"Desultory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... painting, for the cultivation of which their circumstances would appear most propitious. It is as impossible to find a female Raphael, or a female Handel, as a female Shakespeare or Newton. Women are intellectually more desultory and volatile than men; they are more occupied with particular instances than with general principles; they judge rather by intuitive perceptions than by deliberate reasoning or past experience. They are, however, usually ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... addressed himself to the southward-stretching highway. Walking briskly at first, he soon left behind the railway-station with its few parasitic cottages; a dip in the land hid them, and he had hereafter for all company his thoughts, the desultory road, a vast and looming sky, and bare ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... lawyer—a mighty good lawyer for that time—and had more business 'n a bird pup with a gum-shoe. He was just a boy then, and, like all boys, he enjoyed a good time. He drank more or less in the army—they all did 's far as that goes—but he kept it up in a desultory way after he came here, as a sort of accessory to his main business of life, which ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... uncertain of her nationality, though I had had my suspicions of it, for the Anglo-Saxon walk differs from the gait of the southern nations; but on this slender introduction we dropped into conversation, and spoke in English of those desultory matters which one does chat upon to ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... continued. The sky was cloudless, the desultory breezes that swept the plains blighted growing things, raising little whirlwinds of fine, flinty alkali dust and spreading it over the face of the world. The storm that had caught Hollis on the Dry Bottom trail had covered only a comparatively small area; it had lasted only a ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... too often the case to be a mere accident that men who become eminent for wide compass of understanding and penetrating comprehension, are in their adolescence unsettled and desultory. Of this Burke is a signal illustration. He left Trinity in 1748, with no great stock of well-ordered knowledge. He neither derived the benefits nor suffered the drawbacks of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... wanted to set Gambara off on his high horse to amuse the new guest. Andrea was already conscious of an unwillingness to expose so noble and pathetic a mania as a spectacle for so much vulgar shrewdness. It was with no base reservation that he kept up a desultory conversation, in the course of which Signor Giardini's nose not infrequently interposed between two remarks. Whenever Gambara uttered some elegant repartee or some paradoxical aphorism, the cook put his head forward, to glance with pity at the musician and with meaning at the Count, ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... heeding. He felt uneasy, here in space, and as if drawn toward the gaping chasm, whence ascended, from time to time, the desultory clanging of the bell, which was still swaying and would be some ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... on its platforms, and it ran across two streets. His hurried council of war over-ruled him, as Montgomery's council had over-ruled the original plan of storming the walls; and so his men began a desultory fight in the streets ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... the advancing mobs the street-end pickets retired on the Prison and were admitted as the surging crowds amalgamated, surrounded the walls, and opened a desultory fire at the loopholes and such of the defenders as fired over the coping ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... produce, an immense change for the better in the study of English literature: and he deserved the contemptuous remarks of some later critics as little as he did the savage attacks of the half-lunatic Ritson. But he was rather indolent; his knowledge, though wide, was very desultory and full of scraps and gaps; and, like others in his century, he was much too fond of hypothesis without hypostasis, of supposition without substance. He was very excusably but very unluckily ignorant of what ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... bread and butter, and even apple-sauce, were one or the other daily distributed. Such unwearied attention is the more appreciated, when one remembers the number of females who subsequently arrived, and the desultory and fitful labor performed. Passing from one hospital to another, and bestowing general sympathy, with small works, is not what wounded men want. It was very soon perceptible how the men in that hospital appreciated the ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... power about him; he was ever frittering away his undeniable abilities upon a number of hastily adopted projects, crudely conceived, and remorselessly abandoned when the temperature of his enthusiasm lowered, or any unlooked-for difficulties appeared in his path. How the erratic and desultory nature of his mind was fostered and aggravated by Hayley's mischievous efforts has already been shown. That the glowing eulogium pronounced by Flaxman upon his friend's productions will be endorsed by modern ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... consequence and employment of this unripe time of half-awakened manhood is, however, unsatisfactory enough. There is much reminiscence of early Edinburgh days, with their law studies, and tutoring, and translating, in Teufelsdroeckh's desultory period. The climax of it is in those scornful sentences about Aesthetic Teas, to which the hungry lion was invited, that he might feed on chickweed—well for all concerned if it did not end in his feeding ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... good-natured woman communicated in her frank, desultory manner, as she led Flora down the steep, narrow path which led to the meadows below. Her kindness did not end here, for she walked some way up the road to put Mrs. Lyndsay in the right track to regain her lodgings, for Flora, trusting to the ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... dear Erskine, tell I love the license all too well, In sounds now lowly, and now strong, To raise the desultory song? Oft, when mid such capricious chime, Some transient fit of lofty rhyme To thy kind judgment seemed excuse For many an error of the muse, Oft hast thou said, "If, still misspent, Thine hours to poetry are lent, Go, and to tame thy wandering course, Quaff ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... who committed the fatal error of embroiling himself beyond all hope of pardon with the Church, and who died discomfited in the duel with his warier antagonist. Urbino profited by each mistake of Sigismondo, and the history of this long desultory strife with Rimini is a history of gradual aggrandisement and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... iv., no. 6291, as well as in Krohn's: in which latter [nos. 3554, 3562] there are some useful notices. See my account of M. Denis: post. Critics have accused these "Commentaries concerning the MSS. in the imperial library at Vienna," as containing a great deal of rambling and desultory matter; but the vast erudition, minute research, and unabateable diligence of its author, will for ever secure to him the voice of public praise, as loud and as hearty as he has received it from his abridger Reimannus. In ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... a rain began to fall, and it rapidly thickened from a desultory shower to a roaring downpour that effectually quenched not only the fires around which the savages were dancing, but the enthusiasm of the dancers as well. During the rest of the afternoon and all night long the fall was incessant, accompanied ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... of an author not systematick and consequential, but desultory and vagrant, abounding in casual allusions and light hints, is not to be expected from any single scholiast. All personal reflections, when names are suppressed, must be in a few years irrecoverably obliterated; and customs, too minute to attract the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... provided for me, even as for the sparrow on the housetop, and hath He not in His graciousness pointed towards His lowly servitor? The Lord stuck His finger in the net of my nerves gently—yea, verily, in desultory fashion—and brought slight disorder among the threads. And then the Lord withdrew His finger, and there were fibres and delicate root-like filaments adhering to the finger, and they were the nerve-threads of the filaments. And there was a gaping ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... a great deal of pains with the writing of his reviews, and having a pretty fair share of desultory reading, acquired in the early years of his life an eager fancy and a keen sense of fun, his articles pleased his chief and the public, and he was proud to think that he deserved the money which he earned. We may be sure that the Pall Mall Gazette was taken in ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... explaining, in an offhand way, that he had met a man who had told him the Mountain Fort was all safe, and that his comrades also were safe, and wandering about in that part of the country in search of him. After a good deal of desultory conversation, Dick turned to his guest with a sad, serious air, and, fixing his large ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... of literature and art with which he chiefly loves to deal, and has much in him which reminds of the race of essayists preceding the brilliant dogmatists of our time; and we confess that we find a great enjoyment in the lazy mood in which he here gossips of twenty desultory matters. The name of the present work is, to be sure, a somewhat formidable mask under which to hide the cheerful visage of a rambler among Inns, Pictures, Sepulchres, Statues and Bridges, and a tattler of Authors, Doctors, Holidays, Lawyers, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... behind the houses and stone fences along the road, or made their way to a wood which crowned the summit of the hill opposite to our position on the western side of the road, another man being killed and several more wounded while seeking this shelter. From this time a desultory fire was kept up from ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... after a fashion more or less desultory that day; I had many absent moments, was restless, and walked more than I painted. Oliver Saffron did not join me in the late afternoon; nor did the echo of distant yodelling bespeak any effort on his part to find me. So I gave him up, ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... cease. Clarke and the reporter left the mills; the others, comfortably seated near the furnace, lingered, smoking and talking in a desultory way. Greek would not have been more unintelligible to the furnace-tenders, whose presence they soon forgot entirely. Kirby drew out a newspaper from his pocket and read aloud some article, which they discussed eagerly. At every sentence, Wolfe listened ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... lips; and, after the habitual pleasure of the apt quotation, he felt acutely shocked at the inappropriateness of the place, the press-yard, with the dim light weeping downwards between immensely high walls, and the desultory snowflakes that dropped between us. And he had tried so hard, in his emergency, to be practical. When he had reached London, before even attempting to see me, he had run from minister to minister trying to influence them in my favour—and ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... day was a pleasant break in the monotony, and also signalized my release from the office of stableman. We were off again at six; an exquisite night it was, a big moon in the zenith, the evening star burning steadily over the dim, receding island. We finished with a sing-song on deck, a crooning, desultory performance, with sleepy choruses, and a homely beer-bottle passing ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... phenomena of hypnotism. This subject was rescued from the hands of charlatans, rechristened, and subjected to accurate investigation by Dr. James Braid, of Manchester, as early as 1841. But his results, after attracting momentary attention, fell from view, and, despite desultory efforts, the subject was not again accorded a general hearing from the scientific world until 1878, when Dr. Charcot took it up at the Salpetriere, in Paris, followed soon afterwards by Dr. Rudolf Heidenhain, of Breslau, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... gossip round the fire on the previous evening; yet this man, Mafuta, seemed to know more about the details of them than was likely to have transpired during such a conversation, which was probably of an exceedingly desultory and general character. Yet even this was not so surprising as the knowledge he displayed of the twofold object of my journey, which I knew he could not have acquired from my "boys", because even they were ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... retreat, and led his exhausted soldiers back over the desert plains which they had already passed with so much difficulty. The retrograde march was terribly harassed by the light cavalry of the Persians, a species of troops peculiarly fitted for desultory warfare. The difficulties of the Romans increased at every step, and the harassing attacks of their pursuers became more frequent and more formidable; at length, in a skirmish which almost deserved the name of a ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... in books of all sorts, and Millais and Arthur Hughes, two of the three illustrators of the notable "Music Master," come into our list of children's artists. At this point the attempt to weave a chronicle of children's books somewhat in the date of their publication must give way to a desultory notice of the most prominent illustrators. For we have come to the beginning of to-day rather than the end of yesterday, and can regard the "sixties" onwards as part ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... in the room, but left it soon. Next arrived Miss Knight, who remained all the time I was there. Princess Charlotte was very gracious—showed me all her bonny dyes, as B—-would have called them—pictures, and cases, and jewels, &c. She talked in a very desultory way, and it would be difficult to say of what. She observed her mother was in very low spirits. I asked her how she supposed she could be otherwise? This QUESTIONING answer saves a great deal of trouble, and serves two purposes—i.e. ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... high time that Government stepped in and endeavoured by prompt and decisive action to bring the mining industry upon a sound and legitimate basis. Though our ranges abound in all kinds of minerals that might give employment to hundreds of thousands of people, mining is carried on in a desultory, haphazard fashion. There is no system, and the treatment of ores is of necessity handed over to the tender mercies of men who have not even an idea of what an intricate science metallurgy has become in older countries. During many years ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... past, the preoccupation with life, not with death, that filled the pale galleries within. Today the eighteen hives lay under their winter covering, and the eager creatures within slept. Only one or two strayed sometimes to the early arabis, desultory and sad, driven home again by the frosty air to await the purple times of honey. The happiest days of Abel's life were those when he sat like a bard before the seething hives and harped to the muffled roar of sound that ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... and some credit in the University, and a fellowship at his college, as a reward for his scholarship. In this time of Mr. Esmond's life, he got the little reading which he ever could boast of, and passed a good part of his days greedily devouring all the books on which he could lay hand. In this desultory way the works of most of the English, French, and Italian poets came under his eyes, and he had a smattering of the Spanish tongue likewise, besides the ancient languages, of which, at least of Latin, he ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... Chicago Delights of Dougherty, The Desultory Hints and Maxims for Anglers Distinguished Visitor, A Dorgs, On Dogs Tale, A Down the Bay Drainage under Difficulties Dreadful State of Things out West, The Dubious ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... dining-room at the "Ritz," and Olivia found the dinner delightful. The three men, after some desultory talk about common friends and the ordinary London subjects, fell to talking about their work and their fighting in France. She was most pleased by the evident respect and admiration with which the other two regarded her husband. ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... off it, and kept me in dread of a total smash. The Champs Elysees were full of the late afternoon sunlight, and we sauntered slowly, criticising the occupants of the various carriages rolling up to the great arch of Napoleon, and arguing in a broken, desultory way on our usual ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... long, hurrying columns, I came hour by hour to feel a greater intimacy, a deeper enthusiasm for their vigor of existence, their unfailing life at the highest point of possibility of achievement. In every direction my former desultory observations were discounted by still greater accomplishments. Elsewhere I have recorded the average speed as two and a half feet in ten seconds, estimating this as a mile in three and a half hours. An observant colonel in the ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... fact, I never have got so far as to read it with any comfort in the original; and I suppose a practical educationalist would say that such fitful, desultory instruction as I did receive from my father in our cuddy living-room on board the Livorno was quite valueless. But I fancy the expert would be wrong in this, as experts sometimes are. In the schoolman's sense I learned ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... rich brown complexion, and his finely cut nostril and upper lip; for there was a certain virtue in that benignant yet keen countenance as there is in all human faces from which a generous soul beams out. And over all streamed the delicious June sunshine through the old windows, with their desultory patches of yellow, red, and blue, that threw pleasant touches of colour ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... it was limited, and I may say desultory. In this my Aunt Jerusha was allowed a greater authority than in the matter of my diet, and she early made up her mind that the great weakness of the educational system of the day was the tendency of the teachers in our schools to cram the minds of ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... had never been famous for punctuality. He was slightly Bohemian in his habits, and rather given to desultory bachelor ways; but his domestic timekeeper, Mrs. Drabble, ruled him most despotically in the matter of meals, and it was amusing to see how she kept him and Mr. Tudor in order: neither of them ventured ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... excelled in. She had for years received instruction gratis from the organist at the Cathedral, who, originally attracted by her lovely voice singing in the choir, took her up with enthusiasm, and taught her harmony and thorough bass. Thus, instead of only practising a desultory accomplishment, she was able to compose and arrange ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... and annexed by Portugal; the Portuguese king, expelled by the French in 1808, fled to his colony, which was made a kingdom 1815, and an empire in 1822. The emperor, Pedro II., was driven out in 1889, and a republic established on the federal system, which has been harassed ever since by desultory civil war. The capital is Rio Janeiro; Bahia and Pernambuco, the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... '79.—To-day one of the newspapers of St. Louis prints the following informal remarks of mine on American, especially Western literature: "We called on Mr. Whitman yesterday and after a somewhat desultory conversation abruptly asked him: 'Do you think we are to have a distinctively American literature?' 'It seems to me,' said he,'that our work at present is to lay the foundations of a great nation in products, in agriculture, in commerce, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... must be, just as there is the puff of wind that drifts the wandering insect to the spider's web—that brought the impression to her mind, was the brief report of a cross-examination in the divorce courts, conducted by J.H. Traill. She knew that in the last two years he had, in a desultory way, been gleaning briefs from the great field where others reaped. That had stood for little in her mind; for though she had always realized that in temperament and intellect he would make an excellent barrister, she had never believed that he would throw aside the ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... still continued, though in a more desultory fashion. It was a strange waiting game, and a grim one, that was being played. The defenders had shifted their positions to guard against surprise. Douglas had in vain begged his daughter to leave the room and join the women in an inner apartment, but she had pleaded so hard with ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... detected—but he succeeded in captivating all my sympathy. Long after dinner was over, and the salle empty, we sat smoking our cigars, and discussing politics, literature, and art in that suggestive desultory manner which often gives a ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... plenty on the flats by the river. Here was an indication of what the colony could hope to do if all its settlers were men of Hebert's persistence and stability. But the other prominent men of the little settlement, although they may have turned their hands to gardening in a desultory way, let him remain, for the time being, the only real colonist in the land. On his farm, moreover, a house had been built during these same years with the aid of two artisans, but chiefly by the labour of the owner himself. It was a stone house, ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... a very taking way with him. His eyes were sky-blue and his hair old gold. He was a terrific sportsman and when not making love was singing. From his Teutonic ancestry he had inherited a taste for music which desultory study in a German university town, combined with a musical ear, had improved. He had been told by managers that if he would work hard he could make a sensation, but Henry was lazy and Henry was rich, so he sang, shot big game and flirted his years away. Then he met Mrs. Holda, of ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... married to a gaunt female, who, I hope, nagged him as he us, preferred to take his meals at home. Smallweed, who had somehow got made quartermaster, couldn't go old Heavysterne, he said, and so kept as long as he could to his desultory habits of living as a citizen and a bachelor. So our mess consisted of the major, who exercised a paternal care over the rest of us, superintending, indeed often joining in, our amusements and discussions, our quarrels and makings up; of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... declared between the Eastern Empire and Persia, ending desultory conflicts that had continued ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... many hours a day, writing letters so many more hours; taking the quite unenthusiastic, business-like interest in literature and politics of a woman whose life is very empty, and, it seems to me, from the tone of her letters, growing daily more indifferent to life, more desultory, more cynical, more misanthropic and tittle-tattling. And Alfieri, meanwhile, was growing more unsociable, more misanthropic, more violent in temper, hanging a printed card stating that he wished no visits (one ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... that peaceful day we have had desultory picket firing, and the great guns in the naval battery have spoken whenever an opportunity presented itself. The opposing outpost lines are drawn so far apart that with the best intentions they can scarcely harm each other. But the long range of ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... of destruction, endangering your domestic tranquillity, plundering you of the means of defense, alienating the affections of your allies and promoting the spirit of discord; must the tardy, tedious, desultory road by way of impeachment be traveled to overtake the man who, barely confining himself within the letter of the law, is employed in drawing off the vital principle of the Government? The nature of things, the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... time. If the Tehuas were informed of his approach they would either prepare for his coming at the Puye—and the result of an open attack would be to say the least extremely doubtful,—or they would come out in force, and desultory fighting would ensue. In this those who were nearest water and supplies always had the advantage. His idea of striking a sudden blow appeared very much endangered by the presence of Tehuas in the forest. He thought and thought without arriving at any satisfactory conclusion. Return to ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... has some facility as a writer, and for twenty years has maintained a quasi or direct connection with the press. He is not lacking in the culture of desultory reading, and when he chooses to do so can bear himself like a gentleman. Of such a thing as dignity of character, he appears to have but a faint conception. Pedantry is more to him than profundity, and to tickle the ear of the town with a cheap witticism, he deems a greater thing than to command ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... can manage the children. I have the tact, the character, the gift, that nameless something which gives one person control over others; and for the studies, they are as yet a pleasure to me. I see how they will lead me on to other knowledge, how I may bring into form and make available my desultory reading, and there is a great pleasure in the very study itself. And for the rest, if my great grief is never out of my mind, if it is always present to me, at least I can put it back, behind my daily occupations and interests. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... said, with a deep inspiration. And now they walked back and forth in silence broken only by a casual word or desultory phrase. Once Staniford had thought the conditions of these promenades perilously suggestive of love-making; another time he had blamed himself for not thinking of this; now he neither thought nor blamed himself for ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... resurrection life? I do not mean that this life is limited to the few hours of social worship and prayer, glorious and profitable as they are; for in that case there would be cause to fear that it was a mere pretense; nor to the services, always but small and desultory, that each of us, actively working through the gifts of the Spirit, accomplishes, as it were, visibly and tangibly according to his measure, for the kingdom of God. In manifold ways besides these we become conscious of this new life; ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... Andy was out and only the saturnine Williams was in the room. Although Steve had grown to like Williams very well, yet, in his present mood, the right tackle was not the sort of company Steve craved, and after a few minutes of desultory football talk he went on. He would have called on Roy and Harry, but now that he and Tom had quarrelled they would, he thought, side with Tom. In the end he found himself in the gymnasium. Several fellows were splashing about in ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... affairs to the precipice of destruction, endangering your domestic tranquility, plundering you of the means of defense, alienating the affections of your allies, and promoting the spirit of discord, must the tardy, tedious, desultory road, by way of impeachment, be traveled to overtake the man who, barely confining himself within the letter of the law, is employed in drawing off the vital principle of the Government?" The nature of things, the great objects of society, ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... undecisive campaign. During the continuance of this war, the naval transactions present no grand results. Du Bart, a celebrated adventurer of Dunkirk, occupies the leading place in those affairs, in which he carried on a desultory but active warfare against the Dutch and English fleets, and ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... the desultory and futile procedure of his Huron allies. Against his advice, they now withdrew to the distance of a cannon-shot from the fort, and encamped in the forest, out of sight of the enemy. "I was moved," he says, ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... a thing had been done to develop self-respect or self-reliance. Even more than most girls, he was made to feel himself dependent on his parents. He had studied but little; he had read much, but in a desultory way. Of business and of men's prompt, keen ways he was lamentably ignorant for one of his years, and the consciousness of this made him shrink from the companionship of his own sex, and begat a reticence whose chief cause was timidity. His parents' wealth had been nothing but a curse, and they would ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... figure walking across the grass, by the side of some rails, and I felt somewhat disappointed, and dissatisfied, when, at length, it vanished among the trees. I was now resting myself at the foot of one, and deeply engrossed in the desultory wanderings of a beetle on the ground, between my feet. I am not conscious how long a time I might have been thus amusing myself, when I was roused by an indistinct rustle close to me, and, on looking up, I saw before me the lady-like figure. ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... an account in the London Times, on that date, the enemy began to move toward the Ismailia Ferry. They met a reconnoitering party of Indian troops of all arms, and a desultory engagement ensued to which a violent sandstorm put a sudden end about three o'clock in the afternoon. The main attacking force pushed forward toward its destination after nightfall. From twenty-five to thirty galvanized iron pontoon boats, seven and a half meters in length, which had been dragged ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... ethics, did Milton leave any distinguishable trace on the thought of his time or in the history of opinion. In both these lines of his activity circumstances forced upon him the position of a controversialist whose aims and results are by the necessity of the case desultory and ephemeral. Hooker before him and Hobbes after him had a far firmer grasp of fundamental principles than he. His studies in these matters were perfunctory and occasional, and his opinions were heated to the temper of the times and shaped to the instant ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... which Melicent had arranged and in which she held out such promises of a "lark" proved after all but a desultory affair. For with Fanny making but a sorry equestrian debut and Hosmer creeping along at her side; Therese unable to hold Beauregard within conventional limits, and Melicent and Gregoire vanishing utterly from the scene, sociability was a feature ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... if you cannot find something new this summer along the coast to which you are going. There is no reason why you should not be so successful as a friend of mine who, with a very slight smattering of science, and very desultory research, obtained in one winter from the Torbay shores three entirely new species, beside several rare animals which had escaped all naturalists since the lynx-eye of Colonel Montagu discerned them forty ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... been almost submerged in the torrent, and the punitive expedition she had planned had brought punishment mainly upon herself, and that not merely at the hands of Serbia's powerful patron, but at those of the little people who were to be chastised. The early fighting was of a desultory character, and Austria's two first-line corps having been withdrawn to meet the Russians, the Serbs and Montenegrins made a combined effort on 12 August to invade Bosnia and capture Serajevo. No great progress was made, and on the 16th the Austrians retaliated with the capture of Shabatz in the ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... hunts and war-parties,—I lost no opportunity of gathering information concerning their religious belief and traditions, and the system of medicine, as it prevails in its purity. It would be foreign to the design of this desultory paper to enter at large upon the history of creation as preserved by the Indians in their traditions, the conflicts of the Beneficent Spirit with the Adversary, and the Indian idea of a future state. With all these, the present sketch has no further concern than a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... Frank to my office. They tried to be casual, engaged me in desultory nothings. Frank looked reproachful—I ...
— Question of Comfort • Les Collins
... no temper more unpropitious to interest than desultory application and unlimited inquiry, by which the desires are held in a perpetual equipoise, and the mind fluctuates between different purposes without determination. I had books of every kind round ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... in the grasp of someone who held him fast, and learned, by breathing quietly, that the presence of the muffler about his nose and mouth did not greatly inconvenience him. There was some desultory conversation between the two men in the car, but it was carried on in an odd, sibilant language which the boy did not understand, but which he divined to be Chinese. He thought how every other boy in the school would envy him, ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... aggregate It is a reproof to shallowness There is a misconception here I strongly suspect it so He was covered with confusion It was a just rebuke A pleasing instance of this It lends dignity to life She has a desultory liking for music It seems incredible A kind of detached ideal It blunts the finer sensibilities Beyond question or cavil A well-founded suspicion It has elicited great praise They are landmarks in memory Superhuman vigor and activity ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... testified to the remarkable ability and zeal he had found in his pupil, and likewise to the spirit of industry which had prevented the desultory life of travelling and ill-health from having made him nearly so much behindhand as might have been expected. If he only had health to work steadily for the next two years, he would be quite as well prepared to matriculate at the university as all but the very foremost scholars from the public ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... leaving the occupied area we threaded streets with men from the relief columns in full view, but soon enough we found ourselves in treacherous roadways, all littered with the ruins and the inexpressible confusion which come of desultory street-fighting spread over long weeks. To me this was a new quarter—one which I had not been near since the month of May, and soon it was equally clear that it was still a very evil place. Only yesterday men who had broken away from the French corps were found here, some dead ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... After some desultory wanderings for a year or two along the shores of Lake Erie, among the prosperous towns then springing up, the family, with its Canadian home forfeited, and in quest of another resting-place, came to Milan, Ohio, in 1842. That pretty little village offered at ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... no very authentic details of the minutiae of the form or size of ancient ships, but antiquarians have collected a vast amount of desultory information, which, when put together, enables us to form a pretty good idea of the manner of working them, while ancient coins and sculptures have given us a notion of their general aspect. No doubt many of these records are grotesque enough, ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... time when all business was run on the chaotic and desultory lines characteristic of the purely competitive age, he had the foresight and shrewdness to perceive that the storekeeper who depended upon the jobber and the manufacturer for his goods was largely at the mercy of ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... allegations and suggestions, for which he came unprepared, from a reliance that those publicly given were all against which he need arm himself, and that, if those were disproved, he was cleared; while the desultory and shifting charges of the managers put him out in every method of defence, by making it impossible to him to discern where he might ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... and our outposts during the latter part of January, the main attack was not developed until Feb. 2, when the enemy began to move toward the Ismailia Ferry. They met a reconnoitring party of Indian troops of all arms, and a desultory engagement ensued, to which a violent sand storm put a sudden end about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. The main attacking force pushed forward toward its destination after nightfall. From twenty-five to thirty galvanized iron pontoon boats, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... ministers exhibited as little concert out of office as they had displayed in their resignation. In one matter, however, they were all agreed, that of hostility to the present government. In both houses a desultory warfare was carried on against it: single individuals taking upon themselves at intervals the task of castigating its members. In the commons Sir Thomas Lethbridge chiefly undertook this task; but, although ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... which spring up between the sailors themselves, who, it must be recollected, have no other society, and all, or almost all, whose ordinary social ties have been broken either by the chances of war, or by the very nature of their roving and desultory life, which carries them they really know not ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... any of its contributors show the connexion which subsists between oriental mythology, allegory, and legendary lore, with that of the Scandinavian nations? This Sir Walter Scott has omitted to do;—but this might afford, even formed of the materials to be gleaned from various desultory sources, another volume ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... a desultory conversation, but Barbican did not hear them. One fact, in particular, troubled him, and he sought in vain to account for it. Having come so near the Moon—about 30 miles—why had not the Projectile gone all the way? Had its velocity been very great, the tendency to fall could certainly ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... became desultory, as they proceeded for at least a mile along a cart-track through soft-tufted grass and heath and young fir- trees. It ended in a broad open moor, stony; and full of damp boggy hollows, forlorn and desolate under the autumn sky. Here they ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... a very careless and desultory attendant, sometimes upon the Catholic chapel, sometimes upon the Protestant church, now became a very regular frequenter of the latter place of worship; the object of his worship being not the Creator, but the creature, whom, if he missed from her accustomed seat, the ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... limp, unless now and then a feeble expansion caused by some desultory puff be excepted. Gary divided the remainder of the men into two watches, one of whom he caused to lie down on deck for a little rest, with ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... these general and desultory statements touching the progress of the colony, it may be well to say a word of Rancocus Island. The establishments necessary there, to carry on the mills, lime and brick kilns, and the stone-quarry, induced the governor to erect a small work, in which the ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... foster-father read a chapter to them every night before they went to bed, but the eldest of the family was generally too much occupied in pinching the twins, or keeping them in order, to give the reading anything better than a very desultory attention. But Jake's slow, droning voice was not calculated to arouse interest. "I dunno," he said, glancing up sidelong at the man. "Mebby he—I ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... did not bring her. The hours wore on—Mr. Ingelow at his easel, Mollie with her book, Susan Sharpe with her needle, conversation desultory and lagging. ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... he was adamant against all their blandishments and remained a widower, devoting his entire care to the one child he had brought with him as an infant from the Highland hills, and to whom he gave a brilliant but desultory and uncommon education. Life seemed to swirl round him in a glittering ring of gold of which he made himself the centre,—and when he died suddenly "from overstrain" as the doctors said, people were almost frightened to name the vast fortune his daughter inherited, accustomed ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... marched thence in pursuit of Jackson to strike him before he could be reinforced. Sigel, with 1,500 men, encountered Jackson with more than double that number, on July 5th, near Carthage, in Jasper County. Sigel's superiority in artillery gave him an advantage in a desultory combat of some hours. Jackson, greatly outnumbering him in cavalry, proceeded to envelop his rear, and Sigel was forced to withdraw. Sigel retreated in perfect order, and managed his artillery so well that the pursuing cavalry ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force
... halbert formerly much used. Thus in Shakspeare (Antony and Cleopatra), "I had as lief have a reed that will do me no service, as a partizan I could not heave." Also, a useful stirring man, fit for all sorts of desultory duties. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... smaller children playing a desultory game of lic-lic for pieces of candy and cigarettes. Slowly he climbed the stairs of a stone flat. He prepared a supper for himself and ate it without either enjoyment or distaste. He lay down, fully clothed, on his bed. The visit to ...
— Monkey On His Back • Charles V. De Vet
... down the windy pasture slope in silence; the mullein candles blossomed shoulder-high, and from underfoot came the warm, aromatic scent of sweet-fern. Once they stopped for some more blueberries, with a desultory word about the heat; then they picked their way around juniper-bushes, and over great knees of granite, hot and slippery, and through low, sweet thickets of bay. At the foot of the hill the shadows were stretching across the road, ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... was plain that one must be abandoned. An examination of them all showed that the Nellie Powell was in the poorest condition and she was chosen for the sacrifice. She was put back in her shelter being afterwards used by Lee for a desultory ferry business, that developed. About ten days before our arrival, the Dean had been discovered by a newspaper man named J. H. Beadle, and used to cross to the north side where he left her. This was how she happened to be there when we came. Beadle had ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... was born in Elkton, August 25, 1829, and received his education at the common school and Academy in that town. His youth and early manhood was spent in mechanical pursuits and in the improvement of his mind by a desultory course of reading, and in perfecting himself in the knowledge ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... like calamity in the future, the governor issued a proclamation ordering all who lived in secluded places in the country to gather themselves into villages "after the fashion of our New Engand neighbors." After some desultory fighting on the frontier, Dutch and Indian hostilities in a great measure ceased, and for about ten years, beyond the threatenings of the English on the one hand and the Indians on the other, New Netherland enjoyed a season of ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... the parsonage and Jane Riggs, as rigid as starched linen could make a human being, admitted them, and presently after a little desultory conversation, the collection, which was really a carefully made one, and exceedingly good and interesting, was being displayed. Then came the charming little tea which Von Rosen had planned; then the suggestion with regard to the rose-garden and Aunt ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... visited Professor Amici, who showed him his microscopes "magnifying (it was said) two thousand diameters." Emerson hardly knew his privilege; he may have been the first American to look through an immersion lens with the famous Modena professor. Mr. Emerson says that his narrow and desultory reading had inspired him with the wish to see the faces of three or four writers, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Landor, De Quincey, Carlyle. His accounts of his interviews with these distinguished persons are too condensed to admit of further ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... amid the desultory clapping of hands, and he could hear people passing outside on their way into the garden. He turned the handle ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... eye-lashes. In society he was reserved and often taciturn, but was free and communicative among his personal friends. He was not a little superstitious, and a firm believer in the reality of spectral illusions. Desultory in some of his literary occupations, he was laborious in pruning and perfecting his poetical compositions. His claims as a poet are not inconsiderable; "Jeanie Morrison" is unsurpassed in graceful simplicity and feeling, and though he had not written another line, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... party, is highly irregular. The information must also be positive, not founded on belief or opinion, but derived from a legitimate source. And, lastly, it must not have been received casually, but for the very purpose of being used for masonic purposes. For one to say to another in the course of a desultory conversation: "A.B. is a Mason," is not sufficient. He may not be speaking with due caution, under the expectation that his words will be considered of weight. He must say something to this effect: "I know this man to be a ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... Dr. Aikin's daughter, was now also making her own mark in the literary world, and had inherited the bright intelligence and interest for which her family was so remarkable. Much of Miss Aikin's work is more sustained than her aunt's desultory productions, but it lacks that touch of nature which has preserved Mrs. Barbauld's memory where more ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... unnecessary, on the ground that all his life long he had been preparing against that hour. For the speech breathes throughout a spirit of defiance, (ut non supplex aut reus sed magister aut dominus videretur esse judicum', Cic. de Orat.); and the loose and desultory style is an imitation of the 'accustomed manner' in which Socrates spoke in 'the agora and among the tables of the money-changers.' The allusion in the Crito may, perhaps, be adduced as a further evidence of the literal accuracy of some parts. ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato
... correspondence, of his domestic life; scarcely, in fact, any of its details. Reading the letters again, I found the matter to be somewhat more varied than my first eager inspection of them, as hastily unfolded, had led me to suppose; but they were desultory, and much broken as to dates. The occasional mixture of other matter, especially public matter, with the domestic topics, did not diminish the interest of the letters, but the contrary. In this publication I follow the order of the dates. Where ...
— Washington in Domestic Life • Richard Rush
... his return from Canada, embarked for England, to renew the solicitations of the colony for aid in another attempt on Quebec. Though unsuccessful in this application, the government of the province was bestowed on him; and, in this character, he returned to Boston. A desultory war continued to be carried on, which, without furnishing any events that would now be interesting, produced heavy ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Leicester's army, by living on the mountains of Wales without bread, which was not then much used among the inhabitants, had been extremely weakened by sickness and desertion, and was soon broken by the victorious royalists; while his Welsh allies, accustomed only to a desultory kind of war, immediately took to flight, and were pursued with great slaughter. Leicester himself; asking for quarter, was slain in the heat of the action, with his eldest son Henry, Hugh le Despenser, and about one hundred and sixty knights, and many other gentlemen of his party. The old king ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... resolved to make my examination in private, and now followed him into the smoking-room. We stayed there for a short time, talking in a desultory manner, and soon afterwards retired ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... side, was not without provision for reflection, and they lingered on in broken, desultory talk. Rowland felt the need for intellectual rest, for a truce to present care for churches, statues, and pictures, on even better grounds than his companion, inasmuch as he had really been living Roderick's intellectual life the past three months, as well as his own. As he ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... Stanley made a clear and vigorous exposition of its spirit and provisions; Mr Bright delivered a powerful oration on the condition of India—its past government and future prospects; the rest of the discussion weak and desultory. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... liquor traffic. It set everybody to talking, even the public school children and students in all the higher institutions were profoundly interested. The press and the pulpit broke their silence and from all over the state came the echo. It was the firing of the signal guns. The response came desultory, as the rattle of musketry in a skirmish, then heavier from the bigger guns, as is the case in all reformatory work. The criticisms and comments were varied, often amusing, reflecting the agitation from far and ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... The desultory duties connected with the removal of the Indians, in which the Army has been constantly engaged on the northern and western frontiers and in Florida, have rendered it impracticable to carry into full effect the plan recommended by the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Martin van Buren • Martin van Buren
... spirit cast in times yet more wild and enterprising, and without seeking interpretations, after the fashion of allegory or system, of each legend, it is the most simple hypothesis, that Theseus really departed in quest of adventure from a dominion that afforded no scope for a desultory and eager ambition; and that something of truth lurks beneath many of the rich embellishments which his wanderings and exploits received from the exuberant poetry and the rude credibility of the age. During his absence, Menestheus, of the royal race of Attica, who, Plutarch ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Desultory effort irritated him, and he was quick to detect busy idleness under its various disguises. He swore very freely himself, and as I heard so many oaths I was beginning to acquire the same accomplishment, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... by an occasional loaf of bread, a jar of butter, apple sauce, or plum sauce which the company foragers were lucky enough to pick up, there was great temptation whenever we came to a halt to indulge in a little desultory foraging on private account; and as we were now in a farming country there was considerable of this done. But if the sight of a distant farm house, with the hope of chickens and cherry trees swimming before the mind, tempted any of us to indulge without leave ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... as a German province and to administer it as such, at least during the continuance of the war. The Belgian army retired to the north within the fortifications of Antwerp, where they were joined by French troops, but desultory fighting against the German invader continued at many points and the Franco-British allies soon came into contact with ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... some time and I talked with her son, who was sociable but desultory and kept moving over the place, always with his fan, as if he were properly impatient. Sometimes he seated himself an instant on the window-sill, and then I made him out in fact thoroughly good-looking—a fine brown clean young athlete. He failed to tell me on what special contingency ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... seventy yards. No shot was fired, but you may be sure that safety-catches were hastily released. Suddenly, in the tense silence, the ambassador's nerve failed him. He bolted back, followed by a few desultory bullets. The reason for his sudden panic was never rightly ascertained, but the weight of public opinion inclined to the view that Mucklewame, who had momentarily exposed himself ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... done as Patty opened the door; and her visitors walked upstairs without having any regular narration to attend to, pursued only by the sounds of her desultory good-will. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... There was a little desultory conversation, two cups of delicious tea and one of Matilda's choice sandwiches and then Markham led the way to ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... any real benefit; and because I consider the advance of small sums rather as a temporary palliation than a radical remedy. Our disorders are such, that the former can be of no use, and it would be better to desist in a desultory defence, than to put on the delusive appearances of a vigor we do not feel; for this lulls the people into a dangerous security, and softens those hopes of the enemy, which give duration and extent ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... had been carried on in a very desultory way. All parties were anxious for a peace. Towards the end of April, 1697, William once more crossed over to Flanders,(1858) and the French king having for the first time shown a disposition to come to terms, it was arranged that a congress should ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... that had sallied out to help their masters. They then made a rush on the fort, but were driven off at once, one of their number being killed and several badly hurt, while but one of the defenders was wounded, and he but slightly. After this they withdrew to cover and began a desultory firing, which lasted for ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... what I am reading, I become much embarrassed. I may be reading a catalogue of books at the time, or the book notices in some magazine, but such reading may not seem orthodox at all to the one who asks the question. My reading may be too desultory or too personal to be paraded in public. I don't make it a practice to tell all the neighbors what I ate for breakfast. I like to saunter along through the book just as I ride in a gondola when in Venice. I'm not going ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... Books and Reading is in the air at the present time; Lord Iddlesleigh raised the question last November, by his admirable discourse on Desultory Reading, delivered at Edinburgh. Sir John Lubbock was not slow to follow the lead, in his lecture at the Working Men's College; and lastly, we have Mr. Goschen's more abstract and despondent remarks on Hearing, Reading, and Thinking. ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... through the evening; Elizabeth played cribbage with Mr. Rhodes, and Elsie gave snatches of desultory music at the piano; every time her fresh young voice rang out in joyous song Elizabeth started, as if an unseen dagger had struck ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... my staircase here," drawls Volumnia, whose thoughts perhaps are already hopping up it to bed, after a long evening of very desultory talk, "one of the prettiest girls, I think, that I ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... excuse of haste, or of a want of time, to offer for the defect of these volumes. All I ask is, that they may be viewed as no more than they profess to be. They are the gleanings of a harvest already gathered, thrown together in a desultory manner, and without the slightest, or, at least, very small pretensions, to any of those arithmetical and statistical accounts that properly belong to works of a graver character. They contain the passing ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... one by one, out of the immeasurable expanse of darkening blue above us, the silence of the vast ocean solitude that hemmed us in became a thing that might be felt. So oppressive was it that, as by instinct, our conversation gradually dwindled to the desultory exchange of a few whispered remarks, uttered at lengthening intervals, until it died out altogether; while the profound stillness of air and ocean seemed to become accentuated rather than broken by the measured roll of the oars in the rowlocks, and the tinkling lap of the water under the bows ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... These desultory recitals continued for some time, until one day, as I met my young friends in the ordinary way, only somewhat earlier than common, I saw that there was something unusual in the wind. They mustered stronger than was their wont, and I ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... over their coffee and liqueurs long after the fall of the first twilight, till the points of their cigarettes glowed like little specks of fire through the enveloping darkness. Conversation had been from the first curiously desultory, edited, in a way, Francis felt, for his benefit. There was an atmosphere about his host and Lady Cynthia, shared in a negative way by Margaret Hilditch, which baffled Francis. It seemed to establish more than a lack of sympathy—to suggest, even, a life lived upon a different plane. Yet ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... saddled and bridled under McMahon's shed at the Drovers' Arms by day and night. His behaviour in drink was original and erratic. He would fraternise with the man at the bar for a time, and then go roaming at large about the township in a desultory way, sleeping casually in all sorts of absurd places; but Waddy had a large experience in 'drunks' and ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... Marie roused Henri. The worst of the bombardment was over, but there was far-away desultory firing. He listened carefully before, standing outside in the cold, he poured over his head and shoulders a pail of cold water. He was drying himself vigorously when he heard Sara Lee's voice ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... more desultory converse, Aileen asked her friend if she were prepared to hear some ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... 26.—[The debate on the 9th section still continued desultory—and consisted of similar objections, and answers thereto, as had before been used. Both sides deprecated the slave trade in the most pointed terms; on one side it was pathetically lamented, by Mr. Nason, Major Lusk, Mr. Neal, and others, that this Constitution provided for ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... slight, and Weber, on whom the hand of death was heavy as he wrote the score, failed to infuse much individuality into his characters. 'Oberon' was his last work, and he died in London soon after it was produced. During the last few years of his life he had been engaged in a desultory way upon the composition of a comic opera, 'Die drei Pintos,' founded upon a Spanish subject. He left this in an unfinished state, but some time after his death it was found that the manuscript sketches and notes for the work were on a scale sufficiently elaborate to give ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... time for hollow truce and a desultory and irregular warfare was rapidly passing away. It was but little more than a month after the beginning of the new year before the conflagration again burst forth. The Protestants of all parts of the kingdom were at length of one mind; there was no room for doubt that any hopes ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... Hittall were "so much occupied with Bullingdon and hunting that there was no great opportunity for those mental gymnastics which train and brace the mind for future acquisition." My ways of wasting time were less strenuous than theirs; and my desultory reading, and desultory Church-work, were supplemented by a good deal of desultory riding. I have some delicious memories of autumnal canters over Shotover and Boar's Hill, and racing gallops across Port Meadow, and long ambles on summer afternoons, through the meadows ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... even of such a victory as Crecy. Luckily for England the pestilence had fallen as heavily on her foe as on herself. A common suffering and exhaustion forced both countries to a truce, and though desultory fighting went on along the Breton and Aquitanian borders, the peace which was thus secured lasted with brief intervals of fighting for seven years. It was not till 1355 that the failure of a last effort to turn the truce into a ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... some readers and revolted others throw no shadow over his writings. He is a placid enlightened professor, whose real good feeling and frequent shrewdness should not be overlooked in consequence of the rather desultory and often superficial mode of reasoning. This, however, suggests a ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... publish a book with the title, Press, Platform and Parliament (NISBET). It is one of the most genuinely good-tempered books I have ever read; but that was to be expected from the author of the column signed "Sub Rosa," who had in this course of desultory writing made innumerable friends and never lost one; and, more pleasing sport than that, had brought two people together through a matrimonial agency conducted by W.T. STEAD, and had met the pair many years after, to find that they ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various |
