"Desultory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all sorts, and Millais and Arthur Hughes, two of the three illustrators of the notable "Music Master," come into our list of children's artists. At this point the attempt to weave a chronicle of children's books somewhat in the date of their publication must give way to a desultory notice of the most prominent illustrators. For we have come to the beginning of to-day rather than the end of yesterday, and can regard the "sixties" onwards as ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... but then, again, beyond there were more trees and more shade. The nameless little crickets and flies and all manner of humming things panted musically in the warm air; the small birds chirped lazily now and then in desultory conversation, too hot to hop or fly; and a small lizard lay along the wall dazed and stupid in the noontide heat. The genius loci was doubtless cooling himself in the retirement of some luxurious hole among the ruins, ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... a rambling, desultory sort of fashion and quite a low tone of voice, as if he were addressing a circle ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... so light a breeze lisped never so faintly in the tree-tops; here and there bird-notes fell, liquid, desultory, like drops of rain after a shower; and constantly one heard the cool music of the river. The sun, filtering through worlds and worlds of leaves, shed upon everything a green-gold penumbra. The air, warm ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... are fragmentary and desultory, owing to the fact that the circumstances are so varied, the subject so vast, and the materials so abundant, yet, taken as a whole, they seem overwhelming, and, except to the careful, ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... 3562] there are some useful notices. See my account of M. Denis: post. Critics have accused these "Commentaries concerning the MSS. in the imperial library at Vienna," as containing a great deal of rambling and desultory matter; but the vast erudition, minute research, and unabateable diligence of its author, will for ever secure to him the voice of public praise, as loud and as hearty as he has received it from his abridger Reimannus. In ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... stone balcony and perched upon the worn balustrade were in deshabille, not being accustomed to display their splendors to an empty paradise, and the few fat blackbirds who were hopping about on the lawn did so in a desultory manner, as though they were only half awake and had turned out under protest. Stillness reigned everywhere, but it was the sweet hush of slowly awakening day rather than the drowsy, languorous quiet of exhausted afternoon. With one's eyes shut one could tell ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... not so with the Pilgrim's Progress. That wonderful book, while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to admire it. Doctor Johnson, all whose studies were desultory, and who hated, as he said, to read books through, made an exception in favour of the Pilgrim's Progress. That work, he said, was one of the two or three works which he wished longer. It was by no common merit that the illiterate sectary extracted praise like this from the most ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... Rimini, who committed the fatal error of embroiling himself beyond all hope of pardon with the Church, and who died discomfited in the duel with his warier antagonist. Urbino profited by each mistake of Sigismondo, and the history of this long desultory strife with Rimini is a history of gradual aggrandisement and consolidation for ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... and I seem to feel that something ought to be done to save him from the fearful consequences of popular feeling. Let us hasten to the town, and procure what assistance we may: but a few persons, well organised and properly armed, will achieve wonders against a desultory and ill-appointed multitude. There may be a chance of saving him, yet, from the imminent danger ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... total smash. The Champs Elysees were full of the late afternoon sunlight, and we sauntered slowly, criticising the occupants of the various carriages rolling up to the great arch of Napoleon, and arguing in a broken, desultory way on ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... and I pursued these studies with indescribable pleasure and avidity. I still, however, sensibly felt the want of a more systematic education, and those advantages which females enjoy in the present day.... My reading was very desultory, and novels engaged too much of ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... was the only recreation my life knew, it was of a most desultory, though always mercenary sort. I read every book I could get out of the circulating library which, from its title or general character as summarized in the newspaper reviews, I thought might help me to solve the problem ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... may (in addition to their parochial work as curates!) take up a real course of reading and go into it thoroughly; and this gives girls not only employment for the time, but gives the mind power to seize every other subject presented to it. If you are quite alone, your reading is apt to become desultory. I find it useful to take once or twice a week a walk with Riddell of Balliol, and go through a certain period of Old Testament history; it makes me get it up, and then between us we hammer out so many more explanations ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... leaving no trace. The circumstances of her disappearance permit of a very matter-of-fact and not very creditable explanation. On the day in question she prepared an unusually good dinner, and the farmer had enjoyed it in spite of Mrs. Mumpson's presence and desultory remarks. The morning had been fine and he had made progress in his early spring work. Mrs. Wiggins felt that her hour and opportunity had come. Following him to the door, she said in a low tone and yet with a decisive accent, as if she was claiming ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... corporeal good, far more than the ocean the fleeting bubble which floats on its surface. To such as are destitute of these requisites, who make the study of words their sole employment, and the pursuit of wisdom but at best a secondary thing, who expect to be wise by desultory application for an hour or two in a day, after the fatigues of business, after mixing with the base multitude of mankind, laughing with the gay affecting airs of gravity with the serious, tacitly assenting to every man's opinion, however absurd, and winking at ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... only be learnt from the memoirs of the chief actor, or from his intimate friends; and in such things of this kind are often treated of in a very desultory manner, or purposely misrepresented. Criticism must, therefore, always forego much which was present in the minds of those ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... proclamations. Half the army takes one side, half the other; and crowds of volunteers and self-made officers join them, in the hope of present pillage or future emolument. Barricades appear in the streets; and at intervals there is to be heard the roaring of cannon, and desultory firing of musketry from the flat roofs, killing a peaceable citizen now and then, but doing little ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... met—nor can I ever forget the majestic courtesy of Mrs. Chuff, as she remembered having had the pleasure of seeing me at Mrs. Perkins's—nor the glance of scorn which she threw at an unfortunate gentleman who was preaching an exceedingly desultory discourse to a sceptical audience of omnibus-cads and nurse-maids, on a tub, as we passed by. 'I cannot help it, sir,' says she; 'I am the widow of an officer of Britain's Navy: I was taught to honour my Church and my King: and I cannot bear ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in desultory wanderings about the gardens, Magdalen and her sisters being invited guests, and Vera in a continual state of agitated expectation. Had not Wilfred Merrifield always been a cavalier of her own? And here he was, paying no attention to her, with all the embellishment of her bridesmaid's ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Men, and flamed forth in his second dress as a captain of banditti. A great robbery was followed by a long chase, a chase of days if not of weeks, among the intricate hill-country; and the chase was followed by much desultory fighting, in which several—and the dentist, I believe, amongst the number—bit the dust. The grass was springing for the first time, nourished upon their blood, when I arrived in Calistoga. I am reminded of another highwayman of that same year. "He had been unwell," so ran ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the fugitives crouching in the interior of the altar estimated that about a dozen people had entered the church. They seemed to rush forward a few paces and then halt, as though staring about them; then followed a few brief, desultory movements, and silence. Finally, a ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... make but one. The accountant substitutes "short cuts'' in adding where all the operations should be taken in regular order and made as automatic as the few short cuts previously developed. The executive has the habit of depending upon "desultory'' memory where the logical should be developed. The salesman in speaking to a critical customer says "he don't,'' instead of saying "he doesn't''; "gents' goods'' instead of "men's goods.'' Every investigation into the ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... the latter and I were alone together, after that unhappy evening, was an hour or two after breakfast on the following day, when the gentlemen were gone out, after the usual time spent in the writing of letters, the reading of newspapers, and desultory conversation. We sat silent for two or three minutes. She was busy with her work, and I was running over the columns of a paper from which I had extracted all the pith some twenty minutes before. It was a moment of painful embarrassment to me, and I thought it must be infinitely more so to ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... the mate and Louis began a desultory conversation concerning what they termed "ambergrease." I had never even heard the word before, although I had a notion that Milton, in "Paradise Regained," describing the Satanic banquet, had spoken of something ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... disappointed by not obtaining a commission in the Guards, he led a desultory butterfly-like life; one day at Richmond with Queen Caroline, then Princess of Wales; another, at Pope's villa, at Twickenham; sometimes in the House of Commons, in which he succeeded his elder brother as member for Bury; and, at the period when ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... friends. The first letter which he wrote after this change bore the impression of impatience at the breaking up of a happy time. Edward found this natural enough; but he was surprised in the following letters to detect signs of a disturbed and desultory state of mind, wholly foreign to his friend's nature. The riddle was soon solved. Ferdinand's heart was touched for the first time, and perhaps because the impression had been made late, it was all the deeper. Unfavorable circumstances opposed themselves to his hopes: the young lady ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... a change had come upon the ball. About the circular buffet numbers of men called for drink, and talked loudly of horse-racing. Many were away at supper, and those that remained were amusing themselves in a desultory fashion. A tall, lean woman, dressed like Sarah in white muslin, wearing amber beads round her neck, was dancing the lancers with the Demon, and everyone shook with laughter when she whirled the little fellow round or took him in her arms and carried him across. ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... remonstrance and encouragement were equally thrown away upon the good- humored but immovable indifference of their pupil; and though there exist among Mr. Sheridan's papers some curious proofs of an industry in study for which few have ever given him credit, they are probably but the desultory efforts of a later period of his life, to recover the loss of that first precious time, whose susceptibility of instruction, as well as of pleasure, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... pretty and fair-haired girl, who smiled sweetly, and held out her hand to her father's guests. She might have been two or three years younger than Wenlock, though, being well grown, there seemed but little difference in their ages. While their elders were talking, the young people, after a few desultory remarks, found ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston
... accurate. As her parts had been happily thrown together by nature, they were no less happy in the circumstances which attended their progress and development. They were refined, not by a course of solitary study, but by desultory reading, and chiefly by living intercourse with the brightest geniuses of her age. Thus trained, they acquired a pliability of movement, which gave to all their exertions a bewitching air of freedom and negligence. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... and frequent confinement to the chamber or the couch, I secretly rejoiced in those infirmities, which delivered me from the exercises of the school, and the society of my equals. As often as I was tolerably exempt from danger and pain, reading, free desultory reading, was the employment and comfort of my solitary hours. At Westminster, my aunt sought only to amuse and indulge me; in my stations at Bath and Winchester, at Beriton and Putney, a false compassion respected my sufferings; and I was allowed, without controul or advice, ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... not allayed; and the appearance of a body of Dutch troops at Brussels was sufficient to dispel the expectation of a peaceful settlement. Barricades were erected; a conflict took place in the streets; and the troops, unable to carry the city by assault, retired to the outskirts and kept up a desultory attack for several days. They then withdrew, and a provisional government, which was immediately established, declared the independence of Belgium. For a moment there appeared some possibility that the Crown Prince of Holland, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... inhabitants in fear flying to Manhattan for safety. To prevent a like calamity in the future, the governor issued a proclamation ordering all who lived in secluded places in the country to gather themselves into villages "after the fashion of our New Engand neighbors." After some desultory fighting on the frontier, Dutch and Indian hostilities in a great measure ceased, and for about ten years, beyond the threatenings of the English on the one hand and the Indians on the other, New Netherland enjoyed a season of ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... arms and a reconciliation was brought about. I think of late there has been a little more apparent conduct in the Chiefs than before. I see in our papers great puffs about the fighting in Greece. The warfare, in fact, is desultory and next to ridiculous excepting in the passes of the Mountains, and when Turkish cavalry are caught there the Greeks always kill them all. As yet the campaign is rather against the Greek by the loss of Psara, their chief Naval Island, which ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... went through extraordinary hardships;—engaged in a series of desultory but sanguinary expeditions;—and gradually learnt to despise the nation, in whose behalf they were ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... from the ravine charged forward to within 500 yards of the 66th, but the rifle fire of the British regiment drove them back with heavy loss, and they recoiled as far as the ravine, whence they maintained a desultory fire. The enemy's artillery fire was well sustained and effective; the infantry found some protection from it in lying down, but the artillery and cavalry remained exposed and suffered severely. An artillery duel was maintained for two hours, greatly to ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... the situation as far as we could learn was as follows: The British section of the salient had not been attacked beyond some desultory shelling. The section held by the Second Canadian Brigade had remained untouched also. This section ran from Gravenstafel northerly. First, the 5th Battalion on the right, the 8th battalion on the left. Then the 15th ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... deplorable, succeeded. In this state, however, he became once more the inmate of his brother-in-law's house; and though avoiding all society, except that of Teresa, whose affectionate nature never wearied of its cares, he resumed many of his old occupations. Again he appeared to take delight in desultory and unprofitable studies, and in the cultivation of that luxury of solitary men, "the thankless muse." By shunning all topics connected with the gloomy cause of his affliction, and talking rather ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his side, was not without provision for reflection, and they lingered on in broken, desultory talk. Rowland felt the need for intellectual rest, for a truce to present care for churches, statues, and pictures, on even better grounds than his companion, inasmuch as he had really been living Roderick's intellectual life the past three months, as well as his own. As he looked back on these ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... commission of thirty. Consideration in committee was sluggish, and the Assembly itself was not readily roused to action. During the twelvemonth that followed several projets were brought forward, and there was desultory discussion, but no progress. In the summer of (p. 305) 1874 a new commission of thirty was elected and to it was intrusted the task of studying and reporting upon all of the numerous constitutional laws ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... I had studied various subjects by myself in a more or less desultory manner. I read the histories of Greece, Rome and the United States. I had a French grammar in raised print, and as I already knew some French, I often amused myself by composing in my head short exercises, using the ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... the pleasant road under the great trees, from time to time engaging in a desultory conversation. Philip endeavored to cheer his companion by talking lightly of boyhood days, as each turn of the road brought familiar places in the old estate in view. Here he and Katharine and Hilary had been wont to play; there was a favorite spot, a pleasant ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Here his desultory training continued, but a lesson in sled pulling was almost invariably turned into a romp, so that he had only acquired the rudiments of an education when he ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... so desultory as Mr. Schlosser, the critic has a right to an extra allowance of desultoriness for his own share; so excuse me, reader, for rushing ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... the ear becomes more Irish and less nice." The first man I ever saw killed was a Spanish soldier, who was cut in two by a cannon ball. The French army, not long after we began to return their fire, was in full retreat; and after a little sharp, but desultory fighting, in which our Division met with some loss, we took possession of the camp and strong position of Soult's army. We found the soldiers' huts very comfortable; they were built of branches of trees and furze, and formed squares and streets, which had names placarded up, such as Rue de Paris, ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... large collections of epic poetry. The one comprised poems relating to the great events and enterprises of the Heroic age, and characterised by a certain poetical unity; the other included works tamer in character and more desultory in their mode of treatment, containing the genealogies of men and gods, narratives of the exploits of separate heroes, and descriptions of the ordinary pursuits of life. The poems of the former class passed under the name of Homer; while those of the latter were ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... sullenly. Down came the rain in torrents, the lightning flashed, the thunder rolled. The lightnings came jaggedly, bayonets of the storm, stabbing downward; the artillery of the skies dwarfed all sound below. For an hour there was desultory fighting, then it ceased. The grey troops awaiting orders, wondered, "Aren't we going to cross the river after them?" "Oh, let it alone. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... solitude a pastoral and simple life, and were childless. Philip Feltram was hardy and active, having passed his early days among that arduous scenery. Cold and rain did not trouble him; and these people being wealthy in their way, and loving him, would be glad to find him employment of that desultory pastoral kind which would best ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... surrounded by her ladies, but though my eyes searched here, there, and everywhere I could not see the face I longed to see. The Queen engaged me for a few moments in desultory talk, and then at a sign from her we were ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... Northern Virginia; but Burnside, who had succeeded McClellan, was preparing another great army, which was to march to Richmond and crush out the rebellion. Lee was standing on the defensive. Along the whole line of the frontier, from New Orleans to Tennessee, desultory fighting was going on, and in these conflicts the Confederates had generally the worse of things, having there no generals such as Lee, Jackson, and Longstreet, who had made the army of ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... investigation of the phenomena of hypnotism. This subject was rescued from the hands of charlatans, rechristened, and subjected to accurate investigation by Dr. James Braid, of Manchester, as early as 1841. But his results, after attracting momentary attention, fell from view, and, despite desultory efforts, the subject was not again accorded a general hearing from the scientific world until 1878, when Dr. Charcot took it up at the Salpetriere, in Paris, followed soon afterwards by Dr. Rudolf Heidenhain, of Breslau, and a host of other experimenters. The value of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... question were the fruit of inquiries begun indeed as a relief from weightier cares; but as it was not in their author's nature to rest satisfied with desultory and superficial results in his treatment of any subject, so his archaeological papers more resemble the exhaustive treatises of a leisurely student, than the occasional efforts of one overwhelmed ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... from Canada, embarked for England, to renew the solicitations of the colony for aid in another attempt on Quebec. Though unsuccessful in this application, the government of the province was bestowed on him; and, in this character, he returned to Boston. A desultory war continued to be carried on, which, without furnishing any events that would now be interesting, produced heavy ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... There was desultory firing all along the line during that memorable afternoon, but during that time our army was finally concentrated, McCook, with his three divisions on the right, Thomas, with his three in the center, and Crittenden, with his three on the left. The whole line, with the intervals ...
— Personal recollections and experiences concerning the Battle of Stone River • Milo S. Hascall
... and there were some who said that war might now be declared; and Jock Howieson, ever a daring and rash spirit, declared we should repent it if we were not ready against one o'clock. Speug and Dunc were however of opinion that nothing was likely to take place that day except desultory skirmishes, and that the whole day ought to be spent in accumulating a store of snowballs against Friday, when there was no question that we should have to face the united schools in a decisive battle. This was the only instance where ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... sufferings, which have accrued to American women, from this cause, are almost incalculable. There is nothing, which so much demands system and regularity, as the affairs of a housekeeper, made up, as they are, of ten thousand desultory and minute items; and yet, this perpetually fluctuating state of society seems forever to bar any such system and regularity. The anxieties, vexations, perplexities, and even hard labor, which come upon American women, from this state of domestic service, are ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... intellectual resembled his physical appetite. He gorged books. He tore the hearts out of them, but did not study systematically. Do you read books through? he asked indignantly of some one who expected from him such supererogatory labour. His memory enabled him to accumulate great stores of a desultory and unsystematic knowledge. Somehow he became a fine Latin scholar, though never first-rate as a Grecian. The direction of his studies was partly determined by the discovery of a folio of Petrarch, lying on a shelf ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... instinctively that they stood on the brink of a precipice. They therefore took the greatest pains to avoid the subject which really occupied their thoughts. The conversation was thus carried on in a careless and desultory tone, and in short and broken sentences. At last she made an effort to bring him to the point, and asked him if he had caught many ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... indifferently. "You've been neglecting my education lately, by the way. I wish you'd read something. Let me choose a book." So speaking, she went across to his bookshelves and began looking in a desultory way among his books. Anything, she thought, was better than bickering or the strange silence which drove home to her the distance between them. As she pulled one book forward and then another she thought ironically of her own certainty not an hour ago; how it had vanished in a moment, ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... a very careless and desultory attendant, sometimes upon the Catholic chapel, sometimes upon the Protestant church, now became a very regular frequenter of the latter place of worship; the object of his worship being not the Creator, ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... of all parties and very various experiences, and our object was to discuss the welfare of the Empire in a disinterested spirit. We dined monthly at the Mermaid in Westminster, and for a couple of years we kept up an average attendance of ten out of fourteen. The dinner-time was given up to desultory conversation, and it is odd how warm and good the social atmosphere of that little gathering became as time went on; then over the dessert, so soon as the waiters had swept away the crumbs and ceased to fret us, one of us would open with ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... the desultory talk which followed that Tom was able to piece out the story, the mystery of which he had already penetrated. Harlowe, in fear of capture after his supposed killing of the child, had sought refuge in the hunting shack of his friend upon the mountain. ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... we had just placed a 4.7. They sent a beautiful shot from their "Long Tom," which pitched within a few yards of where the gun had just been placed and close by Generals French and Mahon. We Mounted Infantry remained behind the kopje and dozed and lunched while desultory shells now and again whizzed over us. Beyond this, nothing occurred worth mentioning. On Tuesday morning we went out a few miles and took up a position to prevent the Boers retreating in our direction. We had to collect stones and form miniature sangars. ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... taking the quite unenthusiastic, business-like interest in literature and politics of a woman whose life is very empty, and, it seems to me, from the tone of her letters, growing daily more indifferent to life, more desultory, more cynical, more misanthropic and tittle-tattling. And Alfieri, meanwhile, was growing more unsociable, more misanthropic, more violent in temper, hanging a printed card stating that he wished no visits (one such is preserved in the library at Florence) in the hall, pursuing and flogging ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... their usual desultory fashion—the fashion of country school-children the world over—irregularly, spasmodically, and always as if accidentally; a few hand-in-hand, others driven ahead of or dropped behind their elders; some in straggling groups more or less ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... right answer to another question that is constantly asked. We are constantly asked whether desultory reading is among things lawful and permitted. May we browse at large in a library, as Johnson said, or is it forbidden to open a book without a definite aim and fixed expectations? I am for a compromise. If a man has once got his general point of view, if he has ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... more, the good-natured woman communicated in her frank, desultory manner, as she led Flora down the steep, narrow path which led to the meadows below. Her kindness did not end here, for she walked some way up the road to put Mrs. Lyndsay in the right track to regain her lodgings, for Flora, trusting to the pilotage ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... their resentment offers. Veracity, gratitude, and integrity are not to be found in the list of their virtues, and their minds are almost strangers to the sentiments of honour and infamy. They are jealous and vindictive. Their courage is desultory, the effect of a momentary enthusiasm which enables them to perform deeds of incredible desperation; but they are strangers to that steady magnanimity, that cool heroic resolution in battle, which constitutes in our idea the perfection of this quality, and renders it a virtue.* ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... office of stableman. We were off again at six; an exquisite night it was, a big moon in the zenith, the evening star burning steadily over the dim, receding island. We finished with a sing-song on deck, a crooning, desultory performance, with sleepy choruses, and a homely beer-bottle passing ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... held to atone for much of wrong and error, and even something of crime, in the past. And let us say of him, as the master-dramatist says of the perished Cawdor, and as some tired reader may be disposed to say of this long and desultory narration—that "nothing in his life became him like the ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... between oriental mythology, allegory, and legendary lore, with that of the Scandinavian nations? This Sir Walter Scott has omitted to do;—but this might afford, even formed of the materials to be gleaned from various desultory sources, another volume upon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... of pains with the writing of his reviews, and having a pretty fair share of desultory reading, acquired in the early years of his life an eager fancy and a keen sense of fun, his articles pleased his chief and the public, and he was proud to think that he deserved the money which he earned. We may be sure that the Pall Mall Gazette was taken ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... one-room hut there was no place for guests. Presently the men drifted out to the chip pile, where they lingered a while in desultory talk. Roxy and Johnnie, partly undressed, occupied the one bed; and later the host and his guest came in and lay down, clothed just as they were, with their feet to ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... Bach's importance in the history of music cannot be exaggerated. His art, neglected as old-fashioned and crabbed by his younger contemporaries, survived only in certain limited aspects as the subject of a desultory and unintelligent academic study, until its re-discovery by Mendelssohn. And yet, whatever disguise may have been foisted on it by corrupt traditions and ignorance of its idioms, whenever any fragment ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... therefore it must be an energy, and inasmuch as it relates to the whole moral man, it must be exerted in each and all of his constituents or incidents, faculties and tendencies;—it must be a total, not a partial; a continuous, not a desultory or occasional energy. And by virtue of the former, that is, reason, faith must be a light, a form of knowing, a beholding of truth. In the incomparable words of the Evangelist, therefore—'faith must be a light originating in the Logos, or the substantial ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... barrister, almost a briefless one at present, for his habits were desultory, not to say idle, and he had not taken very kindly to the slow drudgery of the Bar. He had some money of his own, and added to his income by writing for the press in a powerful trenchant manner, with a style that ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... mean." Merthyr was tempted to discharge him at first, but controlled his English antipathy to babblers, and discovered him to be a serviceable fellow. Toward nightfall they heard shots up a rock-strewn combe of the lower slopes; desultory shots indicating rifle-firing at long range. Darkness made them seek shelter in a pine-hut; starting from which at dawn, Lorenzo ran beating about like a dog over the place where the shots had sounded on the foregoing day; he found a stone spotted with blood. Not far from the stone ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... off the road into the heather, where they stood and eyed the passing carriage with anything but a frightened air. And while Mackenzie hummed something resembling, but very vaguely resembling, "Love in thine eyes sits beaming," and while Ingram, in his quiet, desultory, and often sardonic fashion, amused the young girl with stories of her lover's bravery and kindness and dare-devil escapades, the merry trot of the horses beat time to the bells on their necks, the fresh west wind blew a cloud of white dust away over ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... a week later, Denman and Florrie sat in the deck chairs, watching the twilight give way to the gloom of the evening, and speculating in a desultory manner on the end of this never-ending voyage, when Munson again darted on deck, and ran up the bridge stairs with a sheet of paper, barely discernible in the gathering darkness, and handed it to Jenkins, who peered over it in the ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... This method of taking fish is practised on a large scale and with elaborate machinery by men who supply the market. I speak not of their commercial enterprise and its gross equipage, but of ice-fishing in its more sportive and desultory form, as it is pursued by country boys ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... too, and simplicity of life and character. I seated myself in the pictorial chair, with the only light in the room descending upon me from a high opening, almost at the ceiling, the rest of the sole window being shuttered. He began to work, and we talked in an idle and desultory way,—neither of us feeling very conversable,—which he attributed to the atmosphere, it being a bright, west-windy, bracing day. We talked about the pictures of Christ, and how inadequate and untrue they are. He said he thought artists should attempt only to paint child-Christs, human powers ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Italy at War (DENT) he sets out to tell us a good deal that is interesting about the fine feats of our Italian Allies, especially of those Titanic gymnasts, the heaven-scaling Alpini. It is fair to warn the reader that it is a rather desultory scrap-book of the type the War has made common; fair also to add that some of the chapters least connected with the War are exceedingly interesting, as that about the elaborate sport of pigeon-netting at Cava dei Terreni. What I ...
— Punch, July 18, 1917 • Various
... leave barracks, when you go a-shopping, Without an escort loaded up with lead; Always maintain a desultory popping At anyone who wags a wanton head; If, as he passes, some low boy should whistle With nose in air and shameless chin out-thrust, Making your scandalised moustaches bristle— Reduce ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various
... few moments of desultory conversation about the work which Houston knew to be only preliminary, during which Mr. Rivers moved about in a nervous, ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... and Antonia, succeeded in an unwatched moment in possessing themselves of the precious bottle of Paras brandy, and thereafter, to their great joy, emptied a considerable portion of it over the unfortunate yellow cat, a mere desultory spanking was deemed to be a meet ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... motion; the little whirlwinds of dust that arose settled quickly down, the desultory breezes which had caused them departing as mysteriously as they had come. In the blighting heat the country lay, dead, spreading to the infinite horizons; in the sky no speck floated against the dome of blue. ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... most excellent narrator. The episode with the Bellestres and Monsieur's kindly care, the efforts to subdue in some measure the child's wildness and passion for liberty, which made the father smile, thinking of his own exuberant spirits and adventures, her affection for the Indian woman, her desultory training, that Father Rameau believed now had been a sinful mistake, her ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... apartment, Monsieur. He was by no means young—past forty—and very far from good-looking. The people here said that he was the ugliest man, and the most good-natured, that ever lived. He played on the fiddle, sang, and wrote poetry. His habits were odd and desultory. He would sometimes sit all day in his room writing, singing, and fiddling, and go out at night for a walk. An eccentric man! He was by no means a millionaire, but he had a modicum bonum, you understand—a trifle more than half a million of francs. He consulted his stockbroker about investing ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... a small breakfast-room, I found myself in the presence of an elderly gentleman—very grave, business-like, and respectable-looking. I presented Mr. Hunsden's letter; he received me very civilly. After a little desultory conversation he asked me if there was anything in which his advice or experience could be of use. I said, "Yes," and then proceeded to tell him that I was not a gentleman of fortune, travelling for pleasure, but an ex-counting-house ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... doing so, I will proceed without regard to any systematic order, taking up, exactly as chance or preponderant interest may offer them, any urgent questions of the hour, before the progress of events may antiquate them, or time may exhale their flavour. This desultory and moody want of order has its attractions for many a state of nervous distraction. Every tenth reader may happen to share in the distraction, so far as it has an Indian origin. The same deadly anxiety on behalf of female relatives, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... is time to draw to a close. We could expatiate much longer upon this topic, but want of space constrains us to leave unfinished these few desultory remarks—slender contributions towards a subject which has fallen sadly backward, and which, we grieve to say, was better understood by the king of Siam in 1686 than by all the philosophers of to-day. If, however, we have awakened in any rational mind ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... perseverance, practical good sense, and devotion to established principles; as largely Irish his spontaneous enthusiasm, ardent emotion, and disinterested idealism. Always brilliant, in his earlier years he was also desultory and somewhat lawless. From Trinity College in Dublin he crossed over to London and studied law, which he soon abandoned. In 1756 he began his career as an author with 'A Vindication of Natural Society,' a skilful satire on the philosophic writings which ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... the utter incompleteness of their unstable political and economical institutions, even when an indolent agriculture seems to tie them to the soil. Thus it often comes about that, in spite of abundantly provided and well-tended means of culture, their life is desultory, wasteful of power, unfruitful. This life has no inward consistency, no secure growth; it is not the life in which the germs of civilization first grew up to the grandeur in which we frequently find them at the beginnings of what we call history. It is full rather of fallings-away ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... much rather than minutely. It is obvious that to attack details would be easy. And since he was only secondarily a critic, it is natural that his critical opinions should not have been erected into any system. But while they are essentially desultory, they are the ideas of a man whose information and enthusiasm extended through a wide range of studies; and they are rendered impressive by the abundance, variety, and energy, which mark them ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... pleasure loving man, did not wish to make himself into the pedagogue, as he would have considered it, if he had ever questioned Ellinor with a real steady purpose of ascertaining her intellectual progress. It was quite enough for him that her general intelligence and variety of desultory and miscellaneous reading made her a pleasant and agreeable companion ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... honorable to the French. Instead of a greedy scramble after other men's property in gold and silver, the business basis of the French enterprises was to consist in a widely organized and laboriously prosecuted traffic in furs. Instead of a series of desultory and savage campaigns of conquest, the ferocity of which was aggravated by the show of zeal for the kingdom of righteousness and peace, was a large-minded and far-sighted scheme of empire, under which remote ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... that, he considered the Bible rather tame. His foster-father read a chapter to them every night before they went to bed, but the eldest of the family was generally too much occupied in pinching the twins, or keeping them in order, to give the reading anything better than a very desultory attention. But Jake's slow, droning voice was not calculated to arouse interest. "I dunno," he said, glancing up sidelong at the man. "Mebby he—I don't ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... had that great gift—almost the highest and rarest that has been granted to man. Nothing of an extraordinary sort was still to be done, yet the remaining work could not safely be left to the King's idiots; for it would require wise statesmanship and long and patient though desultory hammering of the enemy. Now and then, for a quarter of a century yet, there would be a little fighting to do, and a handy man could carry that on with small disturbance to the rest of the country; and little by little, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... divided against itself; and the chance of victory was well-nigh lost before the struggle had begun. When the Persians took the field they found half Armenia ranged upon their side; and, though a long and bloody contest followed, the end was certain from the beginning. After much desultory warfare, a great battle was fought in the sixteenth year of Isdigerd (A.D. 455 or 456) between the Christian Armenians on the one side, and the Persians, with their Armenian abettors, on the other. The Persians were victorious; Vartan, and his brother, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... short-lived poet and prose writer, was born on the farm of Affrusk, parish of Banchory-Ternan, Kincardineshire, on the 26th of May 1805. He was instructed in the ordinary branches at the parish school, and employed as a youth in desultory labour about his father's farm. From boyhood he cherished a passionate love for reading, and was no less ardent in his admiration of the picturesque and beautiful in nature. So early as his fourteenth year he composed verses of some merit. In 1828, he published ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... news, they plunged into their work again, till the roar of cannon and clash of steel became familiar as were the terrors of the scene of some desperate fight, such as modern soldiers would speak of as a desultory skirmish. ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... returned in the afternoon. Willie was of an age to go to school too; but his father, who was not a rich man, could not afford to send him just then, and therefore instructed him himself, together with Duncan and Seymour, though rather in a desultory fashion, as he was a doctor, and could not command ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... men kept up a desultory fire, but it was less frequent and manifestly less hopeful than at first. They could not but see that the craft was steadily passing beyond range, and the chances of inflicting injury grew less every moment. ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... Then, after a little desultory conversation, one by one sank from incoherence into silence, and rose from silence to snores, while Paul alone lay sleepless, listening to the creeping tinkle of the dying fire, drearily wondering at the marvellous change that had come over his life and fortunes in the last few ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... supernatural penalties. The doctrines by which Butler attracted some readers and revolted others throw no shadow over his writings. He is a placid enlightened professor, whose real good feeling and frequent shrewdness should not be overlooked in consequence of the rather desultory and often superficial mode of reasoning. This, however, suggests a ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... think, was soft-billed. It was no paws, and was too long and too big for the golden-crowned wren, appearing most like the largest willow-wren. It hung sometimes with its back downwards, but never continuing one moment in the same place. I shot at it, but it was so desultory ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... his thoughts, he resumed a desultory conversation with Jessy, but he betrayed himself several times during it, for no change of his expression was lost upon the girl. At length she let him go. It was some time, however, before he secured a place beside Evelyn, a little apart ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... Knight, who remained all the time I was there. Princess Charlotte was very gracious—showed me all her bonny dyes, as B—-would have called them—pictures, and cases, and jewels, &c. She talked in a very desultory way, and it would be difficult to say of what. She observed her mother was in very low spirits. I asked her how she supposed she could be otherwise? This QUESTIONING answer saves a great deal of trouble, and serves two purposes—i.e. avoids committing oneself, ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... desultory, however, and spiritless, like everything else about the place that night, greeted us as Mrs. Ashley opened the door leading directly into the large ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... young second officer over to him. This was not done in displeasure. The glance he fastened on Mr Powell conveyed a sort of approving wonder. He engaged him in desultory conversation as if for the only purpose of keeping a man who could provoke such a sound, near his person. Mr Powell felt himself liked. He felt it. Liked by that haggard, restless man who threw at him disconnected phrases to ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... in a pleasant and talkative humor, this bright-faced and stalwart young fellow, with his proud, fine features and his careless air. One could easily see how these old folks had made a sort of a pet of him. But while he went on with this desultory chatting about the various people whom he had met, and the friendly invitations he had received, and the hopes he had formed of renewing his acquantainceship with this person and the next person, should chance bring him again to London soon, he never ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... first question asked by the men of these camps is whether the English and Muscovs are fighting; they have either heard of the present (summer of 1885) crisis over the Afghan boundary question, or they imagine that the English and Russians maintain a sort of desultory warfare all the time. When I tell them that the Muscov is fenna (bad) they invariably express their approval of the sentiment by eagerly calling each other's attention to my expression. It is singular with what perfect faith and confidence these ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... have been comparing the Septuagint with some passages from the Talmud. I heard you say that there was a Rabbinical Targum in the library at Le Bocage, and I must beg you to examine it for me, and ascertain whether it contains any comments on the first chapter of Genesis. Somewhere in my most desultory reading I have seen it stated that in some of those early Targums was the declaration, that 'God originally created men red, white and black.' Mr. Hammond is charitable enough to say that I must have smoked an extra cigar, and dreamed the predicate ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... who showed him his microscopes "magnifying (it was said) two thousand diameters." Emerson hardly knew his privilege; he may have been the first American to look through an immersion lens with the famous Modena professor. Mr. Emerson says that his narrow and desultory reading had inspired him with the wish to see the faces of three or four writers, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Landor, De Quincey, Carlyle. His accounts of his interviews with these distinguished persons are too condensed to admit ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... and is lost to society, like the miser's concealed hoard, by the death of the proprietor. His studies were also under the additional disadvantage, that, being pursued for the gratification of a desultory longing after knowledge, and directed to no determined object, they turned on points rather curious than useful, and while they served for the amusement of the student himself, promised little utility to mankind ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... the Gypsies, according to the editor of the present work, is best presented in a series of desultory anecdotes which relate chiefly to the Egyptian usages of murder, pocket-picking, and horse-stealing, and the behavior of the rogues when they come to be hanged for their crimes. Incidentally, a good ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... awkwardly, as if to listen to the wind, which was rattling the windows, and spreading a film of rain against the opaque darkness without. Then, smoothing her wrapper over her knees, she remarked, as if opening a desultory conversation, "Thar's ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... read on and on till he had gone far beyond the point in search of which he started, and had no time left to take up the other points which belonged to the subject he had in view. I should say he was always a desultory scholar, reading very much and to very great purpose, but being led continually from one subject or one book to another long before coming to an end of the first. He was always so dissatisfied with what he did, that whereas there are remaining several beginnings of one or two pages on one subject ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... want bread, looking up to me! Nor is this all. My happiest moments for composition are broken in upon by the reflection that I must make haste. I am too late! I am already months behind! I have received my pay beforehand! Oh, wayward and desultory spirit of genius! Ill canst thou brook a taskmaster! The tenderest touch from the hand of obligation, wounds thee like a ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... have greatly preferred a much smaller number to have secured more effectually their uniform efficiency. I would much rather have had 200,000 on the footing of Lord Hobart's first letter in June than double that number selected and formed in the loose and desultory manner they have more recently been under the variety of contradictory orders they have since received and by which Government have annoyed every corner of the country." Melville adds that they would be useful if thoroughly trained and not allowed to leave their ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... So desultory and various are the accounts we have heard, and many of them so vague and unintelligible, that it has been a work of much difficulty to weave them into one continuous narrative, and to shape them into a plot sufficiently interesting for our purpose. The name and character of "Noman" are still ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... continual desultory war; Justinian, according to Procopius' account, playing false with each, in order to make them destroy each other. Then, once (this is Procopius' story, not Paul's) they meet for a great fight; and both armies ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... for knives and tobacco. And in the course of time my father and I had them for guides in many a pleasant hunting expedition, and for allies against the Spaniards, when they resumed their pretensions to the country, and carried on a feeble, desultory warfare, which kept the settlement always on the alert, but never once disturbed us, for our home lay quite out of their track and beyond them, when they came up the river upon one of ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... explanation of an authour not systematick and consequential, but desultory and vagrant, abounding in casual allusions and light hints, is not to be expected from any single scholiast. All personal reflections, when names are suppressed, must be in a few years irrecoverably obliterated; and customs, too minute to ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... have rarely in my life been more gratified than by reading your address; though I feel that you speak much too strongly of what I have done. Your notice of pangenesis (225/3. "It would be unpardonable to finish these somewhat desultory remarks without adverting to one of the most interesting subjects of the day,—the Darwinian doctrine of pangenesis...Like everything which comes from the pen of a writer whom I have no hesitation, so far as my judgment goes, in considering as by far the greatest observer ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... A desultory discussion followed now, and Lord Kitchener urged that the Governments should make a proposal in accordance with what he had suggested; and both the Presidents replied that the Governments, according to the constitutions of the ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell
... hunter from the Yellowstone to the Gila, was one of the most famous and eccentric men of the early days. In 1826, as a boy, he ran away from St. Louis with a party of Santa Fe traders, and so fascinated was he with the desultory and exciting life, that he chose to sit cross-legged, smoking the long Indian pipe, in the comfortable buffalo-skin teepee, rather than cross legs on the broad table of his master, a tailor to whom he had been apprenticed when he took ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... of an occasional and desultory remark or two, the conversation had reached a close. The gravity—the almost haughty melancholy which, at intervals, appeared the prevailing characteristic of the manners and countenance of the youth, served greatly to discourage even the blunt freedom of Mark Forrester, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... pain the Aleuts fell back, and found shelter for themselves behind trees and rocks. But they were not minded to give up the fight so easily. They gradually extended their line of battle until they had our friends completely surrounded. Their desultory fire, however, did not at first do any damage to those in the fortress, and the whites replied only occasionally, taking careful aim and winging an Indian at ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... scorned to bend. Some sneered, it is true, at what they called a military tyro, at the impromptu general who had sprung out of the uncouth lawyer and the unlearned judge, who in arms had only the experience of a few months, acquired in a desultory war against wild Indians, and who was, not only without any previous training to his new profession, but also without the first rudiments of a liberal education, for he did not even know the orthography ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... The soldiers had had a few scuffles with rowdies at Blue Island and the stock yards. They had chased the toughs in and out among the long lines of freight cars, and fired a few shots. Even the newspapers couldn't magnify the desultory lawlessness into organized rebellion. It was becoming a matter of the courts now. The general managers had imported workmen from the East. The leaders of the strike—especially Debs and Howard—were giving out more and more incendiary, hysterical utterances. All workingmen were ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... writing is one of my amusements, but in a wild, careless, and desultory way. Judge, then, how unlikely such scraps are to come out a book. Not that I would hesitate to publish any thing which might do these people good, however it might effect my own name, about which the fifty years which have ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... been unanimously voted a "pukka[12] bounder" by that isolated community of Englishmen, who played as hard as they worked, and invariably "played the game"; a code of morals which had apparently been left out of Kresney's desultory education. The fact revealed itself in a hundred infinitesimal ways, and each revelation added a fresh stone to the wall that sprang up apace between himself and ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... pointed out that poetry and prose were almost side-issues for him. The resulting faults and weakness of what he left are obvious. Except in the plays he has no sustained scheme of thought. Even "De Profundis" is too desultory. ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... 44: During a desultory discussion on the 13th of July, Mr Disraeli had assailed the Government and its chief in the Commons, to such purpose that Lord John Russell, stung by his sarcasms, and mortified by his own failure, asked Lord Aberdeen to relieve him of the Leadership of the House. The Queen, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... epithets can hardly exaggerate, and which tended to intensify the self-esteem of the Maori, never the least self-confident of warriors. A war carried on in such a theatre and in such a temper was likely to drag. There was plenty of fighting, mostly desultory. The Maoris started out of the bush or the bracken to plunder, to cut off stragglers, or to fight, and disappeared again when luck was against them. Thirteen tiresome months saw much marching and counter-marching, frequent displays of courage—more courage ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... bring her. The hours wore on—Mr. Ingelow at his easel, Mollie with her book, Susan Sharpe with her needle, conversation desultory and lagging. ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... like a dream; and long before we could find our tools and get to work we heard the desultory reports of his pistols exploding in his holsters, as his pony measured off the darkness between ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... not a very gay little supper. Pauline and Jack Goodheart had very little to say for themselves, but in their eyes were bright pools of happiness. Clanton sustained the burden of the talk, assisted in a desultory fashion by Lee and Billie. But there was so much quiet joy at the table that for years the hour was one fenced off from all the others of their lives. Even Jim, who for the first time felt himself almost an outsider, since he did not belong to the close communion of lovers, could find plenty for ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... sky was cloudless, the desultory breezes that swept the plains blighted growing things, raising little whirlwinds of fine, flinty alkali dust and spreading it over the face of the world. The storm that had caught Hollis on the Dry Bottom trail had covered only a comparatively ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... asking herself questions, sometimes answering them, sometimes unable to answer, she managed to keep up some desultory talk first with one of her neighbours, then with the other. It seemed to take all her strength to do this, and made her feel weak and broken, not excited and vital, as she had felt on the wonderful night at ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... militant friar of the Middle Ages, aware of Steingall's protective reverie, spoke in desultory periods, addressing himself questions and supplying the answers, reserving his epigrams ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... be good for a young clergyman to have much to say to her. They have not been so cordial to them of late, but that is partly owing to poor Mrs. White's foolish talk, and in part to young Alexis having been desultory and mopy of late—-not taking the interest in his music he did. Mr. Lee says he is sure some young woman is ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gardening near New York in winter was carried on in rather a desultory way, and the supply of salads and other forced vegetables was limited and mostly raised in hotbeds and other frames, and prices ran high. But of recent years our markets in winter have been so liberally supplied from ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... Heally, William Reyle, William Barrett, and Roger Burke signed to a petition to the General Court of Massachusetts on August 17, 1664. Such names as Maccarty, Gleason, Coggan, Lawler, Kelly, Hurley, MackQuade, and McCleary also appear on the Cambridge Church records down to 1690. These are but desultory instances of the first comers among the Irish to Massachusetts, selected from a great ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... The boy at once set to work, spending all his leisure time, day and night, over these studies, to which he afterwards added geography and fortification. It was in this desultory way that his education was gained, no regular course of training being prescribed, and his strong self-will ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... are a good many men, who intend to be teachers, who enter for classical examinations. But where we fail grievously is in our provision for average men; they are provided with feeble examinations in desultory and diffuse subjects, in which a high standard is not required. It is difficult to imagine a condition of greater vacuity than that in which a man leaves the University after taking a pass degree. No one has endeavoured to do anything for him, or to cultivate his intelligence in any line. ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in which books instruct women—and men, too, for that matter—but there are other and more vital processes in which only experience (individual or inherited) teaches. In her desultory reading, little Mrs. Haney, like every other citizen, had taken imaginative part in many murders, seductions, and marital infidelities; and yet the motives for such deeds had never before seemed ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland |
