"Pother" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... way to the end of the table and drew out the chair opposite Miss Carmichael with a degree of assurance that precipitated the rest of the table into a pretty pother. ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... week after, the wind sallied forth, And, in anger or merriment, out of the north, Coming on with a terrible pother, 15 From the peak of the crag blew the giant away. And what did these school-boys?—The very next day They went and they ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... peer. Let me extol a cat, on oysters fed, I'll have a party at the Bedford-head; Or even to crack live crawfish recommend; I'd never doubt at Court to make a friend. 'Tis yet in vain, I own, to keep a pother About one vice, and fall into the other: Between excess and famine lies a mean; Plain, but not sordid; though not splendid, clean. Avidien, or his wife (no matter which, For him you'll call a dog, and her a bitch) Sell their presented partridges, and fruits, And ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... all laws human and divine. Thus when inflamed with passion for a beautiful nun he did not hesitate to smash the gates of a convent to drag her forth and forcibly make her his mistress. And this too was a dreadful scandal, but no great pother could be made about it, seeing that Edgar was so powerful a friend of the Church and of ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... so long, it is not very wide, For two are the most that together can ride; And e'en then 'tis a chance but they sit in a pother. And joke and cross and ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... their feet of three camels by voice persuasion alone is no mean performance, but no voice, not even the vocal chords of the Archangel Gabriel, would have moved the cause of all this pother, for at the word of command, in a tone which should have put fear of death into her black heart, she slightly shifted her hind-quarters ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... make as much noise as they choose, for their own pleasure," said Philip, laughing, as the report of the culverins, which startled the colonists from their sleep, were heard; "but it is only a useless pother, and a vain rubbing of drowsy eyes. I should like to see how valiant Captain Endicott will look, when he finds that the bird ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... caught the Colonel's eye. "One of Spotswood's golden horseshoes!" he exclaimed. "I had them wrought for him in London. Had they been so many stars and garters, he could have made no greater pother! 'Tis ten years ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... infinitely small, and I could almost pity my enemies for giving themselves such trouble about so very little. What would become of us without philosophy, without this reasonable contempt of things frivolous, transient and fugitive, about which the greedy and ambitious make such a pother, fancying them to be solid! This is to become wise by stripes, you will tell me; well, if one do become wise, what matters it how?—I read a great deal; I devour my Books, and that brings me useful alleviation. But for my ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the May. He is assisted by a lieutenant known as Frank, a pudgy, easy chap, swell-dressed, who goes among the tables seeing that dull care does not intrude. Now, what is there about Rooney's to inspire all this pother? It is more respectable by daylight; stout ladies with children and mittens and bundles and unpedigreed dogs drop up of afternoons for a stein and a chat. Even by gaslight the diversions are melancholy i' the mouth—drink and rag-time, and an occasional surprise when the waiter swabs ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... when a bridge has to be made, there is an infinite pother and worry about building the piers, coffer-dams, and heaven knows what else. Some swing their bridges to avoid this trouble, and some try to throw an arch of one span from side to side. There are a thousand different tricks. In Belfort ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... In the meantime, Miss Long hath become quite cruel to Wellesley Pole, and divides her favor equally between Lords Killeen and Kilworth, two as simple Irishmen as ever gave birth to a bull. I wish to Hymen that she were fairly married, for all this pother gives one a disgusting picture of ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... moment, that a sharp little, gray little, dark-spotted, clean-cut, close-cropped, intelligent head, on a snaky, long neck, peeped out of the shadows, and peered about, as if to see what in whiskers all the pother was about. The head might have been there by chance, but it wasn't. Its owner had been running her trail for hours, and looking for it for days, and didn't mean to let her go, now that he had finally come up with her, polecats or no polecats, smells or not. But he was not ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... coward fool. Did I not tell thee that there are no Gods? lo! you now! for what should they have roused this trumpery pother, if not to strike me? Tush, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... fuss and bustle. This is his idea of a tragic scene: A little fellow comes bustling in, goes bustling about, and runs bustling out." Here Mr. Cibber left the room, to give greater effect to his description, but presently returned in a mighty pother, saying: "'Give me another horse!' Well, where's the horse? don't you see I'm waiting for him? 'Bind up my wounds!' Look sharp now with these wounds. 'Have mercy, Heaven!' but be quick about it, for the pit can't wait for Heaven. Bustle! ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... left in a shabby way To Marcadee, with an abbot to pray And pother with "consolation," Reminding 'twas never too late to search For mercy, and hinting that Mother Church Was never known to leave in the lurch A king with a fat donation. But the abbot was known to Richard ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... herself in front of the door; I pushed her aside so roughly that she fell, and, I believe, hurt herself slightly. She immediately filled the house with her cries; and later, in the trial, made a great pother about what she was pleased to call an attempt to murder her. I at once entered Edmee's room; there I found the abbe and the doctor. I listened in silence to what the latter was saying. I learnt that the wounds ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... any person who should inquire about their motions. "As for my own peart, measter," continued this charitable publican, "I believes as how they are no better than they should be, else they wouldn't be in such a deadly fear of being overtaken. Methinks, said I, when I saw them in such a woundy pother to be gone, oddsheartlikins! this must be some London 'prentice running away with his measter's daughter, as sure as I'm a living soul. But, be he who he will, sartain it is, a has nothing of the gentleman about en; for, thof a asked such a favour, a never ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... the insurgent and free poets didn't trouble Mary Virginia very much. Although she sensed that something was wrong with somebody somewhere—hence these lyrical lamentations—she could not, to save her, tell what all the pother was about, for as yet she saw the world couleur de rose. Some one or two of the French and Germans pleased her; she fell into long reveries over the Gael, who has the sound of the sea in his voice and whose eyes are full of a haunting light, as of sunsets upon graves. But it ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... is much larger than is generally imagined, and that number tends to increase steadily. They are women who, with their economic independence assured, either by inheritance or by their own efforts, chiefly in the arts and professions, do exactly as they please, and make no pother about it. Naturally enough, their superiority to convention and the common frenzy makes them extremely attractive to the better sort of men, and so it is not uncommon for one of them to find herself voluntarily sought in marriage, without any preliminary scheming by herself—surely ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... Pother (Doctor), an apothecary, "city register, and walking story-book." He had a story ['a] propos of every remark made and of every incident; but as he mixed two or three together, his stories were pointless ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... terrific pother. Stephen wakened violently, and in a moment all three were staring ineffectually at the thousand crystal ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... repairs. And all the while wise, gray old Finn sat erect on his haunches beside the writing-table, looking on approvingly, and reflecting, no doubt, upon the prowess of the youngster who had caused all this pother. ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... unashamed, the woods were smiling; southward, a long flash spoke of the sunlit peaks and the dead march of snow; and there, a league away, grey Pau was basking contentedly, her decent crinoline of villas billowing about her sides, lazily looking down on such a fuss and pother as might have bubbled out of the pot of Revolution, but was, in fact, the hospitable rite daily observed on the arrival ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... which eugenists raise such a pother, are surely not the worst curses that mankind has to bear. Some of the greatest men in history have had them; whole nations have had them and survived. The truth about them is that, save in relatively rare cases, they do very little damage. The horror in which ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... smote and over-rode the waves, and, beating them down, maintained an unvarying, stubborn poise. But although she refused to vacillate or shuffle to the wooing efforts of the uneasy waters, she progressed not without noise and pother; foamed and fumed mightily at the bow and left behind her a wake, receding almost as far as the eyes might reach. Captain Macpherson looked after the bubbles, cast his glance aloft at the bulging patches of white, and then condescended to observe the agent of the ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... Yatton, and the lady whom he had striven to attract the notice of in Hyde Park, were one and the same beautiful woman, and that that beautiful woman was neither more nor less than the sister of the present owner of Yatton—the marvellous discovery created a mighty pother in his little feelings. The blaze of Kate Aubrey's beauty in an instant consumed the images both of Tabitha Tag-rag and Dora Quirk. It even for a while outshone the splendors of ten thousand a-year: such is the inexpressible and incalculable power of woman's beauty over everything ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... very word etiquette is an irritant. It implies a great pother about trifles, these conscientious objectors assure us, and trifles are unimportant. Trifles are unimportant, it is true, but then life is made up of trifles. To those who dislike the word, it suggests all that is finical and superfluous. It means a garish embroidery on the big ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... my father sent I was not told; but two days later, a little before sundown, I saw a plain, honest-looking man ride slowly up the road in a great pother of dust. He was clad in homespun, with a broad straw hat; wore a patriarchal beard; and had an air of a simple rustic farmer, that was, in my eyes, very reassuring. He was, indeed, a very honest ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at the mouth of Superior Bay, where conflicting currents make a pother of waters. This spirit sat on the bottom of the lake, gazing upward, and if any boatman ventured to cross his domain without dropping a pipe or beads or hatchet into it, woe betide him, for his boat would be caught in a current and smashed against a rocky shore. Perhaps ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... and the friend who had come to help quarrelled shrilly, she murmured, 'Poor things! putting themselves in such a pother!' When, after a crash, Martha was heard to say, 'There's the cream-jug now! Well, break one, break three!' she only shook her head, and murmured that servants were not what they used to be. When Martha's friend's little boy dropped the urn—presented to the late Mr. Marston by a grateful congregation, ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... 24 'Pother;' to be, or cause to be, as one involved in dust, in a cloud; to perplex, to puzzle, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... What an immense pother, by parliamenting and palavering in all corners of your empire, to decide such a question as that! I say, if that is the function, almost any human creature can learn to discharge it: fling out your orange-skin again; ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... is what ails me; I am growing shiftless. When I came on board I decided to marry Arthur, and have done with the pother. Now I am at the same place as when I left home. I don't want to marry anybody. Have you ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... great gods, That keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads, Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch, That hast within thee undivulged crimes Unwhipp'd of justice: hide thee, thou bloody hand; Thou perjur'd, and thou simular man of virtue That art incestuous: ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... when Pelle tumbled out of the nest, it so happened that old Klaus Hermann was clattering into town with his manure-cart, in order to fetch a load of dung. And this trifling circumstance decided the boy's position in life. There was no more pother than this about the question: ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... half a week after the Wind sallied forth, And, in anger or merriment, out of the North Coming on with a terrible pother, From the peak of the crag blew the Giant away. And what did these School-boys?—The very next day They went and ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... But what a pother about a simple act of charity! In order to repeat it habitually I shall have to rely on the fortuitous attendance of a boy and a policeman, or have a policeman and a boy permanently attached to my person, which would be as agreeable as the continuous ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... pedigree bulls and his pedigree mares. "It's money clean wasted," said the old farmers, "for a calf's a calf no odds what begets it, and a horse that can work in chains and take its turn on the road is horse enough for any man, without sinking money in dumb beasts, and a' this sire-and-dam pother." It would anger the old man that talk, ay, even when he was the old frail frame of what once he was,—like a dead and withered ash-tree, dourly awaiting the death gale to send it crashing down, to lie where once its shade fell in the hot summer days of its ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... make the lady believe so, or rather, I begin first to make myself believe that I am in love—but I carry on my affairs quite in the French way, sentimentally—l'amour (say they) n'est rien sans sentiment. Now, notwithstanding they make such a pother about the word, they have no precise idea annexed to it. And so much for that same subject called ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... last the contest rose, From words they almost came to blows: When luckily came by a third— To him the question they referred, And begged he'd tell 'em, if he knew, Whether the thing was green or blue. "Sirs," cries the umpire, "cease your pother! The creature's neither one or t'other. I caught the animal last night, And viewed it o'er by candlelight: I marked it well—'t was black as jet— You stare—but, sirs, I've got it yet, And can produce it." "Pray, sir, do; I'll lay my ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... had somewhat spent itself, she retreated to her brothers, to whom she poured out a full and animated account of the night's happenings. They all agreed that Mademoiselle must have rats in the upper story to make such a pother over the adventure, though Maxwell, who held himself to be approaching years of discretion, gave it as his opinion that the whole thing was a piece of bad luck and an experiment ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... of pother about a capuchin who had stared at the Madonnino of Anguissola! The matter was out of all proportion to the stir it made, and I conveyed in my next words some notion ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini |
