany him at once, leaving the rest under the command of his subordinate Carpenter at Dera Galib, nominally for drill, but also to serve as a ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... dim light of the lowered hall gas he saw an envelope lying on the floor—a thick grey envelope addressed to himself in a thin irregular hand. The sight of that superscription startled him like a glimpse of the unseen. For it was the handwriting of the ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... gave no reply, and, after shouting once or twice, he took his lantern and came to investigate. The door was locked on the inside! He instantly called d'Ardeche and Duchesne, and together they hurled themselves against the door. It resisted. Within they could hear irregular footsteps dashing here and there, with heavy breathing. Although frozen with terror, they fought to destroy the door and finally succeeded by using a great slab of marble that formed the shelf of the mantel in Fargeau's room. As the door crashed in, ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... a lovely smile, and an arch twinkle of her eye towards me, and then launched forth in full tide, accompanying her sweet and mellow voice on that too much neglected instrument, the guitar. It was a wild, irregular sort of ditty, with one or two startling arabesque bursts in it. As near as may be, the following conveys the meaning, but not ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... started again, the bridges opening to permit her passage. The great Wenern Lake lay before them, which is the third in size in Europe, Onega and Ladoga alone exceeding it in extent. It is about a hundred miles long by fifty in breadth, very irregular in shape, and portions of it are densely crowded with islands. Its greatest depth is three hundred and sixty feet near the Island of Luroe, but a considerable part of it is very shallow, and difficult of navigation. It ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... abroad. But it is not so. Ulster will fight for the same cause as did the Northern States of America, and may well show the same self-sacrifice. It will be civil war in a country peculiarly adapted to the movements of irregular troops, well acquainted with its features; it will be accompanied by atrocities which will be remembered for centuries. And this is the tremendous risk we are deliberately running, when we only possess six divisions of regular troops to support our allies on the continent and to ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... The kind of tree which had so opportunely reached us I afterwards saw growing on shore. It reaches to about the height of thirty feet. The leaves are large, pinnate, shining, and very smooth and irregular. They grow out of the trunk, the whole of which is covered with a coating of fibres hanging down like coarse hair. It is called by the natives piassaba. This fibre is manufactured into cables and small ropes. It is ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... against the wall was a pair of Indian clubs. He picked these up and examined them owlishly. He gave them little tentative jerks. Finally, with the air of a man carrying out a great resolution, he began to swing them. He swung them in slow, irregular sweeps, his eyes the while, still glassy, staring fixedly ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... weeks, only two of the 5000 members of temperance societies became its victims. In Montreal, where the victims of the disease were intemperate, it usually cut them off. In Great Britain, those who have been addicted to spirituous liquors and irregular habits have been the greatest sufferers from cholera. In some towns ...
— Object Lessons on the Human Body - A Transcript of Lessons Given in the Primary Department of School No. 49, New York City • Sarah F. Buckelew and Margaret W. Lewis
... whether Garibaldi was to be tried, and if so, what for; but the unpopularity into which the ministry had fallen could not be so easily dissipated. The Minister of Foreign Affairs (Durando) published a note in which it was stated that Garibaldi had only attempted to realise, in an irregular way, the desire of the whole nation, and that, although he had been checked, the tension of the situation was such that it could not be indefinitely prolonged. This was true, but it hardly improved the case for the Government. In Latin countries, ministers ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... "Mr." and "Mr"; use of variable numbers of asterisks as ellipses; irregular and archaic spelling other than noted below; inconsistent capitalization (especially Christian vs. christian) and hyphenation, are ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... And, indeed, the doctor himself had not much money in spite of his good practice. He played cards every night at the club, and always lost. Moreover, he bought mortgaged houses through a building society, and let them. The tenants were irregular in paying the rent, but he was convinced that such speculations were profitable. He had mortgaged his own house in which he and his daughter were living, and with the money so raised had bought a piece of waste ground, and had already begun to build on it a large two-storey house, ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... becomes a little forest of "fairy-cups and elf needles." And who else would have thought of saying that "the fields look rough with hoary dew"?[78] In the Easter-Day vision he sees the sky as a network of black serrated ridges. He loves the intricate play of light and shade, and the irregular, contorted, honeycombed surface which produces it; craggy, scarred, indented mountains, "like an old lion's cheek-teeth";[79] old towns with huddled roofs and towers picked out "black and crooked," like "fretwork," or "Turkish verse along a scimitar"; ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... state of nature can be deduced from the observations of those occurring among domestic animals. The two are so much opposed to each other in every circumstance of their existence, that what applies to the one is almost sure not to apply to the other. Domestic animals are abnormal, irregular, artificial; they are subject to variations which never occur and never can occur in a state of nature: their very existence depends altogether on human care; so far are many of them removed from that just proportion ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Mr. Stevens notices them as follows in his book In India: "A gang of half-a-dozen, brilliantly dishevelled, a faggot of daggers with an antique pistol or two in each belt, and a six-foot matchlock on each shoulder. They serve as irregular troops there, and it must be owned that if irregularity is what you want, no man on earth can supply it better. The Arab irregulars are brought over to serve their time and then sent back to Arabia; there is one at this moment, who is a subaltern in Hyderabad, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... of his country from the Gothic hardness of Lucas Cranach, Van Eyck, and Albert Durer; but notwithstanding his taste and knowledge of what constituted the higher qualities of the Italian school, the irregular combinations and multitudinous assemblage of figures found in the early German compositions remained with him to the last. His works are like a melodrama, filled with actors who have no settled action or ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... dug-out, probably, and a rat upset it; or some other of the million possibilities took place. Nobody was killed, but a dozen pipal trees were blown to smithereens, and the ghastly fact laid bare for all to see that in the irregular chasm that remained there was not a symptom of the ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... east across the long narrow valley of sand, nowhere broader than a couple of miles. To the north were a number of low hills shaped like so many tents, white, grey, and light-red in colour, and also to the south, where there was an additional irregular and ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... the two were made somewhat irregular by Greif's constant visits to Sigmundskron, and occasionally by the coming of the baroness and Hilda. The good lady thought that there was little dignity in bringing her daughter to Greifenstein, but she was quite unable to oppose Hilda's ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... subject to prolonged melancholy, and she is of but little account in the narrative of the life of Galileo. But Sister Maria Celeste, though never leaving the convent, managed to preserve a close intimacy with her beloved father. This was maintained only partly by Galileo's visits, which were very irregular and were, indeed, often suspended for long intervals. But his letters to this daughter were evidently frequent and affectionate, especially in the latter part of his life. Most unfortunately, however, all his letters ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... a noise if the pavement should be irregular, but if the pavement is regular and the vibrations or beats are uniform, it is then called a sound. But you wanted to know why you saw the shot before you heard it. Simply because sound does not travel as fast as light. Sound moves 1,040 feet in a second, and ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... this jagged, irregular mark? He had not said. Lord Ronsdale's words, "A recent wound—perhaps Mr. Steele is too modest—" returned to her. It was not so much the words as the tone, an inflection almost too fine to notice, a covert sneer. Or, was it that? Her brows drew together ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... very heavy pressure was heard on the port beam and bow (south) and very close to the ship. This occurred again at irregular intervals. Quite close to the ship the ice could be seen bending upwards, and occasional jars were felt on board. I am inclined to think that we have set into a cul-de-sac and that we will now experience the full force of pressure from the south. We have prepared for the worst and can ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... Nuernbergers give an Orbis Pictus) an Orbis Vestitus; or view of the costumes of all mankind, in all countries, in all times. It is here that to the Antiquarian, to the Historian, we can triumphantly say: Fall to! Here is learning: an irregular Treasury, if you will; but inexhaustible as the Hoard of King Nibelung, which twelve wagons in twelve days, at the rate of three journeys a day, could not carry off. Sheepskin cloaks and wampum belts; phylacteries, stoles, albs; chlamydes, togas, Chinese silks, Afghaun shawls, trunk-hose, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... a subject of France, and gave me a commission in one of the provincial corps that usually served in concert with our Indian allies. With the general I soon became a favourite; and, as a mark of his confidence at the attack on Quebec, he entrusted me with the command of a detached irregular force, consisting partly of Canadians and partly of Indians, intended to harass the flanks of the British army. This gave me an opportunity of being at whatever point of the field I might think most favourable to my design; and I was too familiar with ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... frailest organdy, but it had evidently been washed and starched since then, for it was fresh and unrumpled. Daylight confirmed the impression he had received that in a sketchy, faulty way she was lovely. She was clean, her features were small, irregular, but eloquent and appropriate to each other. She was a dark, unenduring little flower—yet he thought he detected in her some quality of spiritual reticence, of strength drawn from her passive acceptance of all things. In this he ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... whenever there was a chance, of killing or capturing any of these most troublesome foes, and Harvey and Harold knew that a report of their presence at the Jacksons' would suffice to bring a party of horsemen from the American lines. Their visits, therefore, were always made after dark, and at irregular intervals, and, in spite of their inclination to the contrary they made a point of returning at night ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... Durbin go down, then the major, and finally, the district attorney. Nothing could stay their curiosity now, not even the possibility of danger, which as yet was a lurking and mysterious one. But when a light shot up from below, and the irregular opening before me became a loophole through which I could catch a very wide glimpse of the library beneath, I found that it was not necessary for me to warn them to keep away from the hearth, as they were all clustered very near the door—a precaution not altogether uncalled for ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... literary renown, the political sense of which he had given proof in the Spanish war, the popularity that surrounded him, were certainly arguments in his favor. But looking at things coolly, it was clear that an irregular genius was not suited for the part of Mentor, when he still had all ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... let us look at a few which have been delivered by regularly practising speech-makers before groups of men whose interest, concern, and business it was to listen. All men who speak frequently are extremely uneven in their quality and just as irregular in their success. One of the best instances of this unevenness and irregularity was Edmund Burke, whose career and practice are bound to afford food for thought and discussion to every student of the power and value of the spoken word. Some of Burke's speeches are models ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... deceased, could pretend to judge what sort of marriage would turn out well for a young girl who preferred Casaubon to Chettam. In short, woman was a problem which, since Mr. Brooke's mind felt blank before it, could be hardly less complicated than the revolutions of an irregular solid. ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... to take out the things. He took them out very carefully, and laid them in order upon a table which was near the trunk. There were clothes of various kinds, some books, and several parcels, put up neatly in paper. Stuyvesant stopped at one of these parcels, which seemed to be of an irregular shape, and began to feel of what ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott
... to see that Ellen did not take her nonsense in her usual smooth good-natured way. She flushed and said nothing. Thereafter Christina kept a strict censorship over Bruce's letters, and was slightly troubled to find that they were rather irregular. Ellen's answer always went back the very next day, and Christina could not help seeing that her sister was anxious and worried until another came. And occasionally a wearisome time elapsed before it ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... just got through dinner, when the cook put his head down the scuttle and told us to come on deck and see the finest sight that we had ever seen. "Where away, cook?" asked the first man who was up. "On the larboard bow." And there lay, floating in the ocean, several miles off, an immense, irregular mass, its top and points covered with snow, and its center of ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... at the head of the irregular procession; and as the crowd continued to shout and yell, "Peace with France!" he muttered, "I think I have accomplished a good deal to-day. The archduke will be satisfied with what I have done, and we may compel the minister after all to ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... at the foot of the slope and were reformed; having fallen into some disorder, from the irregular nature of the ground over which they had been fighting. The guns were brought forward, so as to cover their next advance; while a very strong force was sent to support the batteries on the Homolka Hill, so as to ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... were pitiably anxious to make her feel welcome,—and failed. They called her "Raine." The other two men did not call her anything at all. They were both sandy-complexioned and they both chewed tobacco quite noticeably, and when they sat down in their shirt sleeves to eat, Lorraine had seen irregular humps in their hip pockets which must be six-guns; though why they should carry them in their pockets instead of in holster belts buckled properly around their bodies and sagging savagely down at one side and swinging ferociously ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... habits, and temperament, of the human body. It leads us to a knowledge of the causes of diseases: these we shall find consist either in an excessive or preternatural excitement in the whole or part of the human body, accompanied generally with irregular motions, and induced by natural or artificial stimuli, or in a diminished excitement or debility in the whole, or in part. It likewise teaches us that the natural and only efficacious cure of these diseases depends on the abstraction of stimuli, from the ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... large proportion of irregular comb, can never be expected to prosper. Such comb is only suitable for storing honey, or raising drones. This is one reason why so many colonies never flourish. A glance will often show that a hive contains so much drone comb, ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... were dragging, and his square shoulders bowed under the burden of the knapsack, whose height and big irregular outline seemed almost fantastic. ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... dissipated sailor, whom he afterward blamed as the prompter of his first licentious adventures. His father died in 1784, and with his brother Gilbert the poet rented the farm of Mossgiel; but this venture was as unsuccessful as the others. He had meantime formed an irregular intimacy with Jean Armour, for which he was censured by the Kirk-session. As a result of his farming misfortunes, and the attempts of his father-in-law to overthrow his irregular marriage with Jean, he resolved ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... footsteps amongst the clouds. Such hints, after his little sister's death, were furnished by certain expressions of the Litany, by pictures in the stained windows of the church, and by the tumult of the organ. Nor were the dreams thus introduced mere fantasies, irregular and inconsistent. Throughout, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... widow and son had been left to face the world together. Sir William Elsmere and his nephew's wife had not much in common, and rarely concerned themselves with each other. Mrs. Elsmere was an Irishwoman by birth, with irregular Irish ways, and a passion for strange garments, which made her the dread of the conventional English squire; and, after she left the vicarage with her son, she and her husband's uncle met no more. But when he died it was found that the old man's sense of kinship, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... get caught, this time, Captain Lockett. I don't want my nephew to learn to speak French, instead of Spanish, for there is very little trade to be done in that quarter, at present; and what there is is all carried on by what I may call 'irregular' channels." ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... and more analogical expression than than whom; but both are of questionable propriety, and the former is seldom if ever found, except in some few grammars; while the latter, which is in some sort a Latinism, may be quoted from many of our most distinguished writers. And, since that which is irregular cannot be parsed by rule, if out of respect to authority we judge it allowable, it must be set down among the figures of grammar; which are, all of them, intentional deviations from the ordinary use of words. One late author treats the point pretty well, in this short hint: "After the conjunction ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... to the south. Beyond the widening branches of the lagoon, and rising out of the bright lake into which they gather, there are a multitude of towers, dark, and scattered among square-set shapes of clustered palaces, a long irregular line fretting the southern sky. Mother and daughter, you behold them both in their widowhood—Torcello and Venice. Thirteen hundred years ago, the gray moorland looked as it does this day, and the purple ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... in a small house situated on the Quai de l'Ecole, at the back of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, from whence he had a clear and uninterrupted view across the river, as far as the irregular block of buildings of the Chatelet prison and the ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... on the north of Lisbon, and left no single point open between the Tagus and the sea. This was the barrier to which Wellington meant in the last resort to draw his assailants, whilst the country was swept of everything that might sustain an invading army, and the irregular troops of Portugal closed ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... a sheet of water to fill the spaces between the circular contour of the movable piston and the internal surface of the cylinder, for there were no cylinder-boring tools in those days, and surfaces of cylinders were most irregular. To the surprise of the engineer, the engine began one day working at greatly increased speed, when it was found that the piston-head had been pierced by accident and that the cold water had passed in small drops into the cylinder and had condensed ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... Edgar had slept under its uneven on some visit to Dunstan's monkish colony, was scarcely sufficient to make a palace of the rambling rookery which a wall separated from the West Minster. It was an irregular one-storied building,—or, rather, group of buildings connected by covered passages,—and every kind of material had been used in its construction,—brick and stone and wood,—while some of the smaller offices ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... can be no adequate prosperity for the forty or fifty million people in these islands without the Empire and all that it provides; there can be no enduring Empire without a healthy, thriving, manly people at the centre. Stunted, overcrowded town populations, irregular employment, sweated industries, these things are as detestable to true Imperialism as they are to philanthropy, and they are detestable to the Tariff Reformer. His aim is to improve the condition of the people at home, and to ...
— Constructive Imperialism • Viscount Milner
... hordes still grazing their herds and their flocks on the grassy plains of high Asia, as they have done for countless centuries, are divided up into Banners, or military divisions, showing the enormous strength in irregular cavalry they possessed two hundred and fifty years ago. Round the Forbidden City are the Six Boards and the Nine Ministries, the outward signs of those bonds of etiquette and procedure which bind the Manchu Throne to the eighteen provinces. The walls ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... a mile from the convent by a road following the shore of the lake is an intermittent fountain, very irregular in its action. To reach it continue the road till arriving at a clump of chestnut and horse-chestnut trees, some having stone seats round the trunks. The fountain is in the corner under the fourth tree. Near ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... the vast harbour; numerous white forts, backed by picturesque hills rising above them, covered with the richest verdure, and villages peeping forth here and there in beautiful little bays; while higher up the bay the vast city appeared, extending for miles along its irregular shore, and running back almost to the foot of the Tijuca Mountains, with hills and heights in every direction. In the midst of this scene we dropped our anchor under the frowning fortress of Villegagnon, the first castle erected by Europeans ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... case. The drafts were countless, and often were for very petty amounts, much as if a prosperous merchant were drawing cheques to pay his ordinary expenses. Further, the uncertainty of the passage across the Atlantic led to these bills appearing at all sorts of irregular times; seconds often came to hand before firsts, and thirds before either; the bills were often very old when presented. Knaves took advantage of these facts fraudulently to alter seconds and thirds into firsts, so that extreme care had to be taken to prevent constant duplication and even triplication ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... Principal parts of irregular verbs are given in parenthesis in the following order: Present, Future, Past Absolute, Past Participle. All radical-changing verbs have the vowel change indicated in parenthesis. Any other forms are specially marked. Adjectives, adverbs, prepositions are indicated only in cases ...
— A First Spanish Reader • Erwin W. Roessler and Alfred Remy
... became more irregular; he seemed to walk by a series of jerks; his teeth chattered; his hands were cold; a violent agitation ran through his body. I spoke to him; he did not answer. He was just able to let himself be led along. A cab was ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... prime importance in the construction of a rock garden. They hold the only considerable spaces of soil and are the chief means of colonizing plants, thus providing for pronounced color effects. They should break the slopes and be irregular in size, shape, and distribution. The large ones may be easily subdivided by small stones when the planting is done if a further separation of species is desirable. The soil must slope a little from the top, so that there will ...
— Making A Rock Garden • Henry Sherman Adams
... cause of the King's love for old Maintenon. In the first place, when she wished to have her near her children, she shut her ears to the stories which were told of the irregular life which the hussy had been leading; she made everybody who spoke to the King about her, praise her; her virtue and piety were cried up until the King was made to think that all he had heard of her light conduct were lies, and in the end he most firmly believed it. In the second place, Montespan ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... made inquiries about the "Amphion," but as yet we had only the information gained through Ned from the Sanguir Malay to guide us. She might have been lost at Gillolo itself, and yet the Dutch might not have heard of it, as but very irregular intercourse is kept up between the different parts of that little ...
— The Mate of the Lily - Notes from Harry Musgrave's Log Book • W. H. G. Kingston
... not sufficient to support the church and its services, so that the latter were irregular and repairs were neglected. In 1608 Mayor Hancox procured the delivery of a Saturday lecture "for the better fitting of the people for the Sabbath." In 1641 Simon Norton, alderman, left property to his son Thomas, on trust, the condition being that if at any time St. John's ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse
... letter of the 26th of December, and am expecting your defence of early marriages to-day. My father laughs at my impatience to hear from you, and says I am in love; but I do not believe that to be a fair deduction, for the post is really very irregular and slow—enough ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... honesty. Of the third, fourth, and fifth volumes I indeed mean eventually to rearrange what I think of permanent interest, for the complete edition of my works, but with fewer and less elaborate illustrations: nor have I any serious grounds for refusing to allow the book once more to appear in the irregular form which it took as it was written, since of the art-teaching and landscape description it contains I have little to retrench, ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... house, herself. A full week had he been there before his fellow lodgers, self-constituted into a Committee on Membership, took his case under consideration in full session upon the front steps. None had had speech with him, but it was known that he kept irregular hours. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... sight to see some four or five hundred coolies squatted in a long irregular line, chattering, laughing, shouting, or squabbling. A dense cloud of dust rises over them, and through the dim obscurity one hears the ceaseless sound of the thwack! thwack! as their sticks rattle on the ground. White dust lies ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... roar, punctuated with a series of violent explosions as huge blocks of ice were shivered and shot into the air by that Titanic force. Nothing on earth could live in that wild maelstrom. It was one vast, pulsating, churning mass, and as the sun caught its irregular, crystal-like crest, a lawn-like mist, that glowed with every colour of the rainbow, hovered over it. It was indeed a ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... inadequacy of the Government's policy towards Ireland, cannot but recognise in this experiment an example which might be profitably followed in dealing with what—with all due deference to Hibernian susceptibilities—we are reluctantly driven to call the irregular conduct of certain sections ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... Christians, while not superstitious like the heathen, know well "that God is not bound to his creation and the ordinary course of Nature, but must often, especially in these last dregs of the world, resort to irregular means to display his ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... out of sight from the road. He made himself as comfortable as possible, to avoid transmitting any information about his whereabouts. He stuffed his ears to mute the sounds of open country. From four o'clock to eight, at irregular intervals, he turned on the sensory-linkage device for a second or two at a time. He came to recognize the physical sensations of the man who, back in the hidden missile base, wore a child's belt and ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... up the Murray, a man and a woman, neither of them young or handsome or respectable-looking. If they had been so once they had outgrown them all. The woman certainly had what is called the remains of a fine woman about her, but her face had so many marks of care, of evil passions, and of irregular living, that it was perhaps more repulsive than if it had been absolutely plain in features; her dress was slatternly and ill-fitting, her gray hair untidily gathered under a dingy black cap, with bright, though soiled yellow flowers stuck in it; her eyes, ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... did not have than are American fathers. The man who is most eager that his son should have a college education is not the man who has two or three academic degrees, but the man who never went to college at all. The father whose boys are allowed to be irregular in their church attendance is the father who, as a boy, was compelled to go to church, rain or ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... the man. I found him in one of the caves at Thebes, among the mummies, laid up with a fever, nearly ready to be a mummy himself! I remember bleeding him—irregular, was not it? but one does not stand on ceremony in Pharaoh's tomb. I got him through with it; we came up the Nile together, and the last I saw of him was at Alexandria. He is your man! something ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... had not, in a long married life, grown like his spouse in any way, nor she like him. He was small, with a narrow forehead, irregular face and projecting under-lip, which made him ugly. His eyes were of that common no-colour type, and might or might not have been pigmented, and classifiable as brown or blue—Dr. Broca himself would not have been able to decide. But the absence ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... were regular in features and good-looking, though dirt and torn clothing of various gaudy colours gave a picturesque, but hardly an attractive, appearance to the group. The bazaar was entered at right angles with the quay; the streets were paved with stones of irregular size, sloping from both sides towards the centre, which formed the gutter. Camels, mules, bullock-carts, and the omnipresent donkeys thronged the narrow streets, either laden with produce for the quay, or returning after having delivered ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... had estimated. The new slopes now revealed were covered with verdure down to the very edge of the water, which, for nearly a mile seawards, broke over jagged reefs. The sea looked strangely calm from this height. Irregular blue patches on the horizon to south and east caught the man's first glance. He unslung the binoculars he still carried and ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... an edict renewing the order for the closing of the temples and the abolition of sacrifices—and that too under pain of death and confiscation. But in distant provinces, such as Numidia, the action of the central power was slow and irregular. It was often represented by officials who were hostile or indifferent to Christianity. The local aristocracy and their following scoffed at it more or less openly. In their immense villas, behind the walls of their parks, the rich landowners offered ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... irregular in shape, forming something of an underground split in the rocks. The flooring led steadily downward, with here and there an opening of ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer
... ascend the Cordiere Gardens, commanding beautiful views of the city as we wind round and upwards. The sea, running eastward into the heart of the town, forms the harbour; the older part of the town, with somewhat narrow streets and massive but irregular houses, occupies a triangular point to the north; while the new town—much the largest, consists of wide, handsome streets and many fine public buildings and institutions. It is, I think, an excellent plan, when visiting a ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... a big laugh was Joe's, for his mouth was somewhat large, and a grin always seemed to twist it. On this occasion, so great was his surprise that his master should think he would be fool enough to enlist for a "soger," that his mouth assumed the most irregular shape I ever saw, and bore a striking resemblance to a hole such as might be made in the head of a drum by the heel ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... the chair, and walked out of the school-room, followed in good order by all the students who had taken part in these irregular proceedings. I was going out with the rest, when Mr. Parasyte intimated that he had something to say to me, and I remained. When the boys had all gone, he invited me to accompany him to his private office—a ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... (The Young Heckler. "Naw moor be we, Zur. We ain't zeed nayther on 'em zo fur!" Tumult, and a general demand for the instant production of Orson or Valentine.) Now, children, children! this is very irregular. You must allow me to tell this story my own way. You will see them both in good time, if you only keep still! (To Ass.) I can't stand this any more. Valentine and Orson must be underneath the rest. Find them, and shove them in quick. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 6, 1891 • Various
... divined his thoughts, or probably observed the irregular and faltering steps he was making, for, seizing him by the arm, he ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... subjection of states to the Law of Nature, if contemplated at all, must have seemed at most an extreme result of curious speculation. The truth appears to be that modern International Law, undoubted as is its descent from Roman law, is only connected with it by an irregular filiation. The early modern interpreters of the jurisprudence of Rome, misconceiving the meaning of Jus Gentium, assumed without hesitation that the Romans had bequeathed to them a system of rules for the adjustment of international transactions. This "Law of Nations" was at first an authority which ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... to do anything, and always hoping to get better, he had sent different gentlemen to take the services, first one and then another, or had asked the masters at Ragglesford to help him; but it was all very irregular, and no one had settled down long enough to know the people or do much good in visiting them. My Lady, as they all called Lady Jane, was as sorry as any one could be, and she tried what she could do by paying ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... (hiccup) happy new year to us all!' exclaimed Sir Harry, drinking off his wine. 'H-o-o-ray!' exclaimed the company in irregular order, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... took roundabout ways, and presently he was where he could see long gray walls of vapor where lay battle lines. The voices of cannon shook him. The musketry sounded in long irregular surges that played havoc with his ears. He stood regardant for a moment. His eyes had an awestruck expression. He gawked in ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... hole is circular, the rings will be found circular also, but if the hole is square, then the rings will be irregular in shape. One remarkable characteristic about these rings is, that when two of the rings are travelling in the same straight line, the one behind will overtake the front one, and while so doing, the diameter of the front one is enlarged, while that of the one behind ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... were hurrying toward the tool house in a long, irregular line. Peterson started toward the office, to give the word to the men before they could hand in ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... shortly found a spot of blood that was repeated at irregular intervals for a mile or so. Pard was grunting now, but Douglas rowelled him and pushed on until he saw the antelope kneeling in the lee of an outcropping of rock. It struggled to its feet and fell again, its beautiful head dropping against its ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... variety of arches and windows, of irregular arrangement, both round and pointed. Some of those in the south seem to have opened into chancels or recesses, and some probably were mere cupboards: but in the north wall of the opposite transept ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various
... right through Rainharbour, and about a mile out into the country on the other side, to arrive at Fairholm, Uncle James Patten's place. The sun had set, and the quaintly irregular red-brick houses, mellowed by age, shone warm in tint against the gathering grey of the sky, which rose like a leaden dome above them. At one part of the road the sea came in sight. Great dark mountainous masses of cloud, with flame-coloured fringes, hung suspended over its shining surface, in ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... the general method employed in the preparation of the series can be gathered. To the moon and to the sun, to each of the planets, and to the important stars a separate section was assigned. In this section the peculiarities, regular and irregular, connected with each of the bodies were noted, their appearance and disappearance, the conditions prevailing at rising and at setting, the relationship of the moon to the sun or to a star, of the stars to one another and to the ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... the doctor said peremptorily. "No. A woman, with a fractured skull. Beautiful case. Van Kirk was up to his eyes and sent for me. Hemorrhage, right-sided paralysis, irregular pupils—all the trimmings. ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... appointed courses in the midst of such mighty overthrows and such interruption to the courses of their own wonted happiness and their habitual expectations. Why should morning and night, why should all movements in the natural world be so regular, whilst in the moral world all is so irregular and anomalous? Yet the sun and the moon rise and set as usual upon the mightiest revolutions of empire and of worldly fortune that this planet ever beholds; and it is sometimes even a comfort to know that this ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... incarnation, had been disregarded by the synod of Ephesus: his authority, and that of the Latin church, was insulted in his legates, who escaped from slavery and death to relate the melancholy tale of the tyranny of Dioscorus and the martyrdom of Flavian. His provincial synod annulled the irregular proceedings of Ephesus; but as this step was itself irregular, he solicited the convocation of a general council in the free and orthodox provinces of Italy. From his independent throne, the Roman bishop spoke and acted ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... grovelling command their candidates To satisfy examiners in Smalls, and Mods., and Greats, To learn those verbs irregular which men of taste abhor, Before you can a Doctor be or e'en ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... square; and between these was an oblong courtyard. Between the front and back courts, the building had two small lateral projections, like the transepts of a church. In front were two square projecting towers; and round the building, at irregular distances, were nine others, projecting, of different shapes, but principally five-sided segments of octagons—if this description be intelligible. It was, probably, from the general appearance of the plan, intended more as a residence for a nobleman or prince, than a fortress, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 491, May 28, 1831 • Various
... side of the river on which they were located arose to a height of from twenty to thirty feet. In one place there was a sheer rocky wall, but at other places the rocks were much broken up, and consequently, irregular. ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... its degree, produce the same results. Nature-studies have long been valued as a "means of grace," because they arouse the enthusiasm, the love of work which belongs to open-eyed youth. The child blase with moral precepts and irregular conjugations turns with delight to the unrolling of ferns and the song of birds. There is a moral training in clearness and tangibility. An occult impulse to vice is hidden in all vagueness and in all teachings meant ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... a tourist's point of view it deserves to be better known. It is a veritable town amidst the waters, and almost encircled by the meandering channels that connect Upper and Lower Lough Erne. It consists almost entirely of one long, irregular, but tolerably-built street, at both ends of which you cross the river Erne. A wooded knoll, crowned by a monument to Sir Lowry Cole, who did good service under Wellington, is a conspicuous object, and through openings purposely cut through the trees, affords some very ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... went for a walk. He took Toto with him, and they made the circuit of the Park, which formed an irregular circle about the narrow streets of the old citadel where the wall had once stood. He walked, as he had done before, because he was in trouble, but with this difference, that then, he had walked in order to think, and now he walked ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the old sculptured marbles. One salon was decorated with Flaxman's drawings on the wall, in their classical outlines. From a steep, dark stone stairway, down which one descended (at the imminent risk of a broken neck in the darkness and from the irregular stairs rudely carved in the stone), one emerged on a landing, where a little door opened into the balcony of the chapel, a curious, gloomy place, with tombs and altar and shrine, and some very poor old paintings. One's progress to it recalled the ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... sounds that came from the quarter where the conflict was going on. Occasionally, a discharge of musketry reached these spots, and once or twice I heard the report of a gun; but the firing was desultory, far from heavy, and irregular. ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... department was assisted by a council; and at the head of each circle or district into which they were subdivided, was placed an eparch, with a distinct board. The first acts of the government were to disband the irregular troops, to organise a new and regular army, and to endeavour to provide something like an administration of justice. The disbanding of the irregular troops, however, did not contribute to the internal tranquillity of the country; on the contrary, it ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... for the four years is, upon the best authority attainable, placed at one million one hundred thousand men (1,100,000). The maximum number of men on the Confederate Army rolls at any one time is estimated at five hundred thousand. The irregular manner in which the men were conscripted during the last two years of the war, taken in connection with the loss of records, makes it impossible to give accurate statements of the numbers furnished by the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... the national domain is worth more than all the lives and all the property of rebels of whatever sort; and while Andrew Johnson is declaring the same thing in Tennessee, these Northern traitors are speaking tenderly of the rebellion as an 'irregular opposition'—excited and almost justified by Northern aggressions on Southern rights—which ought to be so met on our part as not to preclude the South from a return to its ancient domination. They insist that ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... out of their pale, by uniting themselves with women of other castes, led not by considerations of righteousness but by uncontrolled lust, cause numerous mixed castes to come into existence whose occupations and abodes depend on the circumstances connected with the irregular unions to which they owe their origin. Having recourse to spots where four roads meet, or crematoria, or hills and mountains, or forests and trees, they build their habitations there. The ornaments ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... into view, with a drinking-trough below. Directly opposite, the two blue roofs ranged themselves side by side, with long strips of garden and a thick privet hedge between them and the road. And behind, in the direction of the marsh, the poplars stretched in an irregular line. ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... justice, she had, at irregular periods, paroxyms of reformation and arrangement, which she called "clarin' up times," when she would begin with great zeal, and turn every drawer and closet wrong side outward, on to the floor or tables, and make the ordinary confusion seven-fold more confounded. Then she would light ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... whom it is found difficult, almost impossible even, to live. Rather must we rank him high among those genial and warm-hearted men who love too much, rather than too little, and who are easily led by the women to whom they give their devotion. Irregular and faulty, even immoral as he was, he yet possessed the redeeming domestic virtues in a large degree. Away beyond his seventieth year we find women still madly loving him, and him capable of reciprocating their affections. And well was it that this should ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... minor key, and in a wild, irregular rhythm, the dirge was far more impressive than the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... rectangular space, and dotted it with pale-yellow lumber-piles, that looked as if nothing less than a miracle kept them from rolling over and over down to the bottom of the valley, or where the gray, irregular face of a precipice denied all foothold to the boldest roots. There was nothing smooth, swelling, or graceful, in the aspect of the range. They seemed, hills though they were, to be inspired with the souls of mountains, which were ever seeking to burst the narrow ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... luminous arch had broken into irregular masses, streaming with much rapidity in different directions, varying continually, in shape and interest, and extending themselves from north, by the east, to north. The usual pale light of the aurora strongly resembled that produced ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... to go with a light. We cry mystery long before the region of mystery comes. True mystery casts no shadows around. It is a sudden and awful gulf yawning across the field of knowledge; its form is irregular, but its lips are clean cut and sharp, and the mind can go to the very verge and look down the precipice into ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... irregular one, running in somewhat of a semicircle and with a flooring that was comparatively level. It was dry and fairly comfortable, and once beyond the fury of the storm the lads dismounted and proceeded ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... and his head, with its strong curly hair of a light golden brown, which was repeated in his short beard, carried itself with the unconscious ease of one who has never known anything but the upper seats of life. His features were handsome, except for a broad irregular mouth, and his blue eyes were kind and ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... this is not the end. After these snowy blossoms have performed their mission of beauty, they will drop off upon the carpet of moss, and, in a short time, will be succeeded by the leaves of the plant, which are large and irregular, but very beautiful, and each leaf is supported by a stem which comes directly from the ground, giving the impression of a miniature tree. A large dish of these little trees springing from the moss makes the ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... thirst, because I did not have the right kind of money. On Monday I drew my check in English currency, and bought a suitable purse; but I was very awkward for a few days at counting money. England has the oddest and most irregular money table that I found from there to Egypt, except those of Holland and Germany. Many of the coins are old and purseworn, so that it is impossible to decipher either the image or the superscription (Matt. XXII. 20), consequently the value must he guessed ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... the Mayor and the magistrates heard mass sung and presented two candles. Now for two months Brother Helie had been under order to appear before the Parlement of Poitiers.[1878] On what charge we do not know. Mendicant monks of those days were for the most part irregular in faith and in morals. The doctrine of Friar Richard himself was not ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... good appetite?" but the second question I would ask is, "What is your lung capacity?" The lungs have increased very rapidly at fourteen to sixteen in the boy; in the girl the increase has been smaller and quite irregular. It ought to be more regular than it is, I am convinced. The heart has gained greatly in capacity. The arteries have expanded much less than the heart, and the result is that there is a much higher blood pressure than there has been at any time before. The brain has attained practically ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... silence before she turned to him suddenly: "See here—all this is very irregular-so, that being the case—why shouldn't we buy it together? We know each other. Neither of us will ever stay here long. One summer apiece will satisfy us, though it is lovely. Be a sport. We'll draw lots as to who is ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... cross the trenches north of Peronne. Archie then scored an inner. One of his chunks swept the left aileron from the leader's machine, which banked vertically, almost rolled over, and began to spin. For two thousand feet the irregular drop continued, and the observer gave up hope. Luckily for him, the pilot was not of the same mind, and managed to check the spin by juggling with his rudder-controls. The bus flew home, left wing well down, with the observer leaning far out to the right to restore ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... pitch, and a remarkable memory. As a very young child he could repeat, after a fashion, any composition that was played for him. No matter how many wrong notes he struck, he never lost the intention of a passage, he brought the substance of it across by irregular and astonishing means. He wore his teachers out. He could never learn like other people, never acquired any finish. He was always a negro prodigy who played barbarously and wonderfully. As piano playing, it was perhaps abominable, but as music it ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... the crown of elongated leaves. On March 8th, between 12.20 and 7.20 P.M. the stem described an ellipse, open at one end. On the following day a new tracing was begun (Fig. 84), which plainly shows that the stem completed three irregular figures in the course ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... black-and-white bloom. The Overboro' road ran through part of the Okebourne property (which was far too extensive to be enclosed in a ring fence), and the timber had therefore been allowed to grow so that there was an irregular avenue of trees for some distance. I faced the beanfield, which was on the opposite side, leaning back against the gate which led into some of Hilary's wheat. The silence of the highway, the soft wind, the alternate sunshine and shade as the light clouds passed over, induced a dreamy feeling; ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... of an act which he declared was so unconstitutional, so derogatory to the character of the senate, and marked with so broad an impression of compliance with power. But though thus pronounced an irregular and unconstitutional proceeding by Mr. Webster and the other senators with whom he sided and voted, Mr. John Quincy Adams, who was at the time a member of the house, and in direct antagonism, politically, ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... with an inborn thirst for scientific knowledge; he might spend all his spare moments making crude experiments with an air-pump, or gazing at planets through a cheap astronomical telescope; he might fail dismally to grasp the rudiments of the Latin grammar, and be incapable of conjugating an irregular verb; but his nose would be kept down to the grindstone of the school curriculum all the same, and not the smallest attention paid to ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... all-sufficient. If Barnabas had been like some of us, he would have had a very different style of exhortation. He would have said, 'This irregular work has been well done, but there are no authorised teachers here, and no provision has been made for the due administration of the sacraments of the Church. The very first thing of all is to give these people the blessing of bishops and priests.' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... full of sullen resolution. The nose, pinched, yet not pointed, showed scarcely any nostril, and might as well have been made of wood, for any meaning it betrayed. Her eyebrows were short, wide, rugged, and irregular, though very black; the cast-down eyes, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... fluid and the substance, of language. The fluid seems to have been poured in on the corpuscles all at once, and the whole has, therefore, curdled, and collected itself into a lumpy soup full of knots of curds inisled by interjacent whey at irregular distances, and the curd ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... you watch for a few minutes, you'll see that the swells are not long and unbroken, as after a steady period of strong wind from any quarter, but irregular, some of the swells long, some short. That suggests that they have received their initial impulse from a hurricane, with a whirling center, the waves being whipped by gusts ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... above little diagram would seem to have suggested the arrangement of fiefs in the state, in which the irregular feudality of former times became moulded into a symmetrical system. The sovereign state was in the centre; and those of the feudal barons were ranged on the four sides in successive rows. The central portion was designated Chung Kwoh, "Middle Kingdom," a title which has come ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... any considerable height, but having enough of the mountain spirit to throw itself into continual succession of bold slope and dale; elevated, also, just far enough above the sea to render the pine a frequent forest tree along its irregular ridges. Through this elevated tract the river cuts its way in a ravine some five or six hundred feet in depth, which winds for leagues between the gentle hills, unthought of until its edge is approached; ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... moment lessened. At the same instant, Paco and El Tuerto re-appeared on the summit of the precipice, and began to descend the water-course. Herrera now perceived that the latter was in fact a rude and irregular staircase, or rather a ladder of steps cut in the rocky surface, some perhaps naturally indented, but others evidently chiselled out by the hands of man. By means of these steps, which afforded a slippery but sufficient ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... but not as he had hitherto done. There was another tone in his voice, warmer, more confidential. It attracted Beatrice Cary's attention, and she looked curiously from Lois to the man beside her. About thirty-five, with a passably good figure, irregular, if honest, features, and an expression usually somewhat grave, he made no pretensions to any exterior advantage. He could apparently be gay, as now, but his gaiety did not conceal the fact that it was unusual. Altogether, he had nothing about him which appealed to her, but Beatrice ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... favorable aspect of the heavens, as he had often done before, went a-fishing that afternoon, and his company thenceforth was known to old and young, grave and gay, as "The Shad," and by the youths of this vicinity this was long regarded as the proper name of all the irregular militia in Christendom. But, alas! no record of these fishers' lives remains that we know, unless it be one brief page of hard but unquestionable history, which occurs in Day Book No. 4, of an old trader of this town, long ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... only will the germs of excellence be likely to be extinguished in the members of the lower class of the community, but the temptations to irregular acts and incroachments upon the laws for the security of property will often be so great, as to be in a manner irresistible. The man who perceives that, with all his industry, he cannot provide for the bare subsistence ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... uniformity of law, so essential to the quiet and harmony of a people, and so necessary in defining the title and securing the tenure of property, by this system was so greatly disturbed, that it led to the informal assembling of the judges at irregular periods, and upon their own responsibility, to reconcile these discrepancies. This in some degree obviated the necessity of a supreme court for the correction of errors; but was very unsatisfactory to the Bar, who were almost ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... seemed with a stick, or possibly with a very badly fashioned quill-pen. There was very little writing upon it, and this of the raggedest sort. To their intense disappointment it bore no name to tell where in the seven seas it might be. That the chart was of some coast was certain. A deep, irregular bay occupied the central part of the sheet. Two long promontories jutting from east and west nearly closed the seaward or southern end. The single word "Watter" was written beside a dot high up on the paper and a little northeast of the bay. An anchor, ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... a straggling group of buildings outside, in the same humble style,—a stable, a barn, a hay-barn, a sheep-pen with a shed attached, and a milk-house; and stretching around the whole lay the farm,—a straggling patch of corn land of from twelve to fifteen acres in extent, that, from its extremely irregular outline, and the eccentric forms of the parti-coloured divisions into which it was parcelled, reminded one of a coloured map. Encircling all was a wide sea of heath studded with huge stones—the pasturage land of the farmer for his sheep and cattle—which swept away ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... with the rigid, convulsed look of a woman who has been stricken with dumbness. Her flaxen hair, damp with camphor, which Mrs. Carr had wildly splashed on her forehead, clung flat and close to her head, while the only pulse in her body seemed to beat in irregular, ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... other residences of the same character; but most of the houses were built of soft stone, with thatched roofs, forming four irregular narrow streets, with several narrower lanes of no very dignified character. Still, we were fond of our little town, and had reasons to be proud of it from the events ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... company might he established for the purpose of erecting bridges to noses that, like my own, have been unprovided by nature. I should be happy to become a director. Revenons nous—my mouth is decidedly large, and my teeth singularly irregular. My father was violently opposed to Dr. Jenner's "repeal of the small-pox,"[4] and would not have me vaccinated; the consequence of which has been that my chin is full of little dells, thickly studded with dark ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... infractions of the treaty. A short time thereafter President Adams in an address to Congress, November 23, 1797, reported that several decisions on the claims of citizens of the United States for losses and damages sustained by reason of irregular and illegal captures or condemnations of their vessels or other property had been made by the commissioners in London, conformably to the Seventh Article of the Treaty. "The sums awarded by the Commissioners," said he, "have been paid by the British Government; ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... dichotomous organisations is divided almost equally between matrilineal and patrilineal tribes. The latter occupy the region north of Lat. 30 deg. and west of an irregular line running from Long. 137 deg. to 140 deg. or thereabouts. In addition a portion of Victoria and the region west of Brisbane form isolated patrilineal groups. The problem presented by these anomalous areas ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... storming down the aisle exclaiming; 'Your Honour, I protest against this grossly irregular proceeding!' The judge pounds on his desk with his little croquet mallet and Myron Bughalter tells Snyder, out of the corner of his mouth, to shut up. But he won't shut up for some minutes. This is the first case he'd ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... in No. 2—a camp, (23) the hands then placed together as in No. 3, and in this position, both moved in short irregular upward and downward jerks from side to side—many wik'-i-ups, (24) then indicate the chief of the tribe as in No. 7—meaning that it was one of the camps of the chief of the tribe. (25) Make a peculiar whistling sound of "phew" and draw the extended index ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... air, it seems, lies in great level expanses; even when there are gales it moves in uniform masses like the swift, still rush of a deep river. The airman, in Mr. Grahame-White's phrase, can go to sleep on it. But over the land, and for thousands of feet up into the sky, the air is more irregular than a torrent among rocks; it is—if only we could see it—a waving, whirling, eddying, flamboyant confusion. A slight hill, a ploughed field, the streets of a town, create riotous, rolling, invisible streams and cataracts of air ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... earth, looking like enormous trunks of elephants, or such as even mammoths might have carried. One of these immense icicles was directly in front of the aperture; while on the ground just below its point stood up a huge mass of an irregular conical shape, the convex surface of which was coated with ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid |
