"Self-appointed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... took a high hand. He entered Kilkenny in state, on the 18th of September, and committed the members of the Supreme Council as prisoners to the Castle, except Darcy and Plunket. A new Council was appointed, or self-appointed, on the 20th, of which the Nuncio was chosen President. The imprisonment of the old Council was undoubtedly a harsh and unwise proceeding, which can scarcely be justified; but the times were such that prompt action was demanded, ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... returned he carried his cowl and mantle, and a scroll. "I too, am become a messenger," he said, "but I am self-appointed. This note was to go by a palace courier, but I relieved him of ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... says, "the people of the State were told that one woman had proved herself competent and well qualified to enlighten the constitutional convention upon the evils of woman suffrage."[361] Such was the effect of this self-appointed obtruder from another State that the members of the convention, without giving a woman of their own State opportunity for reply, not only struck out the clause submitting the question to the people in a separate article, but actually incorporated in the body of the constitution a clause which ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... settle the question. Hugh at least would be glad to lay his burden down, for it had been an uphill fight all the way. Besides, there was so much need of his being able to pay full attention to baseball matters, with the first game only six days off, that he would welcome any means for winding up his self-appointed task. ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... blushed till her proximity to things inflammable would have awakened justifiable fears of a conflagration. Joel gave his attention to his self-appointed nurse. "Steady now! Better take a little less to start with. That's right. ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... unerring justice. This law is the very least comprehended of men, because its majesty, its even-handedness has been so misinterpreted, so travestied by various kinds of religious teachers, rulers, and self-appointed judges. Man-made laws which everywhere prevail tend always to segregate people into classes, producing results devoid of equity, favoring the materially superior. It is quite common for people who know nothing ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... visitors" spoken of above must have been some of those self-appointed or hired agents called "interviewers," who do for the American public what the Venetian spies did for the Council of Ten, what the familiars of the Inquisition did for the priesthood, who invade every public man's privacy, who listen at every key-hole, who tamper with every ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... well equipped and in good condition, but as they left the sea-shore and advanced, without molestation, to be sure, through the populous country, some idea of the magnitude of their self-appointed task permeated the minds of the common soldiery, and evidences of hesitation, reluctance and dissension speedily appeared. The unwillingness of the men grew until Pizarro was forced to take notice of it. Halting on the ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... several of "the boys" on the pier to welcome me—the same dear friends, but so different. I had lost my partners, but not my friends. This was something; it was much. Still a vacancy was left. I had now to take up my self-appointed task of wisely disposing of surplus wealth. That would keep ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... respectable classes rose with the tacit support of the people against the State Government which the people had elected; deposed it almost without an effort, and established in its place the arbitrary rule of a self-appointed Vigilance Committee, whose members no one knew. That lawless Government hanged as many rowdies, pilferers, highway robbers and card sharpers as it thought fit; banished hundreds under penalty of death—a ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... in his arms," four tongues explained at once, when, the next day, the self-appointed committee on romance reported back to the other Ravens. "Of course, he didn't know we were peeking. He isn't exactly the type I'd go crazy over, but he's so much better than that undertaker! And going ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... "Young man, young man." Bok retraced his steps, and then the old lady said: "Young man, you have been leaning against something white," and taking her tree-switch she whipped some wall dust from the sleeve of Bok's coat. It was not until that moment that Bok recognized in his self-appointed "brush" no less a ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... but some, more energetic than their neighbours, made furtive excursions into the main streets. They slunk along with pike and club, as if even now half doubtful of their own strength, though here and there a self-appointed leader shouted for death to the nobles. But the time was not yet. The appetite of the canaille was not sufficiently whetted; later they would ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... into the night, and Monty bent over the sobbing form of the self-appointed missionary. We were all alone in the midst of the courtyard, not even watched from behind the wheels of arabas, for a fight or a thrashing in the khans of Asia Minor is strictly the affair of him who gets ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... everything in it was one series of ever-recurring disaster. She was a doleful body, taking pleasure only in funerals and the laying out of the dead. With her peculiar taste for sorrow and distress, she had come to be self-appointed nurse to the whole neighbourhood. She was always due at the house of affliction and, with her kindly heart and a certain skill in nursing, she proved a sort of melancholy blessing. Her predilection for disaster caused her ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... lying awake at nights, with all the changes he will ring on pain, are of his own choosing? For my part I cannot see what difference it makes, provided it is one and the same bare back which receives the stripes, whether the whipping be self-appointed or unasked for; nor indeed does it concern my body in general, provided it be my body, whether I am beleaguered by a whole armament of such evils (22) of my own will or against my will—except only for the folly which attaches ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... studied and taught in all the schools, until the rising generation understand that all the affairs of mankind are governed by the uniform laws established by the great Creator and Ruler of the universe; and that self-appointed "leaders of the people" who would entice them to follow their own inventions cannot save them from the penalties which naturally follow the violation of any of the laws of the universe. In short, education,—wisely directed education,—both in science ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... of Head "open" and ascending slightly upwards towards or on to the Mental Mount of Mars (3-3, Plate III.), are self-appointed leaders, organizers of any public movement. They will sacrifice everything, home, affection, and all ties for what they believe is their public duty in connection with the work that they ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... incorporated it into its Indian Empire. Burma was administered as a province of India until 1937 when it became a separate, self-governing colony; independence from the Commonwealth was attained in 1948. Gen. NE WIN dominated the government from 1962 to 1988, first as military ruler, then as self-appointed president, and later as political kingpin. Despite multiparty legislative elections in 1990 that resulted in the main opposition party - the National League for Democracy (NLD) - winning a landslide victory, the ruling junta refused ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... But you, my self-appointed guide, should blush, too, at never having led me thither. Come, Mrs. Shortridge: these soldiers are too slow for us; let us take horse to-morrow, and make an inroad ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... came. The words of the captain had stirred his heart, and now the actual approach of the royal family set every pulse throbbing. Eagerly his eyes were fixed upon the advancing column of gallant riders, the self-appointed bodyguard of the king and queen—a bodyguard which, changing and shifting as the royal party progressed through the kingdom, yet never deserted them throughout the triumphal march, and did not a little to raise within the breast of the queen that martial ardour which was to be so severely ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... and stood in the window looking east. The Silver Lady came and stood beside him. She did not seem to notice his face, but in the mysterious way of women she watched him keenly. She wished to satisfy her own mind before she undertook her self-appointed task. ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... sacrosanct "liberty of the subject" was involved; and though Mr. Blaine would have been forcibly restrained if he had shown any tendency to injure lamp-posts, or to lay hands upon his own worthless life, he was given every facility in his self-appointed task of inciting the public to all sorts of offences against the State, and to a variety of ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... same acute critic, in his "History of Classical French Literature," pointed out that French novels were under a cloud of suspicion even so far back as the days of Erasmus, in 1525. It was many scores of years thereafter before the self-appointed guardians of French literature esteemed the novel highly enough ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... they hate us? They hate what we see right here in this chamber — a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms — our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... long ere he returned. He had presented himself at the prison before the self-appointed tribunal that was consigning the prisoners to massacre, and had announced himself as a victim of the Bastille. One member of the tribunal had identified him; the member was Defarge. He had pleaded hard for his son-in-law's ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... on the thought that all that was fair and free in life, all that struggled, all that planned and made, all pride and beauty and honour, all fine and enjoyable things, were irrevocably damned to everlasting torments. They were the self-appointed confidants of God's mockery of his own creation. So at any rate they stick in my mind. Vaguer, and yet hardly less agreeable than this cosmic jest, this coming "Yah, clever!" and general serving out and "showing up" of ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... into the Connecticut woods and began his search for possible mosquito-breeding spots. He was the "Mosquito Man," the self-appointed guardian of the Connecticut coast ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... The self-appointed savior of the American working people shrugged his heavy shoulders disdainfully. "That is no matter—it is always easy to find a grievance. When the factory men have walked out, then will come the sympathetic strike of your strong Mill workers' union. All the other labor organizations ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... mother or sister endeavors to care for a protracted case of insanity. Unless the man of the house interferes, this effort is sure to bring disaster. And the more sensitive, imaginative, and loving is the self-appointed nurse, the more certain is she to suffer. There are no cases in which it is so hard to advise, none in which it is so difficult to get people to follow your advice. The morbid view of insanity, the vague sense ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... first singer of Italy; and this reputation was found to be well deserved, notwithstanding all the prejudices he had to overcome, for I remember well the disparaging statements made concerning him before his debut at the court theater. According to these self-appointed connoisseurs, he was a bawler without taste, without method, a maker of absurd trills, an unimpassioned actor of little intelligence, and many other things besides. He knew, when he appeared on the stage, how little disposed ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... This was Captain Benet's self-appointed task, and he has performed it admirably. He has examined all the authorities, French and English, and his book bears the evidences of this original investigation. For purposes of study, his system is clear, his arrangement logical, and his divisions ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... cared for by its self-appointed shepherd. What it should be called under Henry it would be hard to say. It was not Protestant; and it was just as ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... first day at home wore on, Beth was seized with an importunate yearning to go out, and it was with difficulty that she got through her self-appointed tasks. She thought of the sea, the shore, the silence and solitude, which were apt to be so soothing to her dull senses that she ceased to perceive with them, and so passed into the possession of her farther faculty for ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... you've got," my self-appointed pilot blared. "None o' your agency whiskey, either. What's yourn?" ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... and equal spirits. Instead of resenting Magdalen's systematic avoidance of his society, he looked to results, and highly approved of it. The more she neglected him for his wife the more directly useful she became in the character of Mrs. Wragge's self-appointed guardian. He had more than once seriously contemplated revoking the concession which had been extorted from him, and removing his wife, at his own sole responsibility, out of harm's way; and he had only abandoned the idea on discovering that Magdalen's resolution to keep Mrs. Wragge ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... rattle of the knob as the bobby, having shoo'd the putative evil-doer off, assured himself that no damage had actually been done. Then he, too, departed, satisfied and self-righteous, leaving a badly frightened but very grateful amateur criminal to pursue his self-appointed career of crime. ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... said, however, in this age marked by altruisms, that he was altruistic; on the contrary, he loved himself, and made himself his prime study—but as a member of the human race, he had his own purposes to fulfill, his own self-appointed tasks, and he preferred to take men only on his own terms. He was filled with righteous indignation, in reading Carlyle, to find a passage where, hearing the door-bell ring one morning when he was very busy, he exclaimed that he was afraid it was "the man Emerson!" Yet Dr. Holmes was himself one ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... she. "Tell the king and write to Caesar about it. So you will prove your faithfulness and devotion. Loving Caesar, you have been a spy self-appointed. Antipater shall be put to death, and we—we shall have honor and glory and, maybe, ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... lovers stand with heart to heart, 'No more,' they cry, 'no more to part!"[TN-140] But still along the lone lagoon The steel skates ring a ghostly tune, And in the moonlight, pale and cold, The panting lovers still behold The self-appointed sacrifice Skating toward the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... required by the hardy miners, would constitute himself the postmaster. Of course he charged exorbitant rates for the transmission of the mail to the nearest regular station. It is recorded of one of these self-appointed officials that, although he transported the mail but once a month, he still charged twenty-five cents for each letter. He used an empty barrel for the reception of mail. He cut a hole in the top, and posted above it the following suggestive warning, to all who sent ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... conversation among those who had come to visit the wreck. When they did talk, it was in low tones. Rick thought that was strange, because anything like this was usually a field day for self-appointed experts who discussed it in loud tones and offered opinions to all who would listen. Then, as he lifted his camera for a picture, he saw the men look up, startled at the flash. He saw them turn their backs quickly so their faces ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... the effort to transmit to posterity a faithful record of his deeds. For him unfading laurels are secure, so long as letters shall survive and history shall continue to be the guide and teacher of civilized men. The whole human race has become the self-appointed guardian of his fame, and the name of Washington will be ever held, over all the earth, to be synonymous with the highest perfection attainable in public or private life, and coeternal with that immortal love to which reason and revelation have together toiled to elevate human aspirations—the ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... came to a great upstanding mountain, with marked politeness it ran round by a circuitous route, more easily if of greater length; at other times it scaled clear up, nimbly and straight, turning not once to us in its self-appointed task, and at the top, standing like some fairy on a steeple-point, beckoned us on encouragingly. At times it became exhausted and stretched itself wearisomely out, measuring in width to only a few small inches, and overlooked the river at great height, telling us to ponder well our ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... earlier days her ancestors had edified themselves with burning witches. She would pass out of his life but never out of his memory. His heart would go with her, but though it killed him he would never modify the rigors of his self-appointed exile from her presence until ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... shout, and committee number one, self-appointed, started for the baskets. Others arranged the table with boards and rocks put outside the cave door. The eatables were soon temptingly arranged. The jug of coffee and bottle of milk, with rubber mugs, were placed under Arthur's care; and he soon had as much as he ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... meal the gigantic cook hovered near Billie Warren as she sat near one end of the long table. It was evident to Harris that the big man was self-appointed guardian and counsellor of the Three Bar boss. He showed the same fussy solicitude for her welfare that a hen would show ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... it to me, even ere this day of Salvation for Jerusalem, by the date of my birth, by the ancient parchment, by the homage of Nathan, by the faith of my brethren and the rumor of the nations, by my sufferings, by my self-appointed martyrdoms, by my long, weary years of forced wanderings to and fro upon the earth, by my loneliness—ah, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... to be so necessary. Now, had any one essayed to teach Patience German or mathematics, with that young lady's free consent, I believe that she would have been found a meek scholar. But it was not probable that she would be meek when she found a self-appointed tutor teaching her manners ...
— The Parson's Daughter of Oxney Colne • Anthony Trollope
... West of Vermelles, fell on the Company as they were passing the Mansion House Dump. They were marching in fours and had practically a whole platoon wiped out, for eleven were killed and fourteen wounded. Amongst the killed was Freddie Chambers, self-appointed Company humorist, and one of the best known and most cheerful soldiers ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... tenure of power this ruler seems to have aimed solely at enjoying the sweets of ease and tranquillity. He left the provinces severely alone and thought only of the peace of the metropolis. Turbulent displays on the part of self-appointed partisans of the Southern Court; intrigues in the Kwanto; revolts among his own immediate followers—all these things were treated by Yoshimochi with gloved hands so long as the atmosphere of Kyoto was not troubled. In 1428, he fell sick, and, the end being in sight, he ordered his advisers to consult ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Mexican that he could deliver the cattle immediately, and realizing his mistake,—for he knew that the Mexican would straightway summon his retainers and take the cattle in the name of "Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality,"—Scar-Face promptly shot this self-appointed savior of Mexico, mortally wounded one of his two companions, and finally persuaded the other to help drift the cattle north with a promise of a share of the profits of ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... work in London tended to make all English clergymen who desired freedom, free. For over twenty years he preached every Thursday noon, and often twice on Sunday. No topic of vital human interest escaped him. He was a self-appointed censor and critic— sharp, vigilant, alert, yet commending as well as protesting. The two Parkers, one in America and one in England, made epochs. In point of time Theodore Parker comes first, and his ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... Pennsylvania had suffered in the cause of religious liberty and reform. He had been confined in the Tower for writing heretical pamphlets, and been prosecuted for preaching in the streets of London. He had traveled in Holland and Germany as a self-appointed missionary of the Society of Friends, and had not spared his own ease in pleading the cause of persecuted Quakers everywhere. When, therefore, he proposed to found a colony in America, his name alone was enough to attract ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... for the king. They thundered as one voice for the Italian Republic, and instantly broke up and disbanded. This was the folly of the young: Carlo Ammiani confessed that it was no better; but he knew that a breath of generous confidence from the self-appointed champion of the national cause would have subdued his impatience at royalty and given heart and cheer to his sickening comrades. He began to frown angrily when he thought of Vittoria. "Where is she now?—where now?" he asked himself ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... had the wit, the genius, or the good luck to gain, within the last fortnight, two staunch supporters—Girardet's father-in-law and a very shrewd old merchant to whom Monsieur de Grancey had sent him. These two worthy men, his self-appointed spies, affected to be Albert's most ardent opponents in the hostile camp. Towards the end of the show of hands they informed Savarus, through the medium of Monsieur Boucher, that thirty voters, unknown, were working against him in his party, playing the same trick that they were ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... all its bearings, though there was a dense ignorance on the part of the critics as to the evidence that would be called. To everything he heard the wild, unkempt man turned a deaf ear; regarding, as he undoubtedly did, the self-appointed judges around him with silent contempt ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... don't. Everybody always ought to do what they ought to do. And you ought to go to sleep, and so I shall go away." She knew that it was not all right,—that there was something fast, and also something vulgar, about this self-appointed friend of hers. But though Mrs. Houghton was fast, and though she was vulgar, she was a relief to the endless ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... This self-appointed guide was no negro, no mulatto, of that Manuel was sure. The money had been received without that wide answering grin of pleasure characteristic in almost all negro types. Moreover, the palms of the ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... o'clock of the day following, Senator Stanton, having read the reports of his speech in the morning papers, punctuated with "Cheers," "Tremendous enthusiasm" and more "Cheers," was still in a willing frame of mind toward Cuba and her self-appointed envoy, young Mr. Arkwright. ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... and Rip appeared to have the situation in hand, Dane turned to his own self-appointed job. He jammed the machine on reverse, maneuvering it with an ease learned by practice on the rough terrain of Limbo, until the gate doors were pushed shut again. Then he swung the machine around so that its bulk would afford an effective bar to keep the door locked for some very precious ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... women friends set to work then and there, and positively in less than an hour the grass hut was ready for occupation! I did not, however, stay to witness the completion of the building operations, but went off with some self-appointed cicerones to see the different camps; everywhere I was received with the greatest enthusiasm and manifestations of respect and friendship. My simple loin-cloth of crimson Japanese silk occasioned ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... and putting spurs to their horses, the four lads dashed down the mountain road upon their self-appointed mission, which was by no means the first daring adventure in which they had engaged; for the stories of the doings of the three American lads in the quartette have furnished interesting reading for ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler
... liked to stick the toasting fork into his subjects, and then hold them pretty close to the bars of a decidedly hot fire. The result was that many of them burned and smarted under the ordeal. One of the victims went so far as to propose that this self-appointed censor of public characters should be fought with his own weapons, and have a taste of his own nasty physic. In a word it was suggested that someone should draw Mr. H.J. Jennings' portrait on his own lines after his ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... cultivating the moral nature of the degraded and abject poor whites; and those who in circumstances of the greatest peril, manifested their fearless and undying attachment to their country and its flag; all these were entitled to a place in such a record. What wonder, then, that, pursuing his self-appointed task assiduously, the writer found it growing upon him; till the question came, not, who should be inscribed in this roll, but who could be omitted, since it was evident no single volume could ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... are bound, for that matter, to give him the full benefit of the speed he has exhibited, in so far as it may serve to explain, if it cannot extenuate, the wretched manner in which he has performed his self-appointed task. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... watched Archie's growth and development with the care of a self-appointed nurse temporarily doing her duty by her charge. Later on, as the fact became burned into her mind that Lucy would never willingly return to Warehold, she clung to him with that absorbing love and devotion which an unmarried woman often lavishes ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the Doctor communicated under an injunction of secrecy on which he had no need to dwell, that the crowd had taken him through a scene of carnage to the prison of La Force. That, in the prison he had found a self-appointed Tribunal sitting, before which the prisoners were brought singly, and by which they were rapidly ordered to be put forth to be massacred, or to be released, or (in a few cases) to be sent back to their ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... group of young men lingered at the door of the hall with their usual inability to enter a meeting until a few minutes after the hour of starting. There was also a small group at the door of the Methodist church farther up the hill. They were not the customary loungers, but a small self-appointed committee of the Methodist fathers on the outlook for any of the flock who might stumble into the pitfall of the Temperance hall on ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... friends said that her summer's self-appointed task had been too hard for her. In no other way could they account for the sad change that had come ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... few days, the answer came to the clerk's letter. Alec Stoker was O. K. so far as the postmaster of Ridgeville knew. His grandfather had been one of the most highly respected citizens of the place, but—then followed an account of Alec's father. This the self-appointed ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... did not mean it, though he was no longer her self-appointed guardian and guide, became to Lucy a monitor, recalling her as ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... continued to advance and retire from the field of action with tolerable regularity. Not less than sixty or seventy ants appeared to be engaged in this labor of scouring the country around. The object of their repeated journeys in all directions was soon discovered. They were the self-appointed scouts, engaged in the work of reconnoitring. Such at least is a fair interpretation of the acts of the ants, and such also is the conclusion borne out by the subsequent course of events. For, after the scouts had spent a considerable time in their rapid ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... meetings, and publish their newspapers and pamphlets with no great interference on the part of the police or attention on the part of lawgivers. With the progress of the war this situation changed; police and lawgivers began to interfere, and government officials and self-appointed guardians of the public weal began to denounce the "reds" and those suspected of "radical tendencies". The report of the Lusk Committee in the state of New York is perhaps the most imposing monument to this form of ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... day and a busy week for Mary; but somehow she felt a glory in every minute of it—even, I think, as Molly Pitcher gloried in her self-appointed task so many years ago. And when at the close of each day, she locked her desk, she grew into the habit of glancing up and nodding at the portraits on the walls—a glance and a nod that ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... had justified waxed strong as the days went by. When McInerney marked out a quoits-court and Charles Copeman dug a mess—these officers found their amusement in singular ways, and would have been hurt had any one attempted to usurp their self-appointed duties—and when I put in services for Sunday, the 22nd, it was recognized that we should march, and fight on the Sabbath. Not more anxiously did the legionary listen for tales of supernatural fires ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... a dozen self-appointed guides, Mary picked her way to the stairway and looked down. The broken piece of rotten timber, the gaping hole in the splintered bannister, the dark gleam of the water beneath, told their own story. One long, horrified look was enough for Mary. ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... call him Dionysius if he was mine," she confided to Carrie, who soon joined her in her self-appointed task of nursemaid, for the two girls were seldom apart; "but—after—that time—well, he might not like it when he grew up. I am afraid ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... received into their family a poor young man from Jamaica, personally a stranger, but of whose labors as a self-appointed missionary among the recently emancipated slaves of the West Indies they had heard. He had labored for three years, supporting himself as he could, until he was utterly broken down in health, when ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... has declared himself Dictator and self-appointed President. He has declared martial law and promulgated a minute method of rule and administration ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... state. The King of Spain had taken the pains to inform the queen mother that he had fully made up his mind to interfere in the affairs of France, and to enforce Catholic supremacy at the point of the sword. She might accept or decline the offers of the self-appointed champion of orthodoxy; but, if she declined, he was resolved none the less to afford his succor to any true friend of the Church that chose to request it. Timid and irresolute Catharine, who desired to steer clear of the Scylla of Spanish intervention quite as much as of the ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... into the moonlight the expression on his face was exultant but sinister. He was watching and listening and waiting for the horse. At the first sound of the animal's prancing hoofs on the stones by the porter's lodge, the old man was prepared to steal to the self-appointed place somewhat down the road. What befell there would be wholly in the hands of God. Seven years! It was a long time. He had not hunted for this man; he was breaking no promise; their paths had recrossed; it was destiny. ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... professed object of their emigration, and so expressed in their Royal Charter of incorporation—they never sent a missionary or established a school among them for more than twelve years; and then the first and long the only missionary among the Indians was John Elliott, self-appointed, and supported by contributions from England. But during those twelve years, and afterwards, they slew the Indians by thousands, as the Canaanites and Amalekites, to be rooted out of the land which God had given to "the saints" (that is, to themselves), to be possessed ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... return to Court, taking up apartments which the royal favour had reserved for him at Versailles, Saint-Simon secretly entered upon the self-appointed task for which he is now known to fame—a task which the proud King of a vainglorious Court would have lost no time in terminating had it been discovered—the task of judge, spy, critic, portraitist, and historian, rolled into one. Day by day, henceforth for many years, he was to set down upon ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... proclamation of the Republic in September 1792 it ceased to be meritorious in Mayors and other municipal personages to protect life and property, repulse foreign invaders and punish domestic criminals. Varlet, the self-appointed 'Apostle of Liberty,' the man with the camp-chair and the red cap, whom Carnot, the grandfather of the present President, actually insisted that the Assembly should welcome to its floor, gave the keynote of the new order of things. 'We must draw a veil,' he exclaimed, 'over the Declaration ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... in the evil doings of Marco. What deep gratification it afforded Pan! They might thrive for a time, but their heyday had passed. Matthews would be the laughing stock of the town. He could never retrieve. He had been proclaimed only another in the long list of self-appointed ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... necessity, she took up her satchel and went up the path as one might walk, with bared feet, up a ladder of swords. Each step that took her nearer the house hurt her the more, but she was not of those who cry out when hurt. She set her lips more firmly together and continued upon her self-appointed way. ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... manifested. The crowd seemed to regard poor, demented Hannah as inspired, for a space was kept clear before her. When she began to sway in her weird fashion, and her face to twitch, she was the priestess and the oracle. The hymn she began was taken up first by two self-appointed exhorters, ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... taking little if any account of the inner lights of the soul. Thus it imposes upon credulity and ignorance; makes fakers of some and fanatics of others; in politics where not an engine of oppression, a corrupt influence; in religion where not a zealot, a promoter of cant. In short the self-appointed apostle of uplift, who disregarding individual character would make virtue a matter of statute law and ordain uniformity of conduct by act of conventicle or assembly, is likelier to produce moral chaos than to reach the sublime state he ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... themselves. Add to this the vicious constitution of our county courts (to whom the justice, the executive administration, the taxation, police, the military appointments of the county, and nearly all our daily concerns are confided), self-appointed, self-continued, holding their authorities for life, and with an impossibility of breaking in on the perpetual succession of any faction once possessed of the bench. They are, in truth, the executive, the judiciary, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... all except the three eldest boys were in the kitchen variously engaged. Danny under promise of a story was in the high chair submitting to a thorough going over with soap and water. Patsey, looking up from his self-appointed task of brushing the legs of the stove with the hair-brush, loudly demanded that the story ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... wages, and for the exclusion of all those who could not assert their claims to work in London and other corporate towns. Laws of a most arbitrary character were enforced, and they were governed by cliques of self-appointed officers, who never failed to take care ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... the masters of the sea. Hannibal must help himself as best he could. He continued to defeat the Roman armies that were sent out against him, but his own numbers were decreasing rapidly and the Italian peasants held aloof from this self-appointed "deliverer." ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... her women's club and identified with goodness knows how many charitable societies. In South Harniss she was active in church and sewing circles. Her enthusiasm was always great, but her tact was sometimes lacking. South Harniss people, some of them, were inclined to consider her as a self-appointed boss interfering ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... its curmudgeon or self-appointed grumbler, just as every village has its special imbecile. The curmudgeon originates in a class above the idiot; very often he is an ex-churchwarden, guardian, way-warden, or other official, who has resigned in dudgeon or been ousted from his post for some ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... the policeman of the plains. He is the self-appointed guardian of all the other animals, and for some strange, unselfish reason, he always does sentinel duty for the others. His eyes are so keen that he sees your hat when you appear over the horizon two miles away, and from that moment he never loses ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... outside of the kindergarten and the hospital. The former grows cuter and dearer all the time. It is a constant inspiration to see the daily development of these cunning babies. As for the visits to the hospital, they are a self-appointed task that grows no easier through repetition. You know how I shrink from seeing pain, and how all my life I have tried to get away from the disagreeable? Well it is like torture to go day after day into the midst of the most terrible suffering. But in view of the bigger things ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... Kennedy, raising an accusatory finger from the kinograph tracing and pointing it like the finger of Fate itself, "but the self-appointed avenger forgot that the leaden water pipe was common to the two houses. Old Mr. Pearcy, the wronged, died first. Isabel has guessed the family skeleton—has tried hard to shield you, but, Warner Pearcy, ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... genuine inquirer will find before long a number of self-appointed apostles who are eager to answer his question in many strange and inconsistent ways, calculated to increase rather than resolve the obscurity of his mind. He will learn that mysticism is a philosophy, an illusion, a kind of religion, a disease; ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... out in the bay, we were caught in a heavy squall. Sitting by the tiller, I got as much out of her as I knew how. We would go as far as we could before the run was over. Carlos bailed unceasingly, and without a word of complaint, sticking to his self-appointed task as if in very truth he were careless of life. A feeling came over me that this, indeed, was the elevated and the romantic. Perhaps he was tired of his life; perhaps he really regretted what he left behind him in England, or somewhere else—some association, some woman. But he, at least, ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... little ambulance went by, recalling thoughts or absent sons who might be journeying painfully to some far-off hospital, where brave women waited to tend them with hands as willing, hearts as tender, as those the gentle child gave to her self-appointed task. ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... her self-appointed task with all the interest of the born artist, who has an ever-present dream of things as they ought to look. When the last confining pin was in place she viewed the fair head before her from every point, ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... come to overrate the importance of those opinions, to take himself with far too much seriousness, and in the end adopt the dogma of his own infallibility. The liberty to summon this or that man-of-letters to a supposititious bar of justice is apt to beget in the self-appointed judge an exaggerated sense of superiority. He becomes impatient of any rulings not his, and says in effect, if not in so many words: "I am Sir Oracle, and when I ope my lips let no dog bark." When the critic reaches this exalted frame of mind ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... The self-appointed committee for the execution of justice and the man from the Panhandle looked the prison photographs over blankly. Between the hard, clean-cut face of their prisoner and those that looked at them from the photographs ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... sitting erect on top. When alarmed, they would yelp and dive into their lairs in the earth. These little rodents share their habitations with a funny-looking little owl and the rattlesnake. I believe, however, that the snake is not there as a welcome visitor, but comes in the role of a self-appointed assessor and tax gatherer. I picked up and adopted a little bulldog which had been either abandoned on the cars or lost by its owner, not then thinking that this little Cerberus, as I called it, should later prove, on one occasion, to be my ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... could believe that before we died there would not be a corner of the world in which any book of interest or value whatever would not be easily attainable by any intelligent person who wanted to read it. And already we were taking up the more difficult and ambitious phase of our self-appointed task, and considering the problem of using these channels we were mastering and deepening and supplementing for the stimulation and wide ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... newspaper reporter. It was a smaller New York, a more limited Fifth Avenue in those days, and Mrs. Astor ruled its society without any one to question her sovereignty. She was about to give a great ball, and Ward McAllister, as the self-appointed and generally accepted secretary of society, was in charge of the ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... of this self-appointed task, let me say to the reader, in the words of Montaigne, "I bring you a nosegay of culled flowers, and I have brought little of my own but the ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... vast region of forest and streams and wild mountain ranges, men were infinitesimal specks hurrying here and there about their self-appointed tasks. Those like himself and Doris, who did not mind the privations inseparable from that remoteness, fared well enough. The land held out to them manifold promises. Hollister looked at the red-brown shingle bolts accumulating ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Oligarchy, narrowed down to one man, became monarchy. If you wished to be polite to an oligarchy you called it an aristocracy; if you wished to point out that a monarch was rather by way of being self-appointed, you called him a Tyrant. An oligarchy with a property ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... understand the implications and the sinister significance of superficial attempts to apply rosewater remedies to social evils,—by the enactment of restrictive and superficial legislation, by wholesale philanthropies and charities, by publicly burying our heads in the sands of sentimentality. Self-appointed censors, grossly immoral "moralists," makeshift legislators, all face a heavy responsibility for the miseries, diseases, and social evils they perpetuate or intensify by enforcing the primitive taboos of aboriginal customs, traditions, and outworn ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... I have now said enough to secure the author of a wise and moderate disquisition upon a topic which seems fated to stir unwisdom and fanaticism to their depths, a fuller measure of justice than has hitherto been accorded to him, I retire from my self-appointed championship, with the hope that I shall not hereafter be called upon by M. Reville to apologise for damage done to his strong case by imperfect or impulsive advocacy. But, perhaps, I may be permitted to add a word or two, on my own account, ...
— The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature - Essay #4 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... of this world-war will be the birth of a new determination in every nation that its own voice and its own will shall control its own destinies—that no one man or self-appointed clique shall swing it to ruin for his or their own selfish purposes. Who pays the piper must in future call ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... could not come. The provincial magistrates were generally members, though not always. As to the number of temporal lords, it was almost invariably more than twelve, sometimes double as many. From the very first, this self-appointed oligarchy saw that in unity was strength; and while the different members of the royal family were squabbling among themselves, the Cabinet seized the opportunity to increase its power. Though not entitled to a definite salary, it was regularly understood that ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... he had turned out his light and got into bed, he began to feel a certain distaste for his self-appointed task. If Livingstone were Clark, if after years of effort he had pulled himself up by his own boot-straps, had made himself a man out of the reckless boy he had been, a decent and useful citizen, why pull him down? After all, the world hadn't lost much ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... sarcasm the captain attacked his self-appointed task with the grim determination that had made him respected in every port wherever the big deep water tramp, of which he was the proud master, had dropped her ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... assertions of Christian doctrine, but with no negation of it, he believes in doing good for its own sake,—in self-denial, in the rewards which virtue gives herself. His faults are few and venial. His merry life smacks too much of the practical joke and the punch-bowl; he denounces cant in the self-appointed ministers of the gospel, but he is not careful to draw contrasted pictures of good pastors. His opinion seems to be based upon a human perfectibility. But for rare pictures of real life he has never ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... is artificial with men, but natural to women.' Judging by the Divorce Court returns, it would seem that this natural feminine trait has weakened somewhat, since this view was expressed some sixty years ago. According to the Society chroniclers—self-appointed—it certainly has in 'London's West ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... of the Arctic regions. Their names remain an added constellation in polar skies. But, we know that bitter skies and winter winds are not so unkind as man's ingratitude. And why, then, do we withhold sympathy and honor from these men who have so unflinchingly trod their isolated paths of self-appointed duty, accepting political and social excommunication—these heroes of the moral solitudes? But even as it is, our reformers have a better lot than history usually records for such; they have the satisfaction ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... a self-appointed squire of dames; actuated merely by a romantic desire to serve beauty in distress. Extremely interesting, my dear boy. But, see here, Knox," and his tone changed to seriousness. "Let the romance go, and talk sense a minute. You are not going to get very far fighting me alone. You haven't even ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... paper scrolls setting forth that they were named as Sisters of the American Soldier, Patriotic Daughters of America, or Ministering Angels of the Camp and Cot. Shades of Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton! the very voice of such self-appointed angels as Miss Perkins was enough to set the nerves of strong men on edge and to drive fever patients to madness! Even the Red Cross could not always be sure of its selection. It did prevent the sending to Manila of certain undesirable applicants, but it could ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... cheerful pretense with Phil Laidlaw, had a woman's intuition of Marcia's antagonism. Jerry joined and chatted in Una's group for a moment, but I could see that he had lost something of his buoyancy. I watched Marcia keenly. Though absorbed apparently in the pouring of the tea, a self-appointed prerogative which she had assumed with something of an air—(meant, I am sure, for Una)—her narrowly veiled eyes lost no detail of any happening in Una's group, and her ears, I am sure, no detail of its conversation. Subtle glances, stolen or portentous, shot between them, and Jerry, ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... city rickishas are the usual means of travel, but inside the walls most of the streets are too narrow for rickishas to pass one another, and paving of large flagstones is too rough for wheels, so that the sedan chair is the only means of locomotion except one's own legs. My self-appointed guide said he would get chairs for seven dollars per day ($3.00 in American money) but I told him I expected to walk and that if he wanted to go with me he would have to do likewise; he immediately professed ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese
... wish to be "worked for,"—to be carried heavenward on some one else's shoulders: but to climb thither by God's help and our own will, or to stay where we are. Moreover, by what touchstone shall we test the veracity of the self-appointed purveyors of this Positive Revelation? Are we to believe what they say, because they have lost their bodies? If life teaches us anything, it is that God does above all things respect the spiritual freedom of his creatures. He does not terrify ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... one of supreme self-sacrifice and devotion to duty, and had concluded, in a deeply repentant mind, that this unpleasant incident at the close of the day was only the natural consequence of my error in departing from the prescribed limits of my self-appointed task. ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... personally or by deputy, at this assembly, which the chaplain to the Saxon Court, Dr. Hoe von Hohenegg, opened with a vehement discourse from the pulpit. The Emperor had, in vain, endeavoured to prevent this self-appointed convention, whose object was evidently to provide for its own defence, and which the presence of the Swedes in the empire, rendered more than usually alarming. Emboldened by the progress of Gustavus Adolphus, the assembled princes asserted their rights, and after a session of two ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... that science teaches the evolution of man when it teaches nothing of the kind. A mere theory is not science until proven. A man does not become a scientist by advocating an unproven theory, but by making some notable contribution to knowledge. These self-appointed scientists recklessly declare that the "consensus" of science favors evolution. We oppose evolution not because it is science, but because it is not science. There is no conflict between Christianity and real science, but a fight to the death ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... self-appointed stars of the varsity bandied words among themselves as they crossed the field. At the cage door they became separated to mingle with the pushing crowd of excited ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... arrived from Viterbo, notwithstanding the rumors of incendiarism and massacre, they came forth from their homes, and proceeded in companies, with no male attendants but armed men, to the discharge of their self-appointed public duties. There: were many foreigners in the papal ranks, and the sympathies and services of the female visitors to Rome were engaged for their countrymen. Princesses of France and Flanders might be seen by the tressel-beds of many a suffering soldier of Dauphin and Brabant; ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... to foist Tanumafili on the unwilling natives of the group, and backed by three men-of-war, they declared Mataafa a rebel and plunged the country into a disastrous and sanguinary war. England and America, in the person of their respective naval commanders, vied with one another in their self-appointed task; and while the Germans stood aloof, protesting and aghast, our ships ravaged the Samoan coast, burning, bombarding, and destroying with indiscriminate fury. In this savage conflict, so unjust ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... he has been Green Valley's self-appointed librarian. He draws no salary except the joy of doing what he loves to do and he squanders, as his friends truly suspect, much secret money of his own on it. The library is housed in the old church in a ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... the little stream offered an attractive resting place for the self-appointed delegates, and the twilight hour a most ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... at various times, Posing as Europe's self-appointed saviour, Afforded copy for our ribald rhymes By ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 19th, 1914 • Various
... is thus expressed in a letter to one of his friends: "The real people, occasionally assembled in order to express their sentiments on political subjects, ought never to be confounded with permanent self-appointed societies, usurping the right to control the constituted authorities and to dictate to public opinion. While the former is entitled to respect, the latter is incompatible with all government and must either ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... picture subject—the gallant cow on the defensive, even threatening and aggressive, and the many small helpless calves gathering hastily around her for protection. Her! The self-appointed mother of the brood. ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... Io's time for several days thereafter. Morning and afternoon Banneker rode over from the station to make anxious inquiry. The self-appointed nurse reported progress as rapid as could be expected, but was constantly kept on the alert because of the patient's rebellion against enforced idleness. Seizures of the same sort she had suffered before, it appeared, ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of government. First, the right of a people to govern themselves, as opposed to government of the many by a self-appointed few—in other words, democracy as opposed to autocracy. Second, a union of the democracies to insure mutual protection ...
— The Spirit of Lafayette • James Mott Hallowell
... receiving friends at his own home, and conducted them to seats. A venerable clergyman sat in the pulpit with a face full of quiet benignity. Every one who came appeared to receive an almost personal welcome; and Madge and Mr. Muir looked enviously at the self-appointed usher. It was as evident that he was not a professional sexton as that the little congregation could not afford such a luxury. No care clouded his brow. Evidently his future did not depend on fluctuations ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... music that is heard within the confines of the forest. You cannot travel a rod under the trees without being watched by the small forest inhabitants, who regard you with suspicion, and peer at you from under decaying logs or leafy covert like self-appointed detectives. ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... Charley was by far the smaller and paler of the two, the murderer submitted tamely, and dared not look into Charley's eye. Instead of scolding the delinquent tax-payers, the new sheriff sympathized with them, and the county treasury filled rapidly. The self-appointed "regulators" caught a horse-thief a week or two after Charley's installment into office, and were about to quietly hang him, after the time-honored custom of Western regulators, when Charley dashed into the crowd, pointed his pistol at the head of Deacon Bent, the leader ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... Somerled and out at the window. This made me sure that a vague suspicion of mine was founded on fact. Mrs. Bal had angled for Somerled, and he had been one of her few failures. She couldn't be pleased at encountering him again as her daughter's self-appointed guardian and champion. It seemed to me that the situation complicated itself, to Somerled's disadvantage; therefore—it might be—to the advantage of the ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... next to him had been selected as the limit of the ground. The sharp eyes of the boy had long since penetrated the disguises of the remaining masked men, and when the long, lank figure of the master's self-appointed second took up its position beneath the pines in full view of him, although hidden from the spectators, Johnny instantly recognized it to be none other than Seth Davis. The manifest inconsistency of his appearance as Mr. Ford's second with what Johnny knew of his relations to the master was ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... President through its power of ratifying treaties and appointments. "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judicial, in the same hands," wrote Madison, "whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." The devices which the convention adopted to prevent such a centralization of authority were exceedingly ingenious and well calculated to accomplish the purposes ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... seemed: it held a regular and monotonous course; inch by inch it traversed the little orbit of its domain, taking months to accomplish the whole gyration. It was a restless voyager, that tortoise!—patiently, and with pain, did it perform its self-appointed journeys, evincing no interest in the things around it—a philosopher concentrated in itself. There was something grand in its solitary selfishness!—the sun in which it basked—the waters poured daily over it—the air, which it insensibly inhaled, ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... him to be captured in one of his self-appointed expeditions, but the federal colonel released him, after a short examination, satisfied that he could most injure the confederate forces opposed to the Unionists by returning him to his regiment. Col. Sellers was of course a prominent man during the war. He was captain of the ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... Colonel was not about the place. Dick, on missing the ex-convict, had hurried at once to Grand's hotel, finding his man there, seated in the small lobby, a sinister example of respectability, waiting patiently for the return of his enemy. The self-appointed guardian coaxed him away from the place, conducting him to the cheap, ill-favored thieves' lodging-house where he had taken a single room for temporary occupancy. Braddock, after a show of obduracy, finally had consented to make ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... high position entitled him to some consideration. Less than a week after his first interview with the imperial representatives, Lord Elgin received a letter from Keying, who, it was soon found, had come on a self-appointed mission to induce the English by artifice and plausible representation to withdraw their fleet from the river. His zeal was increased by the knowledge that the penalty of failure would be death, and as his reputation ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... would inaugurate, with their lingering adhesion to the rights of wealth and the dignity of rank. There might have been possibly a thousand people crowded into the hall of the Chamber of Deputies, who thus, self-appointed, were forming a government for ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... our Russian friend back here in the corner, where the shelf suppresses him," said Georgia, who seemed to have accepted the self-appointed position of head cataloguer. "Some of the students might happen ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... The self-appointed missionary in her talks with me seldom referred to her work in detail. I respected her reserve and asked no questions, for I gravely doubted any good results from her labor. But to Zura she confided ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... self-appointed task has been prosecuted with conscientious zeal and persistency of purpose, although with frequent interruptions, and more often than not amid circumstances least favorable to literary composition. At the same time my hands have been filled with ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... Savings Banks have risen from six millions in 1896 to over thirteen millions the year before the war. The new War Loan is reported to have had an extraordinary success in Ireland. On the last day of subscription a single Dublin bank took in one million sterling.[*] With some self-appointed champions of Ireland abuse of the British Empire is a very popular amusement, but the Irish farmer and the Irish trader put their money in it, and with it they stand to win ...
— Ireland and Poland - A Comparison • Thomas William Rolleston
... the few readers of radical Abolitionist papers must often have seen the singular name of Sojourner Truth, announced as a frequent speaker at Anti-Slavery meetings, and as travelling on a sort of self-appointed agency through the country. I had myself often remarked the name, but never met the individual. On one occasion, when our house was filled with company, several eminent clergymen being our guests, notice was brought up to me that Sojourner Truth was below, and requested an interview. Knowing nothing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... The other men tell me that in those fifteen years he aged very fast, as well he might indeed, but that he was still the same gentle, uncomplaining, silent sufferer that he ever was, bearing as best he could his self-appointed punishment,—rather less social, perhaps, with new men whom he did not know, but more anxious, apparently, than ever to serve and befriend and teach the boys, some of whom fairly seemed to worship him. And now it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... and good spirits. No matter who is sick, or dejected, or unsatisfied, or what the weather is, or what the price of corn, the crow is well and finds life sweet. He is the dusky embodiment of worldly wisdom and prudence. Then he is one of Nature's self-appointed constables and greatly magnifies his office. He would fain arrest every hawk or owl or grimalkin that ventures abroad. I have known a posse of them to beset the fox and cry "Thief!" till Reynard hid himself for shame. Do I say the fox ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... heart of Republicanism. An American city, having a population of over a million, was disfranchised by an open vote of a Legislature born and nurtured in Democracy and Republicanism, and was handed over to a self-appointed oligarchy, to be robbed and plundered by them and their confederates, heirs and assigns for six years certainly, and prospectively for ever. A month's exhumation among the crimes of the Tammany leaders has not so familiarized ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... looking. Oh, it's you!" she murmured vaguely. Her fellow-assistant had a headache, and forty-five written papers to correct. She had just heard, too, a cutting criticism of her work made by the self-appointed faculty critic; the criticism was cleverly worded, and had just enough truth to fly quickly and hurt her with the head of her department. So she was not in ...
— A Reversion To Type • Josephine Daskam
... voluptuousness, or with malice prepense, won immediate title to Sofia's favourable regard. If she couldn't thwart Victor herself, she would be much obliged to anybody who could and did; and she was nothing loath to betray her bias by looking kindly upon her self-appointed champion. ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... her away toward the prahu of Muda Saffir she cried out to the strange white man who seemed her self-appointed protector. ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs |
