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Rife   Listen
adjective
Rife  adj.  
1.
Prevailing; prevalent; abounding. "Before the plague of London, inflammations of the lungs were rife and mortal." "Even now the tumult of loud mirth Was rife, and perfect in may listening ear."
2.
Having power; active; nimble. (Obs.) "What! I am rife a little yet."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rife" Quotes from Famous Books



... an open patch beyond a bit of cover and fired as he emerged. The boar squealed and plunged forward into the bushes. A moment later he reappeared, zigzagging his way up the slope and only visible through the trees when he crossed a patch of snow. I emptied the magazine of my rife in a futile bombardment, but the boar crossed the summit ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews

... association. His nephew seemed to me an ordinary specimen of a very trite human nature,—a young man of limited ideas, fair moral tendencies, going mechanically right where not tempted to wrong. The same desire of gain which had urged him to gamble and speculate when thrown in societies rife with such example, led him, now in the Bush, to healthful, industrious, persevering labour. "Spes fovet agricolas," says the poet; the same Hope which entices the fish to the hook impels the plough of the husband-man. The young farmer's young wife was ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... presented a fine landing for steamboats. Of course, the valley was not a terra incognito when I entered it, but settlement was very sparse, and very little was known about it. Town-site speculation was rife, and any place that looked as if it would ever be settled was being pounced upon for a future city. There was not a railroad west of Chicago, and every town location was, of course, governed by the rivers. As strange as it may seem ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... being named after Billy Crafford (for so she pronounced his name) for whom the partiality of my father caused him to name me. Few remain to remember the horrors of this partisan warfare. The very traditions are being obliterated by those of the recent civil war, so rife with scenes and deeds sufficiently horrible for the appetite of the curious ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... by a lane ankle-deep in mud and cow-manure. The king's sisters were not allowed to marry; their only occupation was to drink milk from morning to night, with the result that they grew so fat it took eight men to lift one of them, when walking became impossible. Superstition was rife, and the explorers were not sorry to leave Unyoro en route for Cairo. Speke and Grant now believed that, except for a few cataracts, the waterway to England was unbroken. The Karuma Falls broke the monotony of the way, and here the party halted a while before ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge

... exercise—but, above all, hard bodily exercise—made up the gospel which he preached by example. No one ever did more to develop the cult of athletics, and there is no doubt that he thought these ideals the best antidote to drunkenness and other vices, which were far more rife in the University of that day than ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... a sub-variety of all values except the 1/2c on "watermarked" paper. The watermarked letters found in these stamps were known at least as early as 1870 and much speculation was rife as to their meaning. Mr. John N. Luff finally solved the problem by assembling a large number of the watermarked stamps so that he was able to ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole

... they reached the river Zapatas (1), which is four hundred 1 feet broad, and here they halted three days. During the interval suspicions were rife, though no act of treachery displayed itself. Clearchus accordingly resolved to bring to an end these feelings of mistrust, before they led to war. Consequently, he sent a messenger to the Persian to say that he desired an interview with him; to which ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon

... Spring—O lanes of laughing May As fleeting as the shadow-clouds at play With sunbeams rife upon the grassy green; O golden lanes—through roads that lie between Amid what darkened ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones

... Cambyses had killed Smerdis the people were ignorant that Smerdis was dead. After this Cambyses made an expedition to Egypt and while he was there the people became rebellious; falsehood was then rife in the country, in Persia, in Media and the other provinces. There was at that time a magus named Gaumata; he deceived the people by saying that he was Smerdis, the son of Cyrus. Then the whole people rose in revolt, forsook Cambyses and went over to the pretender. After ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos

... Nature's face; Ah, only on the Minstrel's magic shore, Can we the footstep of sweet Fable trace! The meadows mourn for the old hallowing life; Vainly we search the earth of gods bereft; Where once the warm and living shapes were rife, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... a bared dagger, but he soon had to acknowledge that the efforts of the Carbonari were doomed to dismal failure. Membership was confined too much to the professional class, and there were too few appeals to the youth of Italy. Treachery was {186} rife among the different sections of the wide-spreading organization. It was easy for a man to be condemned on vague suspicions. When Mazzini was arrested, he had to be acquitted of the charge of conspiracy because it was impossible to find two witnesses, ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead

... occurred which well illustrates the character of the great philanthropist [Mr. Wilberforce]. As I passed through Hyde Park on my way to Kensington Gore, I observed that great crowds had gathered, and rumors were rife that the allied armies had entered Paris, that Napoleon was a prisoner, and that the war was virtually at an end; and it was momentarily expected that the park guns would announce the good ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse

... cried the latter, interpreting her look, "bring the duds, an', if ye hae ony fear about them, the lassie Kate can gie ye a help to wash them, some weety day. An' weety days are like to be owre rife noo, for ony guid they're doin.—Our guidewife," he continued, addressing their guest, "has aye been fear'd for infectious diseases since a beggar-wife brought the fever to the town mair than fourteen years back. But, though ye had five-and-twenty fevers—ay, fifty o' them—that's ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various

... as we have seen already, Carleton's last year, 1796, was more peaceful than his first. But even then the external dangers made the governor-general's post a very trying one, especially when internal troubles were equally rife. Thus Carleton never enjoyed a single day without its anxious moments till, old and growing weary, though devoted as ever, he finally left Quebec on the 9th of July. This was the second occasion on which he had been forced to resign by unfair treatment at ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood

... large results so little rife, Though bearable seems hardly worth This pomp of words, ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton

... in September, 1895, there was great Uvengwa excitement in a district just across the other side of the estuary, mainly at a village that enjoyed the spacious and resounding name of Rumpochembo, from a celebrated chief, and all these phenomena were rife there. Again, when I was in a village up the Calabar there were fourteen goats and five slaves killed in eight days by leopards, the genuine things, I am sure, in this case; but here, as down South, there was a strong ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... this unmeasured punishment was "looking impudent!"—and the look of supposed impudence was produced by a temporarily swollen lip; but the swollen lip was the effect of a single combat with a schoolfellow; and fighting was so rife, and so severely repressed, that it appeared less dangerous to meet the consequences of the supposed impertinent face than those of the battle. The unfortunate pupil of course continued to grimace, and the wretched schoolmaster to flog, till the pupil streamed with blood, and the master sat ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... Crassus of having been the author of the conspiracy. Such is the information we have; and if we elect to believe that Caesar was then joined with Catiline, we must be guided by our ideas of probability rather than by evidence.[193] As I have said before, conspiracies had been very rife. To Caesar it was no doubt becoming manifest that the Republic, with its oligarchs, must fall. Subsequently it did fall, and he was—I will not say the conspirator, nor will I judge the question by saying that he was the traitor; but the man of power who, having the ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope

... her whose vigorous pencil-strokes Sketched into life her Oldtown Folks, Whose fireside stories, grave or gay, In quaint Sam Lawson's vagrant way, With Old New England's flavor rife, Waifs from her rude idyllic life, Are racy as the legends old By Chaucer or Boccaccio told; To her who keeps, through change of place And time, her native strength and grace, Alike where warm Sorrento smiles, Or where, by birchen-shaded isles Whose summer winds have shivered o'er ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... the wrongfulness of slavery, so long as respect was had to the liberties of the privileged race, was, so to say, treason to the basic principle of the American Commonwealth, a treason which had steadily been becoming rife and upon which it ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... with the people on religious matters grew greater. Regularly now several of our people went ten miles to the church where we heard Mr. Ballou. A donation party for our minister was to be given the last day of April, and the air was rife with conjectures. Jane North made her appearance, and her first ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell

... folk were they. The volunteering spirit rife in the early days of the Civil War had wrought the first depletion in the number. Then came, as time wore on, the rigors of the conscription, with an extension of the limits of age from the very young to ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... life, in action's storm, I float and I wave With billowy motion! Birth and the grave A limitless ocean, A constant weaving With change still rife, A restless heaving, A glowing life— Thus time's whirring loom unceasing I ply, And weave the ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... sufficient to impart some idea of the nature of the relations between the Barbary coast and the interior, and to suggest the importance of the enterprise on which I am engaged. Briefly, the exportation of slaves to Tripoli and beyond, in spite of certain changes of route, is as rife as ever, and in this respect everything remains to be done. But, on the other hand, the trade which, I trust, is providentially intended to supersede this inhuman traffic, is on the increase, though slightly. If we can pave the way for ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson

... only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." "The bread of God is He who cometh down from heaven and giveth life to the world." The doctrine of the pre existence of souls, and of their being born into the world in the flesh, was rife in Judea when this Gospel was written, and is repeatedly alluded to in it.31 That John applies this doctrine to Christ in the following and in other instances is obvious. "Before Abraham was, I am." "I came forth from the Father and am come into the world." ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... for trying to extract comfort from these bits of evidence that the prophet was not without honor save in his own country, though we may question his implication that republican ideas were just then less rife in the Palatinate than in Berlin and Frankfurt. The fact is that the lover of republican ideas must have been the very person to feel the keenest dissatisfaction with 'Fiesco.' Where it did succeed, its success was due to causes having little to do with political sentiment. The Berlin triumph was ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... often rode Gaston Phoebus and his fierce men of Orthez, in pursuit of a fiercer than they, the now disappearing Pyrenees bear. At no time was superstition more rife than then; savage souls were imputed to these savage animals; the spectres of the killed brutes returned to trouble the dreams of the hunter-knights, as the growl of their familiar torrent penetrates ours. We seem to hear old Froissart's voice above the sound, believingly telling a legend ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... Auxi-le-Chateau, whither we moved on June 23, the Battalion's midsummer respite was continued; we were in G.H.Q. reserve. Rumour, not false on this occasion, predicted the Division's share in a great battle between Ypres and the coast which was due to happen before the autumn. Expectancy was rife to the effect that co-operation from the sea was to assist in driving the Germans from the Belgian coast. News, big in its effects, was read one morning in the Daily Mail. The enemy had attacked our lines at Nieuport and driven our garrison ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose

... blind as not to see the abyss into which we are about to plunge? Section hostile against section; States arrayed against the Constitution; Churches sundered; the springs of intelligence poisoned at their source; treason stalking at noonday; insurrection rife; the equality of States and citizens denied, and derided; justice rebuked; treachery applauded; traitors canonized; anarchy inaugurated; monarchy calculating the end of republicanism; and the wheels of government clogged by the minions of ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit

... had had his struggles and his sorrows. The civil power had thwarted him; famine, discontent, and disaffection were rife among his soldiers; and no small portion of the Canadian militia had dispersed from sheer starvation. In spite of all, he had trusted to hold out till the winter frosts should drive the invaders from before the town; when, on that disastrous morning, the news of their ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... to be mentioned refers to Goethe's novel, Die Leiden des jungen Werthers. This was evidently popular in America, though by no means causing the widespread delirium and sentimentality that had been rife in Germany. During our period the book was published here six times in translation, and an English imitation, The Letters of Charlotte, during her Connexion with Werter, had three American reprints.[31] These, together ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... information had been secured, either of the wine or of the thieves; but suspicions were rife against a woman who kept an inn, a new favorite of the Moro, who was thought to have received the wine. The Moro was said by some to have fled, by others to have gone into hiding. It seemed as if the police ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various

... and discipline well defined and guarded, and his first action in the House of Deputies was to move a resolution to take into consideration the propriety of framing Articles of Religion. He lived at a period when Puritanism was rife in New England, especially in Connecticut, and while it was his policy to avoid being drawn into controversy, his devotion to the interests of the Episcopal Church never faltered or became doubtful under any pressure of circumstances. He was a parson without the smallest trace of bigotry, and ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut

... me from my true trade, Wherein hot competition is so rife Already, since these victories brought to town So many foreign jobbers in my line, That I'd best hold my tongue from praise of fame! However, one is caught by popular zeal, And though five midnights ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... to see luxury rife, An fortuns being thowtlessly wasted; While others are wearin out life, With the ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley

... the Occidental mind, astir under the oceanic movements of the modern, arose to break the spell of scholasticism that had fettered and frozen the intellect of man. An all-invading spirit of inquiry, analysis, skepticism, became rife. An unappeasable hunger for facts, facts, facts, took possession of the general intellect. It was felt that abstraction was disease, was death,—that speculation had to be vitalized and enriched from experience and experiment. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... possessed her. Heretofore, whatever her trial, she had been mistress of the situation; she had reigned a queen-mother, her authority undisputed. And now it appeared her kingdom was in revolt, conspiracy was rife. Richard's will and hers were in conflict; and Richard's will must eventually obtain, since he would eventually be master. Already courtiers bowed to that will. All this was in her mind. And a wounding of feeling, far ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... influences that had sway in the eighteenth century, the authority of the popes sank in the Catholic countries. The spirit of innovation was rife. One of the remarkable incidents of the time, characteristic of its tendency, was the conflict of Portugal and the Bourbon courts of France and Spain, with the Society of Jesuits. The Jesuits had secretly established, unobserved, a state under their own exclusive control in Paraguay, a ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... like passions with ourselves, and with them as with everyone else omne ignotum pro magnifico. The book was really an able one and abounded with humour, just satire, and good sense. It struck a new note and the speculation which for some time was rife concerning its authorship made many turn to it who would never have looked at it otherwise. One of the most gushing weeklies had a fit over it, and declared it to be the finest thing that had been done since the "Provincial ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... he, "one day as I sat at his table, there was a layman cunning in the law who began to praise the rigorous justice that was done upon felons, and to marvel how thieves were nevertheless so rife." ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... A spirit is rife in France that renders the position of premier in it almost untenable; and he must unite the firmness of a stoic, the knowledge of a Machiavelli, and the boldness of a Napoleon, who could hope to stem the tide that menaces to set in and sweep away the ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... elders and deacons of a Scotch church were assembled in solemn conclave to discuss the prospective installation of a pipe organ. The table was piled high with plans and specifications and discussion ran rife as to whether they should have a two-manual or a three-manual instrument—a Great and Swell or a Great, Swell, and Choir organ. At last Deacon MacNab, the church treasurer and a personage of importance, got a chance ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller

... cities. Men were talking about hanging Jefferson Davis, and trying to decide whether or not the Confederate soldiers and officers should receive again the suffrage. Designing whites and ignorant coloured men gained control of legislatures. Corruption was rife. The whole South was prostrated. Ten thousand questions arose in Congress, bewildering, intricate, and the whole land was divided in opinion as to the proper courses. Finally, all the Confederate officers, saving perhaps Jefferson Davis alone, ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis

... been successful, it would have put the capstone on imperial splendor. But already its failure was known among the French masses, and ghastly rumors were rife; the Emperor himself was far distant; the Empress was not beloved; the little heir was scarcely a personage; the imperial administration was much criticized; the "system" was raising prices, depressing industry, and increasing the privations of every household. Pius VII was now living ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... gales! The saddest of your tales Is not so sad as life; Nor have you e'er began A theme so wild as man, Or with such sorrow rife. ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... supposed they were pointing the cattle into the valley, unaware that the herd had changed its course on the onslaught of the elements. Confidence gave way to uncertainty, and when sufficient time had elapsed to more than have reached the corral, conjecture as to their location became rife. From the moment the storm struck, both boys had bent every energy to point the herd into the valley, but when neither slope nor creek was encountered, the fact asserted itself that they were adrift and at the ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams

... conversation was Mr. Clegg. As Mr. Clegg had not quitted his bed for over a score of years, it might seem that his novelty as a subject of discussion would have been long since exhausted. But not so. His daughter was the most devoted of daughters, and his name was ever rife on her lips. What he required done for him and what he required done to him were the main ends of her existence, and the demands of his comfort, daily or annual, resulted in numerous phrases of a startling but thoroughly ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner

... the spaces between the tree-trunks, was sprinkled with its first dots and pricks of green, and the afternoon was pleasant for walking—sunless and still, and just a little fragrantly damp from all the rife budding and sprouting. It was a day to further a friendship more effectually than half a dozen brighter ones; a day on which to speak out thoughts which a June sky, the indiscreet playing of full sunlight, even the ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... Fever is very rife in October and November, and these are the most unhealthy months in the year, March and April being the best. The variations under fevers and plague from year to year are enormous. In 1907 the latter ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie

... Even so amiable and generous a man as Burgoyne did not escape these imputations. "It may well be imagined that while Burgoyne was advancing, declamations against his and the Indians' cruelty (for no distinction was admitted) were rife on the American side. By such means, and still more, perhaps, by the natural spirit of a free-born people when threatened with invasion, a resolute energy against Burgoyne was roused in the New ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... he will drive the wild swine into the fields to trample down and root up the crops, and he will do them every mischief in his power. If rain does not fall, so that the freshly planted root crops wither; or if sickness is rife, the people recognise in the calamity the wrath of the ghost, who can only be appeased by the slaughter of the wicked magician or of somebody else. Hence the avengers of blood often do not set out until a fresh death, an outbreak of sickness, failure in the chase, or some other misfortune reminds ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... days the city and fortress of Metz were on French soil. This was just before the short but memorable Franco-Prussian War, but already the air was rife with rumors of an impending conflict. The French, however, were undisturbed. They thought, and expressed the open opinion that it would be fought out on the other side of the Rhine, and that the peace terms would be ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden

... forest on the lee side of the estuary was now distinguishable, and hope would have been rife within me but for the expectation of finding myself anchored fast at a ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... and an obedient wife, Lifts her poor husband to a knightly throne: What though the livelong day with toils be rife, The solace of his cares at night's his own. If she be modest and her words be kind, Mark not her beauty, or her want of grace; The fairest woman, if deformed in mind Will in thy heart's affections find no place: ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson

... discovered that the eleven towns were in a ferment of excitement. Most dreadful tales were rife with regard to us and our work. Some asserted that we cut off heads and hung them up to dry; that in drying, they turned white. Others reported that with knives, made for the purpose, we sliced off the ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... servants from Aldercliffe and Pine Lea should neighbor back and forth with the townsfolk and in this way many a tale of Mr. Laurie's rare disposition reached the village. And even had not these stories been rife, anybody could easily have guessed the patience and sweetness of Mr. Laurie's nature from ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett

... Accompanied by a tall, dark-faced man of decided negroid type who appeared to be ill at ease in European clothes, he was shown into the Doctor's study, where a long consultation took place. Meanwhile among the fellows much speculation was rife as to who the stranger was, the popular opinion being that Trigger should not open his place to "savages," and that if he came we would at once conspire to make his life unbearable and ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... sons of Belial, who said of Saul, after he was anointed king, "Shall this man save us? And they despised him, and brought him no presents." All these meet in our present age. 1. Anabaptists, who are against the being of kings, are very rife. You may find, to our great grief, a great number of them in that army, that hath unjustly invaded the land, who have trampled upon the authority of kings. 2. These are also of the second sort, who ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various

... advices, 6th September, from Port Louis, are that the French fleet at Tamatave maintains a semi-warlike attitude toward the Hovas, not landing nor recognizing the authorities. Rumors are rife of the intentions of the French Government to seize Tamatave, and apply other coercive measures, unless the former treaty ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... was all a lamentable lay, Of great unkindness and of usage hard, Of Cynthia, the Lady of the Sea, Which from her presence faultless him debarred. And ever and anon with singults* rife, He cried out, to make his undersong, 'Ah! my love's Queen, and goddess of my life, Who shall me pity when thou ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... from his meditations by the departure of the American Bishop. "It is true, as you report," the Papal Secretary was saying earnestly. "America seems rife with modernism. Free-masonry, socialism, and countless other fads and religious superstitions are widely prevalent there. Nor do I underestimate their strength and influence. And yet, I fear them not. There are also certain freak religions, philosophical beliefs, wrung ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... my letter miscarried not; if it did I am in a sweet pickle. I desired to hear from you of the receipt and extinction of it. Though there is no danger in my letters whilst report is so rife, yet when it is forgotten they will not be so safe; but your danger ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... spite of all which defensive machinery these same free citizens do occasionally fall victims to injustice. But you, who are without any of these aids; you, who pass half your days on the high roads where iniquity is rife; (20) you, who, into whatever city you enter, are less than the least of its free members, and moreover are just the sort of person whom any one bent on mischief would single out for attack—yet you, with your foreigner's ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon

... place. Nor was it altogether probable that bloodshed would be the outcome. The affray at Marseilles had given the Italian an excellent opportunity for settling old scores in that fashion if he were so minded. At any rate, the position was rife with dramatic possibilities, and each that presented itself to Dick's judgment seemed to favor his own projects, which now demanded a speedy return to England. Yet he hoped to arrange his departure in such wise that Irene Fenshawe might not have it in her heart that ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... the Greeks must beware of a heresy which is very rife just now—the theory of racialism. Political ethnology, which is no genuine science, excused the ambition of the Germans to themselves, and helped them to wage war; it has suggested to the Allies a method of waging peace. The false and mischievous doctrine of superior ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... historical facts of the case. Much of the speculative 'phylogeny,' which abounds among my present contemporaries, reminds me very forcibly of the speculative morphology, unchecked by a knowledge of development, which was rife in my youth. As hypothesis, suggesting inquiry in this or that direction, it is often extremely useful; but, when the product of such speculation is placed on a level with those generalisations of morphological truths which are represented by the definitions ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley

... of the movement not absolutely in extremis, according to our notions, yet it was so bad comparatively to his previous condition and that less than half a century before, and tended as evidently to become more intolerable, that discontent became everywhere rife, and only awaited the torch of the new doctrines to set it ablaze. The whole course of the movement shows a peasantry, not downtrodden and starved but proud and robust, driven to take up arms not so much by misery and despair ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... of assassination were rife, and England was engaged on the side of Spain in war with France. But the alliance with Spain soon came to an end, for Queen Elizabeth saw that the defence of Protestantism at home and peace with France abroad were necessary for her ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... despotism. Yet such an issue was by the design of Providence to be averted. But a few days after the flight of Gustavus out of Mora news arrived that Christiern was preparing a journey through the land, and had ordered a gallows to be raised in every province. Rumor was rife, too, with new taxes soon to be imposed. Nor was it long before a messenger arrived who confirmed the words of Gustavus as to the cruelties in Stockholm, and added further that there were many magnates throughout the realm who not only ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson

... dangerous characters about, and the old folk shook their heads and told of the daring operations of mysterious robbers in the neighbourhood. In their estimation, the times were generally unsafe, and lawless characters rife in the land. We looked around at the pathetic poverty of the place—and wondered why they should disquiet themselves. Poor souls! there was little left to rob them of, save the fluttering remnants of their mortal breath. But, poor as they were, they had their ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne

... was not surprised to find my men gone; with all his good-will to the cause, their host had not dared to entertain such suspicious strangers longer than twenty-four hours: keen eyes and ready tongues were rife all around, and we had proof already, in poor George Hoyle's case, how quickly and sternly the charge of "harboring disaffected persons" could be acted upon: he had sent the men to separate secluded farm-houses, whence they could be summoned at a few hours' warning. ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... the accusation was bitter, as of a man who had been personally deceived and injured, as indeed it is quite possible that he may have felt himself to be; and that there was no pity, no mercy, nor compunction towards her, such as arose in many men's bosoms after a little time, and have been rife ever since both in writers and readers. The Detection is without ruth, and assumes the most criminal and degrading motives throughout. Its intention clearly is to convince Scotland, England, and the world of Mary's utter depravity, and the impossibility of any excuse ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... developed a very efficient organization. I was on the committee of defence, though for the first day no prowlers came near. We could see them in the distance, however, and by the smoke of their fires knew that several camps of them were occupying the far edge of the campus. Drunkenness was rife, and often we heard them singing ribald songs or insanely shouting. While the world crashed to ruin about them and all the air was filled with the smoke of its burning, these low creatures gave rein to their bestiality and fought and drank and died. And ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London

... at division headquarters. The men in the nearest regimental camps, regular and volunteer, were "lined up" along the sentry posts and silently, eagerly watching and waiting. For a week rumor had been rife that orders for a move were coming and the brigades hailed it with delight. For a month, shivering at night in the dripping, drenching fogs drifting in from the Pacific, or drilling for hours each day on the bleak slopes of the Presidio ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King

... demands that there be substantive charges made, and trustworthy evidence to support them. Again, it is before the magistrates, the people, or the courts of justice that men are impeached; but in the streets and market places that they are calumniated. Calumny, therefore, is most rife in that State wherein impeachment is least practised, and the laws least favour it. For which reasons the legislator should so shape the laws of his State that it shall be possible therein to impeach any of its citizens without fear or favour; ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli

... bulwark of New France, projecting its mailed arm boldly into the Atlantic, had been cut off by the English, who now overran Acadia, and began to threaten Quebec with invasion by sea and land. Busy rumors of approaching danger were rife in the colony, and the gallant Governor issued orders, which were enthusiastically obeyed, for the people to proceed to the walls and place the city in a state of defence, to bid defiance ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... the hour was the advent of Julia, the divine Julia! Gossip was already rife about her and Captain Reece. They had taken a long walk in the woods together the day before—with Lady Jane and the Admiral far behind, out of ear-shot, ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... columns of that faithful chronicle of Chicago social doings, the Chicago Saturday Review, she came across an item which served as a final blow. "For some time in high social circles," the paragraph ran, "speculation has been rife as to the amours and liaisons of a certain individual of great wealth and pseudo social prominence, who once made a serious attempt to enter Chicago society. It is not necessary to name the man, for all who are acquainted ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... we are met, as we draw towards the end of the eighteenth century, we are met by the great name of Burns. We enter now on times where the personal estimate of poets begins to be rife, and where the real estimate of them is not reached without difficulty. But in spite of the disturbing pressures of personal partiality, of national partiality, let us try to reach a real estimate of the poetry ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... Phoenix too (if any be) are mine, The Stork, the crane, the partridg, and the phesant The Thrush, the wren, the lark a prey to th' pesant, With thousands more which now I may omit Without impeachment to my tale or wit. As my fresh air preserves all things in life, So when corrupt, mortality is rife; ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... Mid-breast, which stooping to, to see the more, Lo, forth from it came busy, one by one, Light-moving ants! So she to her death had gone These many days; and there where she lost life Her carrion shell with it again was rife. So teems the earth, that ere our clay be rotten New hosts sweep clean the hearth, our deeds forgotten. But stooping still, Odysseus saw her not Nor her brisk tenantry; afar his thought, And after ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett

... as fully exemplified in the king's palace as in the ordinary gaming-houses, since, though the presence of royalty so far acted as a restraint on the gamblers as to prevent any open explosion, accusations of foul play and dishonest tricks were as rife as in the ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... all sorts of rumors were rife as to what was doing in Paris, but nothing definite was learned till about the 9th; then Count Bismarck informed me that the Regency had been overthrown on the 4th, and that the Empress Eugenie had escaped to Belgium. The ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... will accept them. Nature for such a man, and for Nations that follow such, has her patibulary forks, and prisons of death everlasting:—dost thou doubt it? Unhappy mortal, Nature otherwise were herself a Chaos and no Cosmos. Nature was not made by an Impostor; not she, I think, rife as they are!—In fact, by money or otherwise, to the uttermost fraction of a calculable and incalculable value, we have, each one of us, to settle the exact balance in the above-said Savings-bank, or official register kept by Nature: Creditor by the quantity ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... suffering for nothing now? Would any good to himself or others come from a pain so exquisite, so rife with torture—a pain so strongly impregnated with fear and doubt that he scarcely dared own it to himself? Only now and again those few bitter words would ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... the remaining portion of his brother's forces was duly mustered, put himself at their head and commenced his march. On reaching Thebes the troops encamped outside the city, round the gymnasium. Faction was rife within the city. The two polemarchs in office, Ismenias and Leontiades, were diametrically opposed, (21) being the respective heads of antagonistic political clubs. Hence it was that, while Ismenias, ever inspired by hatred to the Lacedaemonians, ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon

... robberies and had captured and held for ransom wealthy persons or even notabilities. But under most of the Emperors these outrages had been few and had occurred only in the wilder districts. During the civil wars between Otho and Vitellius brigandage had become rife all over Italy, even up to the gates of Rome, and Vespasian had had much ado to exterminate the outlaws. Again, under Nerva, bandits had multiplied and prospered. But none had ventured into any populous district during the principates of Trajan, Hadrian and ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... benighted, sir, and brigandage is rife," exclaimed Colonel Armytage, looking up with an angry glance, which Edda observed, but ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston

... "Quo Vadis" as one of the most popular books of the day. In that early era persecution was rife and cruelty relentless. It was the time of Caligula, who mourned that the Roman people had not one neck, so that he could cut it off at a single blow; of Nero, whose evening garden parties were lighted by the forms of blazing Christians; ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... the separatist movements were, they were at times imperfectly justified by the spirit of sectional distrust and bitterness rife in portions of the country which at the moment were themselves loyal to the Union. This was especially true of the early separatist movements in the West. Unfortunately the attitude towards the Westerners of certain portions of the population in the older States, and especially ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt

... met with, Ravanel proclaimed a solemn fast, in order to intercede with God to protect the Huguenot cause. On Saturday, the 13th September, he led his entire force to the wood of St. Benazet, intending to pass the whole of the next day with them there in prayer. But treason was rife. Two peasants who knew of this plan gave information to M. Lenoir, mayor of Le Vigan, and he sent word to the marechal and M. de Saville, who ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... was appointed canon of Westminster. After publishing "Village Sermons" and "The Saint's Tragedy," Kingsley took part with F.D. Maurice in the Christian Socialist movement of 1848, attacking the horrible sweating then rife in the tailoring trade, calling attention to the miserable plight of the agricultural labourer, and the need for sanitary reform in town and country. In "Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet," first published in 1849, Kingsley writes from the point of view of the earnest artisan ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... almost an invariable custom now for the Indians on entering a dwelling-house to leave all their weapons, as rife, tomahawk, &c., outside the door, even if the weather be ever so wet; as they consider it unpolite to ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... imperial house of Germany, the White Lady is supposed to appear in the palace before a death or misfortune in the family, and this superstition is still so rife in Germany, that the newspapers in 1884 contained the official report of a sentinel, who declared that he had seen her flit past him in one ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... allied with France, or, at least, had accepted French sovereignty, and pledged itself to neutrality in the hostilities still rife; but a few years before, far in the interior and leagued with the Kabailes, it had been one of the fiercest and most dangerous among the enemies of France. At that time the Khalifa and the Chasseur met in many a skirmish; hot, desperate struggles, where men fought horse to horse, hand to hand; ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... of the falser life,— Weeds that conceal the statue's form! This silent world with truth is rife, This wooing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... Let us, then, remind our children that men have not always been so weak and so bad as we are. Let us remind them that in all the nations there have been and still are great men, fine spirits. Now, above all, should we do this, when savagery and brutality are rife.... I beseech you, my dear Romain Rolland, to pen this biography of Beethoven, for I am convinced that no one can ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland

... personal estate; He in his turn the same again will prate; A Mr. C. has struck his little wife Is the last movement worthy to relate, 'Tis now affirmed he took away her life, In the next terrace where th' appalling tale is rife. ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott

... voyaging, and anxious to hear from, or of, you before I go, which anxiety you should remove more readily, as you think I sha'n't cogitate about you afterwards. I shall give the lie to that calumny by fifty foreign letters, particularly from any place where the plague is rife,—without a drop of vinegar or a whiff of sulphur to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... Speculation was rife in both British and American newspapers concerning the objects of this holy league, or Holy Alliance, as it began to be called. To some it smacked of Inquisition days. To others it suggested a crusade on all republican principles. In the ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks

... thirty years before. He was cold and distant and serene in a cloud-capped way of ice. He trusted no one but himself, took no man's word save his own, was self-reliant to the point of bitterness, and rife of proud suspicions. Also, he had carried concealment to the plane of Art, and those who knew him best were most in the dark concerning him. And yet Mr. Bayard made a specialty of verbal truth, and his word was a word ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... would call again on my services. I admit that I failed last year. The Englishman is resourceful. He has wits and he is very rich. He would not have succeeded, I think, but for his money—and corruption and bribery are rife in Paris and on our coasts. He slipped through my fingers at the very moment when I thought that I held him most securely. I do admit all that, but I am prepared to redeem my failure of last year, and... there is nothing more to discuss.—I am ready ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... gaily-attired figure as he would have done to see a ghost. He did not know why this feeling crept over him, but, whether he feared or hoped to see her, he did not. The house was empty, save for himself. The night blast beat upon it. The darkness outside was rife with storm, but into it the old woman must have ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... period was this despoliation more rife than in the time of which we write. It had reached its climax of horrors, day after day recurring, when Colonel Miranda became military commandant of the district of Albuquerque; until not only this town, but ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... is characterized by genius; in proportion as it has meaning of an intelligible sort it begins to fade and lower; so far as "Lenore" and "Annie" and "Annabel Lee" are human, they are feeble ghosts of that sentimentality which was so rife in Poe's time and so maudlin in his own personal relations; and except for a half- dozen pieces, in which his quality of rhythmical fascination is supreme, his verse as a whole is inferior to the point of being commonplace. Small as the quantity of his true verse ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... done, O womanhood of France, Mother and daughter, sister, sweetheart, wife, What hast thou done, amid this fateful strife, To prove the pride of thine inheritance. In this fair land of freedom and romance? I hear thy voice with tears and courage rife,— Smiling against the swords that seek thy life— Make answer in a noble utterance: "I give France all I have, and all she asks. Would it were more! Ah, let her ask and take; My hands to nurse her wounded, do her tasks,— My feet to run her ...
— The Red Flower - Poems Written in War Time • Henry Van Dyke

... is not merely because it happens to be a great war involving the lives of millions of people, not merely because famine is tightening its grip on every country in Europe, not merely because disease of every kind, from syphilis to spotted fever, is rife among the warring nations; no, it is not for these reasons that we regard this war as a true Sign of the Times, but because in its origin and its progress it is marked by certain characteristics which seem ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... brought two new things into the world—a new type of life in sharp contrast with the sensuality rife on every side, and a new set of motives powerfully aiding in its realisation. Both these novelties are presented in this passage, which insists on a life in which the spirit dominates the flesh, and is dominated by the will of God, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... outbreaks dwindling to a minimum in the summer months, June to August, and attaining a maximum in the winter months, December to February. It is chiefly in the "flying'' flocks and not in the breeding flocks that the disease is rife, and it is so easily communicable that a drove of scab-infested sheep passing along a road may leave behind them traces sufficient to set up the disorder in a drove of healthy sheep that may follow. For its size and in relation to its sheep population ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... of life, and trembling feare of death, she thus began: For when we cease to be the crimes are rife, which youth committed, and before vs then. For aged memorie doth clasp't containe, Those shapes of sin, which hot blood held as vain. O cursed Fates quoth she, that brought to passe this prodegie ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale

... Congress have not been sufficient to prevent this country from being in some degree agitated by the convulsions of Europe. But why shall every quarrel on the other side the Atlantic interest us in its issue? Why shall the rife, or depression of every party there, produce here a corresponding vibration? Was this continent designed as a mere satellite to the other?—Has not nature here wrought all her operations on her broadest scale? Where are the Missisippis ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... taste to buy. The old hustings deserve a word, and we shall have to record the lamentable murder of Miss Ray by her lover, at the north-east angle of the square. The neighbourhood of Covent Garden, too, is rife with stories of great actors and painters, and nearly every house furnishes ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... and continued: "Perhaps no minister of war—and the archives of the ministry are there for reference—ever received the portfolio under more critical circumstances: civil war within, a foreign enemy at our doors, discouragement rife among our veteran armies, absolute destitution of means to equip new ones. That was what I had to face on the 8th of June, when I entered upon my duties. An active correspondence, dating from the 8th of June, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... seize on the populations of large tracts of country, and, without any clear cause that can be alleged, uneasy movements begin. Subdued mutterings are heard; a tremor goes through the nations, expectation of coming change stalks abroad; the air is rife with rumours; at last there bursts out an eruption of greater or less violence—the destructive flood overleaps its barriers, and flows forth, carrying devastation and ruin in one direction of another, until its energies are exhausted, or its progress stopped by some obstacle that it ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... thought, When that he stood upon the floor, For fifty hartes in were brought, 195 That were bothe great and store[51]. Raches lay lapping in the blood; Cookes came with dressing-knife; They brittened[52] them as they were wood; Revel among them was full rife. 200 Knightes danced by three and three, There was revel, gamen, and play; Lovely ladies, fair and free, That sat and sang on rich array. Thomas dwelled in that solace 205 More than I you say, parde; Till ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick

... the long years of peril and of strife, He faced Death oft, and Death forbore to slay, Reserving for its sacrificial Day, The garnered treasure of his full-crowned life; So saved him till the furrowed soil was rife, With the rich tillage of our noblest dead; Then reaped the offering of his honored head, In that red field of harvest, where he died, With the embattled legions at ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... baulks," said Michael Lambourne, "I need hardly inquire after Tony Foster; for when ropes, and crossbow shafts, and pursuivant's warrants, and such-like gear, were so rife, Tony ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... swift is the transit from laughter to tears! How rife with results is a day! That Hat might, with care, have adorned me for years; But one show'r ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

... harness so suddenly when he appeared to be in the best of health, was something of a mystery. Not a few missed his genial companionship, and were frank enough to say so on those rare occasions when Nat Lawson now put in an appearance at the Club. For a while rumors were rife, but gradually these subsided as his absence became ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse

... lie With jeers of many pouring on to them. Unto the speech these times give slippery words, And to the tongue alike a flattering robe; That falsehood seems like unto sacred truth, And enmities the bonds of friendship seem. O rife Perfidity! O Vanity! O Pride! Great are thy ravages among This simple race, who for a lucre strive, And pomp, and gain, with an unquenched thirst; Whose hand is avaricious, and who hold No check upon it; but, to swell their store In overflowing barns, do from the poor ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar

... wicked was a judgement of heaven, letting loose the powers of hell; and if the face of the corpse chanced to turn black, there was never any doubt but that Satan had flown off with the soul. Suspicions and accusations of witchcraft were rife; and an old woman had to be careful of the reputation of her cat. Wanderers among the mountains saw dragons; in the forests elves peeped at the woodmen from behind the trees, and fairies danced beneath the moon in the open places. The world had not been sufficiently explored for the ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... escaped. The destroyer had not passed Ludgate or Newgate, but environed the walls like a besieging enemy. A few days, however, before the opening of this history, fine weather having commenced, the horrible disease began to grow more rife, and laughing all precautions and impediments to scorn, broke out in the very heart of the stronghold—namely, in Bearbinder-lane, near Stock's Market, ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... the time of this event—seventeen years of age. Ever since his birth the world has been rife with discord and revolutions; all the nations of the world pursued a bitter warfare one against another. I scarce expected my only son would live to be old enough to join the army. Thither, thither, where ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... declared to be a special gift which Heaven, in its boundless mercy, had conferred. Unfortunately, this virtuous prince reigned but one year, leaving, however, in that short time, upon the Russian annals many memorials of his valor and of his virtue. It was a barbaric age, rife with perfidy and crime, yet not one act of treachery or cruelty has sullied his name. It was his ambition to be the father of his people, and the glory he sought was the happiness and the greatness of ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... confined to Frenchmen who had come with William and after him. Frenchmen who had in Edward's time settled in England as the land of their own choice, reckoned as Englishmen. Other enactments, fresh enactments of older laws, touched both races. The slave trade was rife in its worst form; men were sold out of the land, chiefly to the Danes of Ireland. Earlier kings had denounced the crime, and earlier bishops had preached against it. William denounced it again under the ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman

... a vital force was rife in Lamarck's time. The chief starting point of the doctrine was due to Haller, and, as Verworn states, it is a doctrine which has confused all physiology down to the middle of the present century, and even now emerges again here and there in ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... sight of the cold but important fact that the application of Freud's sexual theories to stammering in children is, in my humble opinion, fraught with the greatest danger. I cannot do otherwise than look upon this as positively anti-social. It would, it is my belief, be a glaring and rife source of danger to the community and to society in general for these ideas to be spread broadcast. Freud himself has shown that the child, before puberty, with his more or less undifferentiated sexual impulse, may be swept along into any one ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... with his little army at New Orleans on the second of December, and established headquarters at 984 (now 406) Royal Street. He found the city well-nigh defenseless, while petty factions divided the councils of leaders and people, especially rife among the members of the Legislature. There was, incident to recent changes of sovereignties and conditions of nationalities, serious disaffection on the part of a most respectable element of the population of Louisiana and Florida toward the American Government. The French and ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith

... small number emigrated to Canada or the United States, the passage money for an emigrant being then almost prohibitive. Those who could not pay rent were liable to eviction, and eviction was a more cruel fate then than now, since there was no poor law in Ireland. Fever was rife in their miserable abodes, following in the steps of hunger, and for relief of any kind they could rely only on the mercy of their landlords or the charity of their neighbours. Under such conditions of life crime and disaffection could not but flourish, and the Irish peasant could hardly ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... useful levers in the humble labourers whose characters he had studied, whose condition he sought to make themselves desire to elevate. Unconsciously his whole practice began to refute his theories. The abuses of the old Poor Laws were rife in his neighbourhood; his quick penetration, and perhaps his imperious habits of decision, suggested to him many of the best provisions of the law now called into operation; but he was too wise to be the Philosopher Square ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... their sinews crack, The lashes were so great; Then had not God been with them to Support them, they had died, His power it was that bore them through, Nothing could do't beside. When into prisons we were thronged (Where pestilence was rife) By bloody-minded men that longed To take away our life; Then had not God been with us, we Had perished there no doubt 'Twas He preserved us there, and He It was that brought us out. When sentenced to banishment Inhumanly we were, To be from native country ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood

... life, Threaded together on time's string, Make bracelets to adorn the wife Of the eternal glorious King. On Sundays, heaven's door stands ope; Blessings are plentiful and rife; More ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various

... Kate, who had been out alle the Morning, came in with her Lap full of Butter-burs, the which I was glad to see, as Mother esteemes them a sovereign Remedie 'gainst the Plague, which is like to be rife in Oxford this Summer, the Citie being so overcrowded on account of his Majestie. While laying them out on the Stille-room Floor, in bursts Robin to say Mr. Agnew and Mr. Milton were with ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning

... he had come to deliver a letter to Count von Bernstorff, the German Ambassador, but such a mission seemed so trivial that rumor as to the real intentions of the craft was rife throughout the entire country. There were suspicions that she had put in for fuel, or ammunition, or supplies. But nothing to justify these thoughts occurred. The U-53 hung around through the daylight hours, and at sunset, with a farewell salute, ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry

... stature, to the onset of a warrior faith like that? Of course, 'Caleb drove out thence the three sons of Anak,' and Hebron became his inheritance. Nothing can stand against us, if we seek for our portion, not where advantages are greatest, but where difficulties and dangers are most rife, and cast ourselves into the conflict, sure that God is with us, though humbly wondering that we should be worthy of His all- conquering presence, and sure, therefore, that victory marches by ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... rugged country, where no wheeled vehicle could travel, bullocks were trained to carry produce to the bay, and to bring back stores imported from Sydney. Each train was in charge of a white man, with several native drivers. But rumours of better lands towards the south were rife, and Captain Macalister, of the border police, equipped a party of men under McMillan to go in search of them. Armed and provisioned, they journeyed over the mountains, under the guidance of the faithful native Friday, and at length from the top of a new ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... Change of Creed, There is no Jesuit like Need. Then, too, 'twas cheap; he took it all, By force of Habit, from the Gaul. He showed (the Trick is nowise new) That Nothing we believe is true; But chiefly that Mistake is rife Touching the point of After-Life; Here all were wrong from PLATO down: His Price (in Boards) was Half-a-Crown. The Thing created quite a Scare:— He got a Letter from VOLTAIRE, Naming him Ami and Confrere; Besides two most attractive ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson

... still rife in the neighbourhood, that when Whitelocke came down to see the house before taking it, he put up at an inn, and after dinner asked the landlord to take a glass of wine with him. Upon announcing, however, who he was, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various

... complicated with dysentery and small pox became very rife in Belfast, and accounts from various other places soon showed, that it had seized upon the whole country. The week ending the 3rd of April, the total number of inmates in Irish Workhouses was 104,455, of whom 9,000 ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... "formless"?) "evolutionary ideas were brewing and fermenting. The scientific society of his elders and of the contemporaries among whom he grew up was permeated with the leaven of Laplace and Lamarck, of Hutton and of Herschel. Inquiry was especially everywhere rife as to the origin and nature of specific distinctions among plants and animals. Those who believed in the doctrine of Buffon and of the 'Zoonomia,' and those who disbelieved in it, alike, were profoundly ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... though a stray spark might easily burn down the entire campong. A great part of Celebes is uninhabited and uncultivated, but the tribes of the interior, warlike and treacherous, have never been completely subjugated. The slave trade flourishes among these lonely hills, murder and violence are rife; the methods of warfare, comprising poisoned arrows, and bullets containing splinters of glass, denote absolute barbarism, and the enormous island, which ought to be a field of emigration for some of Java's twenty-seven millions, ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... which continued to exist, as to the boundaries of the tract of country, in which the disease was rife; and then ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... the Oxus basin, and to Mullah Khan, in the plain of Seistan. Dost Mahommed surrendered (November 5, 1840) and was sent to India, where he was honourably treated. From the beginning, insurrection against the new government had been rife. The political authorities were overconfident, and neglected warnings. On the 2nd of November 1841 the revolt broke out violently at Kabul, with the massacre of Burnes and other officers. The position of the British camp, its communications with the citadel and the location ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... thirteenth, and afterwards to the eighteenth, of November. In the meantime, public attention was engaged by the equipment of a large squadron of men-of-war and transports at Portsmouth, and speculations were rife as to the policy of the monarch—whether it would be favourable to war or to peace. All classes of society, however, agreed in anticipating the happiest results from his rule, since he had been born and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... was a very sickly one at Peshawar; fever was rife amongst the troops, and in the hope of shaking it off Brigadier Cotton got permission to take a certain number into camp. It was September, and the sun was still very hot, so that it was necessary to begin the daily march long before dawn in order to reach the new camping ground while ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... chiefly occupied by "bootleggers" and go-betweens—that is the Tanana situation in a nutshell. The men desire the native girls, and the liquor is largely a lure to get them. Tuberculosis and venereal disease are rife, and the two make a ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... Some went to the opposite extreme, and affected to defy fate. The taverns were filled again, and boisterous shouts and songs seemed to mock the dismal cries from the houses with the red cross on the door. Robberies were rife. Regardless of the danger of the pest, robbers broke into the houses where all the inmates had perished by the Plague, and rifled them of their valuables. The nurses plundered the dying. All natural affection seemed ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty

... strife With that huge serpent which ere now Has poisoned all the joys of life, Made many homes with discord rife, And sunk poor ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd

... to each other, while fifty yards off, pulling away at the gloves all the while—"How are you, Canetop?—glad to see you, Canetop. How do you do, I hope."—"How are you, Yamfu, my dear fellow?" their horses fretting and jumping all the time—and if the Jack Spaniards or gadflies be rife, they have, even when denuded for the shake, to spur at each other, more like a Knight Templar and a Saracen charging in mortal combat, than two men merely struggling to be civil; an after all they have often to get their black servants alongside to hold their horses, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... all were leading in England a more or less precarious existence. The sixty white persons sent along were abandoned women, and why Sierra Leone should have had this weight placed upon it at the start history has not yet told. It is not surprising to learn that "disease and disorder were rife, and by 1791 a mere handful survived."[1] As early as in his Notes on Virginia, privately printed in 1781, Thomas Jefferson had suggested a colony for Negroes, perhaps in the new territory of Ohio. The suggestion was not acted upon, ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... rife in the Empire of the Tsars, it is not from any want of carefully prepared laws. In no country in the world, perhaps, is the legislation more voluminous, and in theory, not only the officials, but even the Tsar himself, must obey the laws he has sanctioned, like ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... God and Father. In another room a Bible-reading was going on, accompanied by prayer and praise. In the larger rooms, tea, coffee, etcetera, were being consumed to an extent that "no fellow can understand," except those who did it! Games and newspapers and illustrated magazines, etcetera, were rife elsewhere, while a continuous roar, rather the conventional "buzz," of conversation was going on everywhere. But, apparently, not a single oath in the midst of it all! The moral atmosphere of the place was so pure that even ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne

... matter for much surprise that the British Government did what it could to curb the smuggling that was rife in Man in the days of the Athols. The bad work had begun in the days of the Derbys, when an Act was passed which authorised the Earl of Derby to dispose of his royalty and revenue in the island, ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine

... comets were accurately known. That among them we should look for the agency of the threatened fiery destruction had been for many years considered an inadmissible idea. But wonders and wild fancies had been, of late days, strangely rife among mankind; and, although it was only with a few of the ignorant that actual apprehension prevailed, upon the announcement by astronomers of a new comet, yet this announcement was generally received with I know not what of agitation ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... he was arrested on civil process, and clapped into the Fleet Prison. But here his ever-soaring genius took a new Flight. Those half surreptitious and wholly scandalous Nuptials known as Fleet Marriages, were then very rife, and the adventurer had wit enough to discover that it was to his interest to resume his cassock and bands, and to become the Reverend Mr. Hodge once more. Not much was wanted to set him up in business. Canonicals ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... out, first one and then another of the sleepers awoke, and, after a yawn or two, got up to rouse the fires and put on the cooking-pots. In less than a quarter of an hour the whole camp was astir, conversation was rife, and the bubbling of pots that had not got time to cool, and the hissing of roasts whose fat had not yet hardened, mingled with songs whose echoes were still floating in the brains of the wild inhabitants ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne

... he had in vain striven to maintain peace by explanation and concession, he vigorously maintained what he held to be the truth. He did this the more because the Calvinism of the eighteenth century found itself face to face with a dangerous Antinomianism. This was rife among the Moravians; some of Wesley's own preachers adopted it; John Nelson fought it to the death in Yorkshire; and it was in the face of this state of affairs that the ...
— Excellent Women • Various



Words linked to "Rife" :   overabundant, plethoric, abundant, dominant, predominant, frequent, prevalent, prevailing



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