"Mischief" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hanged afterward. And peradventure, if you look about the world and consider it well, you shall find more such stomachs than a few. Have you never heard a furious body plainly say that, to see such-and-such man have a mischief, he would with good will be content to lie as long in hell ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... the woman proves the first instigator to evil, or the prime coadjutor in mischief; but, in others, her sentiments may be sought with advantage. A wise man will seldom engage in an affair of considerable importance without soliciting advice, for "in the multitude of counsellors there 5s safety;" but who so naturally expects, or who so much deserves to be consulted, as the wife ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... a garrison in the fortress, and sent a captain with a detachment in pursuit of Pinto who, in his flight, was doing much mischief. They followed until Pinto went into forests, with other fugitives, escaping for a time. After Huayna Ccapac had rested for some days at Tumipampa, he got information where Pinto was in the forests, and surrounded them, closing up all entrances and exits. Hunger then obliged him, and those ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... never before or since has female depravity been so illustrated as in the diabolical career of Valerie Marneffe, probably the worst woman in fiction. As for Cousine Bette herself, and her power to breed mischief and crime, it suffices to say that she is worthy of a place beside ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... grace, must look upon themselves as such friends, if they would fulfil the law which even the honourable friendship of the world respects; if not, as I said just now, [9] let them fear and tremble, lest they should be doing mischief to themselves—and God grant it be to ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... have heard several persons, rather inclined to skepticism as to the miraculous qualities of the picture, hint that the barometer was consulted on these occasions; else, say they, why was not the picture uncovered before the mischief had gone so far? What an idea is suggested ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... can't tell you, Easterton," I said after an instant's hesitation. "I don't want to make mischief, and if what I think is possible is not the case, and I tell you about it, I ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... this chemin de fer, as the natives have been taught to call it, proves not to be without certain disadvantages, for during the afternoon I unwittingly manage to do considerable mischief. Suddenly meeting two horsemen, when bowling at a moderate pace around a bend, the horse of one takes violent exception to my intrusion, and, in spite of the excellent horsemanship of his rider, backs down into a small ravine, both ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... king then heard of the existence of a great fear of Rakshasas (in his kingdom). With his four kinds of forces, he went out of his capital. Having proceeded far on his way, he reached the asylum of Vasishtha. His troops, O king, caused much mischief there. The adorable Brahmana Vasishtha, when he came to his asylum, saw the extensive woods in course of destruction. That best of Rishis, Vasishtha, O king, became angry, O monarch, with Vishvamitra. He commanded ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... erect new fortresses, and we have already seen the activity of the queen in procuring the demolition or restitution of the old. They were expressly restrained from duels, an inveterate source of mischief, for engaging in which the parties, both principals and seconds, were subjected to the penalties of treason. Isabella evinced her determination of enforcing this law on the highest offenders, by imprisoning, soon after its enactment, the counts of Luna and Valencia for exchanging a cartel of defiance, ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... sick. I wanted to order him away, but I couldn't. I took him back and got him decent clothes and took him to look for a place, for I knew that hard work was the only thing that would keep him out of mischief. He did not find a place, perhaps he did not look for one. But all at once I discovered that he had money. He would not tell me how he got it. I knew he could not have come by it honestly, and so I watched him. I spied after him, and at ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... that D'Aulnay sent by that strange woman a box of poison into the fort to work secret mischief. But," added the dwarf, looking up in open perplexity, "that box cannot ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Suzanne?" said the Chevalier de Valois, without discontinuing his occupation, which was that of stropping his razor. "What have you come for, my dear little jewel of mischief?" ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... dropping slowly on the knitting to which she was set on her little stool by the stove; and Baas Cogez, working among his sacks and his mill-gear, would harden his will and say to himself, "It is best so. The lad is all but a beggar, and full of idle, dreaming fooleries. Who knows what mischief might not come of it in the future?" So he was wise in his generation, and would not have the door unbarred, except upon rare and formal occasion, which seemed to have neither warmth nor mirth in them to the two children, who had been accustomed so long to a daily ...
— A Dog of Flanders • Louisa de la Rame)
... her, I worship her with a frenzy of which I never believed myself capable, now that I am tired of women. Women play the mischief with art. Pleasure and work cannot be carried on together. Clara fancies that I was jealous of her success, that I wanted to hinder her triumph at Venice; but I was clapping in the side-scenes, and shouted Diva louder than any one ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... painter, and she straightway set to work upon it. The result was The Meeting, exhibited at the Salon of 1884. It represents a group of six boys, standing at a street corner, engaged in plotting some mischief. From the oldest, a school-boy of twelve, to the little fellow in a pinafore, they are intent, eager, alert; absorbed in the scheme which they are discussing. They have sometimes been criticised for being ugly; but as the artist wittily says, "One does not see such miracles of beauty among ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... time on the edge of the quay, looking at her. In a day or two she would sail for a voyage the length of which would depend upon her success; a voyage which would for a long period keep all on board of her out of the mischief which so easily ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... their political innocence. In the evening I told all this to Mellish of the Foreign Office, who knows everything about foreign affairs, and he said it was all a lie, that Russia had offered her assistance, which the Sultan had refused, and she was, in fact, intriguing and making mischief in every Court in Europe. George Villiers writes me word that she has been for months past endeavouring to get up a war anywhere, and that this Turkish business is more likely than ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... violence was turned from the lictor, who suffered nothing else but being prevented from seizing him, against the fathers, the riot was quelled by the interposition of the consuls, in which however, without stones or weapons, there was more noise and angry words than mischief done. The senate, called in a tumultuous manner, is consulted in a manner still more tumultuous; such as had been beaten, calling out for an inquiry, and the most violent members declaring their sentiments no less by clamours and noise than by their votes. At length, ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... smile at this science of etiquette and these rigid forms of ceremony, when they were altogether discarded a great statesman lamented them, and found the inconvenience and mischief in the political consequences which followed their neglect. Charles II., who was no admirer of these regulated formalities of court etiquette, seems to have broken up the pomp and pride of the former master of the ceremonies; and the grave and great chancellor of human nature, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... saw a round, red, merry face, still wearing that happy-go-lucky look which there is no mistaking. His skin was camouflaged by a generous coat of tan and those two strategic hills, his cheeks, had not been reduced by the assaults of hunger. There was, moreover, a look of mischief in his eyes, bespeaking a jaunty acceptance of whatever peril and adventure might befall and when he spoke he rolled his R's and screwed up his ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... council-table and star-chamber enlarged their jurisdictions to a vast extent, inflicting fines and imprisonment, whereby the crown and state sustained deserved reproach and infamy, and suffered damage and mischief that cannot be expressed. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... as transpired later, been so successful in removing the traces of Paddy's mischief that it was not deemed necessary to worry Great-aunt Eliza with any account of it. Felicity announced tea and, while Cecily conveyed Great-aunt Eliza out to the dining-room, lingered behind to consult ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... "she will soon have too much breeze; that gaff topsail is foolish in a boat with no deck and no sailor on board." Then, pointing to the south-west,—"Look at those black lines and the dirty rags hanging on them out of the sky—they are a warning; look at the smoke on the water; the devil is brewing mischief." Then the mist which had hung all day in the offing swallowed ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... mischief was entirely successful, for there was a clatter upon George's plate. "What—what do you think you're ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... burst about the beach, and then that ceased. Each time that happened all the lizards scuttled in and hid for a space. That was all the mischief done, except that once a stray bullet gashed the stone hard by—made ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... considering that he is nearly the first writer to do this, and that his writings were (and were deservedly) the favourite study of generous literary youth for more than a generation, it is scarcely uncharitable to hold him directly responsible for much mischief. The faults of Euphues were faults which were certain to work their own cure; those of the Arcadia were so engaging in themselves, and linked with so many merits and beauties, that they were sure to set a dangerous example. I believe, indeed, that if Sidney had lived he might ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... the stern sheets, but the strain upon the cable here was much greater now that the other was gone, and when I cut it through the vessel gave a jump, I heard oaths and a great scurry of feet on deck and some one let down a flare to discover the perpetrator of the mischief. ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... of whipping the boys, are you, Job?" he said, as he wrested the cane from the man's hand and held him off at arm's length, to prevent him from doing Toby more mischief. ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis
... nowhere was the seemliness of death for native land better understood than it has been in the Italy of this century, but to lose son or brother in a brigand ambush by the hand of an escaped galley-slave—this was hard. The thrust was sharpened by the knowledge that the fomenter of the mischief was dwelling securely in the heart of Italy, the guest of the Head of the Church. From Rome came money and instructions; from Rome, whether with or without the cognizance of the authorities, came recruits. The Roman frontier afforded a means of ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... proceedings of the existing government. One subject after another was dismissed—politics, law, love, and religion—they abused every thing, and agreed marvellously. It was getting very near midnight, the hour at which, it is said, devils are let loose upon earth for mischief—when a rascally little imp crawled up to Planner's ear, and put it into his head to talk about the amusements of the poor, and their effects upon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... do with ethnology, except so far as it suggests the existence or the absence of such contact. The contrary assumption, that language is a test of race, has introduced the utmost confusion into ethnological speculation, and has nowhere worked greater scientific and practical mischief than in the ethnology of ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the wars of the Commonwealth had high treason been so much in men's mouths as it was in Great Britain during this and the following year. Sedition smouldered and burst into flame—not in one place alone, but at every point of the compass. The mischief was not confined to a single class; it prevailed mostly among the starving operatives, but it also fired minds of quite another calibre. Rash, generous spirits in every rank became affected, especially after an encounter between the blinded, maddened mobs and the military, when ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... Captain Morgan, "but there are no women, and when the savages mean mischief they send ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... lay the mischief. Had she been a vicious woman nothing would have troubled her, but she was not vicious. She was not even less than good in her moral instincts. Only she was weak, hopelessly weak, and so all these things drove her to a shrewish ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... I will see that you don't lose any thing, if you are faithful to your duty. You must keep a sharp lookout for Passford: that's the young fellow at the wheel. He is the only one that can do any mischief, and I would not have him go near that steamer for ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... doing shacking here in the cool of the day when you are the servants of the Bekwando Company and there's work to be done of the utmost importance? The whole place seems to be asleep. Where's your labour? There's not a soul at work. We planned exactly when to start the road. What the mischief do you ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... got out of the bloomy peach. It were folly to prove that Science and Invention are our very good friends, yet the sapper who has had the misfortune to be blown to rags by the mine he was preparing for his enemy will not deny that gunpowder has aptitudes of mischief; and from the point of view of a nigger ordered upon the safety-valve of a racing steamboat, the vapor of water is a thing accurst. Shall we condemn music because the lute makes "lascivious pleasing?" Or poetry ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... children of yours never does anything vicious. Full of mischief they may be, full of fun they may be, but ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... of wasting time, one of which is con- temptible, are gossiping mischief, making lingering calls, and mere motion when at work, thinking of nothing or [10] planning for some amusement,—travel of limb more than mind. Rushing around smartly is no ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... emphatically. "I don't at all like that change of flags. It means mischief. There is something suspicious about that craft. We must bring her to, and find out ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... cried all the way for my children, and I was glad enough to come home again! She and Miss Annie spent some time over there, but I came back. Miss Alice was in school, and Theodore—dear knows where he was—into some mischief somewhere! But I'd saved money, and she'd given me the Brooklyn houses, and I took a boarder or two, and that was the last I ever worked for any one ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... running along a small passage that crossed the corridor. Leaning far over the rail she caught a glimpse of a figure. It was—no, Anne could not be certain of the identity. But it looked like—well, never mind whom. Anne meant to keep the secret, for it was evident that the person had been bent on mischief, else why slam a door and run at the approach of Miss Thompson! And now Anne heard the door open again and Miss Thompson's voice calling: "Who is there?" But there was no answer. Deep down in Anne's heart there crept a ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... the other. The interest of the farmers cannot but suffer by these frolics; but as they participate in the enjoyment, for every one may salute a lady whom he finds in the corn, there is no complaint, and indeed care is taken to do as little mischief as possible. In the summer evenings these fields are almost the sole promenade; and the Mall, or public walk of the town is entirely deserted. On Sundays, however, the Mall has its turn, and all the beauty of the ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... Hamlin had no moral scruples, but he had the ethics of a sportsman, which he knew Mr. Van Loo was not. Whether the woman was an innocent schoolgirl or an actress, he was satisfied that Van Loo was doing a mean thing meanly. Mr. Hamlin also had a taste for mischief, and whether the woman was or was not fair game, he knew that for HIS purposes Van Loo was. With the greatest cheerfulness in the world he wheeled his horse and cantered ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... February, when one morning the Oeolus ran down a brig, one of the convoy, and she instantly went down and was ingulfed in the dark recesses of the ocean. The convoy was immediately thrown into great confusion till it was daylight; and the Oeolus was illumined with lights to prevent any farther mischief. On the 13th of February 1763, from the mast-head, we descried our destined island Montserrat; and soon after I ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... man of dignified presence was walking across the floor, when a fellow member with a sly stroke sent his tall hat spinning across the floor. When the victim turned the mischief-maker was intent upon his memorandum book, and the tall man's suspicions fell upon a short, stout young man beside him. With a vigorous sweep he knocked the young man's hat off, saying, "It's a poor rule ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger
... surely altogether inexcusable, first for thy singing, and secondly for thy loss of temper, and finally for thy curse. For who could be so harsh as to strike Saraswati, even with a shirisha petal? But now, the mischief is utterly beyond repair, and once spoken, the curse cannot be recalled.[11] And whether she will or no, she must now go to earth, and leave us for a time, till thy curse has spent its force. And yet, for all that, it is not right that the doer of injustice such as thine should ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... friends—to some of them—this treasure to which he always returned the more enamoured for his vagary and its opportunity of comparison. Women he would not permit. In general, he held that all women, the respectable no less than the other kind, put mischief in each other's heads and egged each other on to carry out the mischief already there in embryo. In particular, he would have felt that he was committing a gross breach of the proprieties, not to say the decencies, had ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... damages, containing rules how to tax the damages done by man or beast, or other casualties, their distinctions are as nice as their cases are numerous. What beasts are innocent and what convict. By the one they mean creatures not naturally used to do mischief in any particular way; and by the other, those that naturally, or by a vicious habit, are mischievous that way. The tooth of a beast is convict, when it is proved to eat its usual food, the property ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... must read on against his will till he has finished the last line of this terrible tragedy; a hateful fascination seems to hold and compel him. Its very purity makes it dangerous. The book is mistaken; the book is poisonous; the book is morbid; the book is calculated to do irremediable mischief; but in spite of all that, the book is a book of ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... lived for twenty months. He was a sturdy, toddling rogue, so full of life and laughter and mischief that, when he died, one day, after the illness of an hour, it seemed a most absurd thing that he should be dead—a thing I could have laughed at, until belief forced itself into my soul like a ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Realism made an instinctive appeal to my painter's vanity, and deriding all traditions, cried aloud with the confidence of ignorance, "Back to Nature!" Nature! ah, my friend, what mischief that cry has done me. Where was there an apostle apter to receive this doctrine, so convenient for me as it was—beautiful Nature, and all that humbug? It is nothing but that. Well, the world was watching; and ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... stay on the island," answered the Boy. "If some of you'll throw him a bite to eat every day, he'll be all right. He can't get into any mischief. And he can't get away. He stands on his dignity so, nobody'd get any ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... their mean and sneaking dispositions. Buck lorded it over them, and as his father was one of the richest men in the town they cringed before him and were always ready to back him up in any piece of meanness and mischief. ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... native soil but could not be created out of hand. In general the white leadership of the dominant party averted much that might have been expected from the ignorance of its legislators as a mass. But plenty of waste and mischief was wrought. Place a crowd of hungry and untaught men next the public treasury with the lid off, and some results are sure. The men will not be safer guardians of the treasure for having had for most of their lives no property rights of their own, not even the ownership of their own ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... fuss,[C] and, tedious as it was at the time, I am glad to have seen it. I shall in future be able to believe real, what I have read with a dim disbelief of such times and tendencies. There is, indeed, little good, little cheer, in what I have seen: a city full of grown-up people as wild, as mischief-seeking, as full of prejudice, careless slander, and exaggeration, as a herd of boys in the play-ground of the worst boarding-school. Women whom I have seen, as the domestic cat, gentle, graceful, cajoling, suddenly showing the disposition, if not the force, of the tigress. I ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... interrupted, a note of anxiety in his voice. Pausing at the bedroom door, with his hand on the knob, he turned toward her with a merry grin on his deeply-seamed face. His sparse hair was as tousled and his eyes as full of mischief as any child's. "Maybe it was old Santa you heard out there, ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... jackal—Tabaqui, the Dish-licker—and the wolves of India despise Tabaqui because he runs about making mischief, and telling tales, and eating rags and pieces of leather from the village rubbish-heaps. But they are afraid of him too, because Tabaqui, more than anyone else in the jungle, is apt to go mad, and then he forgets that he was ever afraid of anyone, ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... as a kitten. But a touch sufficed to start her up, for she was full of fun and frolic, and her laughing blue eyes, which were of that wide-open kind which see everything, were brimming over with mischief. Once or twice she called out 'Mahnee,' and going to the window, stood on tip-toe looking out, to see if she were coming. But on the whole she seemed happy and content, exploring every nook and corner of the kitchen and examining curiously every article of furniture ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... with surprise, for he had been struck with her marvellous beauty, and wondered greatly what mischief so fair a ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... husbands, the post master and Desire, together with the Nemours doctor and Bongrand, made an unusual and noisy party in the doctor's salon. As the abbe entered he heard the sound of the piano. Poor Ursula was just finishing a sonata of Beethoven's. With girlish mischief she had chosen that grand music, which must be studied to be understood, for the purpose of disgusting these women with the thing they coveted. The finer the music the less ignorant persons like it. So, when the door opened and the abbe's venerable head appeared they all cried out: "Ah! here's ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... had not been refused, and which has since been performed. Under any circumstances, therefore, Spain became less responsible for such acts committed there, and the United States more at liberty to exercise authority to prevent so great a mischief. The conduct of this Government has in every instance been conciliatory and friendly to France. The construction of our revenue law in its application to the cases which have formed the ground of such serious complaint on her part and the order to the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... previous to the experiment of inserting it into the arms of those who had gone through the Cow-pox. This I conceived to be of great importance in conducting these experiments, and were it always properly attended to by those who inoculate for the Small-pox, it might prevent much subsequent mischief and confusion. With the view of enforcing so necessary a precaution, I shall take the liberty of digressing so far as to point out some unpleasant facts, relative to mismanagement in this particular, which have fallen under ...
— An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae • Edward Jenner
... I have helped more than one drunkard home at night, and seen a wretched woman or a frightened child come to the door to receive him. Even in the seclusion of my own garden I could not escape the evidences of mischief going on. For sounds echo up and down the valley as clearly as across the water of a lake; and sometimes a quiet evening would grow suddenly horrid with distracted noises of family quarrel in some distant cottage, when women shrilled and clamoured and men cursed, and all the dogs in the parish fell ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... unmercifully about their dress and personal peculiarities, and if they show signs of annoyance they call them names that are not to be repeated. The mill girls wear bright-coloured gowns, white aprons, and nothing on their heads. If a policeman catches them at any mischief they either clatter off in their clogs with shrieks of laughter, or knock him down and kick him most unmercifully. They are as strong as men, and as beautiful, some of them, as saints; but they are very unsaintlike creatures really—irresponsible, ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... him by private ties than about the public interest, all this was perfectly natural, and not altogether unpardonable. Those who intrust a petulant, hot-blooded, ill- informed lad with power, are more to blame than he for the mischief which he may do with it. How could it be expected of a lively page, raised by a wild freak of fortune to the first influence in the empire, that he should have bestowed any serious thought on the principles which ought to guide judicial decisions? ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the time that each man received his dividend from the common stock. Though I had reason to suppose that the heat of the pursuit against me would be somewhat remitted by the time that had elapsed, the magnitude of the mischief that, in an unfavourable event, might fall on me, determined me to neglect no imaginable precaution. I recollected the hand-bill which was the source of my present alarm, and conceived that one of ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... he seemed not to have a single good impulse from first to last. Yet he was, in the keeping of the stage Providence, as harmless as a blank cartridge, in spite of his deadly aims. He accomplished no more mischief, in fact, than if all his intents had been of the best; except for the satisfaction afforded by the edifying spectacle of his defeat and shame, he need not have been in the play at all; and one might almost have felt sorry for him, he was so continually baffled. But this was not enough ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... mean nor a coward," said Robinson, jumping up, and speaking with a voice that was audible right across Spavinhorse Yard, and into the tap of the "Man of Mischief" public-house opposite. "As for meanness, if I had the money, I would pour it out into your lap, though I knew that it was to be converted into beef and mutton for the benefit of a hated rival. And as for cowardice, I repel the charge, and drive it ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... the fact that, wholesome as art is, in general, and, compared with the less abstract activities of our nature, there are yet differences in art's wholesomeness, there are categories of art which can do only good, and others which may also do mischief. ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... of Sassacus, when he suddenly found himself surrounded by a number of armed men, one of whom demanded his piece. Arundel instantly recognised in the man who spoke, and appeared to be the leader, the Assistant Spikeman; and, suspecting mischief wherever he was concerned, and indignant at being stopped, refused to deliver up the gun. The refusal was useless, for it was forthwith wrested violently from his hands, after a struggle, in which he gave ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... walking along, I saw a Sow trampling down the corn of a poor peasant, and tearing it up by the roots, while her hungry Pigs were strayed far from her, and could not get themselves out of the mire; so that I, growing very angry at the great mischief she did the peasant, and at her neglect of motherly duty, killed and ate her up. Three days after, chancing to go again the same way, I observed that those Pigs were grown very lean; and reflecting that, through want of their mother's milk, they would certainly ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... fine wench," said he, with a note of careless but genuine admiration. "I'll not deny it. Don't ye go and throw yerself away. Keep out o' mischief." ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... of the inhabitants; but the affair was speedily forgotten, and although the murderer was confined to a lunatic asylum, nothing was done to rid the town of other idiots who were, collectively, doing mischief of a nature far more serious than that ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... as to its quality or the manner of procuring it. The truth is, however, that there was among our men a much higher tone of society than among the clumsy louts in the English army, and our service was generally so strict that we had little time for doing mischief. I am very dark and swarthy in complexion, and was called by our fellows the 'Black Englander,' the 'Schwartzer Englander,' or the English Devil. If any service was to be done, I was sure to be put upon it. ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that we were quite large girls, for grandma usually said before going away, "Children, you know what there is to do and I leave everything in your care." We did not realize that this was her little scheme, in part, to keep us out of mischief; but we knew that upon her return she would see, and call attention to ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... any authority, covenant, or statute, may, by the sovereign edict of charity, save not only their lives, but honest liberties, from unworthy bondage, as well may a married party, against any private covenant, which he or she never entered, to his or her mischief, be redeemed from unsupportable disturbances, to ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... last night, while these guys was raising the mischief right here, I was setting around doping out big talk, and raising a mighty big wad for the round-up of the whole darnation gang. Can you beat it? I'm sore. Sore as hell. Say, tell it me again. I don't seem ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... earnest and the zealous, but, I am afraid, at the same time the ultimate object of my earlier ministrations. Ye servants, whose scrupulous fidelity has now attracted the notice, and drawn forth in my hearing a delightful testimony from your masters, what mischief you would have done, had your zeal for doctrines and sacraments been accompanied by the sloth and the remissness, and what, in the prevailing tone of moral relaxation, is counted the allowable purloining of your earlier days. But a sense of your Heavenly Master's eye has brought ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... deal of confidence," she went on, with a cheerless, ruminative little laugh, "because it is my own organization that I am describing, too. The difference is that I was allowed to exploit my capacity for mischief very early. I had my own way in my teens—my own money, my own power—of course only of a certain sort, and in a very small place. But I know what I did with that power. I spread trouble and misery about me—always of course on a small scale. Then a group of things happened in a kind of climax—a ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... business, plenty of active work on hand. It was a help to Maria; after a little it diverted her thoughts and took her out of the strain of sorrow. And it was a help to Matilda, but in a more negative way. It kept the child from grieving herself ill, or doing herself a mischief with violent sorrow; it was no relief. In every unoccupied moment, whenever the demands of household business left her free to do what she would, the little girl bent beneath her burden of sorrow. Kneeling before ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner
... this lie much greater inconvenience than that from which I now free myself, and as, with all my supposed CUNNING, the consequences cannot be so easily foreseen but that credit once lost may be much more injurious to me than any mischief which I seek to avoid at present, it should be considered whether it would not be more prudent to act herein according to a universal maxim, and to make it a habit to promise nothing except with the intention of keeping it. But it is soon clear ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... two left to think, for I cannot say to live. You see, there is nothing left of me—I am a heap of mud! They will not let me see myself in a glass.—Well, it is no more than I deserve. Oh, if I might only win mercy, I would gladly undo all the mischief I have done." ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... that is at a distance, and the lions and tigers that are in our antechambers and our lobbies. Algiers is not near; Algiers is not powerful; Algiers is not our neighbor; Algiers is not infectious. Algiers, whatever it may be, is an old creation; and we have good data to calculate all the mischief to be apprehended from it. When I find Algiers transferred to Calais, I will tell you what I think of that point. In the mean time, the case quoted from the Algerine Reports will not apply as authority. We shall put it out of court; and so far as that goes, let the counsel for ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... cannot come to Havana with me. The quality of being always virtuous—it is abhorrent, tres chere; correct it, if possible. And the garret cries out for us!" she said, turning away, with the straight line between her eyes that meant mischief, as Margaret had already learned. She turned to Peggy, who stood in some alarm, not knowing whether the old friend or the new ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... statesmen cannot fail to suggest that arbitration can only be retained as a fixed mode of adjusting international disputes by demonstrating its efficiency as a methods of securing mutual justice and thus assuring that mutual consent without which award and verdicts are powerful only for mischief." ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... to conceal our persuasion that there is nothing more potent to debase and corrupt the minds of a people than a licentious stage. But it may be averred with equal truth, that the abuses of every other institution are fraught with no less mischief to the public. At this very moment the abuse of the pulpit is the parent of more public mischief in Great Britain and America than the stage ever produced in its most prolific days of vice; and it is deplorable to ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... of the establishment, however, is the boy Tom, a grinning young savage fresh from his kraal, up to any amount of mischief, who in an evil hour has been engaged as the baby's body-servant. I cannot trust him with the child out of my sight for a moment, for he "snuffs" enormously, and smokes coarse tobacco out of a cow's horn, and is anxious to teach the baby both these accomplishments. Tom ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... he was up to more mischief, and was on her guard. She saw him stealthily press a button, and in the same instant a deep gulf opened in the floor of the cave, half way between the Princess ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum
... took the road to Middelburg, and found but one, which was full of soldiers. I passed it, and found no other. As I came back past the same cabaret, one of the soldiers came out to me, but I walked along the road. He quickened his pace, and so did I mine, for I expected mischief. At last he came up to me, and spoke to me in Dutch, to which I gave him no answer. He collared me, and then I thought it convenient to pretend that I was deaf and dumb. I pointed to my mouth with an Au—au—and then to my ears, and shook my head; but he would not be convinced, and I heard him say ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... yourself wherein you may have offended him: and at my entreaty forbear his presence until some little time hath qualified the heat of his displeasure; which at this instant so rageth in him that with the mischief of your ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... ill-fortune. And I should very much like to know which of my grand lady friends has taken this fine bird under her patronage; then I might find the means of amusing myself this evening. My ticket, anonymously sent, is no doubt a bit of mischief planned by a rival and having something to do with this young man. His impertinence is to order; keep an eye on him. I will take the Duc de Navarrein's arm. You will be ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... received from him. One wretched pig, however—a little black thing, only a few weeks old—which her husband had purchased at a fair, was, she soon discovered, possessed by an evil spirit, that had a strange power of quitting the animal to do mischief in her dwelling, and an ability of not only rendering her fearfully unhappy, but even of getting at times into her husband. The husband himself, poor blinded man! could see nothing of all this; nor would he believe her, who could and did see it; nor yet could she convince ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... opposed the proposition to assist a city, sometimes openly, always heartily, inimical to Athens. "Much better," he contended, "to suffer her pride to be humbled, and her powers of mischief to be impaired." Ever supporting and supported by the Lacedaemonian party, whether at home or abroad, Cimon, on the other hand, maintained the necessity of marching to the relief of Sparta. "Do not," he said, almost sublimely—and his words are reported to have produced ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was amused, though at first she had been a little frightened. The girl had a good deal of spirit, and she had tant soit peu of mother Eve's love of mischief in her. She determined to "make capital" out of the affair, as the Americans say, ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... cut short by the entrance of Pani Sniatynska and Aniela. They were dressed for going out to the hot-houses. What an imp of mischief lurks in that little woman. She came up to her husband to ask his permission to go out, which he granted, insisting only that she should wrap herself up warm; she turned to me and said with ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... cleaning the bay. "If a gal wants to drive, let her hitch. Ye'd better let a woman go the whole figger when she gits started, just as ye'd better give an ugly cuss of a horse his head up hill an' down. It takes the mischief out of 'em quicker'n anything. Let her go ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the plundering and murdering adherents of King George were the ones who should pay for damage and not the States which had confiscated Loyalist property. Lists of Loyalist names were sometimes posted and then the persons concerned were likely to be the victims of any one disposed to mischief. Sometimes a suspected Loyalist would find an effigy hung on a tree before his own door with a hint that next time the figure might be himself. A musket ball might come whizzing through his window. Many a Loyalist was stripped, plunged in a barrel of tar, ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... brooding away in the city." The lad's bright, clear eyes looked frankly into the captain's as he continued. "I have been making a fool of myself, Captain. Got into some mischief with a crowd of fellows at school. Of course, I got caught and had to bear the whole blame for the silly joke we had played. The faculty has suspended me for a term. I would have got off with only a reprimand if I would have told the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... formerly common on the banks of Lop-nor, and the natives used to hunt them in a singular manner. When a tiger had done mischief among the cattle, the men would all assemble from the huts in the neighbourhood at the thickets on the bank of the river where they knew that the tiger was in hiding. They close up round him from the land ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... the door and heard his sister's voice from the library. "He's probably in mischief somewhere. He'll be a perfect nuisance all the evening. Mother, couldn't you make him go to bed an ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... and that if her ancestors didn't sail with the Conqueror it was probably because they had an appointment at the Moulin Rouge and were too gentlemanly to break it—which was his way of tipping me the wink; and "Britten, my boy," says he, "keep her out of mischief, for you are all she has got in this ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... name?" asked the king. The man of brains replied, "My baptismal name is Nicodemus, but I was always called Slyboots at home, to show that I did not fall on my head." "I will leave you your name," returned the king, "but your head must answer for all mischief if ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... solemnly; "and therefore I would have you depart these fatal bounds, where your love, as well as your hatred, threatens sure mischief, or at least disgrace, both to yourself and others. I would shield, were it in the power of this withered hand, the Ashtons from you, and you from them, and both from their own passions. You can have ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... continent, and to pronounce his curse on the King of France, who had taken part in the massacre of St. Bartholomew; but, in one respect, he was more fortunate than Luther, who in his last days was threatened with mischief from hostile elements about him which he could not control; for around John Knox all was peace. He thanked God for having granted him grace, that by his means the Gospel was preached throughout ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... know that, you young upstart. An' Mrs. Fraser's in an awful way about Allan wearin' one, too, but that don't prove that they didn't look jist like the mischief itself." ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... grimly. "It would be simple enough, I suppose, if one could hit on the key move, but that I suppose no one knows but Deede Dawson himself. One thing, he can't very well be up to any fresh mischief while he's lounging about here like this. I suppose he ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... your heady nonsense, Martie," said her father's heavy voice, drowning down Lydia's clatter. "This is just the sort of mischief I expected to follow a visit from men as entirely irresponsible as these New York friends of yours. I expected something of this sort. Just as you are about to behave like a sensible woman, they come along ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... in it!' he cried, with more annoyance than anger. 'If I am not in my place at my lord's breakfast to-morrow, there will be questioning. That I had leave to accompany my mother makes the mischief. If I had stole away, it would be another matter. It will be hard to ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... spaniel with long brown hair, and she produced five puppies, three of which were hairless and two covered with SHORT brown hair. The next time she was put to a black, hairless Barbary dog; "but the mischief had been implanted in the mother, and again about half the litter looked like pure Barbarys, and the other half like the SHORT-haired progeny of the first father." I have given in the text one case with pigs; an equally striking one has been recently published in Germany, 'Illust. Landwirth. ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... he was, he could not cheat his mother. To his cradle she came, and said, "Whither hast thou wandered in the dark night? Crafty rogue, mischief will be thy ruin. The son of Leto will soon be here, and bear thee away bound in chains not easily shaken off. Out of my sight, little wretch, born to worry the blessed gods and plague the race of men!" "Mother," said Hermes, gently, "why talk thus to me, as though I were like mortal babes, a ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... hide, So that under his cloak our parts we should play, And of the rude people should never be spied? Or if the worst should hap or betide, That I by Tyranny should both you defend Against such as mischief to you ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... table, and all sat around this for several hours, eating, drinking, and discussing the situation. The Radburys were glad Poke Stover had accompanied them, for now the frontiersman could help keep guard against the half-breed, should the latter mean mischief. ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... Nor hath this mischief stopped in logical niceties, or curious empty speculations; it hath invaded the great concernments of human life and society; obscured and perplexed the material truths of law and divinity; brought confusion, disorder, and uncertainty ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... any sort, instead of standing still sensibly, she pretended to be subject to wild-eyed panics. It was all pretense, for when you DID yield to temptation and light into her with the toe of your boot, she subsided into common sense. The spirit of malevolent mischief was hers. ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... here, especially with the Iroquois, and it was to entice them to, as well as to hinder their carrying their skins to the English and keep these savages in awe, that the fort was built. But the trade did not last long, and the fort has not hindered the barbarians from doing us a great deal of mischief. They have still families here, in the outside of the place, and there are also some Missisaguas, an Algonquin nation, which still have a village on the west side of Lake Ontario, another at Niagara, and a third in the strait." Such is the description we ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... baffled anger, "As for the French, nothing but time will do anything with them. They hate British rule—British connection—improvements of {97} all kinds, whether in their laws or their roads; so they will sulk, and will try, that is, their leaders, to do all the mischief they can."[27] ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... last, "this fellow looks like mischief to me. We can't let him go away, to come back after awhile and rob us. We can't leave his gun here with him and go on with our work. The only thing we can do is to take him in charge for ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... a little gleam of mischief in Abbie's eyes as she answered: "Will you tell me, Ester, why you would take the trouble to get 'these things' if you do not care for them ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... her youngest school days, the imp of the grammar school, with a twinkle in his eye and an irrepressible grin on his handsome face. Nothing had ever daunted him and no punishment had ever stopped his mischief. He never studied his lessons, yet he always seemed to know enough to carry him through, and would sometimes burst out with astonishing knowledge where others failed. But there was always that joke on his lips and that wide delightful grin ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... party have done much mischief. The same author observes, "The South has been compelled, in self-defence, to rivet the chains of slavery afresh, and to hold on to their political rights with a stronger hand. The conduct of the abolitionists has arrested the improvements which were ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... fear'd, and what I know she most desires: Mischief, and Murder, are all her Sexes Practice, and Delight? Yet such is the Extravagancy of my Passion, I must obey the Mandate, tho to my certain Ruine: 'Tis strangely difficult, and does ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... about it. But to his extreme annoyance, when he turned by the fig-tree, he saw that the plot was very far from even. He is an old man, but his sight is good, and at a distance of several yards he could discern quite plainly that there had been mischief. The chosen plot was in a disgraceful state. At first the Prebendary thought that the Custos' sandy tom-cat had scaled the wire entanglement on the top of the wall. Then he felt inclined to consider the ruin done ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... certainly carried a pike at Vinegar Hill; and probably had stolen a pair of boots at Furnes, when he kindly made a call at the Deanery, in passing through that place to the field of battle. It is always a pleasure to see the engineer of mischief "hoist with his own petard;" [Footnote: "Hamlet," but also "Ovid:"— "Lex nec justior ulla est, **Quam necis artifices arte perire sua."] and it happened that the horses assigned to draw a post-chariot carrying Lord Westport, myself, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... indifference. I leave every impartial mind to judge for itself whether the circumstances were such as to warrant composure. To be sure, somebody said the car was to be left at Jeru; but Jeru was eight miles away, and any quantity of mischief might be done before we reached it,—if indeed we were not prevented from reaching it altogether. It was a mere question of dynamics. Would dry wood be able to hold its own against a raging fire for half an hour? Of course the conductor thought it would; ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... are on the right track, Queenie?" he said, addressing his animal, as was his custom when they were alone. "It would be strange if we didn't drift away from our bearings. Hello! that can't be Dick Hawkridge's ranch; we haven't gone far enough for that; but what the mischief can it be, unless a fire that some one has started in ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... coming back here to dinner," she said, and her eyes sparkled with mischief. "I shall put you between them, Mr. Blithers. You will find that they are very ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Cambrensis (as I find him in an old translation) "is the variable and fickle nature of woman, by whom all mischief in the world (for the most part) do happen and come, as may appear by Marcus Antonius, and by ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... conduct flow from our actions with as natural and inevitable a certainty as the return of a stone to the earth after the impetus is exhausted which detained it in the air. It is natural and inevitable that the man who employs himself in doing good must be preferred to the man who does mischief. Every thinking being must be penetrated with the truth of this incontrovertible maxim, and all the ponderous volumes of theology that ever were composed can add nothing to the force of his conviction; every thinking being will, therefore, avoid a conduct calculated to injure ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... Jay does much of the mischief that is laid at the door of the Robin, orioles, thrushes, and other birds, and then sneaks away unobserved. He also destroys large numbers of insects and robs the ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... stated Jack. "The watchman is a liar and Wyckoff was not here for any good. He intends mischief ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... marrowbones with our Laurie?" he muttered; "surely he cannot have gotten into mischief with the lasses already. But I kenna—I kenna. When I was sixteen I can mind—I can mind. And the loon may well be his father's ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... own I cannot look upon it as a misfortune. His treachery alarmed me, and I apprehended every thing from it. It was not advisable to throw him into the arms of the Opposition. His death avoids both kinds of mischief. I take for granted you will have Lord North for chancellor of the exchequer.(996) He is very inferior to Charles in parts; but what he wants in those, will be ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... savage blow. The Andromeda had received no quarter, and her crew retaliated now. They did not deliberately murder anyone, but they took good care that none of those whom they encountered would be in a condition to work mischief ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... worse for drink, and would talk of punching the heads both of Mr. Newton and of Mr. Ontario Moggs. Waddle, who was very true to his master's interests, had taken an opportunity of seeing Mrs. Neefit, and of expressing a very distinct idea that the business was going to the mischief. Mrs. Neefit was of opinion that in this emergency the business should be sold, and that they might safely remove themselves to some distant country,—to Tunbridge, or perhaps to Ware. Polly, however, would not accede to her mother's views. The evil must, she thought, be cured at once. ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... and then by the sarcasm of his coarse blue eye, and so far the two men had kept outwardly on terms. Elsmere had reason to know that on one or two occasions of difficulty in the parish Henslowe had tried to do him a mischief. The attempts, however, had not greatly succeeded, and their ill-success had probably excited in Elsmere a confidence of ultimate victory which had tended to keep him cool in the presence of Henslowe's ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... very still, her gaze on the basin. "Perhaps this very estimable person holds other views?" she returned, with a flash of mischief in her eyes. She turned suddenly and looked straight at him, meeting his gaze unwaveringly, a demure smile on her face. "I told you that sometimes a person's thoughts were expressed in their eyes," she said—and now her lashes flickered—"perhaps ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... possess, and wherever necessary exercise, the power to determine whether in a given case employers and employees are not on an equal footing, so that the necessities of the latter compel them to submit to such exactions as to hours and conditions of labor as unduly to tax their strength; and only mischief can result when such determination is upset on the ground that there must be no "interference with the liberty to contract"—often a merely academic "liberty," the exercise of which is the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... tell her so, but she will know what can be done in time, for she cannot leave England till April or May, at any time before August to be here in good season. I have written to Vermont upon the subject of Moore Town and hear nothing to displease me, as yet, if no mischief has been done to our interests in that country, there will be peace, I believe; but of this more when I have their Governor's answer to my letters. They already ask favours and ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... the window. He felt dull and heavy, with a slight headache and a weariness in all his muscles. Worst of all, Nan, in a ravishing pink fluffy affair, was bending over him, her eyes dancing with amusement and mischief. ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... gestures gathered that the general was speaking to him angrily. After this no more arrows were shot at her, and she understood that their curiosity being stirred by the sight of a woman chained upon a gateway, they did not wish to do her mischief. ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... his way to the deck of the steamer, and in the darkness stumbled against the cables, with which the boat was anchored. He was bent on mischief, and he unstoppered the cables, permitting them to run out and sink to the bottom of the lake. The wind was blowing, still pretty fresh, from the west, and the steamer, now loosened from her moorings, began to drift toward the middle of ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... gaoler for a pin to fasten it with. When he was slow in finding a pin, looking on his person for it, she fancied that he feared she would choke herself, and shaking her head, said, with a smile, "You have nothing to fear now; and here is the doctor, who will pledge his word that I will do myself no mischief." ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... chair, and placing her elbows on the table, so that her pretty face sinks into her hands, goes on: "The moment you see her take this attitude, run! don't pause to think, or speculate; run! Because it always means mischief; you may know then that she has quite made up her mind. I speak from experience. Good-bye, children. I hope you will enjoy each other's society. I shall be busy until I leave, so you probably won't see ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... threw off her dress, that she was weary of already, put on a dressing-gown, and ran downstairs; and as she ran downstairs she laughed and thumped with her feet like a school-boy; she had a great desire for mischief. ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... wants her too? does he?" thought Pen as he marched along—and noted within himself with a fatal keenness of perception and almost an infernal mischief, that the very pains and tortures which that honest heart of Foker's was suffering gave a zest and an impetus to his own pursuit of Blanche: if pursuit that might be called which had been no pursuit as yet, but mere sport and idle dallying. "She ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was a triumphant tone about the character, natural to a general consciousness of power; but none of that petty vanity which chuckles and cannot contain itself upon any little successful stroke of its knavery—which is common with your small villains, and green probationers in mischief. It did not clap or crow before its time. It was not a man setting his wits at a child, and winking all the while at other children who are mightily pleased at being let into the secret; but a consummate ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... exclaimed Trevalyon, now fully aroused; "is Delrose at Haughton?" and as he spoke he gave a swift glance at Lady Esmondet, who thought silently, "Delrose, the man who was mixed up in some way with Lionel in the Fanny Clarmont scandal; there will be mischief." ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... look like. Tall and slender, with fair hair, light as the flax at home, and all curling down over her shoulders. And she would carry her head high—not vain and proud, but noble and stately. And her eyes all fire and mischief. Deep eyes, with a reflection of strange worlds, and none could face them with so much as a thought of deceit. Like mother's eyes—only with all, all the fire ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... that such stories are no longer told, and even sworn to on Bible oath, he greatly deceives himself. In the chapter on "Haunted Houses" he will find statements just as hard narrated of the years 1870 and 1882. In these, however, the ghosts had no purpose but mischief. {118} ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... ordered me, Sire [this was written for him in 1785], to speak to you of one of the greatest men of this Age. You admire him, though his neighborhood has done you mischief enough; and, placing yourself at the impartial distance of History, feel a noble curiosity on all that belongs to this extraordinary genius. I will, therefore, give you an exact account of the smallest words ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... sir," he explained. "I've felt the very same thing before, and not very far from here, too—while we was lyin' in Manila harbour. We couldn't make out what the mischief it was at first; but when the skipper went ashore shortly afterwards they told him that there'd been a slight ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... chap," cried Singh piteously, "don't, pray don't, begin making fun of it all again. I feel just as if I am to blame for all the mischief that great beast has done and is going to do. He'll obey me, and as soon as I am dressed I am going down to talk to him and try and keep him quiet while you rouse ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... severity, which is resisting an officer, civil or criminal, in the execution of his office (arresting a person) so that he be slain, yet though he did not produce his warrant, the offence will be adjudged murder. And if persons who design no mischief at all, do unadvisedly commit any idle wanton act which cannot but be attended with manifest danger, such as riding with a horse known to kick amongst a crowd of people, merely to divert oneself by putting them in a fright, ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... has found a faithful minister in the acquisition of wealth, and a faithful steward in hoarding what he has gained. The statesman, in this, as in the case of population itself, can do little more than avoid doing mischief. It is well, if, in the beginnings of commerce, he knows how to repress the frauds to which it is subject. Commerce, if continued, is the branch in which men, committed to the effects of their own experience, are least apt ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... are mixed together the result is a compound truly infernal in its potentialities for mischief. It is not an explosive but if set on fire it burns with an intensity that is positively appalling. Nothing will put it out; no quantity of water has any effect upon the ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... Fortunately such periods were not very long. The latest instance was in the reign of Charles I, who got on without a parliament from 1629 to 1640.[9] In the American colonies the dissolution of the assembly by the governor was not especially dangerous, but it sometimes made mischief by delaying needed legislation. During the few years preceding the Revolution, the assemblies were so often dissolved that it became necessary for the people to devise some new way of getting their representatives together to act for the ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... at once that none of the girls meant to sit beside Ruth if it could be avoided. Annette had declared that she believed Ruth to be a mischief-maker, and untruthful, and that it was the duty of the older girls to "teach ...
— A Little Maid of Old Philadelphia • Alice Turner Curtis
... person of Roderic O'Connor, and in the Irish through him, the chief rights of sovereignty over the whole island, except Leinster and, perhaps, Meath. But, at the same time, a passage or two in the treaty concealed a meaning certainly unperceived by the Irish, but fraught with mischief and misfortune to ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... to notice what the baronet had last said, "because I found it necessary that you should know the fact of your sister having left this child behind her; you would otherwise have made a will different from that intended, and there might have been a lawsuit, and mischief and misery when we are gone. You must perceive that I have done this in honesty to you; and you yourself are too honest to repay me by taking advantage of this knowledge ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... until yesterday; but my aunt is inclined to be so severe with Madeleine, that I feared I might make mischief by taking her into my confidence. Do not go, Madeleine. Sit down, for you must stay. If you go, I will go with you; and Maurice wants to speak to me,—I mean, I want to speak to him,—that is ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... compound fractures, in which the effects of decomposition in the injured part were especially striking and pernicious. The results have been such as to establish conclusively the great principle that all local inflammatory mischief and general febrile disturbances which follow severe injuries are due to the irritating and poisonous influence of decomposing blood or sloughs. For these evils are entirely avoided by the antiseptic treatment, so that limbs which would otherwise be unhesitatingly condemned to amputation may ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... whisperings in a little group of which Elmer Cuddeback was the center; but, if any mischief was brewing, Pen did ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... like that. She's full of mischief and awfully good-natured. But she'll resent Bob's putting you in her place. Don't think of it, Patty. It's all a trifle. She'll have some other part, ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells |
