"Reluctant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Billy Little called them, which, with his own, made up the number he was to take. His adventurous New York trip raised him greatly in the estimation of Mrs. Bays. It brought her to realize that he was a man, and it won, in a degree, her reluctant respect. The ride over the mountains through rain and mud and countless dangers was an adventure worthy to inspire respect. The return would be easier than the eastward journey. Dic would return from New York to Pittsburg by canal boat and stage. From ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... Belle-Isle's son was killed in battle, Madame persuaded the King to pay his father a visit. He was rather reluctant, and Madame said to him, with an air ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 2 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... the effect of some of the work in the public schools is in the exactly opposite direction. If boys and girls are trained merely in literary accomplishments, to the total exclusion of industrial, manual, and technical training, the tendency is to unfit them for industrial work and to make them reluctant to go into it, or unfitted to do well if they do go into it. This is a tendency which should be strenuously combated. Our industrial development depends largely upon technical education, including in this term all industrial education, from that which fits a man ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... understood it. There were a dozen witnesses to prove that I had been in the thick of the rebellion. Among the rest was Volney, in a vile temper at being called on to give testimony. He was one of your reluctant witnesses, showed a decided acrimony toward the prosecution, and had to have the facts drawn out of him as with a forceps. Such a witness, of high social standing and evidently anxious to shield me, was worth to the State more than ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... us from summoning the law to protect us against his persecutions; and though he cannot injure us as seriously as he flatters himself, he can at least cause us a thousand annoyances, which I am reluctant to face. Throw him gold and let him take himself off. But do not leave me again, Bernard; you see you have become absolutely necessary to me; brood no more over the wrong you pretend to have ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... were ill received by the selected victim, who, as soon as his leg was released from the crook, made as if to back away again; but his companions put a stop to this and began urging him on, trying to incite him to begin, he reluctant and resisting all the time, till his ire was roused by Marcus, who, at a word from the old soldier, dashed in to make a beginning, using his fists upon his enemy so well that, at the end of two or three minutes, the latter ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... and provide for them all such substitutes or distractions, in compensation for my loss, as my fertile imagination could suggest. At first, for the sake of Blanche, Roland, and my mother, I talked the Captain into reluctant sanction of his sister-in-law's proposal to unite their incomes and share alike, without considering which party brought the larger proportion into the firm. I represented to him that unless he made that sacrifice of his pride, my mother would be wholly without ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hunger and by anger at this outrageous act to the object of worship, questioned Ei-sai by way of reproach: "Is it, sir, right for us Buddhists to demolish the image of a Buddha?" "Well," replied Ei-sai promptly, "Buddha would give even his own life for the sake of suffering people. How could he be reluctant to give his halo?" This anecdote clearly shows us self-sacrifice is of first ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... up the broken-handled butcher knife that was in the camp kit, and declaimed tragically: "Is this a dagger that I see before me?" and much more of the kind that was eery. He saw the reluctant dimple which showed fleetingly in Evadna's cheek, and also the tears which swelled her eyelids immediately after, but she did not know that he saw them, though ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... conception of the consequences of the wrath. To have inserted the battle at the ships, in which Sarpedon breaks down the wall of the Greeks, immediately after the occurrences of the first book, would have been too abrupt altogether. Zeus, after his reluctant promise to Thetis, must not be expected so suddenly to exhibit such fell determination. And after the long series of books describing the valorous deeds of Aias, Diomedes, Agamemnon, Odysseus, and Menelaos, the powerful intervention ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... spoke. It may have been only a few moments, but to me it seemed like an eternity. I did not know then that Mildred was reluctant to extinguish the last spark of hope in me. At length ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... neighbourhood by way of Westbourne Terrace; but his walks constantly led him in an easterly direction; and whether in an unconscious hugging of his chains, or, as was more probable, from the desire to save time, he would drag his aching heart and reluctant body through the sordidness or the squalor of this short cut, rather than seek the pleasanter thoroughfares which were open to him. Even the prettiness of Warwick Crescent was neutralized for him by the atmosphere ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... make it possible to accompany me after all. She is certainly very delicate, and greatly needs a change of air and scene to renovate her constitution. And then your going with me before the end of May, is apparently out of the question, unless you are disappointed in your visitors; but I should be reluctant to wait till then, if the weather would at all permit an earlier departure. You say May is a trying month, and so say others. The earlier part is often cold enough, I acknowledge, but, according to my experience, we are almost certain of some fine warm days ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... we got through without having any men killed. One more night would carry us over the hostile frontier if we had good luck, and we saw the night close down with a good deal of solicitude. Always before, we had been more or less reluctant to start out into the gloom and the silence to be frozen in the fords and persecuted by the enemy, but this time we were impatient to get under way and have it over, although there was promise of more and harder fighting than any of the previous nights had furnished. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Joe was never a reluctant convert to anything. When he saw the new way, his instinct was for immediate action. "Let's go over to Mr. Drury's," he proposed, "and see if we can't settle this thing to-day. I hope Marcia's right," and he looked into her eyes with a glance of something ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... a journeyman, small in frame, and saved from the draft by not attaining the required military height; naturally lean and made more so by hard work and the enforced sobriety under which reluctant workers like Courtecuisse succumb. His face was no bigger than a man's fist, and was lighted by a pair of yellow eyes with greenish strips and brown spots, in which a thirst for the possession of property was mingled with a concupiscence which had no heat,—for desire, once at the boiling-point, ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... of reluctant assent. "I don't quite know how I can do it personally, in view of the figure wheat is standing at, and I don't think much of any security that Gregory could offer me. Still, there is, perhaps, a way in which it could be arranged, and it's one that, considering everything, is more or less admissible. ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... much larger in the general scheme of things than their intrinsic importance warranted. It was interesting, having heard the bishop's opinion of Emmet, to get Emmet's view of the bishop, a view that was by no means without a certain reluctant respect and admiration. Leigh felt that his prejudice was impassioned, rather than intellectual, and would yield gradually to a change of circumstances, whereas the bishop would never revise his judgment. He was impressed also by the fact that Miss Wycliffe ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... had yielded, if there was in her a reluctant practical certainty that Mary would some day be Meynell's wife, then her conscience, which was that of a woman who had passionately loved her husband, began to ask: "Ought she not to be standing by him in this trouble? If we keep ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of the senora's, bore this conviction to Lola's breast. Jane had faltered in the trust which she had assumed, and now, confronted with the embarrassment of facing Lola's father in a plain confession of her delinquency, she hesitated and was miserable and afraid and reluctant. Rather than state her situation she would even keep Lola ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... except the waiter at the Dodo, now laying the cloth. I have paced the streets, and stared at the houses, and am come back to the blank bow window of the Dodo; and the town clocks strike seven, and the reluctant echoes seem to cry, 'Don't wake us!' and the bandy-legged baby has gone home ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... garb and harness of a slave, dragged and whipped about like a beast; place this image also before him, and paint it as that of one without a ray of hope to cheer him; and you would extort from him the reluctant confession, that he would not endure for an hour the misery to which he condemned his fellow-man for life. How dared he, then, to use this selfish plea of interest against the voice of the generous sympathies of his nature? But even upon ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... The act of removing a feature from a program. Featurectomies come in two flavors, the 'righteous' and the 'reluctant'. Righteous featurectomies are performed because the remover believes the program would be more elegant without the feature, or there is already an equivalent and better way to achieve the same end. (Doing so is not quite the same thing as removing a {misfeature}.) Reluctant featurectomies ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... to charge such a holy body of men with duplicity, but is there not "a sort of a smack, a smell to?" They are reluctant to pray for rain, on the alleged ground that Omnipotence should not be interfered with rashly. But the sincerity of this plea is questionable when we reflect that it obviously favors the clergy. Our climate is variable, long spells of particular weather are infrequent, and if when one occurs the ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... inevitably followed by some such grievous results as the present. This income-tax, however, let our opponents know, will serve for many years to come, long after it may have been removed, as a memento to prevent the country from tolerating the return to power of men whose reluctant and compulsory exit from power, after again doing enormous mischief, will be followed by a similar result—will impose on their Conservative successors the bitter necessity of imposing another income-tax. "The evil that they do," does indeed "live after them;" and without any "good, interred ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... let us see the inferences to be drawn from the fact that the distance of a planet from the sun is not constant. The motion in a circle is one of such beauty and simplicity that we are reluctant to abandon it, unless the necessity for doing so be made clearly apparent. Can we not devise any way by which the circular motion might be preserved, and yet be compatible with the fluctuations in the ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... originality, resourcefulness, and vision. There were strong groups from Ann Arbor and Oberlin and Mt. Holyoke, and there was a fourth group of "pioneer scholars, not wholly college bred, but enriched with whatever amount of academic training they could wring or charm from a reluctant world, whom Wellesley will ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... bringing with them horses to be bartered for elephants. In order to reach the sea, open plains must be traversed, across which it requires the utmost courage, agility, and patience of the Moors to coax their reluctant charge. At Manaar the elephants are usually detained till any wound on the leg caused by the rope has been healed, when the shipment is effected in the most primitive manner. It being next to impossible to induce the still untamed creature to walk on board, and no mechanical ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... As I have said, I did not undertake to argue the men out of this belief, partly because I wished to learn from them all they thought and felt on the subject, and partly, I must confess, because I was reluctant to lay a hard hand upon a source of comfort which, to them, holds a large portion of their earthly enjoyments, especially when I could not replace it with a substitute which they would accept, and which would yield them an ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... and sweep th' expanse on high: From Tithon's bed now might Aurora rise, Her cheeks all glowing with celestial dies, While a pure stream of light o'erflows the skies. The monarch of the day I might behold, And all the mountains tipt with radiant gold, But I reluctant leave the pleasing views, Which Fancy dresses to delight the Muse; Winter austere forbids me to aspire, And northern tempests damp the rising fire; They chill the tides of Fancy's flowing sea, Cease then, my song, ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... that it was an admirable idea, and would undoubtedly be of the utmost value—if it could only be carried out. Togo was of opinion that it could not; I, on the contrary, was convinced that it could; and at length I managed to get the Admiral's somewhat reluctant consent ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... reliance whatever on Donnel Dhu's impostures, still felt reluctant to destroy the hope occasioned by such an agreeable illusion. "Well," he replied, "although I don't much believe in anything that ould scoundrel says; I trust, for all that, that he has tould ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... spiteful look at Cargrim, for she saw plainly that he had intentionally deprived her of a confidential conversation with Gabriel. The chaplain received the look—which he quite understood—with an amused smile and a bland inclination of the head. As he walked out arm-in-arm with the reluctant Pendle, Bell banged the pewters and glasses about with considerable energy, for the significant demeanour of Cargrim annoyed her so much that she felt a great inclination to throw something at his head. But then, Miss Mosk was a high-spirited girl and believed in actions rather ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... of permanent session: Sir Robert Peel tells us its discussions continued from the 25th of November to the 5th of December. With the exception of the Duke of Buccleugh and Lord Stanley, his colleagues gave their consent to his proposal; in some instances, however, he felt it was a reluctant consent. Under such circumstances, he considered he could not succeed in a complete and final adjustment of the Corn Law; so, on the 5th of December, he repaired to Osborne and placed his resignation in the hands of ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... compensated by his saving in wages. The less proportion wages bear to the value of the goods, the higher, generally speaking, is the recompense of labour. The prudent master of a fine spinning-mill is most reluctant to tamper with the earnings of his spinners, and never consents to reduce them till absolutely forced to it by a want of remuneration for the capital and skill embarked in his business" (Philosophy of Manufactures, p. 330). This does not, however, prevent Dr. ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... government. But was there indeed a Parliament? Were there not on the benches many men who had, as all the world knew, no right to sit there, many men whose elections were tainted by corruption, many men forced by intimidation on reluctant voters, and many men returned by corporations which had no legal existence? Had not constituent bodies been remodelled, in defiance of royal charters and of immemorial prescription? Had not returning officers been everywhere the unscrupulous agents of the Court? ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... across it without an interpreter. A number of the smaller nations have wholly abandoned their national tongue and talk only the general language. The greater nations, which have fine literature embalmed in their languages, have been more reluctant to abandon them, and in this way the smaller folks have actually had a certain sort of advantage over the greater. The tendency, however, to cultivate but one language as a living tongue and to treat all the others as dead or moribund is increasing at such a rate that if you had ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... few delights of life in camp is the opportunity the tent affords of ready access to the open air. There is no traversing of stairways, no crossing of halls, and no opening of reluctant doors, but only the parting of the canvas, and our world is as wide as the horizon and high as the heavens. Even when the tent door-flap is snugly closed, nature is not wholly shut out. Often I have lain looking up at the stars as they passed slowly across the central ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher
... hour of ten: But ten o'clock arrived and quickly pass'd, Eleven—twelve—and one o'clock at last, Without a sign of supper even then! At length the speed of cookery to quicken, Betty was called, and with reluctant feet, Came up at a white heat— "Well, never I see chicken like them chicken! My saucepans, they have been a pretty while in 'em! Enough to stew them, if it comes to that, To flesh and bones, and ...
— English Satires • Various
... and the main body so that no sound close at hand might distract his attention from hails or signals farther out. Suddenly he heard an exclamation ahead, the snort of a frightened horse, then some muffled objurgations, a rider urging a reluctant steed to approach some suspicious object, and, spurring his own spirited charger forward, Mr. Drummond came presently upon the corporal just dismounting in the darkness and striving to lead his boon companion, whom he could not drive, up to some dark object ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... advanced, and I sent a note by her attendant, soliciting an interview. Her hotel was within a short distance; yet no answer came. I grew more and more reluctant to approach her without her direct permission. There are thousands who will not comprehend this nervousness, but they are still ignorant of the power of real passion. True affection is the most timid thing in the world. At length, unable to endure this fever of the soul, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... Joseph a letter and a request to take the children with her for a long walk, ending at the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens. The children carried their private navies with them and squatted at the brim of the huge basin, poking their reluctant yachts to sea. The boy Victor perfected a wonderful scheme for using a long stick as a submarine. He thrust his arm under water and from a distance knocked his sister's sailboat about till its canvas was afloat and it filled and sank. All the while he wore the most distant ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... was impossible for Henry to consent to plead; while the appearance of the supposed brief had opened avenues of new difficulty which left no hope of a decision within the limits of an ordinary lifetime. Henry was still, however, extremely reluctant[248] to proceed to extremities, and appeal to the parliament. He had threatened that he would tolerate no delay, and Wolsey had evidently expected that he would not. Queen Catherine's alarm had gone so far, that in the autumn she ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... editor; "it goes on pretty much as it used. The Timminses, who give tiresome little dinners which they cannot afford to dull people who don't want them, are still alive and miserably bent on heaping reluctant beneficiaries with undesired favors, and spoiling the simple 'pleasure of the time' with the activities of their fatuous vanity. Or perhaps you think I ought to bring a hopeful mind even ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... to bribe cast a deep shadow on her imagination. Sharing the feeling of many others, she had reached the reluctant conclusion that Mrs. Brace in some way knew more than anybody else about the murder and its motives. It was, she told herself, a horrid feeling, and without reason. But she could not shake it off. To her, Mrs. Brace was a figure ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... and reluctant to descend the two flights of pitch dark stairs with a heavy water-pitcher in my hand, I had brought up no water! It is interesting to wonder how scrupulous we would all be if our baths were carried up and down two flights of stairs pitcher by pitcher. A little water nearly frozen ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... him in no small degree. He was soon made aware of its happy character, and constantly kept assured; indeed, it seemed that whenever Mrs. Simpson had nothing else to do she laid her pen to the task of telling him once again how cherished a satisfaction they found in Laura, and how reluctant they would be to lose it. She wrote in that strain of facile sympathy which seems part of an Englishwoman's education, and often begged him to believe that the more she knew of their sweet and heavenly-minded guest the more keenly she realised how dreary for him must have been the pang of parting ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... sunlight, towards Domremey, there was much misgiving and confusion in his thoughts. He did not comprehend why he was going, except that he had promised. He was not sure that some one might not know him, or perhaps out of mere curiosity stop him and question him. It was a reluctant journey. ...
— The Broken Soldier and the Maid of France • Henry Van Dyke
... time, in which sums of money were appropriated only a little smaller in amount, while of those which reached the value of L100 their name is legion. Many men also there were who, at first swayed by moral scruples, as well as feeling reluctant to disobey the order which had been issued, refrained from looting on their own account; but when they saw that officers, even of the higher ranks, took possession of plunder, these scruples were cast to the winds—it was ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... hair, whilst her face would have seemed rather common but for its charming expression of gentle obstinacy. Those who did not gaze into her eyes, however, gave her no thought. To them she was but an ordinary child, a poor thing of the roads, a girl of reluctant growth, timidly humble in her ways. Assuredly it was in her glance that Abbe Ader had with agitation detected the stifling ailment which filled her puny, girlish form with suffering—that ailment born of the greeny solitude in which she had grown ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... amazes them always is to find that Southern California has the most perfect summer climate in the world, if you keep near the sea. No rain—many are the umbrellas I have gently extracted from the reluctant hands of doubting visitors; no heat such as we know it in the East. We have an out-of-door dining-room, and it is only two or three times in summer that it is warm enough to have our meals there. In the cities or the "back country" it is different. I have felt ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... gentlemen of the diplomatic corps never paid in piecemeal. Here Thomas would put an end to the comedy by announcing the arrival of the 'Minister for Foreign Affairs,' and politely bowing out the retiring gentleman, who, you may well imagine, maintained a reluctant gravity. There was no end of these little diplomatic comediettas, while Bolt honored the mission with his presence, ending in what was long afterwards esteemed a capital joke, which, though somewhat against my feelings, I will confidentially ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... reluctant surges lap And rustle round and down the strand. No other sound . . . If it should hap, The ship that sails from fairy-land! The silken shrouds with spells are manned, The hull is magically scrolled, The squat mast lives, and in the ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... Usucapion, were not beset with any of the speculative doubts and hesitations which have impeded its reception among the moderns. Prescriptions were viewed by the modern lawyers, first with repugnance, afterwards with reluctant approval. In several countries, including our own, legislation long declined to advance beyond the rude device of barring all actions based on a wrong which had been suffered earlier than a fixed point of time in ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... seas remote and glorious, places where words were lovely and deeds heroic, places most beautiful and brave, most admirably, most restfully unlike Creeper Cottage. He rolled out the sentences, turning them on his tongue, savouring them, reluctant to let them go. She sat looking at him, wondering how he could possibly even for an instant forget ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... in any sort of dependence upon the person by whose means I have taken this truly-reluctant step, inconsistent with any reasonable engagement I shall enter into, if I am not further precipitated. Let me not have it to say, now at this important crisis! that I have a sister, but not a friend in that sister. My reputation, dearer to me ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... truth is, I have not completed my plan of operations. What I am to do, I know not yet exactly. If I could break off the match between her and my brother, she might probably, through the influence of her parents and other causes, he persuaded into a reluctant marriage with Harry Woodward; time, however, will tell, and I must only work my way through the difficulty as well as I can. I will now leave you, and I don't think I shall be able to see you again for a ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... she had such arrears of living to make up: her days had been as bare as the whitewashed school-room where she forced innutritious facts upon reluctant children. His coming had broken in on the slumber of circumstance, widening the present till it became the encloser of remotest chances. But imperceptibly the horizon narrowed. Life had a grudge against her: she was never to be ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... to leave home in time to catch the steamer. The more I thought of catching the steamer, the less I cared to do so; the more I thought of leaving home, the less I cared to do so. It was not that I was going away from Sylvia that made me thus reluctant to start. It was because I was going away without taking leave of her,—without a word or even a sign from her. I ground my teeth as I thought of how I had lost the only chance I had had of bidding her farewell, and of assuring her that, no matter what happened, I would be constant to her ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... when his friend had named The Name all-blessed, Kenwalk frowned. Since then That Name was named no more. O'er hill and dale They chased the wild deer; on the billow breathed Inspiring airs; in hall of joyance trod The mazes of the dance. Then war broke out: Reluctant long King Anna sought the field; Hurled back aggression. Kenwalk, near him still, Watched him with insight keener than his wont, And, wondering, marked him least to pagans like Inly, when like perforce in outward deed. The battle frenzy took on him no hold: Severe ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... of desire, Before I extinguish forever the fire Of youth and romance, in whose shadowy light Hope whisper'd her first fairy tales, to excite The last spark, till it rise, and fade far in that dawn Of my days where the twilights of life were first drawn By the rosy, reluctant auroras of Love; In short, from the dead Past the gravestone to move; Of the years long departed forever to take One last look, one final farewell; to awake The Heroic of youth from the Hades of joy, And once more be, though but for an ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... James's married sister, Mrs. Watson, sprang into the breach and pointed out that "things have gone so far that it is now too late to draw back, if scandal is to be avoided." The argument was effective; and, a reluctant consent having been secured, on July 23, 1837, the "position was regularised" by the bridegroom's brother, the Rev. John James, vicar of Rathbiggon, County Meath. "Thomas James, bachelor, Lieutenant, 21st Bengal Native Infantry, and Rose Anna ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... (he was actually talking of withdrawing from the country to Nassau) was by no means acceptable to his high-spirited wife. The princess was all for vigorous action, and she wrung from William a reluctant consent to her returning from Nijmwegen, where for security she had been residing with her family, to the Hague. In that political centre she would be in close communication with Sir J. Harris and Van de Spiegel, and ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... just before the last game, the management excluded almost all, and only a few who had influence were allowed to enter, and this favoritism caused much hard feeling and disgust, so that the students were reluctant to support the team, and lost most of their interest, a fact which had a bad effect on the athletics ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... was to learn that he was to himself an experiment station. On his own person he directly and practically tried out each idea ... his wife was also a convertee, slightly reluctant, to his tests ... and his son, perforce. Baxter actually kept a vegetarian dog. "Even carnivorous animals thrive better on a vegetarian diet." But the dog was no corroboration of his theory. It lacked gloss and shine to its coat, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... was mistaken. Lena did go the very next afternoon, and dragged the reluctant Eva with her. The girls, proposing to join the Sunday promenade on the Avenue later, were in their Sunday best when they presented themselves at the big, old-fashioned frame house ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... her. She watched him from the heavily draped window, and sighed as she wondered if her dashing Americano would storm the house and carry her off like the knights of old. Finally he had to turn away with heavy and reluctant heart, promising himself that he would return when no petulant and sarcastic companions were waiting for him. Then—ah! what dreams ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... there?" Professor Anstice asked at length, pushing away his books as if bidding them a reluctant good-night. ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... Somebody must have suggested to these girls that their father meant to make her his second wife. What if he had done it himself? Of course, under the circumstances, her intelligence could not fail to interpret aright those downcast eyes, those reluctant answers, and the timid, uncertain manner that showed plainly they were afraid of her. They did not like the notion, of course, of what she hoped was before them. That was nothing; so, as they would not talk, she began to devote herself to the younger children, ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... to a foreign power that has obtained the mastery over us, and compels often a most reluctant service. The redemption of Christ restores our liberty and sets us free from the power of sin. If we are truly to live as redeemed ones, we need not only to look at the work Christ did to accomplish our redemption, but to accept and realize fully how complete, how sure, ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray
... political affairs in their own country was another thing that caused our friends to feel more exclusive and somewhat reluctant to mingle with those of other nationalities. Every mail brought them letters and papers from both North and South, and from their distant standpoint they watched with deep interest and anxiety the course of events fraught ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... reluctant, but he finally stumbled out his explanation. "It ain't like you, Doc. Comes from that Lobby woman you got. It's her dirty idea. We've seen the Lobby doctors cutting open our kids, poisoning their blood, ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... climbed the shirt of Nessus glittered handsomely in the light which shone from Heaven: and by this great light above him, as Jurgen mounted higher and yet higher, the shadow of Jurgen was lengthened beyond belief along the sheer white wall of Heaven, as though the shadow were reluctant and adhered tenaciously to Hell. Yet presently Jurgen leaped the ramparts: and then the shadow leaped too; and so his shadow came with Jurgen into Heaven, and ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... sadness of his look gradually disappeared, his eyes began to sparkle, and joy soon suffused his ruddy face. His soul was ablaze with reminiscences, and his unaffected talk was easy and delightful to listen to. I was reluctant to break the charm of it by introducing a subject that might be distasteful to him. It was my desire to hear from his own lips a tale of shipwreck which is virtually without parallel in its ghastly tragedy. I instinctively felt myself creeping on to ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... the young fellow's retreating form with reluctant admiration. "He moves like a trained athlete and he hasn't got a bad face," he admitted. "I pray he does not prove to be ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... how do you explain his extraordinary insistance on taking it inside the cab with him, which the bobby describes? If there wasn't something horrible, awful in that bundle of his, of which he feared the discovery, why was he so reluctant to have it ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... in Chapter XXVIII., had been visited by Ki-chah of Wu in 544 B.C. Here, as a distinguished traveller, he was asked (practically commanded) by one of the ruler's wives to pay her a visit; and, though the reluctant visit was paid with all propriety and reserve, the fact that this woman was at the time suspected of having committed incest with her own brother is considered by uncompromising native critics to leave a slight stain on Confucius' character. ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... castle, the Norman gave him a note to carry to Philip de Malvoisin, begging him to send assistance with all the speed he could. He promised the friar a large reward for doing the errand, and as they parted at the postern door he thrust into Cedric's reluctant hand a piece of gold, adding, "Remember, I will flay off thy cowl and skin if thou ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... girl. I trembled, all hope and all despair, for the issue. She would not be vanquished. Her love was stronger than its hate; her love knew not the name of fear. For a thousand nights, so it seemed, the two remained thus, at grips, as it were, in a death-struggle. Then with a reluctant gesture of abdication the ghost waved a hand; its terrible features softened into a consent, and ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... under the melting tenderness of these tones. The call was irresistible, and obedience a necessity. The powers of evil had, yet, too feeble a grasp on the young man's heart to hold him in thrall. Rising with a half-reluctant manner, and with a shamefacedness that it was impossible to conceal, he retired as quietly as possible. The notice of only a few in the bar-room was attracted ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... dominant personality, the reluctant applicant for work now made his way. He cut an absent-minded figure upon the street, did Mr. Queed, but this time he made his crossings without mishap. Undisturbed by dogs, he landed at the Post building, and in time blundered into a room ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Meade. He also wrote him a second letter—or was it the first?—which he did not send. We quote from this because it really expressed the President's mind, and because the fact that he did not send it only shows how reluctant he was to wound another's ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... Family of Spain. The signing of the bargain, however, did not necessarily end the friction. The authorities were now fully prepared to recognize Columbus as their messenger to the unknown world; but they were reluctant in the extreme that the intrepid navigator should be carried in too comfortable or costly a fashion. In the end Columbus, conceding that half a fleet was better than no ships, gave way and took what was offered him. He himself as Admiral was ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... Bergson has been reluctant to commit himself on the question of immortality, but he of late has become quite convinced of it. He even goes so far as to think it possible that we may find experimental evidence of personal persistence after death. This at least ...
— Dreams • Henri Bergson
... and the statesmen, occupied mainly in sharing power and place, took a very shortsighted view (not for the first time in history) of the great problems that were beginning to present themselves. The British empire in the East was not won by a towering ambition so much as forced upon a reluctant commercial company by the necessities of its position. The English race became dominant in America; but the political connection was broken off mainly because English statesmen could only regard it from the shopkeeping point of view. When ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... On the far side of the beam stands a chief holding a large frond of fern, and, as each man passes under, he gives him a bit of the leaf, while an assistant cuts a notch on a tally-stick for each volunteer. If for any reason any man is reluctant to go farther, he states his excuse, perhaps a bad dream or illness, or sore feet, and returns to the boats, amid the jeers of those who have passed the ordeal, to form one of a party to be left in charge of the ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... has escaped the guessing and conceits of a multitude of writers, most trustworthy of whom are the early Christian Fathers, who, to the end that they might arouse the attention of the sleeping nations, yielded a reluctant, but impartial and graceful, tribute to the long-forgotten creeds of Chaldea, Phenicia, Assyria, and Egypt. Nevertheless, they would never have appealed to the doctrine of Buddha as being most like to Christianity in its rejection of the claims of race, had they not found ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... shallow grave where the dead madman lay, past the clump of snow-laden willows where the starving horses that had worked their way down huddled for shelter, too weak to move. Leaden-hearted, Uncle Bill went with reluctant feet. Before a bend of the river shut from sight the white-roofed cabin from which a tiny thread of smoke still rose, he looked over ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... and closed his eyes, his face grown suddenly weary. His wife drew near to him slowly, with more of pained curiosity than of solicitude in her face, and laid a half-reluctant hand on the ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... You now know why it was that I was reluctant to give you that ingot—why it was that I degraded myself so far as to ask it back. It was the only means I had of continuing a deception on which I believed my father's life depended. But that delusion has been dispelled. I can live ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... mitigated the pain of his bruises; the pirate captain held his treasured gage, and it was his fixed determination to recover it. The man had at first in a rough way treated him fairly, and had allowed him more liberty than the other captives, and he would have felt reluctant to take extreme measure against him to recover the gage. Now he was not only free from any sense of obligation, but had a heavy score to settle ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... comforting assurances. They did not frighten us much, although there was just enough truth in the warnings to make us uneasy. We took our hazing as well as we could inwardly, and of course with imperturbable calm outwardly; but, to make a confession, I was somewhat reluctant to hear the businesslike "Allez! ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... evening he sat at his task, pausing now and then for inspiration, but most of the time diligently pushing his pen over the strongly lined note paper and hopelessly straying from the lines. Meantime, Mrs. Clark walked around on tiptoe, so as not to disturb him, and was reluctant even to call him to his meals in the kitchen. When Skim went to bed his story had got into an aggravating muddle, but during the next forenoon he managed to bring ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... little fish darting, of big fish turning, of yellow sand and some vivid colour. Then came the grate of gravel and the scraping of the boat's bottom on the beach. We jumped ashore eagerly. I left the men, very reluctant, and ascended a natural trail to a high sloping down over which blew the great Trades. Grass sprung knee-high. A low hill rose at the back. From below the fall of the cliff came the ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Dinsmore was not one to let trifles turn him aside. He led the reluctant ex-dentist to a water-trough and soused his ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... about the rich man, which Ursula, not used to rich men, gazed at with surprise. He seemed to expand himself upon the air, and spread out his large person, as she had never known any one else do. And Sir Robert, following him, looked so strangely different. He was very reluctant to be so led about, and, as it were, patronized by the master of the house, and his repugnance took a curious form. His nose was slightly drawn up, as if an odour of something disagreeable had reached him. Ursula, in her innocence, wondered ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... and beneficial, as had been the reunion of old and tried friends, to celebrate a glorious event, yet, like all earthly enjoyments, it was brought to a termination, reluctant as were the friends to separate. Since that day, many have been the demonstrations of grateful joy and gladness on the glorious anniversary of the emancipation of slaves on the West India Islands; ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... life?' she began in a tone of such touching, such lively interest, as called for her reluctant confidence. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... know anything of the sort," protested Amy, although the remark brought a reluctant smile to her lips. "I've known those same prophetic bones to slip ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... did, and her mind dwelt on them with a kind of physical pleasure such as is caused by the contemplation of bright things hanging in the sun. From them all life seemed to radiate; the very words of books were steeped in radiance. She then became haunted by a suspicion which she was so reluctant to face that she welcomed a trip and stumble over the grass because thus her attention was dispersed, but in a second it had collected itself again. Unconsciously she had been walking faster and faster, her body trying to outrun her mind; but she was now on the summit of a ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... like to follow it too. When I have to choose between the death of a Brahmana and that of my own, I would prefer the latter. The killing of a Brahmana is the highest sin, and there is no expiation for it. I think a reluctant sacrifice of one's own self is better than the reluctant sacrifice of a Brahmana. O blessed lady, in sacrificing myself I do not become guilty of self-destruction. No sin can attach to me when another will take my life. But if ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... on latch, a vision white Lingered reluctant, and again Half doubting if she did aright, Soft as the dews that fell that night, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... readest, thou shalt hear new sport! Each to the other side his eyes averted; He first, who most reluctant was ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... passed ere he heard the tramp of Sherman's army sweeping victoriously across the State, and beheld the once proud and haughty Charleston in possession of the Union legions. As he saw the starry flag again waving aloft in triumph, he hastened, with reluctant footsteps, to place himself once more under its protecting folds, thus renewing, in 1865, his oath of allegiance to the government whose authority he ...
— The Flag Replaced on Sumter - A Personal Narrative • William A. Spicer
... sideways at me when the bag passed, but I bore it with fortitude. I took particular notice that the crimson bag passed along the front of our family pew at a very dilatory pace, and tarried a good deal, as if reluctant to leave it. To and fro it passed in front of my nose as if it contained something I should like to smell, and at last moved away altogether. I was glad of that, because it prevented my following the words of the hymn in my book, and, ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... fabric of evidence in ruins. For, secondly, we are fully disposed to concede to the objector that there are, in the books of Scripture, not only apparent but real discrepancies,—a point which many of the advocates of Christianity are, indeed, reluctant to admit but which we think, no candid advocate will feel to be the less true. Nevertheless, even such an advocate of the Scriptures may justly contend that the very reasons which necessitate this admission of discrepancies also ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... became a very fine fellow indeed in his own eyes as he lay there, half asleep, under the silver and purple of the midnight sky. He must be a very fine fellow—so he argued—if she could love him. She had won his reluctant admiration long before she ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... himself, took the final, reluctant look of the artist at the "slicker" man, and moved away. Leslie called ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... musical box from which flowed the touching melody of "Home, Sweet Home." Then came Stephen bearing the Union Jack on a pole, then I in the midst of the hunters and accompanied by Babemba, then the reluctant Sammy, and last of all the two donkeys led by Mazitus, for it seemed that the king had especially ordered that ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... between sensitive people; a common sensual and psychic language, so to speak, to which appeals may be made, and through which intelligent tokens may be exchanged. This common ground is not necessarily—one is reluctant to introduce metaphysical speculation—any hidden "law of beauty" or "principle of spiritual harmony." It is, indeed, as far as we can ever know for certain, only "objective" in the sense of being essentially human; in the ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... moment a man approached the window with a lantern in his hand, and so strongly represented the dreadful state of the roads from the late rains—the length of the stage—the frequency of accidents latterly from under-horsing, &c. &c. that I yielded, a reluctant assent, and ordered out the leaders, comforting myself the while, that considering the inside fare of the coach, I made such efforts to overtake, was under a pound, and that time was no object to me, I certainly ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... would be tough. He knew that shrewd attorney's mind, whetted keen on a generation of lying and reluctant witnesses. Sooner or later, he would forget for an instant and betray himself. Then he smiled, remembering the books he had discovered, in his late 'teens, on his father's shelves and recalling the character of the openminded agnostic lawyer. If he could only ...
— Time and Time Again • Henry Beam Piper
... said nothing. It was not worth while having a row with men who were so overbearing. Even when money appeared in connection with these postprandial games, into which more and more people were being drawn, he still refrained from raising the question; he was reluctant to draw unduly the attention of "plain Mr. Jones" and of the equivocal Ricardo, to his person. One evening, however, after the public rooms of the hotel had become empty, Schomberg made an attempt to grapple with the ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... seems The adverse Gods his homeward course retard. For not yet breathless lies the noble Chief, But in some island of the boundless flood Resides a prisoner, by barbarous force 250 Of some rude race detained reluctant there. And I will now foreshow thee what the Gods Teach me, and what, though neither augur skill'd Nor prophet, I yet trust shall come to pass. He shall not, henceforth, live an exile long From his own shores, no, not although in bands Of iron held, but will ere long contrive His own return; ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... night, they died around us in ship and prison, some from suffocation, some from starvation, others delivered by prison fevers which rotted them so slowly that I think even death shrank back reluctant to touch them with ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... poor Padrone!' was the slow and evidently reluctant avowal of the maiden; for, in the midst of the acknowledgment her sighs came through the crevices of the door: then, without any farther interrogation, and with ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... as were their circumstances, they broke down the German plan for capturing trenches without an infantry attack. They caught the patrols and annihilated them, and then swept back the disillusioned and reluctant main bodies of German troops. First, the bombing parties were felled, then the sappers as they came forward to repair the line for their infantry, and at last the infantry itself in wave after wave of field-gray. The small French garrison of every center of resistance fought with ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... side. He and another got into the boat, when a fearful sea broke over the ship, washing them both out of the boat into the sea, where they were both drowned. The dream made such an impression upon him that he was most reluctant to join the ship, but he overcame his scruples and sailed. On Christmas Eve, when they were nearing Cape Horn, Cleary had a repetition of his dream, exact in all particulars. He uttered a terrible cry, and kept muttering, "I know it will come true." On Christmas Day, exactly as he had foreseen, ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... more fluently and correctly than those whose errors are being criticized. In consequence, the children begin to doubt themselves, to hesitate, and gradually to lose their desire to talk. In fact, so timid and reluctant do they become that by the time they have been in school a few years many teachers find their greatest difficulty in getting pupils to recite well or to talk naturally. Perhaps before and after school and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... personage of so much importance, Sam could not bear the idea of standing all day in Uttoxeter market, offering books to the rude and ignorant country-people. Doubtless he felt the more reluctant on account of his shabby clothes, and the disorder of his eyes, and the tremulous motion ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... company, and was ordered back and forth to various threatened points along the seaboard. His home affairs, meantime, were left in charge of his son, a quiet young man of four-and-twenty, who for three years had been stumbling with a very reluctant spirit through the law-books in the Major's office, and who shared neither his father's ardor of temperament nor his political opinions. Eliza, a daughter of twenty summers, acted as mistress of the house, and stood in place of mother to a black-eyed little ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... as Keller had suggested, and left the old Mexican under the care of Mrs. Tryon, having pledged the family to a reluctant silence until morning. Manuel's wound was not a bad one, and there seemed to be no reason why he should ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... his own wild fancy, without ever asking whether his aspirations were realizable or consistent with humanity. You too, my friend, have been having a long and marvellous dream; and now reason has stuck a pin into you and startled you out of your sleep; your eyes are only half open yet, you are reluctant to shake off a sleep which has shown you such fair visions, and so you scold. It is just the condition of the day-dreamer; he is rolling in gold, digging up treasure, sitting on his throne, or somehow at ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... himself from Honey's reluctant arms and slowly mounted the stairs. Once inside his room, he turned and locked the door, still smiling grimly. He strode to the closet, flung the door open, lifted his dress suit from its peg, and held it at arm's length where it ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... Road! that lov'st to hide Thy daring in a vapoury bourn, Not seldom may the hour return When thou shalt be my Guide: And I (as often we find cause, When life is at a weary pause, And we have panted up the hill Of duty with reluctant will) Be thankful, even though tired and faint, For the rich bounties of Constraint; Whence oft invigorating transports flow That Choice lacked ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... until they are twenty five years old; but after that time they are considered competent to decide for themselves. A writer describes the initiation of a young lady, whose wealthy parents were extremely reluctant to have her take the vow. She held a lighted torch in her hand, in imitation of the prudent virgins; and when the priest chanted, "Your spouse approaches; come forth and meet him," she approached the altar singing, "I follow with my whole heart;" and, ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... despair drove them back; and seeking their last resource in arms, the most quiet, the most passive, the most timid of the human race rose up in an universal insurrection; and, what will always happen in popular tumults, the effects of the fury of the people fell on the meaner and sometimes the reluctant instruments of the tyranny, who in several places were massacred. The insurrection began in Rungpore, and soon spread its fire to the neighboring provinces, which had been harassed by the same person with the same oppressions. The English Chief ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to enable its friends to make head against it, the repeal of the embargo was absolutely necessary. I expressed a just sense of the merit of this information, and of the importance of the disclosure to the safety and even the salvation of our country: and however reluctant I was to abandon the measure (a measure which persevered in a little longer, we had subsequent and satisfactory assurance would have effected its object completely), from that moment, and influenced by that information, I saw the necessity of abandoning ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... should attempt to shorten sail. These now appeared for a moment as though they meditated resistance, but the irresistible dash of the sailors seemed to change their minds, for they submitted without striking a blow, though many of them were very reluctant to give ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... We turn our sad, reluctant gaze Upon the path of duty; Its barren, uninviting ways Are void of bloom and beauty. Yet in that road, though dark and cold, It seems as we begin it, As we press on—lo! we behold There's Heaven ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... love for woods and meadows and the kindly ways of the warm red earth. Grandmother King had been a Ward, and in Uncle Stephen the blood of the seafaring race claimed its own. To sea he must go, despite the pleadings and tears of a reluctant mother; and it was from the sea he came to set out his avenue in the orchard with trees brought ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... depths of woe are sounded and the limit of patience reached when you are forced to get breakfast in the dripping forest. After the chill of early dawn you are always reluctant in the best of circumstances to leave your blankets, to fumble with numbed fingers for matches, to handle cold steel and slippery fish. But when every leaf, twig, sapling, and tree contains a douche of cold water; when ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... A light of humour showed itself through the tears that had come into her eyes. An amused, reluctant smile curved the corners of her mouth. "What, when I was an awkward, clumsy, ignorant schoolgirl, as I remember your calling me one day after I had done something exceptionally stupid? And when you played practical jokes upon me—hung my doll up by its ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... him onward, for the wagon and the pack mules, and even little gray Bunting had turned reluctant ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... minutes, being reluctant to leave, but satisfied at last that Dost's advice was right, and that I must wait patiently for my release, I covered my face with the great palm fan, and said in ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... military duties. Clearly, then, there was some connection between this brilliant fortune and his espousal of Josephine. But the assertion that this command was the "dowry" offered by Barras to the somewhat reluctant bride is more piquant than correct. That the brilliance of Buonaparte's prospects finally dissipated her scruples may be frankly admitted. But the appointment to a command of a French army did not rest with Barras. He was only one of ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... he was very reluctant to have Rogers brought on shore, but finally yielded, being at heart a good-natured man. So we bade Rogers good-bye, made the doctor a present of some provisions, and a few cases of beer, and told him we should ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... moving group of three, a good mark even at this distance. But it is not to be; though the dust spots are all round them, hit them we can't; and at last as they move away in the distance, the last reluctant shot is fired, and we give it up. On this particular occasion we capture one of the Boers a little further on hidden in a farm garden, his horse having been shot, though we did not notice it. This accounts for two ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... peace. After this, we drove slowly back to G—, but a messenger had arrived before us, and said that I must come back again with him, for the bills were already out that I would preach on Sunday and following days at C——. The vicar was most reluctant to let me go, but under these circumstances, he at last consented; so I went back in the carriage the messenger ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... in the least acquainted, to attend him on his embassy to Paris, with a near prospect of being appointed secretary to the embassy; and, in the meanwhile, of performing the functions of that office. This offer, however inviting, I at first declined, both because I was reluctant to begin connexions with the great, and because I was afraid that the civilities and gay company of Paris would prove disagreeable to a person of my age and humour: but on his lordship's repeating the invitation, I accepted of it. I have every reason, both of pleasure and interest, ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... first time saw him,' added he, 'during the ceremony of my installation. He was kneeling on the pavement in the midst of the crowd; his countenance and deportment had something heavenly in them: I inquired who he was, and upon his being named to me, I caused him, though reluctant, to be conducted to one of the first stalls in the choir. I will entreat him,' said moreover the prelate, 'to favor you with his friendship: he shall be your counsel; you cannot have a better.' I made answer, that Monsieur de Beaumont, the illustrious archbishop of Paris, in whose palace ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... reason, but feeling that governed Marble; and, in a bitter hour, he had determined to pass the remainder of his days where he was. Finding all persuasion useless, and the season approaching when the winds rendered it necessary to sail, I was compelled to yield, or resort to force. The last I was reluctant to think of; nor was I certain the men would have obeyed me had I ordered them to use it. Marble had been their commander so long, that he might, at any moment, have re-assumed the charge of the ship; and it was not probable his orders ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... can be found. Another motive was equally strong. Too frequently men of science are accused of restricting the application of their results to their own particular fields of inquiry. As individuals they use their knowledge for the development of world conceptions, which they are usually reluctant to display before the world. It is because I believe that the accusation is often only too well merited that I have endeavored to show as well as circumstances permit how universal is the scope of the doctrine based ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... to honours celestial a right! From their funeral piles in flames eagles soar'd; Earth's heroes grew gods, and dead kings were ador'd. Defensive, fair justice, he fights in thy cause, And his sword, lightning pointed, reluctant he draws, His courage on aggregate perils still grows; And his triumphs increase from multiply'd foes. Ye Caesars, ye Bourbons, ye scourges of God, Ye saw on the wings of the wind how he rode: Revere then heav'ns champion, who, charg'd with your doom, Shall quell the leagu'd hosts of Gaul, ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... something wonderfully appealing about the innocence of the little child. We watch with delight the marvelous development of the little mind keeping pace with the growth of bodily strength and dexterity. We are reluctant to see the day drawing near when the child must begin his long course of training in school. Sometimes we fail to recognize the fact that before school days come the child has already received a considerable part ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... dramatic contrast were these two men, each in his way so masterful, as they appeared in the famous debates. By good fortune we have a portrait of Douglas the orator, from the pen of Mrs. Stowe, who had observed him with reluctant admiration from the gallery of the Senate. "This Douglas is the very ideal of vitality. Short, broad, thick-set, every inch of him has its own alertness and motion. He has a good head, thick black hair, heavy black brows, and a keen face. His figure would be an unfortunate ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... packed away by reluctant hands, boxes tied up and labelled hopefully for the next dance, while heads that had been curled for the big occasion bore testimony to the skill of many willing fingers (not a few of the fingers bearing blisters to still further testify ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... say what: enough that the messenger departed and our friend remained. But, alas! a second envoy followed and proved to be of sterner composition; and with a basket full of food, kava, and tobacco, the reluctant hero proceeded to the wars. I am sure they had few handsomer soldiers, if, perhaps, some that were more willing. And he would have been better to be armed. His gun—but in Mr. Kipling's pleasant ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fearing the charms of her rival, endeavoured to convince Antony of the strength of her passion, by her sighs, her looks, and well-feigned melancholy. He frequently caught her in tears, which she seemingly attempted to hide, and of which she appeared extremely reluctant to tell him the cause. 9. These artifices, together with the ceaseless flattery and importunity of her creatures, prevailed so much on Antony's weakness, that he commanded Octa'via to return home without seeing her; and still more to exasperate the people of Rome, ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... but one joy for the hills to him—the Blight was coming back to them. All those weary waiting months he had clung grimly to his work. He must have heard from her sometimes, else I think he would have gone to her; but I knew the Blight's pen was reluctant and casual for anybody, and, moreover, she was having a strenuous winter at home. That he knew as well, for he took one paper, at least, that he might simply read her name. He saw accounts of her many social doings as well, ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.
... because one of them knew the second engineer; there was Colonel Tingle (swashbuckler); Senor Canaba (scamp), who had bribed both the captain and the chief engineer (Mr. Bidgood); and lastly a brace of crafty Malays, who were the second mate's contribution to the batch, and made a very reluctant appearance upon the scene. Quite as important, however, as this human freight was Susan's cargo of five hundred kegs of gunpowder, shipped as pickled pork, and a wonderful picture which at one time Mr. Bidgood ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... in order to obstruct the sacrifice of my father, stole the sacrificial horse of the horse-sacrifice that had been let loose under the guard of armed men. Prompted by sinful motives, this one ravished the reluctant wife of the innocent Vabhru (Akrura) on her way from Dwaraka to the country of the Sauviras. This injurer of his maternal uncle, disguising himself in the attire of the king of Karusha, ravished also the innocent Bhadra, the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... be made, these, as well as the selection of the objects of her bounty, being left to herself. She had been very full of this strange duty before her marriage, and had selected several persons who, as it turned out, did but little credit to her choice, almost forcing her will upon the reluctant trustees, who had no power to hinder her from carrying it out, and whose efforts at reasoning with her had been totally unsuccessful. In these early proceedings Sir Tom, who was intensely amused by the oddity of the business altogether, and who had then formed no idea of ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... guided by an abbot, named Flahertach, who was by no means so peaceably disposed as his good master. This unruly ecclesiastic urged war on those who were already too willing to undertake it; and then made such representations to the bishop-king, as to induce him to yield a reluctant consent. It is said that Cormac had an intimation of his approaching end. It is at least certain, that he made preparations for death, as if he believed it ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... Clancy's fears, at the same time checking his impatience. Still is he reluctant to stay, and shows it by ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... and miles before it comes to Axmouth, and above Axminster, the Axe flows in singular loops, often returning almost upon itself, reluctant to quit the lovely land of its birth, youth, and maturity; but now it is straighter, for it is in the lowlands and feels the tide. Flocks of seagulls wade or float in it. It passes quietly under its last bridge, but beyond it is confronted by a huge shingle barrier. Sweeping alongside it, ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... consultations held at his chambers, in cases where new trials were to be moved for; his leaders, (one of whom was Mr. Sergeant Talfourd,) considerately waving etiquette, and coming to their dying junior's chambers. They were, as may be supposed, most reluctant to transact business with one in his state, but he insisted upon it. He earnestly requested me not to mention at Westminster, or elsewhere, how ill I thought him; "for if you do, my clients will send me no ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various |
