"Unencumbered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... occasionally seem to point to a different direction. In his person he resembled the King, for he was noble and majestic both in stature and countenance. But he had the advantage of his elder brother, in being unencumbered with any infirmity, and in every respect lighter and more active. His dress was rich and grave, as became his age and rank, and, like his royal brother, he wore no arms of any kind, a case of small knives supplying at his girdle the place usually occupied ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... stark naked, not covering even their privities; their arms are arrows, bows, assagays, callaways and the like. They have no vessels either large or small, nor has the coast any capes or bights that might afford shelter from west- and south-winds, the whole shore being clear and unencumbered, with a clayey bottom, forming a good anchoring-ground, the sea being not above 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 fathom in depth at 1, 2 and more miles' distance from the land, the rise and fall of the water with the tides we found to be ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... with Andrew on this as on other occasions, and the grumblers were silenced. As we were perfectly unencumbered, we advanced at a rapid rate, and in about three hours we got up to the ship. We scrambled up the sides by the chain-plates, and were all ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... led senates, swayed debates, Enriched themselves, and beggared states Flatter yourselves no more: 'tis riches— The depth of pocket of the breeches That rules the roast. Unhappy wight Is the poor soul with pocket light; His solitary day descends, Quite unencumbered by ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... a little the antithesis: it would have unsettled a little of the balance of that seesaw in which Dr. Johnson so much delighted, and which, falling into the hands of novel-writers and of members of Parliament, has, by moving unencumbered with any of the Doctor's reason or sense, lulled so many thousands asleep! Dr. Johnson created a race of writers and speakers. 'Mr. Speaker, that the state of the nation is very critical, all men will allow; but that it is wholly desperate, few will believe.' When you hear or see ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... up, guilty but happy, from her effort at capturing a fourth vase with her little finger, the only one left unencumbered. "Dear Uncle, you never would be so cruel!" she said. "See! I have only taken one chocolate-pot, and there are five, such beauties! Yes, I know we don't drink chocolate, but some of our guests ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... and a Brautigam, the people of Weimar would have been puzzled to say what it was. It was known that the gracious young lady's father, who would naturally have accompanied them, was sick, and in the fact that they were Americans much extenuation was found for whatever was phenomenal in their unencumbered enjoyment of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... matrimony." Hillard fidgeted. "Young man known as Adonis would adore stout elderly lady, independently situated. Object, matrimony." Pish! "Girlie. Can't keep appointment to-night. Willie." Tush! "A French Widow of eighteen, unencumbered," and so forth and so on. Rot, bally rot; and here he was on the way to join them! "Will the lady who sang from Madame Angot communicate with gentleman who leaned out of the window? J.H. Burgomaster Club." Positively ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... need for strategic frontiers. Its contours were vague, for he had no clear mental picture of the concrete Europe out of which it was to be fashioned. He spoke, indeed, and would fain have acted, as though the old Continent were like a thinly inhabited territory of North America fifty years ago, unencumbered by awkward survivals of the past and capable of receiving any impress. He seemingly took no account of its history, its peoples, or their interests and strivings. History shared the fate of Kolchak's government and the Ukraine; it was not recognized by the delegates. What ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... activity. He can sit down quietly in a town that is growing rapidly; but if it stands still, he is impelled to move his rocking-chair to one more lively. He wants the world to move, and to move unencumbered; and Europe seems to him to carry too much baggage. The American is simply the most modern of men, one who has thrown away the impedimenta of tradition. The world never saw such a spectacle before, so vast a territory ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... he possibly do this, if he takes charge of pupils?—he must either neglect his pupils or neglect his parish. He cannot do justice to both. As Saint Paul says to the bishops, "Although it is better to marry than burn, still it is better to be even as I am," unencumbered with wife and family, and with no ties to distract my attention from ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... been made before he had ventured on matrimony,—provision sufficient for many girls had Fortune so far favoured him. But that an eldest son should have all the family land,—one, though as many sons should have been given to him as to Priam,—and that that one should have it unencumbered, as he had had it from his father,—this was to him the very law of his being. And he would have taught that son, had already begun to teach him when the great blow came, that all this was to be given to him, not that ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... don't," said David. "I held on to the tiller-ropes though I did go overboard." Then ensued a battle between David and his horse, the one wanting to mount, the other anxious to be unencumbered with sailors. It was settled by David making a vault and sitting on the animal's neck, on which the ladies screamed again, and Lucy, half whimpering, proposed ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... Orleans, six miles from Quebec. The afternoon was stormy and dark, and the river was covered with ice, sweeping by with the tide. They were forced to encamp. At midnight, the moon had risen, the river was comparatively unencumbered, and they embarked once more. The wind increased, and the waves tossed furiously. Nothing saved them but the skill and courage of Mestigoit. At length they could see the rock of Quebec towering through the gloom, but piles of ice lined the shore, ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... The drying of the glands during the act of re-expansion is of some little service to the plant; for I have often observed that objects adhering to the leaves [page 16] could then be blown away by a breath of air; the leaves being thus left unencumbered and free for future action. Nevertheless, it often happens that all the glands do not become completely dry; and in this case delicate objects, such as fragile insects, are sometimes torn by the re-expansion of the tentacles into fragments, which remain scattered all ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... bluff and hearty-looking in his manifold wraps surmounted by a dreadnought pilot jacket, sealskin cap, and water boots reaching to his thighs; and it was amusing to see his look of surprise as he came up the Flying Fish's side-ladder and stepped in upon her roomy deck unencumbered by anything but the pilot-house. The four companions of course stepped out on deck in a body to meet him, and after they had all heartily shaken hands with him and deprecatingly received his thanks for the important ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... to New York to study at the Art League, the priest got him a night job as packer in one of the big department stores. Since then, Hedger had taken care of himself; that was his only responsibility. He was singularly unencumbered; had no family duties, no social ties, no obligations toward any one but his landlord. Since he travelled light, he had travelled rather far. He had got over a good deal of the earth's surface, in spite of the fact that he never in his ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... fortnight or thereabouts. But I'm not going to let you call me Mr. Le Breton any longer; it isn't friendly: and, what's more, it isn't Christian. Why should there be these artificial barriers between soul and soul, eh, Selah? I shall call you Selah in future: it seems more genuine and heartfelt, and unencumbered with needless conventions, than your misters and misses. After all, why should we keep up such idle formalities ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... unrolled the beds, sorted out the simple cooking utensils, and started to cook. Occasional travellers on the road just above us shouted out friendly greetings. They were a miscellaneous lot. Most were headed toward the mountains. These journeyed in various ways. Some walked afoot and unencumbered, some carried apparently all their belongings on their backs, one outfit comprising three men had three saddle horses and four packs—a princely caravan. One of the cargadores' pack-trains went up the road enveloped in a thick cloud of dust—twenty or thirty pack-mules and four men on horseback ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... and I wish I could leave them there to demonstrate the superiority of high ideals to purely material considerations for the rest of their earthly career while we others went on with our sordid work unencumbered ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... Unencumbered with heavy baggage, they were all soon aboard, and in three days after debarked at the port of Panama. Thence crossing the Isthmus to Chagres, another sea-going craft carried them on to the city, where they need no longer live in fear ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... Your observations are wholly incomprehensible to me. Cannot you simplify them in some way? At first I thought perhaps I understood you, but I grope now. Would it not expedite matters if you restricted yourself to categorical statements of fact unencumbered with obstructing accumulations of metaphor ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... have been equally overturned by the extirpation of either of the German nations. Among the princes of the Alemanni, Macrianus, who, with a Roman name, had assumed the arts of a soldier and a statesman, deserved his hatred and esteem. The emperor himself, with a light and unencumbered band, condescended to pass the Rhine, marched fifty miles into the country, and would infallibly have seized the object of his pursuit, if his judicious measures had not been defeated by the impatience of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... will consider whether it would not be expedient for a state of peace as well as of war so to organize or class the militia as would enable us on any sudden emergency to call for the services of the younger portions, unencumbered with the old and those having families. Upward of 300,000 able-bodied men between the ages of 18 and 26 years, which the last census shews we may now count within our limits, will furnish a competent number for offense or defense in any point where ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... feeling of being now formally introduced to these acres on which he had worked every summer since he was big enough to carry water to the harvesters. His father told him how much land they owned, and how much it was worth, and that it was unencumbered except for a trifling mortgage he had given on one quarter when he took ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... I treasured up a goodly store of old Border ballads, as well as modern songs; for in those years of unencumbered and careless existence, I could, on hearing a song, or even a ballad, sung twice, have fixed it on my mind word for word. My father, with his family, leaving Langshawburn, went to Capplefoot, on the Water ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... progress, Bob motioned me to leap upon a stone; I looked to see if he were possibly in earnest, and he only signed to me the more imperiously. Now the block stood six feet high; it would have been quite a leap to me unencumbered; with the breast and back weights, and the twenty pounds upon each foot, and the staggering load of the helmet, the thing was out of reason. I laughed aloud in my tomb; and to prove to Bob how far he was astray, I gave a little impulse from my toes. Up I soared like a bird, my companion ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is not obscure—at any rate, not habitually so; never leaves his reader in doubt, or compels him to mount the lever and help to raise his burden; but clutches it in his mighty grasp and hurls it into the air, so that it is not only unencumbered by the soil that gave it birth, but is wholly detached and relieved, and set off against the clear blue of his imagination. His thought is not like a rock propped up but still sod-bound, but is like a rock held aloft, or built into a buttress, ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... which he saw some of the Russian guns on his flank; whereupon he sent an order to Turner's battery for guns, and seemed surprised that they could not be dragged across a stream and up a hill which presented some difficulties to an unencumbered horseman; then cantering off to join the Guards just ere they made their charge, and finding it all over while he was in a hollow of the ground." Lord Raglan, let it be remembered, was the Commander-in-Chief of the English forces. And again:—"The Light Division ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... drunkenly for a moment, still dizzied by his fall. The pandemonium of a moment agone was stilled. Ruth did not cry out again, but voices came from aft. The belaying-pin he grasped was loose in its hole and unencumbered by rope. Quite without reasoning, Martin drew it out, and, grasping it clublike, ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... undermined the family rent-roll that an equally disastrous effect had been produced on the mansion itself (one of the few pieces of property, by the way, that the father had left to his only son and heir unencumbered, with the exception of a suit in chancery from which nobody ever expected a penny), the only dry spots in St. George's finances being the few ground rents remaining from his grandmother's legacy and the little he could pick up at ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... softened by a more habitual air of assiduous courtesy than the stubborn old earl had ever condescended to assume towards the world in general. In other respects, his address was gallant, free, and unencumbered either by pride or ceremony—far remote certainly from the charge either of haughty coldness or forward impetuosity; and so far his father had justly freed him from the marked faults which he ascribed to the manners of the prince ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... wagon-poles and aid the severely taxed mules up the steepest places, to fill gullies and sloughs with stones and brush, to pry mired wheels up to firm ground, and repair broken harnesses and wagons, we were over half a day in going a distance which could have been accomplished in two hours by soldiers unencumbered with a ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... simple villagers had cared to ask his name, or, when they knew it, to store it in their memory. Perhaps from some vague rumour of his college honours which had been whispered abroad on his first arrival, perhaps because he was an unmarried, unencumbered gentleman, he had been called the bachelor. The name pleased him, or suited him as well as any other, and the Bachelor he had ever since remained. And the bachelor it was, it may be added, who with his own ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... France, and as part payment towards the total reparation due from Germany for the damage resulting from the war, Germany cedes to France in full and absolute possession, with exclusive rights of exploitation, unencumbered, and free from all debts and charges of any kind, the coal-mines situated in the Saar Basin."[36] While the administration of this district is vested for fifteen years in the League of Nations, it is to be observed that the mines are ceded to France absolutely. ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... river, but whereas it is ten minutes' walk from Quartes by dry land, it is six weary kilometres by water. We left our bags at the inn, and walked to our canoes through the wet orchards unencumbered. Some of the children were there to see us off, but we were no longer the mysterious beings of the night before. A departure is much less romantic than an unexplained arrival in the golden evening. Although we might be greatly taken at a ghost's first appearance, we ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I would n't offer it. I want you to use your wits in your own way, unhampered, unencumbered. It's ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... sometimes display more of nature's charms to the eager gaze of her wanton sons than befits me to tell, or decency to dwell on. I could not, however, with all the purity of my ethics, help envying a robust fellow who was assisting in clucking the dear unencumbered creatures under ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... LAW.—The violation of all law, both natural and revealed, is the cool and villainous contract by which people entering into the marital relation engage in defiance of the laws of God and the laws of the commonwealth, that they shall be unencumbered with a family of children. "Disguise the matter as you will," says Dr. Pomeroy, "yet the fact remains that the first and specific object of marriage is the rearing of a family." "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth," is God's first word ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... descent from families which, if not noble themselves, are allied to nobility,—and as to my "rise in the world"—if I had risen, it would have been rather for balloon-like qualities than for mother-wit, to being unencumbered with heavy ballast either in my head or my pockets. However, it was my cue to agree: so ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... and jumped overboard to save him, forgetting what was bound to happen, and going down like a stone, feet foremost, but rising to the surface again, to fight gallantly in spite of the weight of his irons, and strive to overtake Nic, who, unencumbered, was some ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... a grand sight to see these two large birds wheeling through the air—the osprey trying to elude the eagle, diving first one way and then another, until at last, when he sees the unencumbered eagle must overpower him, in a fit of desperation he lets the fish drop, and the eagle catches it before it reaches the water, and carries it to some retired ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... into prairie and timber, that he sent repeated messages to his friends in Indiana to come out and join him. Thomas Lincoln was always ready to move. He had probably by this time despaired of ever owning any unencumbered real estate in Indiana, and the younger members of the family had little to bind them to the place where they saw nothing in the future but hard work and poor living. Thomas Lincoln handed over his farm to Mr. Gentry, ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... bequest of his governs the rest of my work. What I have already done is an introduction to these letters. When they are published I shall add a volume of personal recollections of his later life; and this will be all. Had I been left unencumbered by special directions I should have been tempted to leave his domestic history untouched except on the outside, and have attempted to make a complete biography out of the general materials. This I am unable to do, and all that I can give the world will be materials for some ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... time this was no easy task. As every bather knows, it is not an absolutely straightforward matter for even an unencumbered man to effect a landing upon a shingle beach, if ever so little swell is on. And the Roman soldier had to keep his footing, and use his arms moreover for fighting, with some half-hundredweight of accoutrements about him. To form rank was, of course, ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... the approach of winter, and the wants attendant on such numerous bodies of men, would constrain both to quit the field. It is thought the Persians will not adventure a battle, though 180,000 strong, as, being light, and unencumbered with cannon or baggage, they are fitted for rapid marches, and can harass the Turkish army with perpetual skirmishes and assaults on all sides, hovering round about, and wasting them, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... discover to be true. Instead of the meanness, distress, complaint, anxiety, and dependance, which have hitherto been combined in his ideas of poverty, he will read of content, innocence, and cheerfulness, of health and safety, tranquillity and freedom; of pleasures not known but to men unencumbered with possessions; and of sleep that sheds his balsamick anodynes only on the cottage. Such are the blessings to be obtained by the resignation of riches, that kings might descend from their thrones, and generals retire from a triumph, only to slumber undisturbed ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... which had been the object of my uncle's visit to the Manor-house. To my great joy, this was neither less nor more than my father's will, witnessed and sealed in due form, wherein the possessions of my ancestors were conveyed, absolutely and unconditionally, without entail, unencumbered and unembarrassed, to me and to my assigns. I thought it most likely that the papers in and about the trunk might be of use, either as corroborative evidence, in case my uncle should choose to litigate the point and brand the original document as a forgery, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... smeared was dabbed about my face. The blow almost threw me down; and, while I staggered, he rushed at me furiously with his sword. Perhaps it was good for me that I had got no clothes on; for, being utterly unencumbered, I leapt this way and that, and avoided his fierce, eager strokes till I could collect myself somewhat; while he had a heavy scarlet cloak on that trailed on the ground, and which he often trod on, so ...
— The Hollow Land • William Morris
... by this child? how were they to prove that they held it from God? The child became a peril—they got rid of it. To fly unencumbered was easier; the parents resolved to lose it—now in a wood, now on a strand, now down ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... present, plans for the renewal of the struggle were discussed and measures for enforcing discipline on the burghers were taken. Steyn professed to have information that a Russian advance on India was imminent. The idea of resistance en masse was abandoned, and a policy of flying columns unencumbered with wagons and acting aggressively against the British lines of communication was adopted. It was hoped that a timely demonstration would lure the enemy out of his hold, and that a little encouragement would revive the Prieska rebellion. The determination to continue ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... buoyancy of temperament, restored again to a large extent his interest and ambition in his work; and when he remembered that he was, after all, the owner of two unencumbered trails, with all their traps, he almost forgot his disappointment—but not altogether; that ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... succeeded Sir Charles Metcalfe in the Residency of Delhi.[8] He referred the matter to the Supreme Government; and by their instructions, under date 11th of April, 1828, he was authorized to adjust the matter. He decided that Shams-ud-din should make a complete and unencumbered cession to his younger brothers of the pargana of Loharu, without the reservation of any right of interference in the management, or of any condition of obedience to himself whatever; and that Amin-ud-din should, till his younger brother came of age, pay into the Delhi treasury for ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... followed, wagging his head. He was not at all satisfied with that tableau. He employed men to work; he wanted no love-affairs inside his vineyards. As for her highness, she had come for the sole purpose of seeing Gretchen's lover; and it occurred to her that the really desirable men were generally unencumbered ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... rid of it without tearing his whole structure to pieces. In my judgment, as he appears to be sufficiently comfortable under the mouldy accretion, he had better stumble on with it as long as he can. He presents a spectacle which is by no means without its charm for a disinterested and unencumbered observer. ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... partnership as much as you need mine. Even if you returned to Austria unencumbered, you could accomplish less alone than with a man of equal endowments and greater power beside you. Two strong brains and characters with similar purpose can always accomplish more together than alone. I intend to rule and to ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... boundless plain for their deeds. They lead such a simple, dry, and everlasting life, as hardly needs depart with the flesh, but is transmitted entire from age to age. There are but few objects to distract their sight, and their life is as unencumbered as the course of ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... Even a bare-legged King has in his own house an advantage over the European stranger. I was heated, partly from self- repression, partly from Scotch tweed. King George was quite, quite cool, and unencumbered, save for a trifling calico jacket, a pink lava-lava, and the august fly-flapper. But what heated me most, I think, was the presence of the Crown Prince, who, on my presentation, looked at me as though he had never seen me before. He was courteous, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the black has passed this way lately. He wore moccasins, and may therefore be a red man and an enemy; but I have just discovered that he is one of your people, and has a load on his shoulders. Observe that soft ground; his feet sank deeper into it than would have been the case had he been unencumbered. He is either an old man, or overcome with fatigue. He cannot be very far before us, and is going in the direction of your hut." Kepenau pointed as he spoke to some mossy ground, where I could just distinguish a faint outline ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... When on leaving Wei-hsien the number increased to five and then to six, we became dubious. But we concluded that as we were active, stalwart men, we might in a pinch manage twice our number of Chinese soldiers or, if worst came to worst, as we were unencumbered by women, children or luggage, we could sprint, on ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... little inland sea ranged fearlessly and freely. But the conquests of Alexander did more to extend the limits of geographical science, and opened an acquaintance with the remote countries of the East. Yet the march of the conqueror is slow in comparison with the movements of the unencumbered traveller. The Romans were still less enterprising than the Greeks, were less commercial in their character. The contributions to geographical knowledge grew with the slow acquisitions of empire. But their system was centralizing in its tendency; ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... true. And what matter to the reformer, the agitator, the dreamer, though you stone him to death, or throw him to the lions, or clap him into a nineteenth-century prison and shut his mouth that way? He has handed on the sacred fire. Others will bear the torch; and he who is unencumbered will outstrip his fellows. The wrong must ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... it was found that after passing a certain point the footpath was almost unencumbered by volcanic debris. This was owing to the protection afforded to it by the cone of Rakata, and the almost overhanging nature of some of the cliffs on that side of the mountain; still the track was bad enough, and in places so rugged, that Winnie, vigorous ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... gained the woods she made better progress, for under the great shafts of the redwoods there was little growth, and the ground was unencumbered and almost as smooth as a floor. With no goal in view, Alix climbed upward, walking rapidly, breathing hard, and frequently speaking aloud, as some poignant thought smote her, or standing still, too sick with pain, under an unexpected rush ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... had great cause for rejoicing. Instead of a comparatively slender younger son's portion, he had stepped into a fine and unencumbered property of over five thousand a year, and that in the heyday of his youth, when in the full possession of all his capacities for enjoyment, which were large indeed. Henceforth everything that money ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... can take place only in its first and simplest mode—namely, in a linear direction; the plane, produced by the movement of the line, and constituting a higher term of superficial development, corresponds with locomotion upon the water, whose unencumbered surface, which can be traversed in every direction, presents a locomotive medium, the facilities of which, compared with those offered by the surface of the earth, increase in the ratio of the difference of extension between the line and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... Kyrle exactly as it was, and then asked for his advice in return, expressed in plain, downright terms which he could comprehend without any danger of misinterpretations and mistakes. My letter was as short as I could possibly make it, and was, I hope, unencumbered by needless ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... said, she was brave: she went into cages, she flourished lashes, like a spangled lion-tamer. He had not supposed her to be capable of vulgar arts, but these last words struck him as a false note. When a marriageable young woman urges matrimony on an unencumbered young man the most obvious explanation of her conduct is ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... most so in himself. He repeated the persuasion he had already confessed to Dr. Martineau that there was not a single member of the Fuel Commission but had a considerable drive towards doing the right thing about fuel, and not one who had a single-minded, unencumbered drive towards the right thing. "That," said Sir Richmond, "is what makes life so interesting and, in spite of a thousand tragic disappointments, so hopeful. Every man is a bad man, every man is a feeble man and every man is a good man. My motives come and go. Yours do the same. We vary in ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... been afoot and unencumbered, the task would have been hard enough but not insuperable. Mounted, with pack horses carrying loads projecting far on the sides, to catch and entangle with spiky branches, the task became impossible. Yet he persisted, with a feeling that ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... our wonted order of march; but before we pushed forward, the troops were desired to lighten themselves still further, by throwing off their blankets, which were to be left under a slender guard till their return. This was accordingly done; and being now unencumbered, except by a knapsack almost empty, every man felt his spirits heightened in proportion to the diminution of his load. The grief of soldiers is seldom of long duration, and though I will not exactly say ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... on lip and cheek and chin. His neat, colourless face, provided with the merely indispensable features, suggested immediately, for a description, that it was CLEAR, and in this manner somewhat resembled a small decent room, clean-swept and unencumbered with furniture, but drawing a particular advantage, as might presently be noted, from the outlook of a pair of ample and uncurtained windows. There was something in Adam Verver's eyes that both admitted the morning and the evening in unusual quantities and gave the modest ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... to him presently a wave of the strong religious faith that was his sole unencumbered heritage. Once again he was a trustful little boy. He slid out of the great bed of his ancestors and knelt on the old rag mat beside it; he poured out an appeal for help from One who, he had been told—who, he truly believed—marked ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... said Prothero, "which I understand is a kind of monster Trinity unencumbered by a University, Binns tells me that although there is a profession of celibacy within the walls, the arrangements of the town and more particularly of the various hotels are conceived in ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... quite without mercy. I am supposed to arouse a citizenry on their behalf that is petrified with indifference. The very thing, or things, that offend and disgust me, I am supposed to take up and carry about on an unencumbered shoulder. I am supposed to be their prostitute and offer them my body at a price. I am supposed to be their retail grocer and haggle in their behalf. There is something inspiring about a struggle, and when the enemy is worthy of one's steel ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... was just when the sun was changing places with the moon as an illuminator of Silverthorn Dairy, she found him at the spot before her, and unencumbered by a horse. The melancholy that had so weighed him down at their first interview, and had been perceptible at their second, had quite disappeared. He pressed her right hand between both his ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... we must go on board. The deck, you observe, is of narrow deal planks as white as snow; the guns are of polished brass; the bitts and binnacles of mahogany: she is painted with taste; and all the mouldings are gilded. There is nothing wanting; and yet how clear and unencumbered are her decks! Let us go below. There is the ladies' cabin: can anything be more tasteful or elegant? Is it not luxurious? And, although so small, does not its very confined space astonish you, when you view so many comforts so beautifully ...
— The Three Cutters • Captain Frederick Marryat
... leave my native land, go over to Australia, live a life of hard work and self-denial, and not come back again until, by the accumulated rents and by what I could earn, I could make my property absolutely and honestly my own, and leave it unencumbered to my dear child. You have seen enough of me to know that I have some strength of will in my character; and so, when I had made this resolution, I began immediately to carry it out. Taking with me our old nurse, whom I bound to secrecy, I came over to this colony, got employment, ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... art should have arisen. It is but an hour's walk to another great ruin, which has held together more completely. There the central tower stands erect to half its altitude, and the round arches and massive pillars of the nave make a perfect vista on the unencumbered turf. You get an impression that when Catholic England was in her prime great abbeys were as thick as milestones. By native amateurs, even now, the region is called "wild," though to American eyes it seems thoroughly suburban in its smoothness and finish. There is a noiseless little railway ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... when the man was unable to help himself, it seemed well-nigh impossible; and I was greatly afraid that, instead of saving his life, you would lose your own. Of course, the fact that you had successfully traversed the country before was strongly in your favour; but then you were unencumbered, and the two things were, therefore, not to be compared with each other. I shall, of course, put you in orders tomorrow as having performed a singularly gallant action, in rescuing Lieutenant Brooke of the 47th and a sowar from their captivity, by the ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... trout and angling for salmon is like the difference between a drawing of Lionardo's, in silver point, and a loaded landscape by MacGilp, R.A. Trout-fishing is all an idyll, all delicacy—that is, trout-fishing on the Test or on the Itchen. You wander by clear water, beneath gracious poplar-trees, unencumbered with anything but a slim rod of Messrs. Hardy's make, and a light toy-box of delicate flies. You need seldom wade, and the water is shallow, the bottom is of silver gravel. You need not search all day at random, but you select a ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... his energies upon his hair, which was elaborately dressed after a fashion that precluded the possibility of any attention being bestowed upon the rest of his person, which was accordingly wholly unencumbered with any clothing. The perfection of this art apparently consisted in gathering up about a dozen hairs and binding them firmly with grass or fine twine of cocoa-nut fibre plastered with coral lime. As the hair grows, the binding is lengthened also, and only about four or five inches ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the ideal world of universals. God created the world by encumbering each idea with an envelopment or clothing of visible matter; and since matter is vile or imperfect, all things are more or less perfect as they partake more or less fully of the idea. The pure unencumbered idea, the "Idea of ideas," is the Logos, or divine Reason, which represents the sum-total of the activities which sustain the world, and serves as a mediator between the absolutely ideal God and the absolutely non-ideal matter. Here we arrive at a Gnostic conception, which the Philonists ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... ruins Ferrara is lovely. It wears in the tomb the sunset hues of beauty. Its streets run out in straight lines, and are of noble breadth and length. Unencumbered with the heavy arcades that darken Padua, the marble fronts of its palaces rise to a goodly height, covered with rich but exceedingly sweet and chaste designs. On the stone of their pilasters and door-posts the ilex puts forth its leaf, and the vine its grapes; and the ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... bay for that purpose. On the 18th of July the two armaments met. Kirke had six armed vessels under his command, while De Roquemont had but four. The conflict was unequal. The English vessels were unencumbered and much heavier than those of the French. De Roquemont [99] was soon overpowered and compelled to surrender His whole fleet of twenty-two vessels, with a hundred and thirty-five pieces of ordnance, together with supplies and colonists ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... aware of a small black spot far ahead in the very middle of the unencumbered track. As he drew near it looked like a great stone. He swerved as he passed it, and, looking, saw that it was a bundle wrapped in a striped blanket. It seemed so odd that it should be lying there that, his curiosity being aroused, he pulled up and walked back a few yards to examine ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... which had been towing astern in charge of a boat-keeper, was accordingly hauled up alongside, her crew tumbled down into her, and in a few minutes I found myself once more at home. How different everything looked here, to be sure, from what it did on board the Indiaman! Our snow-white decks, unencumbered by anything save the long- boat and pinnace stowed upon the booms, the handsome range of formidable guns on either side, with their gear symmetrically arranged and tackle- falls neatly coiled down, the substantial bulwarks ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... were beginning to live—our very own life; not life hampered and restricted by the wills, wishes and whims of others; unencumbered by the domineering wisdom, unembarrassed by the formal ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... The apothegms ascribed to the wise men of Greece belong to this kind of composition; being extremely valuable to a rude people who can profit by the fruits of reasoning without being able to attend to its forms, and deposite in their minds a useful precept, unencumbered with the arguments by means of which its soundness might be proved. The books which bear the name of Solomon are distinguished above all others for the sage views that they exhibit of human life, and for the sensible maxims addressed to all conditions of men who have to encounter its manifold ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... continues hilly, but affords good pasturage; gradually improving to Sidmouth Valley, which is distant from the pass of the Fish River eight miles. The land here is level, and the first met with unencumbered with timber: it is not of very considerable extent, but abounds with a great variety of herbs and plants, such as would probably highly interest and gratify the scientific botanist. This beautiful little valley runs north-west ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... all the cooking utensils needed. If a company of Girl Scouts attempts a high mountain climb, additional covers of clothing and food can be carried on a pack mule, but this chapter is for those who wish to climb unencumbered with pack animals. It is by far the finest way to see the high mountains, though it must be admitted few have the hardihood or courage to try it. The new Roosevelt National Park, one of the ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... of his followers, and he is ready to help in times of trouble and distress. When the manang bali marries, he generally adopts some children; and if he has had children before he becomes a manang bali, he must give them their portions and start in that career unencumbered. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... the spirit, vigour, and variety that he does. He is not pledged to repeat himself. Every new Register is a kind of new Prospectus. He blesses himself from all ties and shackles on his understanding; he has no mortgages on his brain; his notions are free and unencumbered. If he was put in trammels, he might become a vile hack like so many more. But he gives himself 'ample scope and verge enough.' He takes both sides of a question, and maintains one as sturdily as the other. If nobody ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... launching into the air, instantly gives chase, and soon gains on the fish hawk; each exerts his utmost to mount above the other, displaying in these rencontres the most elegant and sublime aerial evolutions. The unencumbered eagle rapidly advances, and is just on the point of reaching his opponent, when, with a sudden scream, probably of despair and honest execration, the latter drops his fish; the eagle, poising himself for a moment, as if to take a more certain aim, descends like a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... itself and its own ends, regnant dans le desert."[40] The churches of Umbria and Tuscany were as frames in which space was provided for all the arts; where fresco and sculpture could be welcomed with ample scope for their free and unencumbered display. Donatello was never hampered or crowded by the architecture of Florence; he was never obliged, like his predecessors in Picardy and Champagne, to accommodate the gesture and attitude of his statue to stereotyped positions dictated by the architect. His opportunity was proportionately greater, ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... it a "three days' journey over rough country." Another reference in Father Calancha speaks of Puquiura as being "two long days' journey from Vilcabamba." It took us five days to go from Espiritu Pampa to Pucyura, although Indians, unencumbered by burdens, and spurred on by necessity, might do it in three. It is possible to fit some other details of the story into this locality, although there is no place on the road called Ungacacha. Nevertheless it does not seem to me reasonable ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... lifted up the thin carpet bags which reposed at their feet, and which contained an exceedingly small amount of personal linen and other attire, and went on board the boat, followed by Marcus, who was unencumbered with baggage. They entered the ladies' cabin. The thick crowd of people pressed into the cabin in their front and rear, and all about them, and scrambled for seats. There was a general preference for the part forward of the wheelhouse, because ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... he softly pushed off his boots. Soon after he made three or four hard tugs at his oar, and then, by a quick movement, drew one arm out of his jacket. Then rowing with one hand he shook himself quite clear of the garment, so as to be unencumbered when he began to swim, for that was his intention as soon as the man overtook them, ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn |
