"Superannuated" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their way again, going even more rapidly than before. In this way the pursuit led by Captain Fuller came to Etowah Station. Here he found the old "Yonah," a locomotive belonging to the Mark A. Cooper Iron Works. The "Yonah" was a superannuated engine, but Captain Fuller pressed it and its crew into his service. The rickety old "Yonah" seemed to enter into the spirit of the pursuit, for the distance to Kingston—thirteen miles—was made in ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... est, Licinius. Tum intermissa causa, CENTUMVIRI, inquit, HOC ARTIFICIUM PERIIT. Lib. ii. ep. 14. Domitius Afer has been mentioned, s. xiii. note [d]. To what is there said of him may be added a fact related by Quintilian, who says that Afer, when old and superannuated, still continued at the bar, exhibiting the decay of genius, and every day diminishing that high reputation which he once possessed. Hence men said of him, he had rather decline than desist. Malle eum deficere, quam desinere. Quint. lib. xii. ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... grouped around the devoted almond-tree: a gnarled old personage, of a great age and girth, having that pathetic look of sorrowful dignity which I find always in superannuated trees—and now and then in humans of gentle natures who are conscious that their days of usefulness are gone. Esperit, who was beside me, felt called upon to explain that the old tree was almost past ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... regular life I had led, as I have already taken notice, for so many years, not having permitted any superfluous or bad humours to breed in me; or if they did, to acquire such strength and malignity, a they generally acquire in the superannuated bodies of those, who live without rule. And as there was not any old malignity in my humours (which is the thing that kills people) but only that, which my new irregularity had occasioned, this fit of sickness, though exceeding violent, had not the strength to destroy ...
— Discourses on a Sober and Temperate Life • Lewis Cornaro
... another good system, which varied only in local and circumstantial differences; much less that they were holding out to us a superior pattern of legal liberty, which we might substitute in the place of our old, and, as they describe it, superannuated Constitution. He meant to demonstrate that the French scheme was not a comparative good, but a positive evil.—That the question did not at all turn, as it had been stated, on a parallel between a monarchy and a republic. He denied that the present scheme of things in France did at all deserve the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a tariff of prices exclusively on articles produced by the farmers, including the sweet potatoes raised by old women and superannuated negroes. You leave the Jews and extortioners, some of the former of whom go about in uniforms, claiming to be officers and your agents to charge these same venders of produce, whatever infamous prices they please for wares they need to purchase ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... preacher, and would'st rail at me That I strove after things too high for me, Giving my faith to bold unlawful dreams, And still extol to me the golden mean. 35 —Thy wisdom hath been proved a thriftless friend To thy own self. See, it has made thee early A superannuated man, and (but That my munificent stars will intervene) Would let thee in some miserable corner 40 Go out like ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... and fifty-five years' possession on the part of Poland has not invalidated the title of Austria to the Zips! My lawful claim to Silesia was of more modern date than this, and yet Austria would have made it appear that it was superannuated." ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... no value unless they have it all to themselves. They will no more share a book than a mistress with a friend. If they suspected their favourite volumes of delighting any eyes but their own, they would immediately discard them from the list. Theirs are superannuated beauties that every one else has left off intriguing with, bedridden hags, a 'stud of nightmares.' This is not envy or affectation, but a natural proneness to singularity, a love of what is odd and out of the way. They must come at their pleasures with difficulty, and support admiration by an uneasy ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... the Municipal Police Force, whilst in the actual performance of duty, shall become permanently disabled, so as to render his dismissal from membership proper, or if any such member shall become superannuated after ten years of membership, a sum of not exceeding $150, as an annuity, to be paid such member, shall be chargeable upon the Municipal Police Life Insurance Fund. If any member of the Municipal ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... was a licensed preacher. Ordained under Bishop Lee, Johnson, Copeland—all colored bishops at Topeka, Kansas. Then I attended conference at Bereah, Kentucky. Bishop Dizney presided. I preached in Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas. I am now what they call a superannuated minister. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... we take leave of this work of Sir Charles Lyell with the conviction that however obnoxious it may be to orthodox editors and superannuated doctors of divinity, it is destined to stimulate greatly scientific inquiry and active thought. It is impossible that when such a mine has been sprung, and promises to yield such tangible results, it should suddenly cease to work, because ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... Brent looked across at him, "even though I can't agree with you. I've usually found oysters finished all too soon;—and much easier to swallow than your superannuated moral axioms." ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... a year had passed away since I had planted a signal staff upon its parapet to angle upon; being then engaged, as chief of a hydrographic surveying party, in surveying the approaches to Boston Harbor. Then its garrison consisted of a superannuated sergeant whose office was a sinecure; now it held an armed garrison, who drilled and paraded every day, with all the "pomp and circumstance" of war, to the patriotic tune of "John Brown's body lies a-moulding in the grave, but his spirit is marching ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... constitute them lords of all Greece on condition they were not engaged in the war. The Lacedaemonians, receiving news of this, and fearing, dispatched an embassy to the Athenians, entreating that they would send their wives and children to Sparta, and receive support from them for their superannuated. For, being despoiled both of their city and country, the people were suffering extreme distress. Having given audience to the ambassadors, they returned an answer, upon the motion of Aristides, worthy of the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... were the summer sunshine of a long- past century arrested in its course—unrefreshed for ages by dews of night, or the rushing rain-cloud; scorching the dusty, weary, time-eaten grandeur of a people doomed to live on in the stale repetition of memories, like deposed and superannuated kings in their regal gold-inwoven tatters. The city looked so thirsty that the broad river seemed to me a sheet of metal; and the blackened statues, as I passed under their blank gaze, along the unending bridge, with their ancient garments and their saintly crowns, seemed to me the real inhabitants ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... for so long a period as a half year, and when accident, or the unwonted backwardness of the season, increases the number of mouths, or the length of the cold term, it is hard for the farmer to decide on sacrificing the life of even a superannuated horse, or weakly yearling, in time to benefit ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... it was Reality? What had all the infidels of every age contended but that it was Unreal, and the folly of a dream? He had never thought of himself as an infidel; perhaps it would have shocked him to be called one, though he was not quite sure. But that a little superannuated dancer at music-halls, battered and worn by an unlawful life, should sit and smile in absolute faith at such a—a superstition as this, stirred something ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... pieces, and then twisted into new combinations, something as most books are manufactured. This "junk" is bought at the junk shops along the wharves; outlandish looking dens, generally subterranean, full of old iron, old shrouds, spars, rusty blocks, and superannuated tackles; and kept by villainous looking old men, in tarred trowsers, and with yellow beards like oakum. They look like wreckers; and the scattered goods they expose for sale, involuntarily remind one of the sea-beach, covered with keels and cordage, ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... ourselves. For speculative reason is, in the sphere of transcendentalism, dialectical in its own nature. The difficulties and objections we have to fear lie in ourselves. They are like old but never superannuated claims; and we must seek them out, and settle them once and for ever, if we are to expect a permanent peace. External tranquility is hollow and unreal. The root of these contradictions, which lies ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... somnolently. Now and then someone spat. Outside of the window Andrews could see the soft white dancing of the snowflakes. His limbs felt very heavy; his mind was permeated with dusty stagnation like the stagnation of old garrets and lumber rooms, where, among superannuated bits of machinery and cracked grimy crockery, ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... say "drat Lady ——," he insisted she was a foolish, empty-headed creature, and that Browning praised her because she had a title. This was taken seriously, and the Poet requested that no disparaging remarks would be made on one of his best friends. "Pooh," said Forster, contemptuously, "some superannuated creature! I am astonished at you." How it ended I cannot say, but it ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... the sense of rest here captivating?" she continued. "Look at that quaint garden, and this ragged lawn, and the great river in front, and the superannuated fort beyond the river! Everything is peaceful, even down to the poor old General's little bed-room. One would like to lie down in it and sleep a century or two. And yet that dreadful Capitol and its office-seekers ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... Chempoalla, which soon went to ruin. The oydor Delgadillo was much censured for his free gifts, as it was observed he always reserved some rents to himself, and the consequent extortions and oppressions of those he patronized were excessive. The other oydor Matienzo was superannuated. The abuses of the members of this supreme court became at length so notorious, that other members of more discretion were sent out to supersede them. Old Matienzo, who was the least exceptionable, was sent to Panuco to inquire into and remedy ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... with me when I saw Armide again in a city which I shall not name. The opera had been judged superannuated and had been "improved." A young composer had written a new score in which he inserted here and there such bits of Gluck as he thought worthy of being preserved. A costly and magnificently imbecile luxuriousness set off the whole piece. I may be pardoned the cruel adjective when I say ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... moral worth of human life, still less, of the value even of its most painful experiences as a discipline of everlasting benefit. In fine, life is little more than a mere struggle for existence. What wonder then, that in some tribes filial piety has been wont to relieve superannuated parents from an existence devoid equally of joy and of hope; and that in others parental love may have even dictated the exposure—with a view to their perishing—of feeble, sickly, and deformed children, incapable ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... opera. The new entertainment was recognized as a luxury, and it was no more than fitting that it be luxuriously and elegantly housed. It will be necessary to account for the potent influence of Da Ponte, who was only a superannuated poet and teacher of Italian language and literature, and this I hope to do presently; for the time being it is sufficient to say that it was he who persuaded the rich and cultured citizens of New York to build the ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... life for its own sake, and would hardly have exchanged it for prosperity. Here and there was an old fellow, for whom probably all the illusion was gone; but he was proud of his vocation, proud even of the changes that left him somewhat superannuated in his tastes and methods. None, indeed, who have ever known it, can wholly forget the generous rage with which journalism inspires its followers. To each of those young men, beginning the strangely fascinating life as reporters and correspondents, his paper was as dear as his king ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... misfortune? It looks to me as if these eccentric wills of old Nutcombe's came in cycles, as it were. Just as he was due for another outbreak he happened to meet you. It's a moral certainty that if he hadn't met you he would have left all his money to a Home for Superannuated Caddies or a Fund for Supplying the Deserving Poor with Niblicks. ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... forms of government perish from the abandonment and also from the exaggeration of the principle from which their merit is derived, though this is a very superannuated maxim; that they perish by an abandonment of their principle because that principle is the historical reason of their coming into existence, and they perish by carrying their principle to excess, ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... night in June was on the Canongate and the silent palace of the gallant, gentle King James. Lady Carnegie was gracing some rout or drum; Nanny Swinton was in her kitchen, burnishing her superannuated treasures, and crooning to herself as she worked; Nelly, in her solitary, shadowy room, lay plaiting and pinching the cambric and muslin gear whose manufacture was her daily occupation, with her child's clumsy cradle drawn within reach ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... 89 (a.u. 665)] (Par.) Cato,[64] the greater part of whose army was effeminate and superannuated, found his power diminished in every direction: and once, when he had ventured to rebuke them because they were unwilling to work hard or obey orders readily, he came near being overwhelmed with a shower of missiles from them. He would certainly have been killed, if they had had plenty of stones; ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... girl overcame her horror and reluctance for the sake of her aged relative, and promised to marry this man on condition of his success in the promised application. The life, however, of so formidable a conspirator as a superannuated and dying woman, was too great a favour to be granted even to a friend; and the only boon which he could obtain was the promise of Mademoiselle d'Ozanne's life, in consideration of her becoming his wife. "Eh ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... whereupon he acknowledged he was having difficulty in making his feet behave. We became quite a companionable little family, in fact, as the bobbing process went on, and when Dinky-Dunk called for us as he'd promised he was patently scandalized to find his superannuated old soul-mate sight-reading When Katy Couldn't Katy Wouldn't—it was a new one to me—in the second ragged plush shaving-chair of a none too clean barber-shop festooned with lithographs which would have made old Anthony Comstock turn in his ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... of his disintegration. I should have written this description long ago, but I had not years enough; only now am I entering upon them, directly and indirectly. I should have done it while the country was groping for long periods under the shadow of superannuated incompetence. Instead I do it now, when I myself am being accused of a tendency to cast shadows. "Sensationalism," you will say, "chasing after fame!" My dear, chaste friend, I have fame enough ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... Lord Churchill, goin' to do? He's a red-hot 'un. He does slip into 'em, and no mistake. He's a coming man, I reckon. I never see such a flow of language as that bit where he called old Gommy a superannuated Pharisee. That was up against ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... dignity of port, an amplitude of back, an emphasis of vocabulary and conviction unknown in other regions; Dowagers and Dignitaries who have retired from a world no longer worthy of them, ex-Governors of Dominions, unavailing Viceroys, superannuated Bishops and valetudinarian Generals, who wear top-hats and drive around the Park in old-fashioned barouches—a society, I imagine it, not frivolous, not flippant, entirely devoid of double meanings; a society in which ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... Leaf on the Plains of Minden; found in the pocket of an Officer who fell on the First of August.—"The Art of Flying," by Monsieur Contades; with a curious Frontispiece, representing Dismay with Eagle's Wings, and Glory with a pair of Crutches, following the French Army.—"The Reveries of a Superannuated Genius, on the Banks of Lake Liman, near Geneva," by M. Voltaire.—"The Spirit of Lying," from "L'Esprit Menteur" of Monsieur Maubert.—"Political Arithmetic," by the same Author; in which is proved to Demonstration that Two is more than Five, and that Three is less than One.—"The ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... from the light shelf of the blue nose, which rests no more crockery than is absolutely necessary. Here there is a wide array of dishes, large and small—old China tea-cups, wisely kept for show,—little funny mugs, curious pitchers, mysterious covered dishes, unearthly salad bowls, and a host of superannuated tea-pots. Above them is ranged a bright copper kettle, a large silvery pewter basin, and glittering brazen candlesticks, all brought from their English home, and borne through toil and danger, like sacred relics, from the shrine of the household gods. The ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... eight. A board beside the mouth of the harbour, signed by a Secretary of State to his late Majesty King William the Fourth, still announces to a heedless world the tolls to be paid for entry by the ships that never arrive; and a superannuated official in a wooden leg and a gold cap-band retains the honourable sinecure of a harbour-mastership, with a hypothetical salary nominally payable from the non-existent fees and port dues. The little river Cale, at the bottom of whose combe the wee town nestles snugly, has cut itself a deep valley ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... first portion of this letter into the Elia essay "The Superannuated Man," which ought to be read in connection with it (see Vol. II. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... is a situation for life unless the holder prove unworthy, with a pension if superannuated; but in our own country the appointments are in a measure political, and consequently liable to be temporary. This circumstance is deplored by the Board which sometimes in this way loses valuable servants after they have ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... the pavement) suffuses itself, as I look back upon it, with a romantic tone. And in relation to the inn, I suppose I had better mention that I am well aware of the inconsistency of a person who dislikes the modern caravansary, and yet grumbles when he finds a hotel of the superannuated sort, one ought to choose, it would seem, and make the best of either alternative. The two old taverns at Arles are quite unimproved; such as they must have been in the infancy of the modern world, when Stendhal passed that way, and the lumbering ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... Empire (1863) the convent was the hotel of the Minister of War. Hither, about 1748, came Madame du Deffand, later the superannuated adorer of the hard-hearted Horace Walpole, and here was her famous salon moire jaune, aux naeuds couleur de feu. Here she entertained the President Henault, Bulkeley, Montesquieu (whose own house was in the same street), Lord Bath, and ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... finance minister twenty-five years before, had shown both ability and integrity, and who had enjoyed the confidence of the king's father, and though Maurepas had never been supposed to be either able or honest, and might well have been regarded as superannuated, since he had begun his ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... has been utterly effaced by time, it is not so easy to find arguments for its preservation. There is no sense or utility in exhibiting a blank tablet, and I have seen without scruple or remorse such superannuated vestiges employed in repairing the church fabric. But this, be it understood, is only when the stone is irretrievably beyond memento mori service, and on the clear condition that it is employed in the furtherance of religious work. It is true that a stone is only a stone, whatever ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... the required clothing; and she asked me, in case of such an emergency, if she might sometimes apply to me for some of the articles of which they might be in especial need. From that time Canada became the ultimate destination of all my old clothes. I could imagine superannuated cloaks and shawls wrapped around dusky and shivering shoulders, and familiar bonnets walking about Canada in their old age on the woolly heads of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... entered into his father's plans, though he felt much more sanguine than he did as to the result. He said that he had little doubt but that Lord Claymore would grant a superannuated discharge to the two ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... said that dame Jacinthe although little superannuated, had still kept her bloom. It is true that she spared nothing to preserve it: besides taking a clyster every day, she swallowed some excellent jelly during the day and on going ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... beaten track of the schools; who, upon the discovery of so apparent an error as a torrid zone, intended to proceed in an inquisition after more solid truths; till the mediation of some whose livelihood lay in hammering shrines for this superannuated study, possessed queen Elizabeth that such doctrine was against God no less than her father's honor; whose faith, if he owed any, was grounded upon school divinity. Whereupon she chid him, who was, by his own confession, ever after branded with the name of an atheist, though a ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... of justice and truth, and it is to help your poor young mistress that I came to see you; but it seems you are too superannuated to stretch out your ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... modernity. She had wished me to understand that I was old-fashioned; that the frame of mind of which I and my fellows were the inheritors was over and done with. We were to be compulsorily retired; to stand aside superannuated. It was obvious that she was better equipped for the swiftness of life. She had a something—not only quickness of wit, not only ruthless determination, but a something quite different and quite indefinably more ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... castle-building scheme of an academy would cause great changes probably in the masters; and as, no doubt, it would oblige us to adopt the new methods of teaching, I would like to have a private inkling of what salary he would expect on being superannuated. ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... learning that he was bound for India the other inquired the presidency and the station, and it so happened that he had left that district only the year before, and was now settled in Hampshire, having been superannuated, at which he grumbled much, and indeed he was a hale young-looking man to be laid on the shelf. And so the time sped rapidly till they reached Portsmouth harbour, where a conspicuous white vessel, which was pointed out to Crawley as the Serapis, ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... particular spot in the quickset hedge between the park and the twelve-acre field, but was confident he would catch him the next time he tried it, how Moses Skingle, the sexton, fell out with Mr. Speller, the superannuated village schoolmaster, because the juvenile Spellers would not refrain from the preparation of luscious mud pies upon the newly made grave of the late Peter Sullins, farmer, whose promising heir had not yet recovered sufficiently from the dissipation ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... have gone deliberately to work, one would imagine, to reverse matters. Abroad woman is always where man ought to be, and man where most ladies would prefer to meet with women. The ladies garde- robe is superintended by a superannuated sergeant of artillery. When I want to curl my moustache, say, I have to make application to a superb golden-haired creature, who stands by and watches me with an interested smile. I would be much happier waited on by the superannuated ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... moved to pity, and instantly calling upon the genii (for by his knowledge of magic and every abstruse science he had them all under his control), commanded them to bring him the youth from the camel, and place in his room, without being perceived, some superannuated man. They did so, and when the multitude saw the youth, as it were, transformed into a well-known venerable shekh, they were stricken with awe, and said, "Heavens! the young man turns out to be our reverend chief of the herb-sellers;" ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... because a vast expansion of intellect,—it was because new hopes, new necessities, and the frenzy of youthful blood, had translated me into a new creature. Man is doubtless one by some subtle nexus that we cannot perceive, extending from the new-born infant to the superannuated dotard; but as regards many affections and passions incident to his nature at different stages, he is not one: the unity of man in this respect is coextensive only with the particular stage to which the passion belongs. Some passions, as that ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... were occupying our minds as we climbed the bluffs for a visit to this incipient Pittsburg. The equipage did no credit to the financial status of the iron company, as it consisted of a superannuated express-wagon drawn by a dyspeptic white horse which the boy who officiated as driver found no difficulty in restraining. Two gentlemen in charge of the constructions, their visitor and two kegs of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... roundabout way, to the Terrace. Presently Mr. Cardew came out and walked slowly down Rectory Lane. In those days it was hardly a thoroughfare. It ended at the river bank, and during daylight a boat was generally there, belonging to an old, superannuated boatman, who carried chance passengers over to the mill meadows and saved them a walk if they wanted to go that side of the town. A rough seat had been placed near the boat moorings for the convenience of the ferryman's customers. At this time in the ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... advances she made towards his affection; and although there was something repulsive in his nature, he overcame it so far as to make some return to her civilities. — Perhaps, he thought it would be no bad scheme, in a superannuated lieutenant on half-pay, to effect a conjunction with an old maid, who, in all probability, had fortune enough to keep him easy and comfortable in the fag-end of his days — An ogling correspondence forthwith commenced between this amiable ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... than they have already suffered,[607] she unnerves and demoralizes the Punic army by the luxury of Capua.[608] Minerva and Mars play minor parts, the former favouring Carthage, the latter Rome.[609] Nothing is gained by this dreary and superannuated mechanism, while the poem is yet further hampered by the ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... auditors, others aim higher than their taste. But, in view of the fact that under present metropolitan conditions the dramatist may pick his own auditors, this aiming below them or above them seems (to quote Sir Thomas Browne) "a vanity out of date and superannuated piece of folly." While granting the dramatist entire liberty to select the level of his mark, the critic may justly demand that he shall aim directly at it, without allowing his hand ever to droop down or flutter upward. That he should ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... dilapidated farm, as he was annoyed by the beggarly way the old man lived, and the assiduous desire he seemed to manifest for Lev to be stirring around, gathering chips, patching fences, cutting brush; from morn till night, he and the two superannuated cuffies; and the old man barely raising enough to keep soul and body of ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... than to discover a man whose head is full of his family. Weak minds that have imbibed a strong tincture of the nursery, younger brothers that have been brought up to nothing, superannuated retainers to a great house, have generally their thoughts taken up ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... hill the weird old Etrurian nurse of Florence, withered, superannuated, feeble, warming her palsied limbs in the sun, and looking vacantly down upon the beautiful child whose cradle she rocked. Fiesole is perhaps the oldest Italian city. The inhabitants of middle and lower Italy were Pelasgians ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... Cabinet, who shared with Thouin, the chief gardener, the care of the Royal Gardens. Daubenton was at that time the leading anatomist of France, and after Buffon's death he gathered around him all the scientific men who demanded the transformation of the superannuated and incomplete Jardin du Roi, and perhaps initiated the movement which resulted five years later in the creation of the present Museum of Natural History. (Hamy, l. ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... state of the money market, nor bothered himself about the prices of land or cattle, wood, wine, or wheat. Every bank, and brewery, and building society in the world might go into liquidation at once for aught he cared. He had retired from the Government service, had superannuated himself on a pension of nothing per annum, and to draw it he required ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... confidence was completely restored; and that evening everybody in the kraal, including the superannuated victim of jealousy in the little hut where the mealie cobs were stored, went to bed with a sense of sweet security from elephants and all other animals ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... That superannuated monarch remained in his faithful town of Almunecar, on the border of the Mediterranean, surrounded by a few adherents, together with his wife Zoraya and his children, and he had all his treasures safe in his possession. ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... his Age, and makes Clodius, who was a celebrated Dancer at five and twenty, still love to hobble in a Minuet, tho he is past Threescore. It is this, in a Word, which fills the Town with elderly Fops, and superannuated Coquets. ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... sane, I must undoubtedly be the mad one. It is as simple as a sum in arithmetic.—And, in all conscience, isn't it madness, when all is said and done, to take such trifles so much to heart?—to bother about a few miserable superannuated forms that are not of the slightest importance?—a few venerable, harmless prejudices?—a few foolish social customs and other ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... while the train rumbled, creaked, and clattered and jerked itself along, as only local trains can, probably because they are old and rheumatic and stiff and weak in the joints, like superannuated crocodiles, though they may have once been young express trains, sleek and shiny, and quick ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford
... absence with the different parties still alleged to exist in the interior of the empire? Where are they? I see but a single one against me; that of a few royalists, the principal part of the ancient noblesse, superannuated and inexperienced. But they dread my downfall more than they desire it. This is what I told them in Normandy. I am cried up as a great captain, as an able politician, but I am scarcely mentioned as an administrator: that which I have, however, ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... boarder, shortly afterwards made his appearance, and proved a surprising promoter of the conversation. Mr. Calton was a superannuated beau—an old boy. He used to say of himself that although his features were not regularly handsome, they were striking. They certainly were. It was impossible to look at his face without being reminded of a chubby street-door knocker, half-lion half-monkey; and the comparison might be extended ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... deputies, its front facing the south. It presents a magnificent appearance from the street, perhaps the finest of any like building in Europe. It has long been a celebrated military hospital for the reception of disabled and superannuated soldiers. Under Louis XIV. the present hospital was instituted, and building after building was added, together with a fine church, until the vast pile covers sixteen acres of ground, and encloses fifteen courts. At the time of the revolution, ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... surprised at his mother's complaisance; yet wondered to see the smile with which she presently received the Count's half-bantering disparagement of Pianura. For the duchy, by his showing, was a place of small consequence, an asylum of superannuated fashions; whereas no Frenchman of quality ever visited Turin without exclaiming on its resemblance to Paris, and vowing that none who had the entree of Stupinigi need cross the Alps to see Versailles. As to the Marquess's depriving the court of Donna Laura's ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... politeness after Major Favraud's salutation and introduction, waved us in and across her threshold. As for Major Favraud, he had turned to leave us on the door-sill, to see to the comfort and safety of his horses; not liking, perhaps, the appearance of the superannuated ostler, who lounged near the stable of the inn, if such might be called this rustic retreat ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... frequently understood is essentially and exhaustively defined as a matter of popular government; and such a definition raises at once a multitude of time-honored, but by no means superannuated, controversies. The constitutional liberals in England, in France, and in this country have always objected to democracy as so understood, because of the possible sanction it affords for the substitution of a popular despotism in the place of the former royal or oligarchic despotisms. From ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... Glynn about it. "We've got a big balance of 'em," he said, "if we can get 'em all to Boise. They'll probably roast me in the East." And they did. Hearing how forty took three hundred, but let one escape (and a few more on the march home), the superannuated cattle of the War Department sat sipping their drink at the club in Washington, and explained to each other how they ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... curious observers visited the house of mourning, and gazed upon the rugged face of the old veteran, now stiff and cold in death; and more than one eye dropped a tear at the remembrance of the cheery smile, and the joke—sometimes superannuated, generally feeble, but always good-natured—with which the captain had been wont to greet his acquaintances. There was a growing sentiment of anger among these stern men, toward the murderer who had thus cut down their friend, ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... depreciation of what is universally esteemed, because it was not to be found in the immediate object of the ingenious writer's pen; for in truth, from a man so still and so tame, as to be contented to pass many years as the domestick companion of a superannuated lord and lady[103], conversation could no more be expected, than from a Chinese mandarin on a chimney-piece, or the fantastick figures on ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... sea-port, but it is a sea-port deserted and decayed. It belongs to that rather melancholy group of old coast-towns, scattered along the great sea-face of New England, and of which the list is completed by the names of Portsmouth, Plymouth, New Bedford, Newburyport, Newport—superannuated centres of the traffic with foreign lands, which have seen their trade carried away from them by the greater cities. As Hawthorne says, their ventures have gone "to swell, needlessly and imperceptibly, the mighty flood ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... on the point of sending home all his invalided and superannuated soldiers, Eurylochus of AEgae was found to have placed his name upon the list, although he was in perfect health. When questioned, he confessed that he was in love with a lady named Telesippa, who was ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... grande soiree musicale et dramatique at her house, in honor of the event, at which Overtop was a favored guest. Mr. Slapman went direct to Slapmanville, and raised the rent on all his tenants, turned a superannuated non-paying couple into the street, and took a general account of his property, to see how much he could sell out for, preparatory to leaving for Europe, and so dodging the payment ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... "kingdom is more despotic, and more contracted in principle, than the present government of the Russian empire," Ib. p. 61. He adds, "The Old Testament idea of a Deity is the outgrowth of the despotic stage of human mental development," and "a superannuated monotheistic conception," Ib. p. 62. In their opinion, "the developments of republicanism, and of mental happiness among men, depend very much upon the absence of these dogmatical compilations, or fossil relics, of an old Hebrew ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... and which were calculated to fill my imagination with visionary and romantic fancies. The only conversation I heard dealt with the means of leaving all the family fortune to my brother, so that he might uphold the splendor of the name, and with the necessity of marrying me to some superannuated nobleman who would take me without a dowry, or of compelling me to enter one of those aristocratic convents, which are the refuge, and often the prison, of poor ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... it, as I heard it first from an old superannuated follower of the family, which, owning other, though not fairer demesnes in some distant county, had never more used Ditton-in-the-Dale as their dwelling place, although well nigh two centuries had elapsed ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... perseverance in the project to assist my enemies, madam," returned the soldier, with affected humility; "nor to your zeal for their success, or your consummate coolness at the supper-table! But I find it is time that I should be superannuated—I can no longer serve my king with credit, and should take to serving my God, like all other worn-out men of the world! My hearing is surely defective, or a paddock- wall has a most ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... yellow with age, the magnificence of which a queen might have envied, formed a series of yellow ruffles on his breast; but upon him the lace seemed rather a worthless rag than an ornament. In the centre of the frill a diamond of inestimable value gleamed like a sun. That superannuated splendor, that display of treasure, of great intrinsic worth, but utterly without taste, served to bring out in still bolder relief the strange creature's face. The frame was worthy of the portrait. That dark face was full of angles and furrowed deep ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... incumbent on a single person to give another who was also single; and the widow had been true to the usage; but "good Dr. Wilson" was a half-superannuated clergyman, whom no one could suspect of inspiring anything ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... lighter complexion than the young brave; this one lighter than the middle-aged man, and the middle-aged man lighter than the superannuated homo, who, by smoke, paint, dirt, and a drying up of the vital juices, appears to be the true copper-colored Dakota. The color of the Dakotas varies with the nation, and also with the age and condition of the individual. It may be set down, however, as a shade lighter than olive; ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... her Life; and indeed never knew a Party-Woman that kept her Beauty for a Twelvemonth. I would therefore advise all my Female Readers, as they value their Complexions, to let alone all Disputes of this Nature; though, at the same time, I would give free Liberty to all superannuated motherly Partizans to be as violent as they please, since there will be no Danger either of their spoiling their Faces, or ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... sad impression on many is their own fault. When we grow strong as were the men of the first French revolution, then we shall receive an unconditionally good and joyful impression from seeing the national forests rid of rotting and superannuated trees that have stood too long in the way of others with equal right to a period of free growth—an impression good in the same way as that received from the death ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... the same footing. Athens and other Greek cities, though conquered by Rome, exerted after their conquest a powerful influence on Roman civilization, which became far more democratic under the emperors than it had been under the patrician senate, which the assassins of Julius Caesar, and the superannuated conservative party they represented, tried so hard to preserve. The senate and the consulship were opened to the representatives of the great plebeian houses, and the provincials were clothed with the rights ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... members for Wiltshire, Ambrose Goddard, of Swindon, being old and superannuated, resigned, and one of an old family, RICHARD LONG, of Rood Ashton, was to be foisted upon the county by an arrangement made between two clubs, without consulting the wishes of the freeholders. Mr. Goddard had resigned in consequence ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... not restored, at any rate. Those indescribables yonder, half rabbit-hutch, half dry-dock—a long row for ladies and a short one for gentlemen, three hundred yards apart—couldn't trust 'em any nearer, bless you!—these superannuated God-knows-whats, struggling against disintegration from automatic plunges down a rugged beach, and creaking journeys back you are asked to hold on through—it's no use going on drying!—these tributes to public decorum you can find no room in, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... and the front of "the God-like" had preceded the "poor decrepit old man" to the grave. Garrison dealt no less roughly and irreverently with another of the authors of the wicked law and another of the superannuated divinities of a shopkeeping North, Henry Clay. "HENRY CLAY, with one foot in the grave," exclaimed the reformer, "and just ready to have both body and soul cast into hell, as if eager to make his damnation doubly sure, rises in the United ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... members were profound Talmudists, would accept a rabbi to whom unvocalized Hebrew was a snare and a stumbling-block? Moreover, the whole atmosphere of the seminaries was Christian, nay, military. Not a few members of their faculties or boards of governors were discharged police officers or superannuated soldiers, and at the head of the seminary in Vilna, the metropolis of Russian Jewry, stood an apostate Jew! They became, as it were, infirmaries of the bureaucracy, where, at the expense of the Jews, it could ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... no mind to lose the money they had invested in a purely financial operation. The truth is that modern Europe has no room for "prancing Pro-consuls," and no longer takes stock in autocrats. They are, or ought to be, superannuated, out of date. To use an expressive colloquialism they are "a back number." The progress of the world demands the development of peoples; it has no use for mediaeval monarchies like that of Potsdam. One of the things we ought to banish for ever is ...
— Armageddon—And After • W. L. Courtney
... plaintiff's own showing, the defendant was a rich man when he first knew him. I deny the profits from the use of the plaintiff's patented inventions, and call upon him to prove them. I not only call upon him to prove them, but I defy him to prove them. It will take something more than superannuated doctors, stolen letters and the performances of ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... ash hoist, which I did not see in time from the glare of the sky coming right in my eyes, I gained the lee side of the cook's galley at the forward end of the deckhouse. Here, as I conjectured, I found old Greazer, our lamp-trimmer. This worthy, who was quite a character in his way, was a superannuated fireman belonging to the line, whom age and long years of toil had unfitted for the rougher and more arduous duties of his vocation in the stoke-hold, and who now, instead of trimming coals in the furnaces below, trimmed wicks and attended to the lamps about the ship, on deck and elsewhere. ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... of a few Bussorah roses for early flowering, pruning down all the branches to a height of six inches, removing all decayed, and superannuated wood, dividing the roots, and pruning them freely. The Madras roses should be treated in the same manner, not all at the same time, but at intervals of a week between each cutting down, so as to secure a succession for blossoming. Plant out rooted ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... the comparison of one good system with another good system, which varied only in local and circumstantial differences; much less, that they were holding out to us a superior pattern of legal liberty, which we might substitute in the place of our old, and, as they described it, superannuated constitution. He meant to demonstrate that the French scheme was not a comparative good, but a positive evil. That the question did not at all turn, as had been stated, on a parallel between a monarchy and a republic. He ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... moody baby, a dull small boy who knew few of his letters at four; and was superannuated—such was his impenetrability to learning—at the age of five from the school of which his father had been master. He was moreover till the age of six and a half so frequently subject to long fits of abstraction and of apparently causeless crying that his mother and grandmother ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... chapter it is a melancholy picture that I have to present—the old age and death of Greek philosophy. The strong man of Aristotelism and Stoicism is sinking into the superannuated dotard; ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... a short time after the shock of the terrible catastrophe; and, as we began our story with saying, she was left with no better guardianship or support than might be found in the efforts of a long superannuated man. ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... are appointed for political purposes, get on, it is true; but, the 'little men,' who labour from year's end to year's end, like horses in a mill, never have a chance of distinguishing themselves. When they are of a certain age, and attain a particular height in their office, they become superannuated, and retire; for, should a vacancy occur, of a higher standing in the public secretariat, it is not given to them—although the training of their whole life may peculiarly fit them for the post! No, it is bestowed on some young political adherent of the party then in power, who may be ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... getting rid of responsibilities. These hard-working veterans will not let one get rid of them until he drops in his harness, and so gets rid of them and his life together. How often has many a tired old man envied the superannuated family cat, stretched upon the rug before the fire, letting the genial warmth tranquilly diffuse itself through all her internal arrangements! No more watching for mice in dark, damp cellars, no more awaiting the savage gray rat ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... both sexes is equal; but the libertinism of man leads him to make the distinction, and superannuated coquettes are commonly of the same opinion; for when they can no longer inspire love, they pay for the vigour and vivacity of youth. The French who admit more of mind into their notions of beauty, give the preference to women of thirty. I mean to say, that they allow women to ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... bringing in desserts; shabby fellows with Blenheim puppies were loitering under Canterbury Gate. Many stared, but no one knew him. He hurried up Oriel Lane; suddenly a start and a low bow from a passer-by; who could it be? it was a superannuated shoeblack of his college, to whom he had sometimes given a stray shilling. He gained the High Street, and turned down towards the Angel. What was approaching? the vision of a proctor. Charles felt some instinctive quiverings; but it passed by him, and did no harm. Like Kehama, he had a charmed ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... arrangement I obtained the survivorship of an office, the emoluments of which were fully adequate to my wishes; and as the law respecting the mode of providing for superannuated officers was, about five or six years after, altered from that which admitted the arrangement of assistant and successor, my colleague very handsomely took the opportunity of the alteration, to accept of the retiring annuity ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... see any public good concerned here, papa," said Catherine. "Why is it to be expected of any heiress that she should carry the property gained in trade into the hands of a certain class? That seems to be a ridiculous mishmash of superannuated customs and false ambition. I should call it a public evil. People had better make a new sort of public good by changing ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... out in England, that half the justices of peace through this kingdom had laid down their commissions; whereas upon examination, the whole number was found to amount only to a dozen or thirteen, and those generally of the lowest rate in fortune and understanding, and some of them superannuated. So, when the Earl of Pembroke was in Ireland and the Parliament sitting, a formal story was very gravely carried to his Excellency by some zealous members, of a priest newly arrived from abroad to the north-west parts of Ireland, who had ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... affair with this superannuated knight was over, she soon engaged in another intrigue, still more prejudicial to her character; for it was with a married man, one Mr. Tilly, a gentleman of the Law; with whom she lived a considerable time: while he underwent ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... the women adore him everywhere far too much for decency. In my own opinion he is infinitely handsomer and more attractive than when I saw him first, sixteen years ago—which does not mean as much as you may suppose, that I myself am superannuated and wholly anile, and incompetent therefore for judgment. No, indeed, I believe people in general would think the same exactly. And as to the modelling—well, I told you that I grudged a little the time from ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... called, having become unserviceable, the Emperor ordered a new Karano to be built, so as to perpetuate her name. A curious procedure is then recorded, illustrating the arbitrary methods of government in those days. The timbers of the superannuated ship were used as fuel for roasting salt, five hundred baskets of which were sent throughout the maritime provinces, with orders that by each body of recipients a ship should be constructed. Five hundred Karanos ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... he would never get a ship, for his seamanship, like all other things that were his, was hopelessly superannuated. He was not fit to be trusted with a ship—no owner would dream of it, no ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... together and hie to the stubble-fields beyond our ken. Of the one mocking bird who made night hideous by his masterly imitations of the screaking of a wheel-barrow (regreased at an early period in self-defence) and the wheezy bark of Beppo, the superannuated St. Bernard, there could of course be no doubt. There was none of his kind to compare him with—not even a mate, for "sexual selection" could not possibly operate in face of so inharmonious a love-song. His isolation had its parallel in the one white guinea-fowl that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... the previous circumstances were far different from those of Venice. There we saw a superannuated and paralytic state, sinking at any rate into the grave, and yielding, to the touch of military violence, that only which a brief lapse of years must otherwise have yielded to internal decay. Here, on the contrary, we saw a young eagle, rising into ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... the stump of a ruined windmill, and there was the Old Green Copper Ropewalk,—whose long and narrow vista I could trace in the moonlight, along a series of wooden frames set in the ground, that looked like superannuated haymaking-rakes which had grown old and lost most ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... acknowledge the Devil is dumb, these could speak; and as if the wicked Spirit could do more than the Good, the Diabolical more than the Divine, or that Heaven having taken away the DEVIL's Voice, had furnish'd him with an Equivalent, by allowing Scolds, Termagants, and old weak and superannuated Wretches to speak for him; for these are the People we go to now ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... unmanly rage, and seemed scarce able to refrain even from striking her." It would be impossible perhaps to find a party of the upper ranks gathered at a country house at the present time, composed of persons who could have endured, without remonstrance, such treatment of a pair of superannuated horses; yet Miss Burney describes the efforts and sufferings of these old women as affording inexpressible diversion to the ladies and gentlemen who figure in her novel, and she evidently expects the reader to be equally entertained. "Evelina" was written by a young woman ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... &c 124; elderly, geriatric, senile; matronly, anile^; in years; ripe, mellow, run to seed, declining, waning, past one's prime; gray, gray-headed; hoar, hoary; venerable, time-worn, antiquated, passe, effete, decrepit, superannuated; advanced in life, advanced in years; stricken in years; wrinkled, marked withthe crow's foot; having one foot in the grave; doting &c (imbecile) 499; like the last of pea time. older, elder, eldest; senior; firstborn. turned of, years old; of a certain ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... polite to ask what brought such a superannuated militaire as I am,' said the count, 'from his retirement into this gay world again. A relation of mine, who is one of our Ministry, knew that I had some maps, and plans, and charts, which might be serviceable in an expedition they are planning. I might have trusted my charts across the ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... trees, under which the old men sat and amused themselves in the summer mornings. On this chilly wintry day none of them were visible, except the cheerful old soul bent almost double, but with a chirruppy little voice like a superannuated sparrow, who acted as porter, and closed the big gates every night, and fined the old men twopence if they were too late. He trotted along the echoing passages, with his keys jingling, to show them ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... the only dress for a man that makes life worth living, for him, around here," she replied. "Every man who is not superannuated or attached to the state government in some way has to wear a uniform unless he wants ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... paper-knives and tortoise-shell cardcases, Chinese puzzles and papier-mache checker-boards. Nor was the Library replenished "to keep up with the current literature of the day"; its last new novel was a superannuated dilapidation; not one of its yearly subscribers but had worked through the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... vehicles meant for human freight. Old family carriages, high-swung, capacious as the ark, were filled, not with women and children, belles and beaux, but with bags of powder and boxes of cartridges. Superannuated mail coaches carried blankets, oilcloths, sabres, shoes; light spring wagons held Enfield rifles; doctors' buggies medicine cases corded in with care. All these added themselves to the regular supply train of the army; great wagons marked C. S. A. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... position, the friar, bishop, or curate usually remained till superannuated, being therefore a fixed political factor for a generation, while a Spanish civil or military officer never held post over four years. The stay of any officer attempting a course at variance with the order's wishes ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... A superannuated clergyman walked three miles and a quarter in a heavy rain, minus umbrella, to bring me a large and common pitcher, badly cracked and of no original value; heard I was collecting old china. Then, after making a long call, drew out a tiny ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... had, most of them, been degraded in rank. Many of them had been retired on pittances which were not paid. Those who were lucky enough to be retained in active service were superseded by superannuated, often incompetent old officers of the old royal army before the revolution, or by young scions of nobility with no knowledge or fitness to command veterans, to whom the gross-bodied, uninspiring, gouty old King did ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... and which showed itself in all sorts of antiquated locutions which were a torment to his son, had given way to something still more deeply ingrained. His gaunt figure, with the stoop, and the spectacles and the long straight hair—like the figure of a superannuated schoolmaster—assumed, as he turned again to his younger companion, something of authority, something almost ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... its sides against one another, and the action of the gastric juice on the texture of the digestive apparatus. The observations of Bichat, and more particularly the fine experiments of Majendie, are in contradiction to these superannuated hypotheses. After twenty-four, forty-eight, or even sixty hours of abstinence, no contraction of the stomach is observed; it is only on the fourth or fifth day that this organ appears to change in a small degree its dimensions. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... reconciling it to the Thoughts of Death. I must therefore acquaint you, that besides those usual Methods of Charity, of which I have before spoken, I am at this very Instant finding out a convenient Place where I may build an Alms-house, which I intend to endow very handsomely, for a Dozen superannuated Husbandmen. It will be a great pleasure to me to say my Prayers twice a-day with Men of my own [Years [1]], who all of them, as well as my self, may have their Thoughts taken up how they shall die, rather than how they shall live. I remember an excellent Saying that I learned at School, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... glorious view? Hill and valley spread out like a map before us! The snow lies in patches upon the fields, and the sun is lighting up the tinned spire of the village church, which, as the stage passed it yesterday, you thought looked like a superannuated old man with a martin-cage upon his crooked back. There is the old homestead looking at us through the locusts that surround it, and there are the orchards off to the right, which in a few weeks will be white with blossoms. Now, steady, my boys! Do you ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... compassion? May it not be that there is something wrong with the bowels of mercy when criminals are executed barbarously, while science needs their lives, or at least an insight into the method of their dying; when precise examination of the manner of nerve and blood supply to the organs of a superannuated horse is heavily finable; when charitable but perchance too enthusiastic societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals push their earnestness even to interference with scientific researches, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... keyboard, the ear now and then took notice of a broken string. There were many of these broken strings. The instrument plainly announced itself to be a remote, well-nigh mythical ancestor of the modern piano, preternaturally lingering on amid an innumerable deafening progeny. It suggested a superannuated human being whose loudest utterances have sunk to ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen
... of roistering travellers might have made the stately parlor gay; and I dare say they did, in years gone; but now I had only for company their heavy old arm-chairs, a few prints of "fast coaches" upon the wall, and a superannuated greyhound, who seemed to scent the little meal I had ordered, and presently stalked in and laid his thin nose, with an appealing look, in my hands. His days of coursing—if he ever had them—were fairly over; and I took a charitable pride in bestowing upon him certain tough ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... the "Champion of England," he who has to offer battle to the Universe for his new King, had brought it so far that he could now "mount his horse with little assistance," I said to myself: Here also we have a Symbol well-nigh superannuated. Alas, move whithersoever you may, are not the tatters and rags of superannuated worn-out symbols (in this Ragfair of a World) dropping off everywhere, to hoodwink, to halter, to tether you; nay, if you shake them ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle |
