"Persistent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were advising his return. "The medical gentlemen are wanting to survey me, and to send me to Bristol for the re-establishment of my health," he tells Minto; but he adds, "do not mention it (it is my concern) I beg of you." Reports were then unusually persistent that the enemy was about to put to sea. "I must not be sick until after the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... definite conclusion as to the nature or extent of the incident, but it is quite certain that public interest will be much excited when details are forthcoming. All sorts of rumours attain credence in the locality, the murder of several prominent persons being not the least persistent of these. Without, however, giving currency to idle speculation, several authentic statements may be grouped into ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... both, or with any other disagreeable hardship which might be inflicted upon him, if only he could do so successfully. But he believed that his best course would be to press his suit with Isabel. Should he do so successfully, he would at any rate be safe. Should she be persistent in refusing him, which he believed to be probable, then he would have shown himself desirous of carrying out his uncle's wishes. As to all this he was clear-sighted enough. But he did not quite perceive the state of his uncle's mind in regard to himself. ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... this clean, soft air and this enchanting view of Florence, the great valley and the snow-mountains that frame it are the right conditions for work. They are a persistent inspiration. To-day is very lovely; when the afternoon arrives there will be a new picture every hour till dark, and each of them divine—or progressing from divine to diviner and divinest. On this (second) floor Clara's room ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... such fanatical intensity did the thought of his losing the woman harass him, and the torrent of his passion burst restraint to get to her to enfold her—this in the same hour of the original wild monster's persistent and sober exposition of the texts of the law with the voice of a cultivated modern gentleman; and, let it be said, with a modern gentleman's design to wed a wife in honour. All means were to be tried. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... standing before His mirror fumbling with His moustache, which seemed unwilling any more to point upwards, but had a persistent droop. "Donner und blitzen!" He exclaimed irascibly as he added ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... on sunny afternoons had puzzled them in another way. Very persistent had been the flat, black, earth-clinging and distorted thing which followed them so everywhere. What was this black, following thing, anyhow, this thing which swung its unsubstantial body around as one moved but which ever kept its own feet at the feet of the pursued, ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... how hard you are trying to gain knowledge, I think they will be willing to call you by the name that is really yours. Remember this, however. Don't be offended if sometimes we forget, and call you 'Gyp.' It may mean only that we remember the boy who, while still thus addressed, made persistent effort ...
— Princess Polly's Gay Winter • Amy Brooks
... and cutter might be ordered for the same purpose as early as the next day. The documents show that from General Scott's first note, referred to and quoted herein, down to the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, he was persistent in his efforts to have the Southern forts, or as many of them as the means at hand would permit, re-enforced and garrisoned against surprise and capture; but little heed was ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... are long-headed, shrewd, careful, canny, active, persistent, but reserved and blunt, and without demonstrative enthusiasm. They have a physiognomy distinct from the rest of the Scottish people, and have a quick, sharp, rather angry accent. The local Scots dialect is broad, and rich in diminutives, and is noted for the use of e for o ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... square peg in a round hole. In the great flare of the golden age, the age of ingots of Peru and of men of even greater worth, the disease worked beneath the surface. Since then the conflict has corroded into futility all the buoyant energies of the country. I mean the persistent attempt to centralize in thought, in art, in government, in religion, a nation whose every energy lies in the other direction. The result has been a deadlock, and the ensuing rust and numbing of all life and thought, so that a century of revolution seems to have brought Spain no nearer a solution ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... of the darkness all suddenly there came a voice, eager, passionate, persistent. "I am here, Billikins! I am here! Come back to me, darling! ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... strange thing followed this implied refusal. Mrs. Mason, who never allowed her plans or wishes to interfere with her husband's, now repeated her request, and urged it till he yielded, apparently from sheer surprise that his wife could be so persistent. ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... subdued amazement; with the half-open lips, the sunken cheeks, and meekly-staring eyes, it seemed expressing, all over, the words, 'How good to be at rest!' Yes, it is good, good to be rid, at last, of the wearing sense of life, of the persistent, restless consciousness of existence! But ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... as old in appearance as many girls of eighteen, and her looks so belied her age, that the village beaux paid court to her at once. Her most persistent suitor was young Bob Wood who had just ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... now the hardihood to profess it openly, has been the working theory upon which our government has lately been conducted. It is astonishing how persistent it is. It is amazing how quickly the political party which had Lincoln for its first leader,—Lincoln, who not only denied, but in his own person so completely disproved the aristocratic theory,—it is amazing how ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... of her aspects, it is not true that her prevailing attitude is, as here indicated, one of bitter hostility to the race she nourishes on her bosom. If she were the monster here described, mankind would long ago have perished under her persistent cruelties, and Mr. Mill's profane cry would never have gone up to Heaven. Men will always regard the world subjectively, and adjudge it happy or the reverse according to their temperament or passing humor; but, if it be conceded—as it is by Mr. Mill through ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... are old offenders," he explained to the angry owner; "and they are most persistent violators of the fish and game laws. You have seen them caught in the act, and you may expect to be subpoenaed as witness for the state ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... Eternal Nameless And all-creative spirit of the Law, Uncomprehended, comprehensive, blameless, Invincible, resistless, with no flaw; So full of love it must create for ever, Destroying that it may create again, Persistent and perfecting in endeavour, It yet must bring forth angels, after men ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... had passed on, and another, better acquainted with him, had come up and interrogated Raoul as to whether he should inform M. Guiche of his being there. This name even did not rouse the recollections of poor Raoul. The persistent servant went on to relate that Guiche had just invented a new game of lottery, and was teaching it to the ladies. Raoul, opening his large eyes, like the absent man in Theophrastus, had made no answer, but his sadness had increased by it two shades. With his head hanging down, his ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... axes had made them they could tell no other story. But, when they looked on the hideous stumps, what they thought of was personal victory. The chips, the girdled trees, and the vile split rails spoke of honest sweat, persistent toil and final reward. The cabin was a warrant of safety for self and wife and babes. In short, the clearing, which to me was a mere ugly picture on the retina, was to them a symbol redolent with moral memories and sang a very paean of duty, ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... resembles Amanita verna, from which it can be distinguished by its large, persistent annulus, the elongated downward-tapering bulb of its stem, and, ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... very persistent from the S.S.E., rising and falling; to-night it has sprung up again, and is rattling ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... awe: E'en the serpent that slid away silent—he felt the new law. The same stared in the white humid faces upturned by the flowers; The same worked in the heart of the cedar and moved the vine-bowers: And the little brooks witnessing murmured, persistent and 335 low, With their obstinate, all but hushed voices—"E'en so, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... that belonged to the days when he went to church at Castlegarry and thought of a thousand things other than prayer or praise, but yet heard with the acute ears of the young, and remembered with the persistent memory of youth. "For the night cometh when no man can work," were the words which came to him. He shuddered slightly. Suppose that this indeed was the beginning of the night! As she said, he must play the game—play it as Crozier of Lammis ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... navigable, coastal water to the north of Adelie Land, barred by the Mertz Glacier on the east and delimited on the west by more or less compact ice, has been named the D'Urville Sea. We found subsequently that its freedom from obstruction by ice is due to the persistent gales which set off the land in that locality. To the north, pack-ice in variable amount is encountered before reaching ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... half an hour to do it, and when I had brought the two craft to the last of the sea-locks, the four people and the one dog were waiting for me, the most persistent of the ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... that now. You must see now that your incapacity of being alone: your nature so exigent in its persistent claim on the attention and time of others: your lack of any power of sustained intellectual concentration: the unfortunate accident—for I like to think it was no more—that you had not been able to acquire the "Oxford temper" in intellectual matters, ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... be economically scientific or scholarly. But it might surprise many people to see how well read the members are and how clearly they can express their ideas. Their discussions are not seldom informative, and that they make public opinion in rural communities is beyond cavil. The persistent advocacy of specific reforms has directed the thought of the members toward the larger issues that so often rise above the haze ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... these persistent types, as I have termed them, is no real obstacle in the way of the theory of evolution. Take the case of the scorpions to which I have just referred. No doubt, since the Carboniferous epoch, conditions have always obtained, such as existed when the scorpions of that ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... based by Mommsen and his school on the assumption of permanent distinctions among races; and therefore Mr. Robertson applies himself, with a large measure of success, to the task of showing that the theory of innate persistent qualities marking off one people from another has no ethnological justification.... Mr. Robertson is able to make short and easy work of the loose writing which sums up those (imaginary) characters in epithet or epigram.... Mr. Robertson's lively style and happy allusiveness keep the reader ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... Above us the Stars and Stripes fluttered and snapped in the breeze, and the trains on the Elevated Road crawled carefully round the curve. Now and again the deep bellow of a steamer's whistle smote on our ears, smears of sound on the persistent roar of the city behind us. The feet of the little crowd shuffled as they shifted to get a better view, and two boys, chewing gum, climbed on the seats and stood up. A small girl of ten or so sped past on roller-skates, uttering shrill cries to a companion beyond ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... breathe that malarious atmosphere. He had played no conjuror's tricks with his promises to his people; Austrian though he was, he had really acted the part of an Italian prince, and there was nothing to show that he had not acted it sincerely. But a persistent bad luck attended his efforts. Though the ministers appointed by him included men as distinguished as the Marquis Gino Capponi, Baron Ricasoli and Prince Corsini, they failed in winning a strong popular support. ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... him the enormous profits that he drew from his dramatic writings, and it is easy to believe that Balzac's persistent efforts to have a play produced were due to the momentary glimpse of a steady stream of wealth that was thus flashed before his dazzled eyes. After the catastrophe of Vautrin, he still pursued his dramatic ambitions with Pamela ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... he was always polite and attentive, though they annoyed him by their persistent curiosity as to the means by which he produced his unrivaled effects—effects which the established technique of violin-playing could not explain. An Englishman named George Harris, who was an attache of the Hanoverian ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... seem but for the words which follow, 'the Lord working with them.' He shares in all the toil; and the lifting up of His holy hands sways the current of the fight, and inclines the balance. His love appoints effort and persistent struggle as the law of our lives. Nor are we to mourn or wonder; for the purpose of the appointment, so far as we are concerned, is to make character, and to give us 'the wrestling thews that throw the world.' Difficulties make men of us. Summer sailors, yachting in smooth water, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... spirit. The periodic jollities of this company of men whose professed aim was to bury each other, had a high reputation for excellence. Up till a year previously they had always been held at the Duck, in Duck Square, opposite; but Mr Enoch Peake, Chairman of the Club, had by persistent and relentless chicane, triumphing over immense influences, changed their venue to the Dragon, whose landlady, Mrs Louisa Loggerheads, he was then courting. (It must be stated that Mrs Louisa's name contained no slur of cantankerousness; ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... hall prevented my rebuking him as I wished. I told myself that, of course, his persistent reference to that kiss was simply one of mockery and I also admitted to myself that as much as I loved Lillian I was glad that her husband was to be no longer a ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... preposterousness of such an unaesthetic personage as Immanuel Kant enthroned in its centre! Think of german books on religions-philosophie, with the heart's battles translated into conceptual jargon and made dialectic. The most persistent setter of questions, feeler of objections, insister on satisfactions, is the religious life. Yet all its troubles can be treated with absurdly little technicality. The wonder is that, with their way of working philosophy, ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... plan of imprisoning, torturing, and roasting such obstinate heretics as are too obtuse or too sharp-sighted to yield to milder methods of treatment. Such incidents in history as the exposure of Christians to hungry beasts in the Colosseum, a Smithfield burnt-offering of persistent saints, or a Spanish auto-da-fe, with attending civic, ecclesiastical, and sometimes even royal functionaries, and wide-encircling half-rejoicing and half-compassionate multitudes, were not without their charms and compensations ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... But Friend Elder-tree does not therefore cease to shed scent. It casts its spell over him again almost at once. "No, there is no use in trying to work!" Sachs leans back and listens again to the echo in his memory of Walther's song. "I feel it," he meditates, lending ear to the persistent voice in his brain, "and cannot understand it. I cannot retain it—nor yet can forget it! And if for a moment I grasp it, to measure it is beyond me. But how should I hope to grasp that which struck me as illimitable? No rule fitted it, and yet it had not one fault! It sounded so ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... cup has its bitter drop; and Pulin's was the persistent enmity of the head clerk, who bore him a grudge for ousting his wife's nephew and seized every opportunity of annoying him. Leagued with the arch-enemy were two subordinate clerks, Gyanendra and Lakshminarain by name, who belonged to ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... of this struggle cannot be better described in brief space than by saying that the King, from his accession to the throne down to the close of the American War, was engaged in a persistent effort to govern through ministers chosen and dismissed, as the German ministers are now, by himself; while the subservience of Parliament was secured by the profuse use of pensions and places. To this attempt, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... he resumed after a pause, "that Mr. Graves is alive at this moment seems to me infinitesimal. There was evidently a conspiracy to murder him, and the deliberate, persistent manner in which that object was being pursued points to a very strong and definite motive. Then the tactics adopted point to considerable forethought and judgment. They are not the tactics of a fool or an ignoramus. We may criticize the closed carriage as a tactical mistake, calculated ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... coroner was a persistent man. He was making more than an investigation out of it; he was fairly turning it into a trial, with Joe as the defendant. The people were ready to see that, and appreciate his attempts to uncover the dark motive that lay behind this deed, of which they were convinced, almost ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... injustice of it embittered him; it left him floundering in a sea of moral indecision at a time when he most needed some forlorn belief in the beneficence of natural law. It outraged his incongruously persistent demand for fair play, just as the sight of the jauntily clad gunners shooting down pigeons on that tranquil and Edenic little grass-plot at the foot ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... of the British nation and its persistent refusal to regard the Army as part of itself, in conjunction with the growing national passion for Sport and Athletics, fostered the idea that War itself must be a branch of them. From time immemorial ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... the spring was far advanced that the nostalgia of the boulevards began to creep into her life. Then, without intermission, the desire to get away grew more persistent, at last she could think of nothing else. Harold oppressed her. But Mrs. Fargus was not in France, she could not live alone. But why could she not ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... intelligence, his fury become colossal. So, Jim Langly, convinced after months of waiting and brooding that his boy had been enticed away by the giver of the watch, had set out with a grim purpose of finding boy and man which had been undaunted by any obstacle. With slow but persistent effort he had traced the child over mountain and valley, often losing all clue, but never relaxing till at last he had reached Mr. Follet and learned that the boy was in school. From thence he easily made his way to the school of ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... amid the strewn wreck of life and hope, she had waved away one persistent thought, that lit up the blackness with a sudden glory, that came with the face of an angel of light, and babbled with the silvery tongue of sorcery. As far as her future was concerned, this world had practically come to a premature end; but above the roar of ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... at her skirt with one hand and with her chin tilted high in the air would have withdrawn haughtily from the room. She was afraid that his shrewd, persistent questioning and persuasion might end in eliciting from her more unguarded admissions. He had reached the door before her, however, and stood leaning with his back against it and his legs crossed and his arms folded. She stopped sharply and he divined ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... warblers, dressed in a hundred colours, chirp and twitter confidingly above your head; and the Maryland yellow-throat, flitting through the bushes like a little gleam of sunlight, calls "witchery, witchery, witchery!" That plaintive, forsaken, persistent note, never ceasing, even in the noonday silence, comes from the wood-pewee, drooping upon the bough of some high tree, and complaining, like Mariana in the moated grange, ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... a calm sleep, and rose early in the morning, awakened by a subdued tap at the kitchen door. The knock was incessant and patiently persistent. It was still dark and quiet, and the rapping broke in alarmingly on the stillness. Dressing herself rapidly, she walked out into the kitchen, and ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... characteristically Norman: Richard, Gilbert, Hugh, William, John, Robert, Anthony, Henry, Thomas, Joan, Mary, Isabella, Ann, Margaret, being met with frequently. It is likely then that the widespread and persistent use of Norman Christian names by Shakespeare families denotes their Norman origin, and that this link with their past was preserved by family custom long after pride of ancestry—which first continued its use—was forgotten, as in the case of the Irish peasantry ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... continued the Badger, "the strong winds and persistent rains took the matter in hand, patiently, ceaselessly, year after year. Perhaps we badgers too, in our small way, helped a little—who knows? It was all down, down, down, gradually—ruin and levelling and disappearance. Then it was all up, up, up, gradually, ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... she went to bed that night there was a persistent pain of dry unhappiness in her heart, and a self-contemptuous feeling, which she tried to get the better of by calling it ennui. But in time a kind of hardness, at once flexible and impenetrable, began to encase her, rendering her course ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... that I may not tarry so long, that when I arrive I will hear, "Too late, too late, ye cannot enter now"; but may I be so persistent with every day that when I arrive I may be ready as well as on ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... began coming to Wheatland on Tuesday, and by Sunday the irritation over the wage-scale, the absence of water in the fields, plus the persistent heat and the increasing indignity of the camp, had resulted in mass meetings, violent talk, and a ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... America. And on these railways, or tramways, men were now experimenting with steam, trying to harness it to do the work of horses. In England, Trevithick, Blenkinsop, Ericsson, Stephenson, and others; in America, John Stevens, now an old man but persistent in his plans as ever and with able sons to help him, had erected a circular railway at Hoboken as early as 1826, on which he ran a locomotive at the rate of twelve miles an hour. Then in 1828 Horatio Allen, of the Delaware and Hudson ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... an ordinary mother. When I look at other people's mothers I think I'd rather like not being with them. But having known what it is to live in love and understanding with you, it wants a great deal of persistent courage, the sort that goes on steadily with no intervals, to make one able to do ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... Gosse, with his information, in ours, to give 'salient points' to Congreve's character, proves in itself an essential characteristic, which need be negatively stated only by choice. That no amusing eccentricities are recorded, no ludicrous adventures, no persistent quarrels, implies, taken with other facts we know, that he was a well-bred man of the world, with the habit of society: that in itself is a definite personal quality. One supposes him an ease-loving man, not inclined to clown for the amusement of his world. ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... true, dicotyledonous character has yet been found; and with the exception of the leaves just described, all those yet found in the System, which could have belonged to true trees, are of the acicular form common to the Coniferae, and show in their dense ligneous structure that they were persistent, not deciduous. Nor is there evidence wanting that many of the Coniferae of the period grew in so shallow a soil, that their tap-roots were flattened and bent backwards, and they were left to derive their ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... the most abundant in all sections of the east. They are sweet and persistent songsters and frequent side hills, pastures, roadsides, gardens and dooryards if English Sparrows be not present. They nest indifferently upon the ground or in bushes, generally artfully concealing the nest by drooping leaves; it is made of grass and weed stems, lined with fine grass or, occasionally, ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... newly-cured hay on either side of the road, and tufts of red clover blossoms exhaling delicious odors of honey almost under his saturnine nose; but he trotted ponderously on, sullenly aware of the gentle hand on the reins and the mild, persistent voice which bade him ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... so much with weights and measures as with illusive inaccuracies. To be exact is to be a failure. To reject the unknown is to remain a poor doctor, indeed. The issue in this case was defined. Either the congestion of the membranes in the spinal cord was producing a persistent hallucination or else there was, in fact, something going on behind that wall. Either an influence was affecting the child from within or an influence was affecting her from without. I was mad to save her. ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... a spirit of fear but of love and of power and of a sound mind," and with persistent thought culture we can soon form a habit of thought and feeling that will build us away from our old consciousness of disease and pain into a higher law of ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... hours between the early dinner and the welcome moment when the singing kettle and the jingling of the tea-things break up the spell of dreariness, the solemn silence pervading everything, broken only by the persistent ticking of the old clock on the stairs, Morva had noted them all rather wearily. Even the fowls in the farmyard seemed to walk about with a more sober demeanour than usual, but more trying than anything else to ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... by the Charles Graham Chemical Pottery Works. Here again these vessels served our purpose for several months, but unfortunately the glaze used did not suffice to cover them completely and there was a slight, though persistent, leakage of sulphuric acid through the porous walls. To overcome this difficulty the interior of the vessels was coated with hot paraffin after a long-continued washing to remove the acid and after they ...
— Respiration Calorimeters for Studying the Respiratory Exchange and Energy Transformations of Man • Francis Gano Benedict
... was a hard one, for Carleton was in the field until night, now watching a bombardment, now a charge, and again a long and stubborn, persistent musketry fire. The shells sang near him, and at one time he was evidently the target for a whole Confederate battery; for, within a few seconds, a round shot struck a few rods in front of him, a second fell to the right, a third went over his head, a fourth skimmed along the surface of the ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... and, what with their incessant political and colonizing movements in those Territories; the frequent and dreadful atrocities committed by their tools, the Border-ruffians; the incessant turmoil created by cruelties to their Fugitive-slaves; their persistent efforts to change the Supreme Court to their notions; these-with the decision and opinion of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case—together worked the Slavery question up to a dangerous degree of heat, by the ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... double-barrelled rifle that YOU PROMISED me, and a supply of ammunition!" To the last moment he was determined to persevere in his demand, and, if possible, to obtain my handy little Fletcher 24 rifle, that had been demanded and refused ever since my residence in his country. I was equally persistent in my refusal, telling him that there were many dangers on the road, and I could not ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... "Excuse me, as a persistent man of business. Assuming for a moment, that he was overworked; it would show itself in ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... Not even the persistent Collins was able to elicit anything additional. No further information was vouchsafed Mrs. Collins, who had taken up her abode with her brother; the financially troubled Ward, desperately fighting off ruin, could learn nothing ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... some time. More than once he heard in the next room the sounds of smothered laughter and two voices, pitched in a confidential tone: the one with persistent appeal, the other with persistent refusal. At last there reached him the laughter of a merry agreement, and Amy entered the room, holding Kitty Poythress ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... anguish of his loss was so cruelly poignant that he thought he must die of it. His jealousy, lulled to sleep by the persistent ardour of Elena's affection, awoke now with redoubled vigour, and the suspicion that a man was at the bottom of this enigmatical affair increased his sufferings a hundredfold. Sometimes he would be seized with sullen anger ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... strains of "The Blue Danube," fitful, alluring, plaintive—that waltz to which countless lovers have danced and wooed and whispered through the years. Muriel longed intensely to shut it out, to stop her ears, to make some noise to drown it. Her nerves were all on edge, and she felt as if its persistent sweetness would drive ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... demanded for one suitor a speedy hearing, for another a consideration of facts which might not be in evidence, for a third all the favor consistent with law; and Bacon reported to him the result, and how far he had been able to oblige him. This persistent tampering with the source of justice was a disturbing influence in the Chancellor's court, and unquestionably lowered the dignity of his attitude and weakened his ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... reissued in a finer and handsomer form, in response to the persistent demand of those who know the mirth-provoking quality of the exploits of the ingenious small boy named Miltiades Peterkin Paul and spoken of as "a great traveler, although he was small." Whoever has once enjoyed the story ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... "may sometimes be obtuse, but it is at least persistent. Their next move will certainly rank in history as the most astute, the most cunning of any put forward since the war commenced. Of course," the young man went on, fitting his cigarette into a long, amber holder, "we who are ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Relations" the annals of the west really began) has been given to a path now grown into one of the most populous streets along the whole course of the Mississippi River—in Minneapolis. And Du Lhut, the cousin of Tonty, a native of Lyons—a man of "persistent hardihood, not surpassed perhaps even by La Salle," says Parkman, "continually in the forest, in the Indian towns, or in the remote wilderness outposts planted by himself, exploring, trading, fighting, ruling lawless savages, and whites scarcely less ungovernable," [Footnote: Parkman, "La ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... a persistent thing a girl is! I—must you really know? Because you mightn't like it, if I told you the truth." The ingenuous youth here turned a somersault, and coming up on one knee, remained in an attitude of supplication, clasping his hands imploringly. ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... the African slave trade with more binding efficacy than those they have themselves devised. A just and generous confidence in their good faith on this subject exhibited by friendly Powers will be far more efficacious than persistent efforts to induce this Government to assume the exercise of powers which it does not possess.... We trust, therefore, that no unnecessary discussions on this matter will be introduced into your negotiations. ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... the tongues of flame lap the unfortunate city, Charles turned with his army towards Franchimont, that rugged hill country which had proved a nest of hardy and persistent antagonists to Burgundian pretensions. Jehan de Mazilles is in close attendance and gives further details of the pitiless fashion in which Charles carried out his purpose of leaving no seed of resistance to germinate. ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... children of art, who seethed perpetually in self-prodded artificial emotions, attached to him. If it seemed strange at times that Madam Villenauve was more frequently with him than any of the others he only reflected that the vivacious little Frenchwoman was much more persistent; nor did he note that, presently, the others came rather to give way before her and to let her monopolize him ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... not help smiling at the persistent officiousness of his visitor, but his smile was ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... four in the afternoon! And to make matters worse it began to rain. We managed, however, at intervals when the rain held up, to get a pretty good idea of the place, but were driven back to the station by the persistent drizzle long before noon; and there we seemed destined to spend five tedious hours, with not much of anything to do, except to get the way-bills of the Old Colony Railroad by heart, and commit to memory whatever might be available in the other ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... the Stoics direct, would mean no yielding to excitement, no poetry, no high-strung devotion, no rapture, no ecstasy, no ardour of love, no earnest rhetoric spoken or listened to, no mourning, no rejoicing other than the most conventional, to the persistent smothering of whatever is natural and really felt, no tear of pity freely let flow, no touch of noble anger responded to, no scudding before the breeze of indignation,—all this, that reason may keep on the even tenour ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... with their faces closer together, and almost uniformly grave, save when for an instant the smile of the Secretary ran aslant across his face as the jagged lightning runs aslant across the sky. But there was one persistent thing which first troubled Syme and at last terrified him. The President was always looking at him, steadily, and with a great and baffling interest. The enormous man was quite quiet, but his blue eyes stood out of his head. And they ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... sometimes cracked and broke away the formidable husks which enveloped divine kernels in the hearts of some of the wretches, and she frequently wept at the stories of victories gained over monsters whose defences of silence and stolidity had suddenly fallen into ruin above the slow but persistent sapping of constant kindness. Acute tinglings and chilling thrills would pervade her entire body when she read that on Christmas every wretch seemed to become for that day, at least, a gracious man; that the sight of a ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... the dead man, the HIDDEN dead man on the bed! There was the one persistent idea still haunting him. Hidden? Was it only the body being there, or was it the body being there, concealed, that was preying on his mind? He stopped at the window, with that doubt in him; once more listening to the pattering rain, once more looking ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... punctual obedience to what he knows to be the will of God, without finding out that all the 'Canaanites' are not dead yet; but that there are enough of them left to make a very thorny life for the persistent ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... favour and insinuating smiles of his wife. He looked at them with vacant eyes without any suspicion arising in his mind, which was entirely turned in the right direction. Nevertheless, Amalia was so persistent and seemed so engrossed, that the noble gentleman began to pay heed to those signs and to attribute some significance to them. The Valencian felt the pleasure of triumph. Her machinations were about to be realised. And to give an important, decisive stroke to her plot, she suddenly ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... question was now how to meet the emergency! Underneath Olson's sentences he heard the cry of men and boys being asphyxiated in dark dungeons—he heard the wailing of women, like a surf beating on a distant shore, or the faint, persistent accompaniment of muted strings: "O, mein Mann! O, ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... MOSS-roses, and so do I," added the unblushing little beggar, as Mr. Dover took out his knife and began to make the bouquet which was to be Miss Penny's bribe. He could not bear to give up his little playmate, and was quite ready to try again, with this persistent and charming ally to ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... course it matters nothing to you that he should by your father's persistent enemy and do his best to hinder him in everything ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... breath and ready to drop in his tracks, he came at last to the open valley. Far ahead and below were the lights of a town—he could only hope that it was S——. Tortured by the vast oppressiveness of the solitude which lay behind him, peopled by a thousand ghosts whose persistent footsteps had haunted him through every mile of his flight, he cried aloud as he stumbled down the rain- washed hill,—cried with the terror of one who sees collapse after human valor has been done ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... applause sank for the last time, the great men withdrew into the hotel, and the troops marched away. The head of the new republic had been duly installed, and the separation from the old Union was complete. The enthusiasm was tremendous, but Harry, like many others, had an underlying and faint but persistent feeling of sadness that came from the breaking of old ties. Nor had any news come telling that Kentucky was about to join her sister states ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... "I know. You want to go and bask in that elegant company. Our stove's just as good as the one down at that dirty old store," continued my persistent and anxious parent, "and it's certainly not very flattering to think that you leave us on a night like this ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... effect the words may have in them; secondly, because writing and petitioning and pressing a subject upon members and candidates are now so clearly understood; and thirdly, because the paper was meant as an opening to a persistent pressure of the whole question on the public, which would yield other opportunities of touching ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... The persistent man will not be baffled or repulsed by opposition. Diogenes, desirous of becoming the disciple of Antisthenes, went and offered himself to the cynic. He was refused. Diogenes still persisting, the cynic raised his knotty staff, and threatened to strike ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... extravagantly for everything. So stupendous an idea checks even his importunity for a moment, and while he still reels you can escape. The guides outside the Ryks Museum who offer to point out the beauties of the pictures are less persistent. It would seem as if they were aware of the unsoundness of their case. There is no need to ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... male of this new order. The women by obtaining and preparing food would gain an economic value. Wives would become to the patriarch a source of riches, indispensable to him, not only on account of his sex needs, but on account of the more persistent need of food. Thus the more women he possessed the greater would be his own comfort, and the physical prosperity of the group. The women would become of ever greater importance, and the economic power ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... snubbed his persistent conversation but for the drawn anxiety of his face. I remember now the look of his faded eyes and the lids red stained—perhaps you know ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... sent Madame Bouisse to wait upon her, and sat up anxiously listening more than half the night. Next morning, at seven, I heard Madame Bouisse go in again. I dared not even go to her door to inquire how she had slept, lest I should seem too persistent; but when they left the room and went downstairs together, I flew to ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... smacked of incense, stole, and monkish jargon. A writer, signing himself "America," gives in the Boston Evening Post, of October 14, 1771, a communication thoroughly characteristic of the spirit of the community against the establishment of bishops, the persistent determination to "beate down every ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... first day forth, however, in spite of this beginning, Lord Southminster almost persecuted me with his persistent attentions. He did all a fellah could possibly do to please me. I could not make out precisely what he was driving at; but I saw he had some artful game of his own to play, and that he was playing it subtly. I also saw that, ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... performance, which left me in a condition of mental aberration, he sounded again, to begin a persistent, dragging pull which was the most disheartening of all his maneuvers; for he took yard after yard of line until he was far away from me, out in the Panuco. We followed him, and for an hour crossed ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... interests and trades and professions of the human race, amid their multitudinous aspirations, perplexities, doubts, passions, endeavours, deep within every intelligent man remains one dominant desire, one persistent question ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... into the lowest depths, into depths where perhaps the remembrance of Rosamund and the early morning would fade away from him, where even Mrs. Clarke would not care to seek for him, although her will was persistent. ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... reputation of public men in the national esteem. Presuming upon the ignorance, or forgetfulness, of the population at large, the peer and the commoner have frequently spoken as though they had been the invariable champions of freedom of commerce, and of civil and religious liberty. In 1851 they were the persistent and acrimonious opponents of freedom, religious, political, and commercial, and by their eloquence stimulated those who sympathised with them, and incensed those who believed that a great economical victory ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Though her judgment told her that this suspicion was a mere wild fancy, still she could not succeed in driving it from her thoughts, and the more she struggled against it, the stronger was the hold it gained upon her imagination if not upon her reason. In the effort to banish this persistent torment, she began to talk fast and recklessly of other things, until the animation with which she spoke rekindled the old brilliant fervour ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... Mactavish James lumbered in, treading bearishly on his soft slippers, and rubbing the gold frame of his spectacles against his nose to allay the irritation they had caused by their persistent pressure during the interview he had been holding with the representative of another firm: an interview in which he had disguised his sense of his client's moral instability by preserving the most impressive ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... Her persistent implacability gave Harold much pain, but he did not despair of bringing her round in the end; only, to avoid further dissensions, he wisely resolved to keep out of her way: and as soon as he had gained his diploma he started for Germany, ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... unable to converse even through the medium of his nurse, so there was nothing to be gained there. Messages to the public functionaries in his town developed no news. Late into the night, or rather far toward the morning, Bessemer was discovered at a cabaret where his persistent mother and brother had traced him, too much befuddled with his evening's carouse to talk connectedly. He declared Betty was a good old girl, but she might go to thunder for all he cared; he knew a ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... if the tongue of slander wags not with gross untruth concerning the colleagues of John Adams. But he was not in Europe to amuse himself, though at an age when amusement is natural and a tinge of sinfulness is so often pardoned; he was there with the definite and persistent purpose of steady improvement and acquisition. At his age most young men play the cards which a kind fortune puts into their hands, with the reckless intent only of immediate gain, (p. 015) but from the earliest moment when he began the game of life Adams coolly and wisely ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse |
