"Roundabout" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... solvers for their kindly attempts to help me out of the mess into which I had got the plot. I did not like to wound their feelings by saying straight out that they had failed, one and all, to hit on the real murderer, just like real police, so I tried to break the truth to them in a roundabout, mendacious fashion, ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... to take no notice of this remark, and pressed some refreshment upon him; but the old rascal refused, and sat with his knee between his hands, rocking himself backwards and forwards. He went on to make some roundabout inquiries as to who the persons were to whose assistance I had gone, but I told him plainly that I did not ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... deck-hand, we'll take the long boat an' go out an' explore this region roundabout. Somebody may have gasoline somewhere, and if so, we ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... the thermometer registered 108 deg. in the shade. What a climate Natal has! For fickleness it beats anything we have to grumble about in England. At night the temperature went down to 65 deg., and the brilliant summer weather broke up suddenly in a fierce thunderstorm. For a time every object roundabout would be blotted out by inky blackness, and for the next two or three minutes the lowering angry clouds would pulsate with dazzling light that leaped upward like life-blood from the throbbing heart of the storm. Each thundering peal ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... she accidentally betrayed, that she had been instigated to the scheme by her relations the Branghtons, whose letters, which she received today, first mentioned the proposal. She declared that she would have nothing to do with any roundabout ways, but go openly and instantly to law, in order to prove my birth, real name, and title to the estate ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... frock on this particular Sunday. It was starched and ironed with a beautiful gloss, while a touch of distinction was given to her costume by a little black sleeveless "roundabout" made out of the covering of an old silk umbrella. Her flat hat had a single wreath of coarse daisies around the crown, and her mitts were darned in many places, nevertheless you could not entirely spoil her; God had used a liberal hand in making her, and her father's parsimony was ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... is said, that the first awakening thought of those who die is of the tremendous happening that has come upon them. So it was with Sandy. For a while he lay quite still, with his hands folded, and a strange awful brooding, almost as though of fear, breathlessly wrapping his heart roundabout. But it was not for a long time that he lay thus, for suddenly, like a second flash of lightning in the gathering darkness of a cloud, the thought shot through him that no friends had come to meet and to greet him as they had come to meet and greet these others. Why had his wife not come to him? ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... Francis Grose, that roundabout, jovial friend of Burns, was Richmond Herald for many years, but he resigned his appointment in 1763, to become Adjutant and Paymaster of the Hampshire Militia. Grose was the son of a Swiss jeweller, who had settled in London. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... as it happened to be the wrong bell, he obtained the presence of Joseph in a roundabout way, through the agency of a gentleman-in-waiting. Such, however, is the human faculty of adaptation to environment that he was merely amused in the morning by an error which, on the previous night, would have put ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... typewriting. Since then, I have paid back nearly all the rest. But Polly was not satisfied. She wanted me to take my punishment and start fresh. She knew they were watching her so she couldn't write this to me, but she came to me by a roundabout way, taking a year to get here. And all the time she's been here, she's been begging me to go back and give myself up. I couldn't see it. I knew in a few months I'd have paid back all I took, and I thought that was enough. I wanted to keep out of jail. But she said I must ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... have presented the address to the Emperor. But he could not prevent the speech from producing its effect. Although Presburg was only six hours' journey from Vienna, the route had been made so difficult that the news of anything done in the Hungarian Diet had hitherto reached Vienna in a roundabout manner, and had sometimes been a week ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... o'clock this morning; at Albano procured an ancient rural cicerone, a boy, and two donkeys, and set out on the grand giro of the place. The road over the Campagna is agreeable, because the prospect roundabout is so fine, and the aqueducts stretching over the plain so grand. After climbing up to the Capuchin Convent, close to which are the remains of what is called Domitian's Theatre, we came to the lake, which ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... has led me, after a roundabout fashion, to what became for some time the chief delight of my Winters—an employment, moreover, which I have taken up afresh at odd times during my life. It came about thus. My uncle had made me a present of an old book with pictures in it. It ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... the Gordonsville road fork—the left fork leading to Charlottesville—and about a mile beyond the fork Hampton had taken up and strongly intrenched a line across both roads, being reinforced by Fitzhugh Lee, who, as before related, had joined him about noon by a roundabout march. Torbert soon hotly engaged this line, and by the impetuosity of his first attack, gained some advantage; but the appearance of Fitzhugh Lee's troops on the right, and Hampton's strong resistance in front, rendered futile all ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... not but smile, however, to myself that he should make so many circles and roundabout motions to come at a discourse which had no such rarity at the bottom of it, if he had known all. But there was another reason why I resolved not to have him, when, at the same time, if he had courted me in a manner less honest or virtuous, I believe I should ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... made their daily promenade. It was here that he was visited by a kindred spirit, the poet Gay, who had been brought to Edinburgh by his patroness the Duchess of Queensberry, and soon formed acquaintance with the local poet. The two little roundabout bards used to stand together at the door of the shop to watch the crowd, in which no doubt Ramsay would be gratified by a friendly nod from the Lord President, and swell with civic and with personal pride to point out to the English visitor that ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... by "gloom and despondency."(8) The ghosts that hovered so frequently at the back of his mind, the brooding tendencies which fed upon his melancholy and made him at times irresolute, were issuing from the shadows, trooping forward, to encompass him roundabout. ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... Mr. Jeminy came in the chilly dawn, on his way, apparently, to the ends of the earth, and, after breakfast, fell asleep in the hayloft, leaving them both gaping with pleasure and curiosity. For he came, Aaron had to admit, like a tramp; but spoke, Margaret thought, like the Gospels. "He's from roundabout," she said; "I hope he doesn't think to try and sell us anything. Men with something to sell always talk ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... measure through the usual three readings; (7) it was returned to the Bundesrath again to be approved; and (8) it was promulgated by the Emperor—provided he did not see fit to veto and withhold it, as he had an entire right to do. Even if such roundabout law-making were to be considered in itself satisfactory there remained the disquieting condition that the Territorial Committee rested on no basis more substantial than a body of Imperial decrees capable at any time of being altered, or even revoked. Not merely was it altogether lacking ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... emptied her coals on the hearth and surveyed him. He had a red face and bashful eyes, and while the top of his head was quite bald, he had a half-circle of fuzz extending around his face from ear to ear. He wore a roundabout and trousers, and shoes with copper toes. His hands were fat and dimpled as well as freckled. Altogether, he had the appearance of a hugely overgrown boy, ducking his head shyly while Grandma ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... generally received the announcement of both with approval amounting almost to enthusiasm. Of these agreements the former, certainly, and presumably the latter, would be flagrantly illegal in the United States. If, moreover, an attempt were made in America to arrive at the same ends in some roundabout way which would avoid technical illegality, the outburst of popular indignation would make it impossible. Personally I sympathise with the English view and believe both agreements to be not only just ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... him to the rear of the building and thus, by a roundabout way, to the back of the office building. Here she could see a light in the room in which Billy was confined, and after dropping the bridle reins to the ground she made her way to the front of ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a roundabout way to Waterfall Cottage, because she did not want the slight interruption of speaking to Susan Horridge if she went out by the South lodge, the nearest way. By a detour through her own park she entered O'Hart property, which had been in Chancery since she remembered it, ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... she said at length, almost in a whisper, "this is like a dream I once had, of going down and down a long roundabout road, inside the earth, down and down, to the heart of a place full of the dead—the ground black with death, and between ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... the Lusitania case is believed here to mean that the statement was prepared and was ready for promulgation before the destruction of the Lusitania on Friday. Several days usually have been required for messages to come to Washington from Ambassador Gerard, by roundabout cable relay route, and it is believed that this dispatch is ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... with Levi Bedford and Artie before we make another move. Keep your eyes open while I am gone," said the major, and moved off in a roundabout way ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... But she took her revenge on the spy by making his task as difficult as she could. If she detected him in time lying in wait in the bushes by the front of the Pavilion, she would slip out at the back, and reach her favourite haunts by a roundabout path screened by yew hedges, while he imagined her to be still indoors. He was really such an unsuspicious spy that there was hardly any fun in baffling him. She had done so with the usual success one hot afternoon, and was making for a tree under which she ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... it, you know," put in Mrs. Harmon, viewing her benignly. "We heard in a roundabout way that Mr. Brown was paying attention to a ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... Romans themselves perished in war. The continuous killing of the best left room for the "post-Roman herd," who once sold the imperial throne at auction to the highest bidder. As the Romans vanished through warfare at home and abroad, came an inrush of foreign blood from all regions roundabout. ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... Cornwallis, sure of the game, decided to wait till the morrow. He, too, forgot that he was facing an enemy who never overlooked a mistake, and never waited an hour. With quick decision Washington left his camp-fires burning on the river bank, and taking roundabout roads, which he had already reconnoitred, marched on to Princeton. By sunrise he was in the outskirts of the town. Mercer, detached with some three hundred men, fell in with Mawhood's regiment, and a sharp action ensued. Mercer was mortally wounded, and his men gave way just as the main army came ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... slightest idea about the merits of any of them. Some one came up with her nicely the other night, at a party. He had suspicions, I suppose, that she was trying to pass for too much; at all events, he asked her a great many roundabout questions, which she was obliged to answer, and in doing so she let out the secret. Every body saw what sort of a coin she ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... pots to a crossway. Every one who passed by took out of them as much money as his hand could grasp, and yet the money wouldn't come to an end. Then they presented a petition to the Emperor, and he ordained as follows. There was a certain town, the road to which was a very roundabout one. It was some fifty versts long, whereas if it had been made in a straight line it would not have been more than five. And so the Emperor ordained that a bridge should be made the whole way. Well, they built a ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... if they did desire it. The shrewd Roman said: "The gods will give us what is most appropriate; man is dearer to them than to himself." But the faithful Anglo-Saxon maintains that his prayer is none the less answered even if it be denied, and that it is made up to him in some roundabout way. It is inconceivable to the Anglo-Saxon that there may be a strain of sadness and melancholy in the very mind of God; he cannot understand that there can be any beauty in sorrow. To the Celt, sorrow itself is dear and beautiful, and the mournful wailing of ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... du Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine; he remembered the Cul-de-Sac Genrot arranged there like a trap, and of the sole exit of the Rue Droit-Mur into the Rue Petit-Picpus. He made sure of his back burrows, as huntsmen say; he hastily despatched one of his agents, by a roundabout way, to guard that issue. A patrol which was returning to the Arsenal post having passed him, he made a requisition on it, and caused it to accompany him. In such games soldiers are aces. Moreover, the principle is, that in order to get the best ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... everything in the clearing; they leaped over each other as if playing leap-frog; they vied with each other in the high jump. Sometimes they gathered together in the middle of the open space and crept about close to the ground, in and out and roundabout, like a game of fox and geese. Then they rose on their hind legs and hopped slowly about in all the dignity of a minuet. Right in the midst of the solemn affair some mischievous fellow gave a squeak and a big jump; and away they all went hurry-skurry, for all the world like a lot of boys turned ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... to me yesterday, which illustrates the very roundabout way in which justice is arrived at among us all here. The coolies in a French coolie ship rose. The master and mate jumped overboard, and the coolies ran the ship on shore, where the crew had their clothes, &c., taken from them, but were otherwise well treated. On this a French man-of-war ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... have to go that roundabout way by the road, and get to Lanesport two or three hours late. There was nothing else to be done, however, so I went up the wharf once more, and started along the road. At the turn, just beyond the house, I found Mr. Snider, walking ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... source which cannot be doubted to be authentic," wrote the London Correspondent of the Bleater, within the last year, "that Lord John Russell bitterly regrets having made that explicit speech of last Monday." These are not roundabout phrases; these are plain words. What does Lord John Russell (apparently by accident), within eight-and-forty hours after their diffusion over the civilised globe? Rises in his place in Parliament, and unblushingly declares that if the occasion could arise five hundred ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... skies, pattering drops and undisturbed sleep. At sea, you may escape both blinding glare and mosquito bites. A boat is also the only means of realizing the beauty of the coast. Most beautiful is the roundabout sail from Cannes to the le St. Marguerite: I say roundabout, because, if the wind is adverse, the boatmen have to make a circuit, going out of their course to the length of four or five miles. Every tourist knows the story of the Iron Mask; ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... seemed to have had a very roundabout idea of a road, for the lumps of sugar were scattered zigzag in every direction, and, at one place, led directly through a knot-hole in a fence as if nobody could possibly have any trouble in getting through that; but, as the little ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... roundabout way behind the village and saw the great big stone, such a heavy stone that five or six strong peasants could never begin to move it. But our poor fellow with his faithful Woe Bogotir removed it at once. They looked inside. Under the stone there was a pit, a dark, deep pit. At the bottom of ...
— Folk Tales from the Russian • Various
... branch banks' drafts were in form of bank notes, signed by the chief employees of the branches, drawn, it might be, on each other or on the main bank. A great issue of paper was thus brought about; without this roundabout method it would have been impossible to have forced the issue of the notes from the mere physical inability of the president and cashier to sign so large a number. Congress had always refused to delegate this power to any other persons; in consequence of this practice the ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar
... studying the cracks and blemishes in the stucco walls of No. 89 Avenida Norte, encouraged by the occasional flutter of a hand or a soulful sigh from behind the lace screen at the third window from the corner. But when Sunday came he was in no mood to continue this roundabout and embarrassing mode of courtship longer. He made an early start from his quarters, ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... from his first term of service in the House of Burgesses, where he had sat as member for the county of Louisa, he removed his residence into that county, and established himself there upon an estate called Roundabout, purchased by him of his father. In 1768 he returned to Hanover, and in 1771 he bought a place in that county called Scotch Town, which continued to be his seat until shortly after the Declaration of Independence, when, having become governor of the new State of Virginia, ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... Christian is called upon by his Master to live out and actualise God's ideal thought concerning him. Upon the map of his life is already marked out the road by which he is to reach the heavenly city; if, at least, he reaches it, as God intends, by the shortest way. There are no roundabout roads marked on the map in the Mount, and yet the Divine Plan of our life will be found inclusive of the minutest necessary details, just as an Ordnance map will tell you each feature of interest and importance as you go from place to place. ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... what you mean. You think that I have done you a service; so you feel yourself bound to give me something which I am not to give to a neighbour, unless he has done something special for me. I have heard of this kind of thing; but pardon me for saying, that it seems to us a troublesome and roundabout custom; and we don't know how to manage it. And you see this ferrying and giving people casts about the water is my business, which I would do for anybody; so to take gifts in connection with it would look very queer. Besides, if one person gave me ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... right suggestion, no matter how good it is, will only annoy the patient and send her farther on in the wrong path; but if given in some gentle roundabout way, so that she feels that she has discovered for herself what you have been trying to tell her, it will work wonders toward ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... of men, for a moment decline Your feats in the rhubarb and ipecac line; While you shut up your turnpike, your neighbors can go The old roundabout road to ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... through the underwood, and swim across a pond, that would bring him by a very short cut to the old grandam's cottage, while he shrewdly guessed that the little girl would stop to gather strawberries, or to make up a posy, as she loitered along the pleasanter but more roundabout path through the wood. And sure enough the wolf, who cared neither for strawberries nor for flowers, made such good speed that he had presently reached the grandmother's cottage. Thump, thump, went the wolf against the door. "Who is there?" cried the grandam from within. "Only ...
— Bo-Peep Story Books • Anonymous
... beleaguering forces get mortally tired. But what struck me, and what I resented most, is that those pitfalls, barricades, and the whole array of defence are not so much erected for the repulse of the enemy as to give them the sensation of warfare. I spoke of this in a roundabout way with a clever woman only half a Pole, for her father ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... pleasure or of all that may be reckoned as happiness, or even than all threatenings of pain and misfortune. Nevertheless, this is actually the case, and if human nature were not so constituted, no mode of presenting the law by roundabout ways and indirect recommendations would ever produce morality of character. All would be simple hypocrisy; the law would be hated, or at least despised, while it was followed for the sake of one's own advantage. The letter ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... of this and that to those sage carters who rest for ever in the taps of country inns, while the big sleek brass jingling horses wait patiently outside with their waggons; he got a job with some van people who were wandering about the country with swings and a steam roundabout and remained with them for three days, until one of their dogs took a violent dislike to him and made his duties unpleasant; he talked to tramps and wayside labourers, he snoozed under hedges by day and in outhouses ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... 'Now, Potts, you know as well as any man in this town that you're an all-round no-good—you're a human Not—and a darn scalawag into the bargain. So what's the use? Will you go, or won't you?' Then if he'd begin to hem and haw and try to put it off with one thing or another, why, just hint in a roundabout way—perfectly genteel, you understand—that there'd be doings with a kittle of tar and feathers that same night at eight-thirty sharp, rain or shine, with a free ride right afterward to the town line and mebbe a bit beyond, without no cushions. Up about the Narrows ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... route of march, with Steele's and Tuttle's divisions. Blair's division remained at Milliken's Bend to protect our depots there, till relieved by troops from Memphis, and then he was ordered to follow us. Our route lay by Richmond and Roundabout Bayou; then, following Bayou Vidal we struck the Mississippi at Perkins's plantation. Thence the route followed Lake St. Joseph to a plantation called Hard Times, about five miles above Grand Gulf. The road was more or less occupied by wagons and detachments ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... you take up Hartman; perhaps you can stand it from him. But if I were to hold forth to you in the style he prefers, you would get sick of me in twenty minutes. Let it suffice that my lonely vigils are spent in severe studies and profound meditations, the fruit whereof, in a somewhat indirect and roundabout way, may make smooth and safe the path that is traversed by your fairy feet. In the expressive language of the poet, Be happy; tend thy flowers; be ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... back. It became unspeakably unpleasant, when we got into rather cold weather, crossing the Banks of Newfoundland, when the only way I had to keep warm during the night, was to pull on my waistcoat and my roundabout, and then clap the shooting-jacket over all. This made it pinch me under the arms, and it vexed, irritated, and tormented me every way; and used to incommode my arms seriously when I was pulling the ropes; so much so, that the mate asked me once if ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... Kitty patiently. She knew Betty's roundabout way of telling a story, and waited. "What did you tell Aunt Pike? Do tell me, Betty dear. I ought to know ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... fellow with a red nose and white hair, seemed utterly dejected; while the woman, a little roundabout, fat woman, with shining cheeks, looked at the agent of the authorities who had arrested ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... in 'er I don't know. I asked 'im one evening—in a roundabout way—and he answered in such a long, roundabout way that I didn't know wot to make of it till I see that she was standing just behind me, listening. Arter that I heard 'er asking questions about me, but I didn't 'ave to listen: I could ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... considered to be the finest ever known, but he could never be induced to publish them. In one of his lectures he wished to explain that the Greeks had no chimneys to their houses, and created much amusement by explaining it in his scholarly and roundabout fashion: "The Greeks had no convenience by which the volatile parts of fire could be conveyed into the open air." This tutor was a friend of the great Dr. Johnson, and seemed to have been quite an original character, for when his brother, John ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... ever continue in the one path which nature has prescribed for them, as if they were tied and bound. But in brutes the gentleness of mood inspired by reason, the subtlety, the love of freedom, are not qualities found in excess, but they have unreasonable appetites and desires, and act in a roundabout way within certain limits, riding, as it were, at the anchor of nature, and only going straight under bit and bridle. But in man reason, which is absolute master, inventing different modes and fashions of life, has left no plain or evident ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... best, and, so that the neighbours shouldn't see her, went up a passage between some model lodging-house buildings, and in this roundabout way got into the Westminster Bridge Road, and soon found herself in front of ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... "Roundabout trail, an' rough, but you'll make it in one day, easy. Beautiful country. Open, big peaks an' ranges, with valleys an' lakes. ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... had been deliberating how to begin. He felt that he could not show his bundle of clothes to so fair and fine a creature as this, whose manners were so soft and whose smile so pleasant. He would do anything first. He would try a roundabout way of making known his wishes, trusting to his own powers and the intelligence of the lady for a full and complete understanding. Just as he had come to this conclusion there was a ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee
... sustain him; and that the courts and the lawyers, among whose functions it is to see to it that laws and statutes do not interfere too seriously with the convenience of the community, would arrive, in what subtle and roundabout way they might choose, at the conclusion that whatever must be done might be done. These learned gentlemen did their duty, and developed the "war powers" under the Constitution in a manner equally ingenious, comical, and sensible. But the ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... Will motioned to them to stay where they were, and ran ahead to intercept a guard. A moment later he returned with the latter, and the whole party made its way hurriedly and stealthily in a roundabout direction, which would almost certainly intercept the spy—if spy ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... the gate, Uncle James approached stealthily by a roundabout way and beckoned to them. "Excuse me," he began, as they came within speaking distance, "but has Mis' ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... could trust myself so far as that, nearly. You might be pretty nigh it one way and all wrong another, for you have to consider length and breadth and roundabout. I will tell you the best way for you to do. Set the doll standing on a bit of paper, and draw a pencil all round her foot with the point close to it on the paper. Both feet will be better, for it would be a mistake to suppose they must be of the same size. That ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... He had been there but five minutes, he had smoked in her face, and, busy with his telegrams, with the tapping pencil and the conscious danger, the odious betrayal that would come from a mistake, she had had no wandering glances nor roundabout arts to spare. Yet she had taken him in; she knew everything; she ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... be, and was venturing forth to get his first "lay of the land." The latter continued up the draw, crossed a ridge, halted now and then in the manner of the wild creatures to see if he were being followed, and finally by a roundabout route returned to the lifeless form of his only friend. The wolf still trotted ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... to come right out and say "Do you need anything in my line?" for if he answers "No" I ought to turn about and leave him, so I casually remark that it is a good day, or a stormy day, and he says "Yes," as if he had heard that before. I take a roundabout way of getting to my business, and all the time he would be very glad if I was in Halifax. I may interest him in my goods before I get through, but if he could have had his way he would have omitted the interview until a ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... Teresa; "ever since you joined on to a knight-errant you talk in such a roundabout way that ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... his assistance to have the honour to see you." "I believe," said Madam de Cleves in a very unconcerned manner, "that anything you may give yourself the trouble of telling me, will be to little purpose; you had better go to the Queen-Dauphin, and plainly tell her, without using these roundabout ways, the interest you have in that letter, since she has been told, as well as I, that ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... the years sped on, news of Gethin came in a roundabout way to the farm, and at last a letter from some foreign port, from which it was evident that the youth, now growing up to manhood, still retained his bright sunny nature and laughter-loving ways, together with the warmth ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... frequent in praise of Fenimore Cooper, hailing Leatherstocking as better than any of "Scott's lot"; and this laudation appeared in the 'Roundabout Papers' long after the British novelist had paid to the American romancer the sincere flattery of borrowing from the last words of Natty Bumppo the suggestion, at least, of the last words of Colonel Newcome. Cooper's backwoodsman, hearing an inaudible ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... carry out his process in the sister kingdom, whence it was exported to England, and admitted here on payment of the Customs' duty, which was the same as the Excise duty on its manufacture here. All this roundabout method of doing business is now done away with, and no restriction now exists to mar the peace of ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... the Bois and by Suresnes, striking into a roundabout road to Versailles beyond St. Cloud. It was June, a dustless and balmy noon, the air thinly gilded by a faint haze, and I know few things pleasanter than that road on a fair day of the early summer ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... father. He was the intelligence man, and had all the news sent to him—roundabout it might be, but it always came, and was generally true; and the old man never troubled anybody twice that he couldn't believe in, great things or small. Well, word was passed about a branch bank at a place called ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... was nearly twice as far to the marsh by this roundabout route, the bay ice was in excellent condition for the dogs, and they traveled so briskly that they arrived at the point where they were to turn into the woods much too soon for Charley. Here in the deep snow ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... gone out to look after his horses. When questioned, he stated that they might return by a roundabout way through the village of Neckbury, but that it might take half ...
— The Rover Boys on Snowshoe Island - or, The Old Lumberman's Treasure Box • Edward Stratemeyer
... disinclination to the proposal of abolition and judgment that nothing would come of it made Mason cautious in expressing himself to Palmerston. Mason felt that he was stultifying his country in condemning slavery. Hence in roundabout language, "with such form of allusion to the concession we held in reserve, as would make him necessarily comprehend it[1266]," and turning again and again to a supposed "latent, undisclosed obstacle[1267]" to British recognition, Mason ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... circumstance added still more to the interest which the ceremony excited. While the chevaliers of the new order were passing one by one before the Emperor, who welcomed them, a man of the people, wearing a roundabout, placed himself on the steps of the throne. His Majesty showed some astonishment, and paused an instant, whereupon the man, being interrogated, showed his warrant. The Emperor at once and with great cordiality bade him advance, and gave him the decoration, accompanied ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... workmen employed in the extraction of gold often steal pieces and swallow them, without any serious consequences whatever. Another explanation, which has also the advantage of being the true one, is that "swallowing gold" is one of the roundabout phrases in which the Chinese delight to express painful or repulsive subjects. No emperor ever "dies," he becomes "a guest on high." No son will say that his parents are "dead;" but merely that "they are not." The death of an ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... it," sniggered the stepfather-in-law. "I writ a document a Philadelphia lawyer and a Pinkerton detective combined couldn't pick a flaw in. I hedged it in with roundabout reasons an' facts, tellin' 'im he'd 'a' had letter after letter about how the baby was thrivin' if he'd just answered Hettie's first official proclamation, and so on, and so on. Folks, I can hardly wait. He'll git here to-morrow night, an' we'll have the fun of our lives. I hope you two ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... somewhat roundabout advice very well. "The only thing in the world I want," she said, simply, "is to ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... on the road we came," he said, "and on another road that leads in a roundabout way to the Grande Avenue again. So now we must look into ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... to the noise of the terribly exciting fife and drum, which maddened the combatants and drowned the cries of the wounded. In his future he saw himself a soldier with plume and sword and snug-fitting, decorated clothes,—very different from his somewhat roomy trousers and country-cut roundabout, made by Aunt Ellis, the village tailoress, who cut out clothes, not according to the shape of the boy, but to what he was expected to grow to,—going where glory awaited him. In his observation of pictures, it was the common soldier who was always falling and dying, while ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... letters came from me and were about Margery. I made Margery write two or three. Then I knew I could explain that she was not strong enough to write herself. I was afraid she might break down before we could leave home; but she did not. I got her away. By roundabout ways we travelled to the North Carolina mountains. We found a deserted cabin in the woods, some distance from the road. We dressed ourselves in the rough homespun of the country. She went barefooted, as most of the women did. We so secluded ourselves that it was some time before it was known that ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a minute it was still in the consultery, save for the soft swish of the leaves overhead and roundabout. Then Jot broke out—a minute was ...
— Three Young Knights • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... Sannio became the Italian Zanni, was a whirl in the roundabout of etymology, which put Riccoboni very ill at his ease; for he, having discovered this classical origin of his favourite character, was alarmed at Menage giving it up with obsequious tameness to a Cruscan correspondent. The learned Quadrio, however, gives his vote for the Greek Sannos, from ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... morning that those very savages rode out on the plains in a roundabout way, so as to get in advance of the Cheyennes, and then had hidden themselves on the top of a bluff overlooking the trail they knew the Cheyennes to be following, and had fired upon them as they passed below, killing two and wounding a number of others. You can see how ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... this. He held it out toward Nanni and carefully and slowly backed away from the edge of the cliff, coaxing her to follow him. As she stepped forward, he stepped back, and in this way led her by a roundabout path down the farther side of the rocks to the place where the other ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... of no value for breathing, is of great value as a food, forming, as we have seen, an important part of all meats, or proteins, which build the tissues of our bodies. It can, however, be taken from the air only with great difficulty, by a very roundabout route; the bacteria of the soil eat it first, then they pass it on as food to the roots of plants; animals eat plants, and we eat the animals, and thus get most of ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... at the head waters of the Ohio,—among them the Delawares, Shawanese, Mohicans, and Iroquois,—whither they tracked the bear from their village of Logstown, seventeen miles down the river. They also employed the country roundabout as a highway for their march to battle against other tribes, and against each other. At that time France and England were disputing for the new continent. France, by right of her discovery of the Mississippi, ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... frostbitten at the ends. On his head he wore a tall, conical green wool hat, with a broad brim, and a brown band tied in a true lover's knot at one side. The remainder of his costume consisted of a black cloth roundabout, threadbare and dirty; a pair of black casimere pantaloons, very tight about the legs and burst open in several places; and a pair of moccasins on his feet, adorned with beads and patches of red flannel. ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... you want to do, that you are asking my permission in this roundabout way? What do you want to do, that you think ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... more particular and extraordinary intercession with God for such persons as had roused their envy, resentment, or discontent—this would be a certain way to prevent the growth of all uncharitable tempers." You may think that I am taking a roundabout way of accounting for my friend's so concerned attitude at twelve o'clock that business day; but the whole thing seemed to me so unusual at such a time and in such a place that I was led to such ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... consideration for the truth which led her to shrink from producing it on poor occasions. So she didn't say, "Dear me, Adeline, what humbug! you know you hate Verena and would be very glad if she were drowned!" She only said, "Well, I see; but it's very roundabout." What she did see was that Mrs. Luna was eager to help her to stop off Basil Ransom from "making head," as the phrase was; and the fact that her motive was spite, and not tenderness for the Bostonians, would not make her assistance less welcome if the ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... roundabout environed With fire she is illumined: And in the middes there doth appeere, Like to some boy, a visage cleere; Whose eies to us doe seem in view, Of colour grayish more than blew: The browes and forehead tender seeme, The cheeks all reddish one ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... pony and consulted his compass. "Five points north of east. The Professor said that should take me back. Besides I remember that we came this way yesterday. I'm going to save some time by fording that fork without going the roundabout ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... sufficient funds to carry her through for a while, and she'd die before she'd accept the gift of a penny from anybody in Port Agnew, particularly the McKayes. Even a loan from The Laird would be construed as a roundabout ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... that he would put off his tour of inspection till the next day. Travelling in the buggy as he did, he must keep to the road which led to Derrick's, in very roundabout fashion, by way of Guadalajara. This rain would reduce the thick dust of the road to two feet of viscid mud. It would take him quite three hours to reach the ranch house on Los Muertos. He thought of Delaney and the buckskin and ground his teeth. And all this trouble, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... won't make a thoroughfare of the run, at any price. For instance, when Baxter and Donovan delivered that well-timber in the Quondong Paddock, the other day, they were n't five mile from the main road—and a gate to go through—but he made them come right back by the station; thirty mile of a roundabout; and their cheques were n't forthcoming till they did it. No, Priestley; to ask Montgomery is simply to get a refusal; and to argue with him is simply to ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... he suddenly, "you have come by rough seas and mighty roundabout course to your happiness, but there be some do never make this blessed haven ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... barn-yard!" cried Clytie, after the first roundabout view from the front of the bluff. "Adrian mustn't lose any ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... which brought him to Cincinnati, started for his distant Virginia home, not by water nor by the direct route through Kentucky to the Old Wilderness Road, but across southern Ohio, over the highway which led to Marietta. The young man told landlord Yeatman that his object in choosing this roundabout course was to see the country; and he told the truth, but not the whole truth. Arlington cared not so much about going to Marietta as about getting there. He had not escaped the consequences of his recent perilous exposure to the rays of bewitching eyes. As he rode along through ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... taking off my vest, there comes a sister, so frail, so pretty that I can not keep from looking at her; the beautiful big eyes! the long blond lashes! the pretty teeth! She asks me why I have left the lyceum; I explain to her in roundabout phrases how the absence of a forcing pump caused me to be sent back from the college. She smiles gently and says to me: "Ah, sir soldier, you could have called the thing by its name; we are used to everything." I should think she was used to everything, unfortunate woman, ...
— Sac-Au-Dos - 1907 • Joris Karl Huysmans
... to find even the greasy caretaker gone. By this time Gray was decidedly uncomfortable, and, to add to his discomfort, he conceived the notion that he was being followed. On second thought he dismissed this idea, nevertheless he took a roundabout course back toward the ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... ones. It might be mentioned, for example, that a certain rich German company, supported by the State, compel travellers who go from Berlin to Bale to pass via Cologne and Frankfort, instead of taking the Leipzig route; or that such a company carries goods a hundred and thirty miles in a roundabout way (on a long distance) to favour its influential shareholders, and thus ruins the secondary lines. In the United States travellers and goods are sometimes compelled to travel impossibly circuitous routes so that dollars may flow into the pocket of ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... eavesdropper near. It was Pecksniff himself. He had gone into the church to rest, and lying down in one of the high-back pews, had gone to sleep, and now the voices of Tom and Mary had awakened him. He listened and waited till they had both gone; then he stole out and went home by a roundabout way. ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... above all vulgar passions, untouched by commonplace sympathies, himself a lover of the liquid happiness he dispenses, and filled with a fine scorn of all those lesser felicities conferred by love or fame or wealth or any of the roundabout agencies for which his fiery elixir is ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... forward. As the winter came on colder, the scouts brought in moving tales of the enemy's discomfiture. Colonel Alexander of the Federal forces, deciding that the canons could be defended by the Saints, planned to approach Salt Lake City over a roundabout route to the north. He started in heavy snow, cutting a road through the greasewood and sage-brush. Often his men made but three miles a day, and his supply-train was so long that sometimes half of it would be camped ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... able to do, and in some weeks the cure was complete. In this case, however, we had the ingenious idea of changing her personality at the moment when we induced her to walk. The patient fancied she was somebody else, and as such, and in this roundabout manner, we ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... that. To have had a young relative presented without one's knowledge seems too extraordinary. No," she continued, turning to poppa, "the only thing I heard of this young lady—it came to me in a very roundabout manner—was that she had gone home to be married. Was not that your intention?" asked ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... hill from the church turned sharply out of view, and just as we were beginning the descent a gentleman hastened to us and cautioned us not to undertake it. He said that numerous motors had been wrecked in the attempt. We went down by a roundabout way, but when we came to pass the hill at its foot, we found it was not nearly so steep as some we had ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... do you think? To our own hearts, being willing to be severe with ourselves; not to be deceitful in our own eyes; not to guard the outer act, but the inner thought; not to study nor to be what seems, but what is.[59] This may seem a long and roundabout way of learning to play music, but it is the honest, straightforward way of going to the great masters whom ...
— Music Talks with Children • Thomas Tapper
... running the other, gentler pets. Here scampered the cat and her kittens, mewing pitifully. Across the platform hopped the raven. The carrier pigeon fluttered to the Hermit's shoulder. And from the trees all roundabout came winging, with a call answering to John's, a flock of birds who had followed him from the forest, and who had been hidden in the forbidden trees of the King's park until this very hour. They fluttered like a cloud about the heads of ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... came over last night and sat on my gallery making very roundabout inquiries concerning Jeems. I pried out of him the details of your swamp battle. But I want to know now just what Jeems has been doing. Your brother ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... was no doubt. American citizens were imprisoned, interned in reconcentrado camps, and otherwise maltreated. The nationality of American sufferers was in some cases disputed, and the necessity of dealing with each of these doubtful cases by the slow and roundabout method of complaint to Madrid, which referred matters back to Havana, which reported to Madrid, served but to add irritation to delay. American resentment, too, was fired by the sufferings of the Cubans themselves as much as by the losses ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... made a point of that with Brian," he said. "The minute the word is given he is to throw a little army of graders upon the new roundabout. But Ford won't find out. He'll be too busy on this end of the line with the track-layers. I'm a little nervous ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... pictures of rascals, male and female. Yet in this historical study, the eighteenth century setting relieves the effect and one does not feel that the author is speaking with that direct earnestness one encounters in "Pendennis" and "The Newcomes." The many essays, of which the "Roundabout Papers" are a type, exhibit almost exclusively the sunnier and more attractive side of Thackeray's genius. Here and there, in the minor fiction of this experimental period, there are premonitions of he more drastic treatment of later years: but the dominant mood is quite other. ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... got back quickly, by a roundabout way, and walked into the bar of the Royal, through the back entrance from the stables, and stared, and wanted to know where all the chaps had gone to, and what the noise was about, and whose trap had run away, ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... in her conduct. Look at it how she would, she was wrapped up in Harry Tristram; she spent her days watching his fortunes, any wakeful hour of the night found her occupied in thinking of him. Was she a traitor to her friend Janie Iver? Was that treachery bringing her back, by a roundabout way, to a new alliance with her uncle? Did it involve treason to Harry himself? For certainly it was hard to go on helping him toward ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... themselves notorious by their cruelty to Americans, seized Augusta. Brown had been tarred and feathered in Augusta just before the breaking-out of the Revolution, and he made the patriots of that town and of the country roundabout pay dearly for the indignities that had been heaped upon him on account of his loyalty to the Crown. He confiscated the property of the patriots, and issued an order banishing all Whig families beyond the borders ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... that was to get the bag of samples and take it to McGurvin's by a roundabout way?" ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish
... how slow men were to discover the abundance of this supply, and to trace it to its luxuriant deposits amid the rocks. While it was literally forcing itself upon their observation, it was only by a roundabout process that they discovered its richness and importance. As early as the year 1835 its presence amid the rocks was made known on the Alleghany River, a short distance above Pittsburg, by its interference with the salt wells; but no dream of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... who it was, he swerved hurriedly in another direction, and got to his destination by a roundabout way, feeling as he reached it about as miserable and hopeless as it was possible ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... hard with the uncheerful giver. The prospect appeals neither to their reason nor to their Savings Bank books. They hear—they do not need to read—the speeches delivered in their streets on a Sunday morning. It is one of their pre-occupations to send their children to Sunday School by roundabout roads, lest they should pick up abominable blasphemies. When the tills of the little shops are raided, or when the family ne'er-do-well levies on his women with more than usual brutality, they know, because they suffer, what principles are being put into practice. ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... visited the Place Vendome, in the centre of which is a tall column, sculptured from top to bottom, all over the pedestal, and all over the shaft, and with Napoleon himself on the summit. The shaft is wreathed round and roundabout with representations of what, as far as I could distinguish, seemed to be the Emperor's victories. It has a very rich effect. At the foot of the column we saw wreaths of artificial flowers, suspended there, no doubt, by some admirer of Napoleon, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... wandering, and Miss Jennie Overstreet, who was romantic and openly now wrote poems for the Observer, and who looked at Chad with no attempt to conceal her admiration of his appearance and her wonder as to who he was. And there were the neighbors roundabout—the Talbotts, Quisenberrys, Clays, Prestons, Morgans—surely no less than forty strong, and all for dinner. It was no little trial for Chad in that crowd of fine ladies, judges, soldiers, lawyers, statesmen—but he stood it well. While ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... is not this all that we have contended for! Have you not reached the old conclusion in a roundabout way? I think not. To my mind there is a wide difference between the old statement that the higher animals living today have the original adult stages telescoped into their embryos, and the statement that the resemblance between certain characters ...
— A Critique of the Theory of Evolution • Thomas Hunt Morgan
... large balance against Jack for his impudence to him in the field. Nevertheless, the fair Amelia continued her attentions, and talked of hunting, occasionally diverging into observations on Lord Scamperdale's fine riding and manly character and appearance, in the roundabout way ladies send their messages and compliments ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... from kissing her; and presently Tillie drew herself away and, dashing the tears from her eyes, went out of the house by the back kitchen door. From here she made her way, in a roundabout fashion, to the rear entrance of the store-keeper's house across the road, for she was quite sure that her father had gone into the ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... left with Sam. Either Plimsoll had not passed the peaks, was in the woods, or he had come and gone. Something told Sandy this last had not occurred. Travel beyond the peaks must have been hard and slow and roundabout for Plimsoll while he had tangented fast ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... extent, or a change in the method of raising taxes would have taken place. Instead of the capitalist advancing to-day in wages the taxes which the worker must pay, he would no longer pay them in this roundabout fashion, but directly to the State. If wages are higher in North America than in Europe, this is by no means due to its lighter taxation. It is the consequence of its territorial, commercial, and industrial situation. The demand for workers in relation to the supply ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... the new week, Agnes left London on her way to Ireland. As the event proved, this was not destined to be the end of her journey. The way to Ireland was only the first stage on a roundabout road—the road that led to the palace ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... that pill," said Henry Smith, "how well soever it may be gilded. The knave has a shrewd eye for a kirtle, and knows a wild duck from a tame as well as e'er a man in Perth. He were the last in the Fair City to take sour plums for pears, or my roundabout cousin Joan for this piece of fantastic vanity. I fancy his bearing was as much as to say, 'I will not see what you might wish me blind to'; and he is right to do so, as he might easily purchase himself a broken pate by meddling with my matters, and so he will be silent for his own sake. But ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... nine. The whole distance is not more than seventeen or eighteen miles by the roundabout route. And if I could go as the crow flies it is not more than six miles. Why, you know the eastern extremity of your land touches the ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... for the serpent. Some people like to say that it betrays the subtlety and slyness of the Oriental people. But they admired the serpent chiefly because, in their minds, it represented wisdom, the quiet and easy way of doing things, a little roundabout perhaps, but often better than the method ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... were often used, but to close them at time of service would have been to plunge the church into utter darkness. Permission was sometimes given, as in Haverhill, to "sett up a shed outside of the window to keep out the heat of the sun there,"—a very roundabout way to accomplish a very simple end. As years passed on, trees sprang up and grew apace, and too often the churches became overhung and heavily shadowed by dense, sombre spruce, cedar, and fir trees. A New England parson was preaching ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... dancing, loved feeling that she was dancing well and giving pleasure. But, twice over, she sent away her partners, smitten with compassion for her little governess sitting there against the wall—all alone, with no one to take notice of her, because she was elderly, and roundabout, poor darling! And, to that loyal person's horror, she insisted on sitting beside her all through two dances. Nor would she go in to supper with anyone but Winton. Returning to the ballroom on his arm, she overheard an elderly woman say: "Oh, don't you know? Of course ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that such an entity is no vera causa; that if the conception is accepted, it is no real explanation; and that it is merely a roundabout way of saying that the facts are as they are, while the cause remains unknown. To this it may be rejoined that for all who believe in the existence of the abstraction "force" at all, other than will, {228} this conception of an internal force must ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... decided to go to the lake by a roundabout way, covering a distance of about forty miles. They left at a little after ten o'clock, calculating to get to the lake in time for lunch. They would attend the afternoon concert, take Roger's chum out for a short ride around the lake road, ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer
... All this made for health; in addition, she nursed a gentle thought in her heart, which probably accounted for as much as the open air. This was the news of Prosper's return to High March, and of the fine works he performed there in the hall. It came to her in a roundabout way through some pony drovers, who had it from Market Basing. The pietist at March, who made the image of Saint Isolda, may have spread the news. At any rate it came, it seeded in her heart, and as she felt the creeping of the little flower she blushed. It told her that Prosper had avenged her—more, ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... waking from sleep and without malice heaving a stone to crush the life out of his still sleeping comrade, is understood to lack the trained motive which makes a character fairly calculable in its actions; but by a roundabout course even a gentleman may make of himself a chancy personage, raising an uncertainty as to what he may do next, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... an old path from Mwaro has water, and must go early to-morrow morning, and so avoid the roundabout by Morefu. We shall thus save two days, which in this hot weather is much for us. We hear that Simba has gone to fight with Fipa. Two Banyamwezi volunteer. 12th September, 1872.—We went by this water till 2 P.M., ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... spent on the chest of his adversary were idle as the stroke of a cane on the hide of a rhinoceros. But now his nostrils dilated; his eyes flashed fire: Kenelm Chillingly had ceased to be a philosopher. Crash came his blow—how unlike the swinging roundabout hits of Tom Bowles!—straight to its aim as the rifle-ball of a Tyrolese or a British marksman at Aldershot,—all the strength of nerve, sinew, purpose, and mind concentred in its vigour,—crash just at that part of the front where the eyes ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... as these could not, by any ingenuity of party-contrivance, be prevented from forcing themselves by degrees into the minds of the great body of the voters of the Free States. The common sense, the "large roundabout common sense" of the people, slowly, and somewhat reluctantly, came up to the demands of the occasion. The sophistries and fallacies of the Northern defenders of the pretensions of the slave-holding sectional minority were gradually exposed, and were repudiated in the lump. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... channel, high up in the cold sky. Roaring toward Berlin in arrow-straight flight, they slid over the Netherlands. There were to be no roundabout evasive tactics tonight, not with bombs in the ...
— A Yankee Flier Over Berlin • Al Avery
... family— at this very time a few of the leading creditors of the Wishwash and Longstop Railway assembled in the old office of that bankrupt undertaking, and decided to accept an offer from the Grand Roundabout Railway to buy up their undertaking at half-price, and add its few hundred miles of line ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... as Amelie, Vernet, Molitg, and other spots, which, if of less importance than those we have visited, are nevertheless in the Pyrenees. That they are in the Pyrenees cannot be disputed, but being in the eastern portion, the way of reaching them from the resorts among the western heights is so roundabout, that but few people would think of visiting both. However, for the information of any intending travellers, we have collected what reliable facts we could about the above-mentioned places—as well as Capvern, ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... were on the point of overtaking them they were always able to flutter a few yards farther, until they had led us about a quarter of a mile from the nest; then, suddenly getting well, they quietly flew home by a roundabout way to their precious babies or eggs, o'er a' the ills of life victorious, bad boys among the worst. The Yankee took particular pleasure in encouraging us ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... Despite a roundabout route, Furneaux had merely led Robert Fenley through the gardens to the Quarry Wood. Somewhat to the detective's surprise, the rock was unguarded. The two were standing there, discussing the crime, when Police Constable Farrow returned to ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy |
