"Obstreperous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ascended and began anti-rhino demonstrations. I had no time to fool with rhinos, anyway. I wanted to get through that jungle before the leopards left their family circles. I hurled clods of earth and opprobrious shouts and epithets in the four directions of my four obstreperous friends, and I thought I counted four reluctant departures. Then, with considerable doubt, I descended from my ant hill and hurried down the slope, stumbling over grass hummocks, colliding with bushes, tangling with vines, but progressing in a gratifyingly ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... wobbling under conflicting cyclic impulses down to her final fall. For lack of another to take her place, she was still in many ways the foremost power; albeit here and there obstreperous satraps were always making trouble. When Lysander laid Athens low in 404, it was Persian financial backing enabled him to do it; but Cyrus might march in to her heart, and Xenophon out again, but two years later, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... cries Mr. Johnson, laughing with obstreperous violence, "if these two foolish lines can be equalled in folly, except by the two succeeding ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Stewart. The latter did not appear for a length of time to have visited the light-room. On asking the cause—did Mr. Watt and him (sic) disagree; he said no; but he had got very bad usage from the assistant, "who was a very obstreperous man." I could not bring Mr. Watt to put in language his objections to Miller; all I could get was that, he being your friend, and saying he was unwell, he did not like to complain or to push the man; that the man seemed to have ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Promiscuous, miscellaneous Moon Lunar, sublunary Mouth Oral Marrow Medulary Mind Mental Man Virile, male, human, masculine Milk Lacteal Meal Ferinaceous Nose Nasal Navel Umbilical Night Nocturnal, equinoctial Noise Obstreperous One First Parish Parochial People Popular, populous, public, epidemical, endemical Point Punctual Pride Superb, haughty Plenty Copious Pitch Bituminous Priest Sacerdotal Rival Emulous Root Radical Ring Annular ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... composed myself to await whatever might befall. The company assembled; my acquaintance introduced me; and I could not be attentive long, without discovering that they were aiming at the mystification of a young man, who showed himself a novice by an obstreperous, assuming deportment: I therefore kept very much on my guard, so that they might not find delight in selecting me as his fellow. At table this intention became more apparent to everybody, except to himself. They drank more ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... was just on the point of entering the house, with my heart full of filial piety and a contrite speech upon my lips, when I heard a burst of obstreperous laughter from my father, and a loud titter from my ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... of her warm Irish heart upon us—tormenting and troublesome as we were. Sometimes she sung to us of "Acushla machree" and "Mavourneen," and Mammy's Irish songs were especial favorites with the young fry of the nursery. When we were particularly obstreperous, she threatened to go away and leave us, and never come back again; a threat which always produced copious showers of tears, and promises of better behavior. Often have I watched her in dismay as she dressed herself to go out—fearful ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... house plan would be quite likely to subdue a certain obstreperous individual. We have already invited her to a moonlight party at Hunter's Rock, as you know. Once she is there we will see to the rest. Sorry you can't be with us, but that would give the whole plan away. A little meditation in spookland will do our friend good, and this time ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... hour's roystering at the Fleur-de-Lis the party of gentlemen returned to the Taverne de Menut a good deal more unsteady and more obstreperous than when they came. They left Master Pothier seated in his chair, drunk as Bacchus, and every one of the rest of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... I am an unwilling prisoner in this stronghold, being an obstreperous person, who refused to obey my superiors; those set in authority over me. Consequently am I immured in this dismal dungeon of the water-rats, and thus, youthful pirate, I welcome even so red-handed an outlaw ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... crises maintains sure mastery over expression and form. The writer himself may share with his creations their longing for fresh elemental power; but he is endowed with far too much of the traditional culture of his caste ever to allow himself any obstreperous accents. The words of one of his dramatic figures characterize his own art: "We no longer know how to underscore. Underscoring is in bad taste. Those people out there ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... acquaint themselves with it; that those of them who have ever tried to form an opinion on the Anglo-Irish controversy have hardly ever got farther than a loose notion that England had most likely behaved like a bully all through, but that her victim was beyond all question an obstreperous and irreclaimable ruffian, whose ill-treatment must be severely condemned by the moralist, but over whom no sensible man can be ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... than usual, and spread open his eyes to their fullest extent: while Hugh Tarpaulin, stooping down so as to bring his nose upon a level with the table, and spreading out a palm upon either knee, burst into a long, loud, and obstreperous roar of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... a man blowing wild blasts upon a shrill trumpet. Then Carlyle—his big books, his great tawdry, smoky pictures of scenes, his loud and clumsy moralisations, his perpetual thrusting of himself into the foreground, like some obstreperous showman; he wearies and dizzies my brain with his raucous clamour, his uncouth convolutions. I saw the other day a little Japanese picture of a boat in a stormy sea, the waves beating over it; three warriors in the boat lie prostrate and rigid with terror and misery. Above, ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... party to it? A man couldn't be kept for any length of time in the house without his knowing it. Young and Tess were hiding someone! At bed time he decided that the next day he would find out who was the other man in Young's house. It might give him a hold on his obstreperous brother-in-law and ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... handled the large crowds who assembled at the station with considerable tact. One obstreperous fellow who appeared to be the worse for liquor got the butt-end of a rifle in his jaw after grossly insulting a constable, and he was then chased off by the crowd, who appeared to appreciate the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... day," said Fred. "They've better ways at night. One plan is no supper or breakfast; but the champion scheme is the doctor's. On complaint by the askaris that a man on the chain has shirked his work, or answered back, or been obstreperous, the doctor serves him out a handful of strong pills and sees him swallow them. They don't unchain them at night. D'you get ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... obstreperous scorn. 'Why, Jeck's gone to Homerton to his mother till Saturday night. Don't be such a bloomin' fool! Just because Suke Jollop's dead nuts on me, an' I won't have nothin' to say to her, she goes tellin' these bloomin' lies. When I see her next, I'll make ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... Islander's. Unable to proceed, we come to a stand-still, and simply occupy ourselves in protecting the bicycle from the crush, and reasoning. with the mob; but the only satisfaction we obtain in reply to anything we say is " Bin bacalem." One or two pig-headed, obstreperous young men near us, emboldened by our apparent helplessness, persist in handling the bicycle. After being pushed away several times, one of them even assumes a menacing attitude toward me the last time I thrust his meddlesome hand away. Under ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Marjie, who knows? And that was why that letter did not get far enough back from her thievin' fingers. Oh, I'm mighty glad Kathleen Morrison give me the mitten for Jess Gray, one of them Red Range boys. How can a man as good and holy as I am manage the obstreperous girls? But," he added seriously, "this is too near to sin and disgrace to joke ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... go—like a good soul!" Suzon urged. Charley laughed disdainfully. "Like a good soul!" Had it come to this, that Suzon pleaded with him as if he were a foolish, obstreperous child! ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... by ordinary mortals. So when an order was made prohibiting the passing of drays through King Street during certain hours of the day, he told the constables that he, the King's brewer, cared nothing for the order of the House of Lords. The example proved infectious. Other brewers' draymen became obstreperous too, one calling the beadle that stopped him "a rogue" and another vowing that if he knew the beadle "he would have a touch with him at quarterstaff." But all these fiery spirits of King Street were brought to their ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... do as I tell you," said the squire. "If you cannot manage her alone you must get the men to help you," for he thought the girl might turn obstreperous. ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... Saleebys, would be that each man would have his favourite kind of idiot. Each doctor would be mad on his own madman. One would have his eye on devotional curates; another would wander about collecting obstreperous majors; a third would be the terror of animal-loving spinsters, who would flee with all their cats and dogs before him. Short of sheer literal anarchy, therefore, it seems plain that the Eugenist must find some authority other ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... by all who stayed at Holt Manor, and in fact by everybody who had seen her more than twice—to come and live with him. And there at Holt she had, in her eccentric way, ever since superintended domestic arrangements and mothered his beautiful little girl and her only brother, by this time an obstreperous boy of fourteen, at Eton and ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... "It doesn't obstruct mine," she said. "Have you been reading what the papers are saying about your friend Mr. Blithers and his obstreperous Maud?" ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... their heads, and laid them down on the backs of their seats rowed in their plaids, and the lasses looked down to the ground and laughed till their faces grew red. I despised to stick the tune, and therefore was obliged to carry on in spite of the obstreperous accompaniment; but I was, time after time, so completely put out of all countenance with the brute, that I was obliged to give up my office in disgust, and leave the parish once more to their old friend, ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... the last time we'll land in a town of this size," declared Roy indignantly, as he helped the constables shove back an obstreperous individual who insisted on examining the motor of ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... hope it isn't this one, 'cause she wouldn't keep still a blessed minute'; or I'd say, 'I've faith to b'lieve it's that one, for she'll coo and play with her toes till I gets ready.' 'Twas allays jest so—'I hope,' or 'I've faith,' every time. And soon as it come to me, why, I jest named the obstreperous one Hope and the quiet one ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... his heels, making him resemble a mouse below a firlot. With some persuasion, however, there being but small difference in the value of the cloths, the one being a west of England bottle-green, and the other a Manchester blue, I caused them to niffer, and hushed up the business, which, had they been obstreperous, would have made half the parish ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... adopted when an obstreperous steer made repeated attempts to leave the herd was to send a bullet through his horn, which gave him something to think about and shake his head over. No doubt it hurt him terribly, but it generally was an effective check to his waywardness. And when some ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... theologian, an excellent jurisconsult, an able physician, a great philosopher, and a successful alchymist. The world at last took him at his word; and thought that a man who talked so big, must have some merit to recommend him,—that it was, indeed, a great trumpet which sounded so obstreperous a blast. He was made secretary to the Emperor Maximilian, who conferred upon him the title of chevalier, and gave him the honorary command of a regiment. He afterwards became professor of Hebrew and the belles lettres at the University of Dole, in France; ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... happens, my dear fellow, I don't want the dagger and I do want the tape-worm. Martini, I must run off. Are you in charge of this obstreperous patient?" ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... under the circumstances. If he becomes willful and unruly, the Captain no doubt will take great pleasure in giving the offender "a good paddling," to use his own forcible expression. This official is a strong advocate of corporal punishment. He claims that a "little loosening up of the hide" of an obstreperous prisoner does the said prisoner a vast amount of good. Among the convicts the deputy warden is austere. He is never seen sauntering about the prison enclosure with his long arms entwined about any of "the boys in stripes." He claims, that too great a ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... years had passed since Jill Carden, the English girl, had first tried her 'prentice hand upon the obstreperous camel. She had ridden out into the desert under the stars with her desert lover; she had, strong in a great love, fearlessly climbed the high wall of racial distinction crowned with the spikes of custom and convention; she had watched the seed of happiness ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... unknown, even in the household. Jennie especially was often saucy and obstreperous. Jane Clemens, with more strength of character than of body, once undertook to punish her for insolence, whereupon Jennie snatched the whip from her hand. John Clemens was sent for in haste. He came at once, tied ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... energy and heat. In 1863 note the dates Tyndall gave a course of lectures on heat as a mode of motion, and was even then sneered at by some scientific men for his temerity. Tait, of Glasgow, was particularly obstreperous. To-day nobody questions it; and we go back to Sir Humphry Davy and Count Rumford for our proofs, too. It was proved scientifically proved then; but it took the world all these years, even the scientific world, to get rid of its prejudices in favor of some other theory, and ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... despise this Cossack rabble incredibly; for their fighting qualities withal are close on zero, though their talent for arson and murder is so considerable. And contrariwise, the Cossacks, for their part, have no objection to plunder, or even, if obstreperous, to kill, any regular Officer they may meet unescorted in a good place. Their talent for arson is great. They do uncountable damage to the Army itself; provoking all the Country people to destroy ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... on the little pony. They had at first suffered great amazement at the voluntary presence of the old lady, but she was there really because she knew no better. Her colossal ignorance took the form, mainly, of a most obstreperous patriotism, and indeed she always acted in a foreign country as if she were the special commissioner of the President, or perhaps as a special commissioner could not act at all. She was very aggressive, and when any ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... on farther. When, however, he recognized in the sturdy old man who strode along in the midst of the new company, no more distant acquaintance than the father of Marcia, he was conscious of a strong revulsion. Better the continued buffeting with an obstreperous mob than the embarrassments he foresaw in such a rencontre; but it was too late to avoid it: the interests and perils of the two parties were too nearly identical, and he heard the gruff voice of his old ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... buth up in a mistry' (like that of Charles James Fitzjames de la Pluche), out of regard for the character of his royal mamma. I believe this about as much as I believe that a certain Rev. Mr. Douglas, an obstreperous Covenanting minister, was a descendant of the captive Mary Stuart. However, Saint-Germain is said, like Kaspar Hauser, to have murmured of dim memories of his infancy, of diversions on magnificent terraces, and of palaces glowing beneath an azure sky. This is reported by Von Gleichen, ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... blank, her mind was busy. Surely not since the gay women of Barras's court laughed at the megalomaniac ravings of a noisy, badly dressed, dirty young lieutenant named Buonaparte, had there been a vanity so candid, so voluble, so obstreperous. Nor did he talk of himself in a detached way, as if he were relating the performances and predicting the glory of a human being who happened to have the same name as himself. No, he thrust upon her in every sentence that he, he himself ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... the murmurous May-day is half gone, The watchful lark before my feet takes flight, And wheeling to some lonelier field far on, Drops with obstreperous cry; and here at night, When the first star precedes the great red moon, The shore-lark tinkles from the darkening field, Somewhere, we know not, in the dusk concealed, His little creakling ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... Knowledge; and (next to what is Divine) truly so called; as far, at least, as Humane Nature extends towards the Knowledge of Nature, by enlarging her Empire beyond the Land of Spectres, Forms, Intentional Species, Vacuum, Occult Qualities, and other Inadequate Notions; which, by their Obstreperous and Noisy Disputes, affrighting, and (till of late) deterring Men from adventuring on further Discoveries, confin'd them in a lazy Acquiescence, and to be fed with Fantasms and fruitless Speculations, which signifie ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... a terrible passage home from New York. The Captain told us he "knew every drop of water in the Atlantic personally"; and he had never seen them so uniformly obstreperous. The ship rolled in the trough; Charles rolled in his cabin, and would not be comforted. As we approached the Irish coast, I scrambled up on deck in a violent gale, and retired again somewhat precipitately to announce to my brother-in-law that we had just come ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... their own; and these only are the pure uncorrupt judges of the truth. For as the air in the ears, unless it be still and void of noise in itself, without any sound or humming, does not exactly take sounds so the philosophical judgment in disputations, if it be disturbed and obstreperous within, is hardly comprehensive of what is said without. For our familiar and inbred opinion will not allow that which disagrees with itself, as the number of sects and parties shows, of which philosophy—if she deals with them in the best manner—must maintain one to be right, and all ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... ignorant persons of their own color, or low-down white men, who only wish to use them for their own advantage. I am very sorry for Eliab and the others, but I must say I think they have brought it all on themselves. I am told they have been mighty impudent and obstreperous, until really the people in the neighborhood did not feel safe, expecting every day that their houses or barns would be burned down, or their wives or daughters insulted, or perhaps worse, by the lazy, saucy crowd ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... Miss Josephine was very much concerned about Mr. Turner's accident, very happy to know how lucky he had been to come off without a scratch, except for the tear in his coat, and very solicitous indeed about any further handling of the obstreperous gray team; and, forgiving him readily under the circumstances, she renewed her engagement to drive with him ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... ardor, which sent him to his Council a different person altogether, one whom his ministers were finding it difficult to recognize and still more difficult to reconcile to their plans. Only when the effects had died down towards the end of each day did the King become himself again. Obstreperous till noon, he would then quiet down by degrees till, at six o'clock, his spirits had reached a strange nadir of depression. Had Brasshay only caught him then, in that period of reaction, he would have found him unformidable as of old; but Brasshay did not know. And then, night ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... Health Monthly; Psychic Theories; Twentieth Century Science, Dawning at the end of the Nineteenth; Comparative Speed of Light and Electricity; Wonderful Photography; Wooden Cloth; The Phylloxera; Falling Rents; Boston Civilization; Psychic Blundering; Beecher's Mediumship; A Scientific Cataract; Obstreperous and Pragmatic Vulgarity; Hygiene; Quinine; Life and Death; Dorothea L. Dix; The Drift of Catholicism; Juggernaut The Principal Methods of Studying the Brain Responses ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... what with my whole world-wide wandering, What with my search drawn out through years, my hope 20 Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope With that obstreperous joy success would bring, I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring My heart made, finding failure in its scope. As when a sick man very near to death 25 Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end The tears, and takes the farewell of each friend, And hears one bid the ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... near the hotel-entrance, ready to convey me to Jericho. He is a small mason-boy to whom I contrived to be useful in the matter of an armful of obstreperous bricks which refused to remain balanced on his shoulder. Forthwith, learning that I was a stranger unfamiliar with Levanto, he conceived the project of abandoning his regular work and becoming my ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... would have likened the dominion of Heaven to the King of Prussia's body-guard, and only admitted the elect on account of their inches, so tickled mine host's fancy, that he leaned back in his chair, and indulged in a long, dry, obstreperous cachinnation. This irreverence mightily displeased the Corporal. He looked at the little man very sourly, and said in ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... some time been loudish round a table at the bottom of the hall; but presently came a burst of mirth so obstreperous and prolonged, that the prior sent the very sub-prior all down the hall to check it, and inflict penance on every monk at the table. And Gerard's cheek burned with shame; for in the heart of the unruly merriment his ear had caught the word "courage!" and the trumpet ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Red Hot Gulch, Colorado, where, under pressure, he had invested sundry pieces of lead in the persons of several obstreperous citizens and then had paced the zealous and excitable sheriff ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... the noise of a little boy having his face washed. Our host was a merry bachelor, and to the rosiness of a priest might, for aught I knew, have added the paternity; but I had never heard of it, and still less expected to find a child in his house. More obvious and obstreperous proofs, however, of the existence of a boy with a dirty face, could not have been met with. You heard the child crying and objecting; then the woman remonstrating; then the cries of the child snubbed and swallowed up in the ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... the impression," he said, in the heavy way almost invariably affected by weak masters in their dealings with the obstreperous, "I was distinctly under the impression that I had ordered you to retire immediately to your dormitory. It is possible that you mistook my meaning. In that case I shall be happy to repeat what I said. It is also ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... like a knowing patriarch, upon the youthful whisperers in corners. Sometimes, it sported with the holly-boughs; and, shining on the leaves by fits and starts, made them look as if they were in the cold winter night again, and fluttering in the wind. Sometimes its genial humour grew obstreperous, and passed all bounds; and then it cast into the room, among the twinkling feet, with a loud burst, a shower of harmless little sparks, and in its exultation leaped and bounded, like a mad thing, up ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... and obstreperous puppy of three months or so, Lady was stricken with distemper and was taken to a veterinary hospital. There, for something more than three months she was nursed through the scourging malady and through the chorea and pneumonia which ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... within the jurisdiction of the Secretary for Scotland. It is possible that my right honourable friend who holds that office, and whom I am pleased to see here with us, will answer the Prime Minister's question. He is responsible for his obstreperous countrymen." The Home Secretary paused, and also smiled happily to himself. He had evaded a trap, and had involved an unloved colleague in its meshes; what more could be required of ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... Later, when the obstreperous ones were in bed and everything quiet Philip and Margery sat together in the hammock, lovers still after eight years of strenuous married life and discussed Larry's last letter, which had contained the rather astonishing request that he be permitted to bring ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... tease and torment the good man with every petty and malicious trick his malevolence could invent. He would shout opprobrious words after the other in the streets, to the entertainment of all who heard him; he would parade up and down before Colonel Belford's house singing obstreperous and unseemly songs at the top of his voice; he would even rattle the ferrule of his cane against the palings of the fence, or throw a stone at Madam Belford's cat in the wantonness of ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... feet. I picked it up, and gave it back to a worried-looking little mother who was endeavouring to arrange the wrapping in the perambulator with one hand, while with the other she clutched firmly at the arm of an obstreperous person of three. She smiled at me in wan acknowledgment, and I said, "May I help?" and tucked in one side of the shawl. Two mornings later I met the same trio returning from their morning's walk, a third time I picked the small boy out of a puddle, and helped to wipe ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... 1st.—There having been a heavy rain yesterday, a nest of chimney-swallows was washed down the chimney into the fireplace of one of the front rooms. My attention was drawn to them by a most obstreperous twittering; and looking behind the fireboard, there were three young birds, clinging with their feet against one of the jambs, looking at me, open-mouthed, and all clamoring together, so as quite to ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... hastily and with prejudice. Generally we decide that any agitation foreign to our settled habits is wrong. And we bolster up our satisfaction by pointing to some mistake of logic or some puerility of statement. That done, we feel the agitation is deplorable and can be ignored unless it becomes so obstreperous that we have to put it in jail. But a genuine statecraft would go deeper. It would know that even God has been defended with nonsense. So it could be sympathetic to agitations. I use the word sympathetic literally. For it would try to understand the inner ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... you ken take down de bill, I ain't no longer to let—I'm on, yah, yah!" shouted Snowball, giving way to the most obstreperous merriment, in order to testify his satisfaction at Mr Lathrope's engaging him in his service, the darkey having always had a hankering after the American from his ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... religious in the sense of creed and dogma. In all his life he had scarcely given a thought to religion. His knowledge of the Almighty by name had been largely confined to that of a word to conjure with in mastering an obstreperous bronco; but, in the broad sense of personal cleanliness and individual duty, he was religious to the core. He would not shirk a responsibility, and a responsibility ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... in the kitchen, and pushing the landlord about, crying at the same time that they would stand by Sir Watkin to the last, and would never see him plundered. One of them, a fellow of about thirty, in a hairy cap, black coat, dirty yellow breeches, and dirty white top-boots, who was the most obstreperous of them all, at last came up to the old chap who disliked South Welshmen and tried to knock off his hat, swearing that he would stand by Sir Watkin; he, however, met a Tartar. The enemy of the South Welsh, like all crusty people, had lots of mettle, and with ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... in times past," Hall took up again with a tragic tone in his voice, "to use discipline upon such occasions as this, and if by chance an incoming member becomes obstreperous, we employ a friend to help us—he holds an honored position in our fraternity ... ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... landlord, had already made some inroads upon the limits of temperance, as was evident from the tone in which Michael inquired after his old acquaintances in the town, and the bursts of laughter with which each answer was received. Giles Gosling himself was somewhat scandalized at the obstreperous nature of their mirth, especially as he involuntarily felt some respect for his unknown guest. He paused, therefore, at some distance from the table occupied by these noisy revellers, and began to make a sort ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... shears, and peevish through want of sleep maybe, or mayhap irritated by their obstreperous behaviour, jerked the strings which bound those marionettes called humans to ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... to see me. On rising, I found him to be a plain, simple Servian of the old school; he informed me that this being a saint's day, the Bishop would not commence mass until I was arrived. "What?" thought I to myself, "does the Bishop think that these obstreperous Britons are all of the Greek religion." The doctor thought that I should not go; "for," said he, "whoever wishes to exercise the virtue of patience may do so in a Greek mass or a Hungarian law-suit!" But the Natchalnik ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... When Mrs. Bull is obstreperous, go to the coffee-house and call for your glass. It is an excellent cure for her complaint, and you will get the latest news retailed in the most engaging manner, with the pleasure of knowing she is biting her lips at home ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various
... district school is distinctly NOT exhilarating—at least in such a well-behaved school as this, where the pupils are so painfully good that I haven't even the traditional excitement of thrashing obstreperous bad boys. Everything seems to go by clock work in Lindsay educational institution. Larry must certainly have possessed a marked gift for organizing and drilling. I feel as if I were merely a big cog in an orderly machine that ran itself. However, I understand ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of "the Gadsden Purchase"), Marion, Sumter (both of Revolutionary fame), Carteret, Columbus, Stanton, Colfax, Greeley, Chase, Sherman, Seward, Fillmore, Harlan (Senator), Butler (Ben), Johnson (obstreperous "Andy"), Grant (our chiefest military hero), Polk (General), Brown (John Brown, of Ossawatomie), Thomas (General), Sheridan, Wallace (General), St. John (Prohibitionist, Republican governor of Kansas), Lane (Jim Lane, of Kansas), McPherson ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... the soldier's brains; in which, however, he was restrained by two younger savages, who caught him in their arms, and muttered somewhat in their own tongue, which mollified his wrath in a moment causing him to burst into a roar of obstreperous laughter. "Ees,—good!" he cried, grinning with apparent benevolence and friendship over the helpless youth: "no hurt Long-knife; take him Piankeshaw nation; make good friend squaw, papoose—all brudders, ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... deplorable chaotic state of the Anglican and other non-Catholic Churches offers us abundant and forcible illustrations. From the very first the One True Church has not only taught, but ruled; not only spoken, but acted. And when any of her subjects have proved obstreperous and disobedient, and stubborn in their resistance to her orders, she has invariably turned them out of her fold, so that they should not infect and contaminate the good and the loyal. It was in this ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... of her mind with delight at being among all her old friends again; she flung her arms round the pretty little Snowflake, stroked the obstreperous Greenfinch, while she herself was thrust at from all sides by the affectionate and confiding goats; and so at last she got near to where Peter was still standing, not having yet got over ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... by their greater adaptiveness that women are better linguists than men; it is by their more delicate organisation, their more subdued identity, and their less obstreperous temperaments, which are consequently less egotistical, less redolent of the one individual self. And what is it that makes the men of mark or note, the cognate signs of human algebra, but these same ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... others with bundles of hay, and all manner of rubbish with which they intended to plug up his mouth and nostrils, so that he might perish for lack of breath. These last, however, could by no means perform their appointed duty; inasmuch as the enemy's breath rushed out of his nose in an obstreperous hurricane and whirlwind, which blew the Pygmies away as fast as they came nigh. It was found necessary, therefore, to hit upon some other method of carrying ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... government is becoming more and more the crushing of the democratic tendency. They are obliged to do it at home, both in the back and the front parlor; it would not be decent as yet to have a Spielberg just at home for obstreperous patriots, but England has so many ships, it is just as easy to transport them to a safe distance. Then the Church of England, so long an enemy to the Church of Rome, feels a decided interest with it on the subject of temporal possessions. The ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... mood. Their fund of animal spirits seemed inexhaustible. For life's jollities they were never unprepared. No doubt there were "mighty mean moments" in their existence, as there have been in the existence of most of us. It cannot have been pleasant to Mr. Winkle to have his eye blackened by the obstreperous cabman. Mr. Tracy Tupman probably felt a passing pang when jilted by the maiden aunt in favour of the audacious Jingle. No man would elect to occupy the position of defendant in an action for breach of promise, or prefer to sojourn ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... took part with the peasants in their rebellion; but rebellion against a known authority was more pardonable than that against the unknown, or else his services were of greater value. At any rate he was pardoned not once but many times, being apparently an obstreperous character. ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... not found. And then two big policemen took a hand and dragged out of the furious mob of onlookers a crushed and trampled thing, with a wedding ring in its vest pocket and a shredded and hysterical woman beating her way to the carpet's edge, ragged, bruised and obstreperous. ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... whole host of my deductions to the deuce in a moment. This unknown personage could not be an old gentleman; for old gentlemen are not apt to be so obstreperous to chamber-maids. He could not be a young gentleman; for young gentlemen are not apt to inspire such indignation. He must be a middle-aged man, and confounded ugly into the bargain, or the girl would not have taken the matter in such ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... Congress, in care of the Secretary of State, to be delivered. But Washington, whose patience had seemed inexhaustible, believed that the time had come to act boldly. By his instruction Jefferson returned the communication to Genet with a note in which he curtly reminded the obstreperous Frenchman of a diplomat's proper behavior. As the American Government had already requested the French to recall Genet, his amazing inflation collapsed like a pricked bladder. He was too wary, however, to return to France which he had served so devotedly. ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... dogs!' and with an obstreperous bound, Fly flew to the new-comer, a young man in the robust strength of eight-and-twenty, of stalwart frame, very broad in the chest and shoulders, careless, homely, though perfectly gentleman-like ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... timbers slid and creaked along the greased slides, dragged mightily by a straining wire cable that snapped and swung dangerously. When they had reached the solid "bank" that slanted down toward the mill, the obstreperous "bull" donkey lowered its crest of white steam, coughed, and was still. A man threw over the first of these timbers a heavy rope, armed with a hook, that another man drove home with a blow of his sledge. The rope tightened. Over rolled the log, out from the greased slide, to ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... in each case separately, and simply because he cannot help it; being so framed that when that particular running thing called a mouse appears in his field of vision he must pursue; that when that particular barking and obstreperous thing called a dog appears there he must retire, if at a distance, and scratch if close by; that he must withdraw his feet from water, and his face ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... necks! Besides, in taking your last augury, No prosperous bird appear'd; but croaking ravens Flagg'd up and down, and from the sacrifice Flew to the prison, where they sat all night, Beating the air with their obstreperous beaks! I dare not counsel, but I could entreat, That great Sejanus would attempt the gods Once more ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... discipline to which the obstreperous Locos were subjected, and neither their general disposition, nor their particular temper of mind at the time, was such as to induce them to bear the infliction with Christian resignation. Accordingly, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... few knew the ways of buck-jumpers more thoroughly and, as the horse came down, she coolly stepped on one side, and was on his back again the instant he had recovered himself. That was too much for the obstreperous animal; he knew he was conquered and gave in to the inevitable, allowing himself to be handled and put through ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... have a living faith in the potency of the Horse-Guards, and in the maxim that "Safe bind is sure find." They have a sincere affection for roast beef. They are quite sure "the mob" will do no harm if it is vigilantly watched and thoroughly overawed. Their obstreperous loyalty might seem inconsistent with this unideal character, but it is only seeming. When the portly and well-to-do Briton vociferates "God save the Queen!" with intense enthusiasm, he means "God save my estates, my rents, my shares, my consols, my expectations." ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... things in a different light. I tell you what it is, Adela; I can't stand that fellow Rodman. I've got an idea he's up to something. Don't let him lead Mutimer by the nose, that's all. But this isn't Sunday talk. Youngster rather obstreperous ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... steadily for two hours. Little was said; and our chief embarrassment lay in the yelpings of the dog, who took exceeding interest in our proceedings. He, at length, became so obstreperous that we grew fearful of his giving the alarm to some stragglers in the vicinity,—or, rather, this was the apprehension of Legrand;— for myself, I should have rejoiced at any interruption which might have enabled ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... have a fair wind, and may be distinctly seen from the city. Nay, it is a well known fact, which I can testify from my own experience, that on a clear still summer evening, you may hear, from the Battery of New York, the obstreperous peals of broad-mouthed laughter of the Dutch negroes at Communipaw, who, like most other negroes, are famous for their risible powers. This is peculiarly the case on Sunday evenings, when, it is remarked by an ingenious and observant philosopher, who has made great discoveries ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... fight Mr. Cody is never noisy, obstreperous or excited. In fact, I never hardly noticed him in a fight, unless I happened to want him, or he had something to report, when he was always in the right place, and his information was always ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... complexion and fully developed nose. Here, too, is Thomas's cousin, Adam Rutledge, fresh from an adventure at Carlisle, where he has tasted the luxury of Doomsdale, a noisome dungeon reserved for witches and murderers, but sometimes tenanted by obstreperous drunkards. Of a more reputable class here is Job Leathes, of Dale Head, a tall, gaunt dalesman, with pale gray eyes. Here is Luke Cockrigg, too, of Aboonbeck Bank; and stout John Jackson, of Armboth, ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... matter, it is my belief that British seamen are not addicted to express their feelings in that way, unless perhaps occasionally a few do so when they become sentimental with a larger amount of grog on board than usual, but even that is not very common. They are more inclined to become obstreperous and combative ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... chap marked doon roight, ayse warrant un!" shouted Timothy from the hill side, where with some trouble, he was holding in the obstreperous spaniels. "He's doon in a roight laine atwixt 't gray stean and ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... appeal to the reason of my obstreperous audience by standing on the menzil front and delivering a harangue in such Persian as ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... of the policy to the death of the child, there were several other slight circumstances of corroborative suspicion. The chief of these was, that a neighbor had declared he heard the father indulging in obstreperous mirth in a room adjoining that in which the corpse lay only about two hours after his son had expired. This unseemly, scandalous hilarity of her husband, the wife appeared to faintly remonstrate against. The directors had consequently resolved non obstante ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... sparkled, and rolled about till the winking black pupils were eclipsed by the whites. At times he would stand still, and whisper solemnly and mysteriously to himself, and then, without a moment's warning, he would bring his hands down on his thighs, and burst into a loud, long, obstreperous, and deafening peal of ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... pensive, most beloved of you all. I seek her from afar, I come from temples where her altars are, From groves that bear her name, Noisy with stricken victims now and sacrificial flame, And cymbals struck on high and strident faces Obstreperous in her praise They neither love nor know, A goddess of gone days, Departed long ago, Abandoning the invaded shrines and fanes Of her old sanctuary, A deity obscure and legendary, Of whom there now remains, For sages to decipher and priests to garble, Only and for a ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... boys in the first exchanges did their full share in adding to the troubles of the business. Nothing could be done with them. They were immune to all schemes of discipline. Like the MYSTERIOUS NOISES they could not be controlled, and by general consent they were abolished. In place of the noisy and obstreperous boy came the ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... in the middle of the performance of "Auld Lang Syne," a most obstreperous proceeding, during which there was an immense amount of standing with one foot on the table, knocking mugs together and shaking hands, without which accompaniments it seems impossible for the youths of Britain to take part in that famous ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... service. But for the promptness and pluck of several Atlanta policemen these Negro ex-soldiers would have done serious mischief at the depot. Those who undertook to make trouble were very promptly clubbed into submission, and one fellow more obstreperous than the rest, was ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... didn't notice the size of my assistant, Swifty Joe, as you came in? His specialty is escortin' obstreperous parties downstairs and dumpin' 'em on ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... hear me in civilness; if not, we must handle that rod which was laid down for the use of obstreperous. If you had come in a peaceable manner, like our brothers, the English, we would not have been against your trading with us as they do; but to come, fathers, and build houses upon our land, and to take it by force, is what we ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... he was in for it, he had better get away before any one saw him. He caught up the clothes and the umbrella and hurried off into the brush. It was not easy for him to make his way along with the obstreperous load, and he soon discovered that the best way to manage the umbrella was to carry it over his head. Very comforting he found it, too, though it did not for a moment occur to him that this was its real purpose. His plan was to go to his father's tribe, the Elcuanams, in the mountains ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase
... after the War ended, but the teacher had gone, and no one else seemed available for the job. John was sober and studious, and besides was so well grown for his age that they banked on his ability to "lick" any negro boy that got obstreperous. ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... arrived at the same moment. The gentlemen they found in the dressing room merely glanced at them carelessly or nodded. An old gentleman, mistaking Archie for some one else, asked assistance with an obstreperous tie and expressed his gratitude in the warmest terms. The Governor, primping with the greatest deliberation, had never been calmer. To Archie this intrusion in the house of perfect strangers was a culminating act of folly, bound to result ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... is necessary to state that during the period from 1878 to 1879, the native chief Sekukuni—Cetchwayo's dog, as the blacks called him—had become obstreperous. He had been engaged in raids into the Transvaal—raids of the same character as those which, as has been already mentioned, had helped to bring about the collapse of the Republic. Colonel Rowland's expedition, which started in November 1878 for the suppression of this ruffian, was baffled ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... great gift of leadership; she would be the leader here. She rejoiced in the fact that all the girls were staring at her. She would go carefully to work and soon secure a band of followers, who would increase by-and-by, becoming extremely obstreperous and doing all sorts of naughty things, for Holly had no intention when at school to be good or to learn much. She went solely and entirely for her own happiness, because she preferred the girls with the blue, gray, and nondescript eyes to the ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... giving everything actual the lie, by continually substituting something else, no less specific and no less nugatory. This world, any world, exists only by an unmerited privilege. Its glory is offensive to the spirit, like the self-sufficiency of some obstreperous nobody, who happens to have drawn the big prize in a lottery. "The world", M. Benda writes, "inspires me with a double sentiment. I feel it to be full of grandeur, because it has succeeded in asserting itself and coming to exist; and I feel it to be pitiful, when I consider how it hung on a ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... in many ways, all of them silent, rather than obstreperous and obtrusive. It is shown by a certain gracious, ineffable expectation with which for the first time he approaches any human soul, as if unknown and incalculable possibilities were opening here; by a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... to the east and the other to the west, to explore the shores of the Arctic Ocean. Franklin and his companions had hardly left the river when he met near a large bay a numerous party of Esquimaux, who at first testified great delight at the rencontre, but soon became obstreperous, and tried to carry off the boat. Only by the exercise of wonderful patience and tact were the English able to ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... daughter of Chaos has now enveloped our hemisphere (which a short time since was enubilous of clouds) in the grossest blackness. The drowsy god reigns predominantly, and the obstreperous world is wrapped in profound silence. No sounds gliding through the ambient air salute my attentive auricles, save the frightful notes which at different intervals issue from that common marauder of nocturnal ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... specimens of humanity ranged themselves, and at the word of the starter plunged into the water with that downward plunge so incomprehensible to the uninitiated. A short, sharp struggle followed, the competitors swimming with the sidelong movement and obstreperous puffing which likens the swimmer so closely to the traditional grampus. Eventually one of the group is seen heading the others, and breasting the water with calm and equable stroke in the old-fashioned style. He reaches the flag a full yard before his nearest antagonist. ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... result of their better nourishment at our table, the imps of the devil daily grew more obstreperous and life became so burdensome to Silvia that I proposed moving away ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... passed away, loud became the noise made by the kings, all exclaiming, 'Array! Array!' With the blare of conches and the sound of drums that resembled leonine roars, O Bharata, with the neigh of steeds, and the clatter of car-wheels, with the noise of obstreperous elephants and the shouts, clapping of arm-pits, and cries of roaring combatants, the din caused everywhere was very great. The large armies of the Kurus and the Pandavas, O king, rising at sunrise, completed ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... must be confessed, an inexcusably obstreperous scholar; but Tora would not have exchanged her husband, her Gunner, the fast friend of her promising "brother Karl," for the meekest or the ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... they had got to some distance, they tied her feet together, and thrusting a stick under, they carried her off on their shoulders at full trot. This riding on a stick—which was very different from lying in a cradle—soon brought the sow to her senses, who began to behave in a very obstreperous and disagreeable manner, and the faster they went the more obstreperous and disagreeable did she become. The thieves now began to repent of the expedient which they had devised for bringing back Tim to their society; but, fearing to lose two hundred roubles, ...
— The Story of Tim • Anonymous
... probability, finally fixed the destiny of William. He remained at Melrose two years, attending the school regularly, and sleeping and eating at Mrs. Elliott's. For the first year, though often very obstreperous, he yet stood in some degree of awe both of his master and grandmother; and on his promising good behaviour for the future, Mrs. Elliott very unfortunately forbore mentioning to his parents, either by letter or when they paid their annual visit ...
— The Eskdale Herd-boy • Mrs Blackford
... round little warm bodies they had, and what delicate, refined faces! They had not seemed like Ellen's blowsy, obstreperous youngsters, practical and grasping to the last extreme after the model of their father. They had starry eyes and hair like tangled sunbeams. Their laughter rippled like brooks in summer, and their hands were like bands that bound the heart. Cookies ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... with increasing years he became unduly interested in questions of dogma. He talked too freely; he was always arguing. Being unable to read or write, he developed an astonishing memory for things he had heard and faces he had seen; he brought them up at inconvenient moments. He grew factious, obstreperous, declaring that there was much in the constitution of the Holy Russian Church which ought to be amended and brought up to date. What people wanted, he said, was a New Jerusalem. A violent altercation with his Superior ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... children to their second breakfast. Little Fay, however, refused to budge, and when the meekly salaaming ayah attempted to take her, made her strong little body stiff, and screamed vigorously, clinging so firmly to her aunt that Jan had herself to carry the obstreperous baby to the nursery, where she left her lying on the floor, still yelling with all the strength ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... night just at supper-time a much-freckled messenger-boy appeared dragging an exceedingly obstreperous fox-terrier on the end of a dangerously frayed leash. Planting himself firmly on the rug in the middle of the room, with the faintest gleam of saucy pink tongue showing between his teeth, the little beast sat and defied the entire situation. ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... served while we were quiescent at the wharf. The stewardess hunted up all the females in the ship, and, preceding them down stairs, placed them at the head of the table; then, and not an instant before, were the gentlemen allowed to appear, who made a most obstreperous rush at the viands. There were about 200 people seated in a fetid and dimly-lighted apartment, at a table covered over with odoriferous viands— pork stuffed with onions, boiled legs of mutton, boiled chickens and turkeys, roast geese, beef-steaks, yams, tomatoes, squash, mush, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... times, ladies and gentlemen, brings to the fore the most pushing and obstreperous blackguards. We have amongst us persons who, under the thin disguise of patriotism, do not scruple to bring hideous charges against public men. Such but serve the blood-stained cause of our common enemies. Conscious of the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... limbs and tweed clothing all the quieter tints of the day that brought him satisfaction and enabled him to melt into insignificance and forget that he was anybody. These English clashed about him like a brass band, making him feel vaguely that he ought to be more self-assertive and obstreperous, and that he did not claim insistently enough all kinds of things that he didn't want and that were really valueless, such as corner seats, windows up or down, ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... extremity, through speaking tubes—the screams of women and children, and the universal combination of discord, announced the termination of the Civic Sovereign's performance in the drama; "the revelry now had began," 343 and all was obstreperous ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... and shorn to suit the French taste, which pronounced him "bizarre, incoherent, diffuse, bustling with rough modulations and wild harmonies, destitute of melody, forced in expression, noisy, and fearfully difficult," even as England at the same time frowned down his immortal works as "obstreperous roarings of modern frenzy." Berlioz's clear, stern voice would often be heard, when liberties were taken with the score, loud above the din of the instruments. "What wretch has dared to tamper with the great Beethoven?" "Who has taken upon him ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... and had found nobody to share her interest with for so long—so long! She felt happily running though everything the general, easy taking-for-granted of all the old, gentle, inflexible standards of breeding that she had nearly forgotten, down in the heart of the city among her obstreperous, affectionate ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... he will unquestionably curse you." "The telegraph operator grabs your message and eyes you as if you were a pickpocket." Now, Mr. PUNCHINELLO does not offer himself as an apologist for the abusive and obstreperous hackman, but he wishes to say that in the course of his active and eventful career he has had various conferences with those servants of the sidewalk, and he has never yet been unquestionably cursed by any one of the whole bad lot. Only yesterday ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... efforts to reach the two captives but always the men with them succeeded in beating them off. The fellows seemed utterly unafraid of the great beasts leaping and snarling about them, handling them much the same as one might handle a pack of obstreperous dogs. Along the bed of the old watercourse that once ran through the gorge they made their way, and as the first faint lightening of the eastern horizon presaged the coming dawn, they paused for a moment upon the edge of a declivity, which appeared to the girl in the strange ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... he ejaculated, with another eclat of laughter, still more obstreperous. "I can't help laughing; but it is merely hysterical, on the faith of a gentleman. I laugh in proportion to my desolation. I could at this moment tear out my beard by handfuls through sheer despair. Par exemple, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... Word of God in all kinds of ground—good and bad; they comforted the sorrowing; they visited the sick and the prisoner; they refused to help, or, in any way to encourage, the idle; they handed the obstreperous and violent over to the police, with the hope—if not the recommendation—that the rod should not be spared; and in all cases they prayed for them. The results were considerable, but, not being ostentatiously trumpeted, were not ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... the one great trunk Eldorado, the greatest discovery of natural resources ever made in Canada. The settlers in that valley wanted more people, the people wanted the railways, the Government needed the voters, and Mackenzie wanted settlers, people, voters, Government and all. If a Government was obstreperous, Mackenzie might lend a heavy hand to help turn it out at the next election. It was not proper for a Government to obstruct him. He ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... Hayraddin had, that very morning, promised to him more modest and discreet behaviour than he was wont to exhibit, when they rested in a convent on their journey, yet he had broken his engagement, and had been even more offensively obstreperous than usual. Something probably lurked under this, for whatever were the Bohemian's deficiencies, he lacked neither sense, nor, when he pleased, self command, and might it not be probable that he wished to hold some communication, either with, his own horde ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... their chief, upon which a message was sent to him; but he did not think fit to show himself for a considerable time, during which they remained with the party round the tub, who continued swilling their wine like so many hogs. Their heads soon became affected, and their obstreperous mirth increasing every minute, the situation of the strangers became ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... left college, in my youth, I spent a couple of years in Wyoming. Well, Mary Ann Crowder was the only single lady within a hundred miles, and she was the most obstreperous damn critter that I ever saw. She had a monopoly an' knew it, an' wasn't decently polite. Put on more style than a nigger at a cakewalk. Though she had red hair an' only one eye, some of the boys used to ride sixty miles ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... your obstreperous talking critics,—the impertinent guides of the pit,—who will not give a plain man leave to enjoy an evening's entertainment, but, with their frothy jargon and incessant finding of faults, either drown his pleasure quite, or force him in his own defence to join in their clamorous censure. The hiss ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... first rays of sun would fall, were taken possession of by a crowd of young men who sat and stood packed together like guillemots on a rock. These too, cheated by that rising cloud of the spectacle they had come so far to see, wanted to have a little fun, and began to be very obstreperous. By and by they found out an amusement very ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... themselves for or against him. Thus a long time elapsed, and our hero had grown old enough to be a page. He had received food, clothing, and goodwill, but no one had thought of giving him an education. Sometimes he became obstreperous. He played tricks with the Club cutlery, and diverted its silver to improper uses; he laid traps for upsetting aged and infirm legislators; he tried the coolness of the youngest and best-natured Members of Parliament by popping up in strange ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... drilled us, all right!" cried Jennie, who was a bit obstreperous on this point, for she liked to play practical jokes on ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... that man. The sort of person I've no use for, you know. So horribly on the spot; such sharp, unsoftened manners. All the terrible bright braininess of the Yankee combined with the obstreperous energy of the Philistine Briton. His mother is a young American, about to be married for the third time. The sort of exciting career one would expect from a parent of the delightful Jim. ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... by a loud, sudden cackling, like flocks of geese, followed by an obstreperous hoo! hoo! ha! ha! of the laughing jackass (Dacelo ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris |
