"Refractory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... me, And that fare I refused, till, to cure what had ailed me, Home leaving I leaped o'er those bars of vexation. What I met on the journey, what I thought in each case, What arose in my soul in the new-chosen place, Where the future was lying,—this to tell is refractory, But I'll give you a picture of ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... the most intelligent, and by whom most of the questions asked by the master are answered. The remaining majority are divided into two sections, one of which consists of what are termed boys of average ability, whilst the other contains the lazy element, the refractory boys, ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... cou'd not take too much about it. Aulus Gellius tells us, that the wise Romans kept Inspectors, over the Agriculture of their People, who took due Care, that every one manag'd their Grounds, in the most skilful and useful Manner, and to instruct the Ignorant and punish the Refractory. At this Day, Pere du Halde assures us, that the Chinese do in the most rigid Manner, oblige every one to sow their Grounds or forfeit them; and they appoint judicious Surveyors, who every Year, make ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... the landlord, between his teeth, and pointing to Tongs, who reeled and raved in his seat, "do as I do!" And, at the word, with a single blow of his fist, he felled the still refractory jailer with as much ease as if he had been an infant in his hands. The pedler, only half conscious, turned nevertheless to the half-sleeping Tongs, and resolutely drove ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... you believe, as I do, that the poor child was conveyed to Bowstead in order that the youth might lose sight of her, and since he proves refractory to the match intended for him, this further device is found for destroying any possible hope ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... texts and pictures. No work, however menial, is beneath them. I have myself seen one scrubbing the stairs, and in turns they sleep on a hard straw bed on the floor, ready to rise in the night as often as a bell summons them to the aid of a suffering invalid or a refractory lunatic." ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... quarrels concerning those which they were entitled to hold. Some of these were settled by the men-at-arms with brief ceremony; the shafts of their battle-axes and pummels of their swords being readily employed as arguments to convince the more refractory. Others, which involved the rival claims of more elevated persons, were determined by the heralds, or by the two marshals of the field, William de Wyvil and Stephen de Martival, who, armed at all points, rode up and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... and vicious, without property, and without habits of industry or enterprise. The colored people in our slave States must, almost without exception, be destitute of information; and in choosing negroes to send away, the masters would be very apt to select the most helpless and the most refractory. Hence the superintendents of Liberia have made reiterated complaints of being flooded with shiploads of "vagrants." These causes are powerful drawbacks. But the negroes in Liberia have schools and churches, and they have freedom, which, wherever ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... rights, but on the contrary they are anxious for a speedy adjustment, in order to secure adequate protection to all classes and conditions of men residing therein, and at the same time afford ample security to the United States Government against any future refractory course that might be pursued on ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... have been done, but cases occurred in the Pretoria Gaol which are surely difficult to justify. Du Plessis stated to the Reform prisoners that he had with the sanction of the Landdrost inflicted upon one prisoner named Thompson, who was undoubtedly refractory and disobedient, upwards of eighty lashes within three weeks. He added that this was as good as a death-sentence, because neither white nor black could stand two inflictions of twenty-five lashes, as they were given in Pretoria Gaol, without permanent injury to the constitution. The effect, he ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... preceding years great dissensions had existed in Lower Canada; and in the year 1837 these dissensions broke out into open insurrection. The provincial parliament of that province assembled on the 18th of August; but from its refractory conduct Lord Gosford was compelled to prorogue it. He had no other alternative but to dismiss the members, since they plainly declared that they suspended all deliberation until the consummation of the reforms announced by and in the name of the imperial ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... horribly dark place, this boot-room, and I could scarcely see who it was who was questioning me. He seemed to be a big boy, a year or two older than myself, with a face which, as far as I could make it out, was not altogether unpleasant. He continued stamping with his refractory boots all the time he was talking to me, letting out occasionally behind, in spite of ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... Renaissance;[54] and in the present day the practice may be classed as one which distinguishes the architects of whom there is no hope, who have neither eye nor head for their work, and who must pass their lives in vain struggles against the refractory lines ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... not of the family? be we not a-supping with the head of the family? be we not in my lord's own refractory? Out from among us; thou art ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... as a court of justice when the lord of the castle had to settle any difficulties, to receive his dues, or reprimand and punish any refractory vassal. At one end of this hall was a great hearth, where most substantial logs of wood could be laid across the fire-dogs, and burn with a cheerful blaze to light and warm the company in the long, ...
— Bayard: The Good Knight Without Fear And Without Reproach • Christopher Hare
... in his profession of regard for the advancement of human freedom. He imposes no restrictions upon his own subjects which he does not consider necessary for the maintenance of his despotic power, and, while struggling against the influence of a wealthy, intelligent, and refractory aristocracy to extend the boon of personal liberty to twenty-three millions of serfs, is the only sovereign who boldly and openly manifests a generous sympathy for the cause of freedom in the United States. While I can see nothing to admire in any form of despotism, or any thing in common ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... understand," said Eleanor, who was standing on one leg as usual, and who paused in a struggle with a refractory elastic sandal to look up with a puckered brow, and general bewilderment. "What has the arithmetic to do with ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... on the English Bridge, a comparatively narrow structure crossing the Severn. A belated drover was driving a herd of refractory cattle into the town when a motor-bicycle ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... postulate being granted, as we are sure it will by most (and we beg to assure those who are refractory or argumentative, that, were this a treatise on the sublime and beautiful, we could convince and quell their incredulity to their entire satisfaction by innumerable instances), we proceed to remark here, once for all, that the principal glory of the Italian landscape is its extreme ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... blocks of long community houses, separate dormitories for the unmarried men and for the single women, a dining-hall, a chapel, one or two schoolhouses, a recreation-hall, a house of detention for refractory persons, one hospital for general cases, and another for infectious diseases. It was all built of wood, simple and primitive, but as comfortable as could be expected under the conditions. The chief danger of the camps ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... dignitary was a tall, lank, leathern-faced man, of incorruptible zeal and stately gravity, who held under his stern dominion a little flock of two hundred souls, and who, eking out a narrow parochial stipend by the week-day office of teaching, had gained large repute for his subjugation of refractory boys. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... to them, or beneath the protection of their confederates. It would appear that in proportion as the law was harsh and severe, so was the Gitano bold and secure. The fiercest of these laws was the one of Philip the Fifth, passed in the year 1745, which commands that the refractory Gitanos be hunted down with fire and sword; that it was quite inefficient is satisfactorily proved by its being twice reiterated, once in the year '46, and again in '49, which would scarcely have been deemed necessary ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... writes in a letter to his good friend Madame Streicher, who was very helpful to him in his domestic matters. On one occasion, when her conduct became unbearable, he threw books at her head. Strangely, this method of disciplining the refractory Nanny produced better results than could have been expected. He reports soon after to Madame Streicher, "Miss Nanny is a changed creature since I threw the half dozen books at her head. Possibly, by chance some of their contents may have entered her ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... house, not mine," says George, very haughtily. And the caution, far from benefiting him, only rendered the lad more supercilious and refractory. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... arms, and be gone to his rest:—all Eternity to rest in, O George! Was thy own life merry, for example, in the hollow of the tree; clad permanently in leather? And does kingly purple, and governing refractory worlds instead of stitching coarse shoes, make it merrier? The waft of death is not against him, I think,—perhaps against thee, and me, and others, O George, when the Nell-Gwynn Defender and Two Centuries of all-victorious Cant ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... useful; his cleverness in upsetting the plot against Dorn and turning all to his advantage demonstrated that. Therefore, Hull should be elected and passed up higher. It did not enter his calculations that Hull might prove refractory, might really be all that he professed; he had talked with Davy, and while he had underestimated his intelligence, he knew he had not misjudged his character. He knew that it was as easy to "deal" with the Hull stripe of honest, high minded men as it was difficult to ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... did she become in her task that she failed to notice the departure of the others at noon. Alone she sat there at the table, snipping, sewing, pinning, and patting the somewhat refractory satin. ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... the Burgesses. Virginian Society. Refractory Legislators. The Quaker Assembly It refuses to resist the French. Apathy of New York. Shirley and the General Court of Massachusetts. Short-sighted Policy. Attitude of Royal Governors. Indian Allies waver. Convention ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... not obey, the officers, in terms of the warrant, proceeded to unroof the cottages, and pull down the wretched doors and windows, —a summary and effectual mode of ejection still practised in some remote parts of Scotland, when a tenant proves refractory. The gipsies, for a time, beheld the work of destruction in sullen silence and inactivity; then set about saddling and loading their asses, and making preparations for their departure. These were soon accomplished, where all had the habits of wandering Tartars; and they set forth on their ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... seen them abolished, and a law passed forbidding the sale of negroes save as part and parcel of the estate upon which they worked, an exception only being made in the case of gross misconduct. Many of the slave-owners, indeed, forbade all flogging upon their estates, and punished refractory slaves, in the first place, by the cutting off of the privileges they enjoyed in the way of holidays, and if this did not answer, threatened to sell them—a threat which was, in the vast majority of cases, quite sufficient to insure good behavior; ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... first Addison and I had had little idea that the old Squire would whip the boys. It was never easy to induce him to whip even a refractory horse or ox. Now he took the paper, read their names, then folded it and put it into ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... of her voice attracted the attention of the refractory steward, notwithstanding his present state of elevation; but he no sooner saw that her eye glistened, and her cheek reddened, than his obstinacy ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... the sea; and by the time the sun had risen we were engaged in various preparations for our departure for the interior. Our days were enlivened by visits from the Arabs who were also bound for Unyanyembe; by comical scenes in the camp; sometimes by court-martials held on the refractory; by a boxing-match between Farquhar and Shaw, necessitating my prudent interference when they waxed too wroth; by a hunting excursion now and then to the Kingani plain and river; by social conversation with the old Jemadar and his band of Baluches, who were never tired ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... the little doctor, trying to slip a collar button into a refractory binding. "Dear me, now that's gone—no, 'tisn't—that's luck," as the button rolled off into a corner of the bureau-top ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... squadron of the English fleet. In a letter from Sir William Coventry to Secretary Bennet, dated November 13th, 1664, we read, "Rear Admiral Teddeman with four or five ships has gone to course in the Channel, and if he meet any refractory Dutchmen will teach them their duty" ("Calendar of State ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... the Lords again, where the SPEAKER-ELECT, attired in Court dress and accompanied by the SERGEANT-AT-ARMS dandling the Mace as if it ware a refractory infant, presented himself at the Bar to hear from the LORD CHANCELLOR the pleasing intelligence that HIS MAJESTY was convinced of his "ample sufficiency" to execute his arduous duties, and readily approved his election. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... said, trying to associate the two with a country and a date. (Of course I knew where Aconcagua was—it was one of the most familiar names in my geography, only for the moment memory was a little refractory. Obviously it was a mountain, because he spoke of having been 'up' it. The name had a Spanish ending—of course! now I knew.) 'A wonderful country, Mexico,' ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... 'The Bride of Messina'. On the stage, too, its effectiveness is somewhat impaired by its great length. But in the imaginative power whereby history is made into drama; in the triumph of artistic genius over a vast and refractory mass of material, and in the skill with which the character of the hero is conceived and denoted, 'Wallenstein' is unrivaled. Well might Goethe pronounce it 'so great that nothing could be compared with it'. Its chief figure is ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... smooth as far as the eye could reach. They therefore went along at a swinging pace, the team stretching out at full gallop, a crack from the whip resounding only now and then, when one of the dogs inclined to become refractory. ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... their most tender infancy with the resentment of the old man, if they are any ways refractory or do any mischievous tricks, which is very rare, they fear and respect him above every one else. This old man is frequently the great-grandfather, or the great-great-grand-father of the family, for those natives live to a very great age. I have seen some of ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... weakening your present position with the Democratic Party as a matter of political necessity. Personally, I am very sorry, Tallente, to do an unfriendly action, but I can only say, like the school-master before he canes a refractory pupil, that it is for ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Standard Oil Company had worked hand in hand with the railroads. It had obtained all its privileges by asking for them and by holding out inducements to railroad managers to grant them. It now commenced to dictate terms to refractory railroad companies. ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... the hand he raised to hers, and, though she was forced to put down her candle first, persisted in confining the refractory tress; then seated herself at the table, and taking from her pocket the manuscript which Hugh had been criticising in the morning, unfolded it, and showed him all the passages he had objected to, neatly corrected or altered. It was wonderfully done ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... the planters endeavored to keep the negroes on the estates are too well known to require detail. Summary ejectments of the refractory from their dwellings, destruction of their provision grounds, refusal to sell them land except at exorbitant prices, were all tried. But there is too much land in Jamaica, and too few people, to make this game successful. There were abundance of thrown-up estates, and especially of coffee properties ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... parendo vincitur. In both worlds, moral and physical, he felt himself encompassed by vast forces, irresistible by direct opposition. Men whom he wanted to bring round to his purposes were as strange, as refractory, as obstinate, as impenetrable as the phenomena of the natural world. It was no use attacking in front, and by a direct trial of strength, people like Elizabeth or Cecil or James; he might as well think of forcing some natural power in defiance of natural law. The first word of his teaching ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... addressed to fine gentlemen and ladies, and were probably received with sympathetic approbation. It is certain they were in general religiously observed by his subjects, and executed by him with impartiality; neither rank nor fortune shielded the refractory from his resentment." Nash, however, was not content with prose in enforcing good manners. Having waged deadly war against the custom of wearing boots, and having found his ordinary armoury of no avail against ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... Bergenheim sat at the piano and Marillac stood behind her. The artist selected one of the scores, spread it out on the rack, turned down the corners so that during the execution he might not be stopped by some refractory leaf, coughed in his deep bass voice, placed himself in such a manner as to show the side of his head which he thought would produce the best effect upon the audience, then gave a knowing nod to Gerfaut, who still stood gloomy and ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... a chair-back, and the seething, bubbling mess of sticky brown syrup poured in a flood over furniture, girl and floor, and trickled in a rivulet around the brim of her father's hat carelessly laid on the table while he wrestled with a refractory buckle on his grip, packed ready for his departure. A gasp of dismay escaped her lips, and Tabitha stood aghast in ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... his business. He modeled, made designs, mixed clay, built kilns, and at times sat up all night and fed fuel into a refractory furnace. Nothing was quite good enough—it must be better. And to make better pottery, he said, we must produce better people. He even came very close to plagiarizing Walt Whitman by saying, "Produce great people—the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... the English, who do not desire peace, by destroying the resources which I find in that ally to carry on the war against them." Over and above this information there is, however, a high probability that Joseph was then informed that since Lucien had proved refractory, he himself was now destined for Spain; that the King expressed at first a decided unwillingness to accept the unwelcome task; and that, like Lucien, he departed under his brother's disfavor. Napoleon's offer had already been discussed at Tilsit ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... engineer. You see, Mr. Reade, it's either a tunneling or a boring claim. We must either sink a shaft or drive a tunnel—-whichever operation can be done at the least cost. Either way will be expensive, and we must find out for a certainty which will be the cheaper. There's a lot of refractory rock in the slope yonder. In the morning our party will get all the ore we can from the surface croppings, then start for Dugout, going from there to Carson City. At Carson we hope to find an honest engineer and ...
— The Young Engineers in Nevada • H. Irving Hancock
... when the books were put away; and it was with very painful feelings that Miss Livesay contemplated not only the drudgery she would be subjected to, in having to go through early lessons with this refractory niece of hers (who was far, very far behind both Clara and the Maitlands in her learning), but the conflict she was likely to encounter with pride and obstinacy, evils she never before ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... irregularities of war, bring back their former habits of submission? Undoubtedly not; they would return full of new sentiments and new ideas, with which they would infect the villages; they would there propagate a refractory spirit, which would give infinite trouble to the master by spoiling ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... Burro—there she lays, right there—and they took out four million dollars in silver before the bonanza pinched out. At first they hauled their ore to the Gulf of California and shipped it to Swansea, Wales, and afterwards they built a kind of furnace and roasted their ore right here. It was refractory ore, mixed up with zinc and antimony; but with everything against them, and all kinds of bum management, she paid from the very first day. All full of water now, or I'd show you around; but some mine in its time, believe me. I wouldn't sell ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... herds between the Balikh and the Tigris. Attempts were made, it would seem, at a very early period to tame them and make use of them to draw chariots; but this attempt either did not succeed at all, or issued in such uncertain results, that it was given up as soon as other less refractory animals were made the subjects of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... of a simile was unfortunate. Mrs. Beale's eyes became fixed upon a refractory button ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... mind, is the measure of planetary motion. The chemist finds proportions and intelligible method throughout matter; and science is nothing but the finding of analogy, identity, in the most remote parts. The ambitious soul sits down before each refractory fact; one after another reduces all strange constitutions, all new powers, to their class and their law, and goes on forever to animate the last fiber of organization, the outskirts ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... eminence I beheld yet another cross—a large wooden structure, which, however, had fallen from its base of loose rocks and lay upon the ground. Old Jose, my servant, was some distance behind assisting the mule-driver with my baggage with a refractory mule, and there was no one to say why the cross had been erected. The dusk was rapidly falling and we had yet some leagues to my objective-point. But there was something pathetic about the lone, fallen ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... virtues seemed to have found a sanctuary for his fame in every honest heart. But when the news reached Scotland, the indignation was general. All envyings, all strifes were forgotten, in unqualified resentment of the deed. There was not a man, even amongst the late refractory chiefs, excepting the Cummins, and their coadjutors Soulis and Monteith, who really had believed that Edward seriously meant to sentence the Scottish patriot to a severer fate than what he had pronounced against his rebellious vassal, the exiled Baliol. The execution of Wallace, whose offense ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... the naval portion of the guests were silent, but the civilians more insolent than before. I did not wish to come to open war, so I said nothing more, and left the table. After I was gone, the refractory parties made more noise than ever. Just before the dinner hour on the following day, Mammy Crissobella sent a circular round to the young men, stating that she could not receive them at dinner. They all laughed, and went down to table as before. The dinner was ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... after-times rather resembled a despotic sovereign in the midst of his counsellors. He might ask the advice of the presbyters, and condescend to defer to their recommendations; but he could also negative their united resolutions, and cause the refractory quickly to feel the ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... he gave a cut to the palm of Murray's hand, just as he was wont to do to refractory pupils in the ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... offered advice as to the best manner of dealing with the refractory Shaver, who gave further expression to his resentment by throwing The Hopper's watch with violence against the wall. That the table-service of The Hopper's establishment was not to Shaver's liking was manifested ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... Catifa in the Persian Gulf had admitted the Turks to take possession of the fort in that city, to the great displeasure of the King of Ormuz, on whom it had been dependent, and who therefore applied for aid to the viceroy to reduce the refractory or revolted vassals. The king of Basrah had also been expelled from his kingdom by the Turks, yet kept the field with an army of 30,000 men, and sent for assistance from the viceroy, to whom he offered leave to erect a fort at his capital, and to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... Jim had been accustomed to break in refractory new arrivals. The logic of his fist usually proved a convincing argument, and thus far his supremacy had never been successfully resisted. He was confident that he would not be interfered with. Secretly, his Uncle Socrates sympathized with him, ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... led them to the mail-room. Despite the refractory nature of the metal, the door had been opened by melting or burning out the lock. And an opening had been burned into the safe itself! ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... capable of producing the anomaly in any desired number of instances; only dependent on a favorable treatment and a judicious selection. In other cases no treatment and no selection are adequate to give a similar result, and the anomaly remains refractory despite all our endeavors to breed it. The cockscomb and the peloric fox-glove are widely known instances of permanent anomalies, and others will be dealt with in future lectures. On the other hand I have often tried in vain to win an anomalous race from ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... disconsolate-looking cattle are roaming; the vaqueros, (herdsmen) are cantering about after them on their lean horses, with their lazos hanging in coils on their left arms, and now and then calling to order some refractory beast who tries to get away from the herd, by sending the loop over his horns or letting it fall before him as he runs, and hitching it up with a jerk round his hind legs as he steps within it. But the poor creatures are too thirsty and dispirited just now to give any sport, ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... furnace, sweep over different areas of the Sun with a velocity of hundreds of miles an hour. Vast ridges and crests of incandescent vapour are upheaved by the action of internal heat, which exceeds in intensity the temperature at which the most refractory of terrestrial substances can be volatilised; and downrushes of the same photospheric matter take place after it has parted with some of its stores of thermal energy. Sun-spots of considerable magnitude have been observed to grow ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... on his lips; what Alice said and thought and did was evidently perfection. Before the Gregorys had been ten minutes in the house on their first visit he had gone downstairs to inspect the furnace, wound and set a stopped clock, answered the telephone twice, and fondly carried upstairs a refractory four-year-old girl, who came boldly down in her nightgown, with reproaches and requests. On his return from this trip he brought down the one- year-old baby, another girl, delicious in the placid hour between supper and bed, and he and his wife and Warren Gregory ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... colonies do not appear at the outcry, what is the condition of those assemblies who offer, by themselves or their agents, to tax themselves up to your ideas of their proportion? The refractory colonies, who refuse all composition, will remain taxed only to your old impositions, which, however grievous in principle, are trifling as to production. The obedient colonies in this scheme are heavily ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... with little delay, and marched them along the side of the mountain, through underbrush and fallen timber, until, just before daylight, I found that we were immediately in rear of the village, and thence in rear, also, of the line occupied by the refractory Indians, who were expecting to meet me on the direct road from the post. Just at break of day we made a sudden descent upon the village and took its occupants completely by surprise, even capturing the chief of the tribe, ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... sent a polite answer, alleging that he was ill and unable to travel. Sekeletu tried again to remove Mashotlane from the Falls, but without success. In theory the chief is absolute and quite despotic; in practice his authority is limited, and he cannot, without occasionally putting refractory headmen to death, force his subordinates to do ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... shoulder; then helter-skelter came the Wanguana, carrying carbines in their hands, and boxes, bundles, tents, cooking-pots—all the miscellaneous property—on their heads; next the Hottentots, dragging the refractory mules laden with ammunition-boxes, but very lightly, to save the animals for the future; and, finally, Sheikh Said and the Beluch escort; while the goats, sick women, and stragglers, brought up the rear. From first to last, some of the sick Hottentots ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... five years' revenue of their entertainer, and in a guard of fifteen hundred foreign soldiers, whom he considered indispensable to the exercise of a vigour beyond the law in maintaining wholesome discipline over the refractory English. The ignorant impatience of the swinish multitude with these fruits of good living, brought forth by one of the meek who had inherited the earth, displayed itself in a general ferment, of which Prince John took advantage to make the experiment of getting possession ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... came into the library unexpectedly. He had been out in the kitchen helping Morton to open a box that was refractory. He found the room entirely dark, and thought he heard a soft sound like sobbing in one corner of ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... That refractory umbrella was hoisted at last, and its owner placed himself on the sand beside me, holding it not seaward, but like a tent, shading us two from the whole world, while the sun ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... It has often befallen me, when I was at the University, or later when studying law, to exert my mind to grasp, and all in vain, some problem in mathematics or a puzzling legal question, or even to remember some refractory word in a foreign language which would not remain in the memory. After a certain amount of effort in many of these cases, further exertion is injurious, the mind or receptive power seems to be seized—as if nauseated—with spasmodic rejections. In such a case pass the question by, but ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... proposed to feed this by a separate system of pipes to small gas jets, and by converting them into practically oxyhydrogen blow pipes, to raise solid masses of refractory material to incandescence, and also by supplying oxygen in the same way to oil lamps of particular construction, to obtain a very great ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... refractory "chauffeur," connected with the Royalist insurrection in western France, 1809, was tried at the bar of justice, where Bourlac and Mergi presided; he was executed the same year that he was condemned to death. [The Seamy Side ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... commons were so daunted with this reply, that they kept silence a long time; and when Coke, member for Derby, rose up and said, "I hope we are all Englishmen, and not to be frightened with a few hard words," so little spirit appeared in that assembly, often so refractory and mutinous, that they sent him to the Tower for bluntly expressing a free and generous sentiment. They adjourned without fixing a day for the consideration of his majesty's answer: and on their next meeting, they submissively ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... preference. If you were a summer resident of importance and needed anything from a sewing-machine to a Holstein heifer, Mr. Ball, the grocer, would accommodate you. When Mrs. Pomfret's cook became inebriate and refractory, Mr. Ball was sent for, and enticed her to the station and on board of a train; when the Chillinghams' tank overflowed, Mr. Ball found the proper valve and saved the house from being washed away. And it was he who, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... levied him an army of men, to the number of a thousand thousand or more. These all he furnished with arms and armour and mounting, with his host, upon his carpet, took flight through air, while the beasts fared under him and the birds flew overhead, till he lighted down on the island of the refractory King and encompassed it about, filling earth with his hosts."—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... then, a cook, preparing a new dish? Is he a nursery maid soothing a refractory child? Is he a woman's dressmaker taking her ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... the governor of Doune Castle. The freebooter durst not disobey, for the army of the Prince was now so near him that punishment might have followed; besides, he was a politician as well as a robber, and was unwilling to cancel the interest created through former secret services by being refractory on this occasion. He therefore made a virtue of necessity, and transmitted orders to his lieutenant to convey Edward to Doune, which was safely accomplished in the mode mentioned in a former chapter. The governor of Doune was directed to send ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... than any curiosities of literature I have since met with, speckled all over with ironmould, and having various specimens of the insect world smashed between their leaves. This part of the Course was usually lightened by several single combats between Biddy and refractory students. When the fights were over, Biddy gave out the number of a page, and then we all read aloud what we could,—or what we couldn't—in a frightful chorus; Biddy leading with a high, shrill, monotonous voice, and none of us having the least notion of, or reverence ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... carry them on to the main object of the war, notwithstanding their private and separate views, jealousies, and wrong-headednesses. Whatever court he went to, (and he was often obliged to go himself to some restive and refractory ones,) he as constantly prevailed, and brought them into his measures. The pensionary Heinsius, a venerable old minister, grown grey in business, and who had governed the republic of the United Provinces for more than forty years, was absolutely governed by the Duke of Marlborough, as that republic ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... time the refractory cow had been brought to a state of partial subjection, and stood blinking at her captors as if uncertain what course to pursue. Leaving the sleigh, Mr. Westmore strode over to where the three were standing and laid his ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... at hand. But when did hot youth behave with thought in a like case? I did as ninety-nine in a hundred would do. I took off my coat, kicked off my shoes, and as the voice cried, "Oh, please, do not trouble," plunged into the water. The refractory boat, once on its way, was in no great hurry, and allowed itself to be overtaken with great good-humour. I clambered in over the stern, caught up the sculls which lay across the thwarts, and, dripping but triumphant, brought my captive ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... valves afford the ultimatum of security. He ensures an easy descent down the steepest declivity by his 'shoe-drags,' and the power of reversing the action of the engines. His hands direct, and his foot literally pinches obedience to the course over the roughest and most refractory ground. The dreadful consequences of boiler-bursting are annihilated by a judicious application of tubular boilers. Should, indeed, a tube burst, a hiss about equal to that of a hot nail plunged into water, contains the sum total of ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... weal-public, and a lazy disinclination to work; one writer describes them as "tender fingered in cold weather." The Mt. Wollaston lot that followed Morton to Merry Mount were but the forerunners of hundreds of others. The Bradstreets' servant, John, may be taken as a type of many refractory bound servants. He was brought to trial in 1661, for "stealing several things as pigges, capons, mault, bacon, butter, eggs, etc., and breaking open a seller door several times." John, when pulled up for trial, affirmed that he had really a very small appetite, ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... the defiantly refractory part to tear itself loose from the whole and to exist for itself, an attempt that succeeds just so long as the strength endures which was robbed from the whole by the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... constructed of the form shown by illustration, about 4 ft. 6 in. high and 2 ft. 3 in. wide at the base, and gradually swelling to 2 ft. 9 in. at the top, built entirely of fireclay bricks. Two refractory tubes, 2 in. square internally, and the height of the furnace, were used for the double purpose of producing the gas ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... is, by the way, easier than is supposed. All hunchbacks walk with their heads held high, all stutterers harangue, all deaf people speak low. As for him, he believed, at the most, that his ear was a little refractory. It was the sole concession which he made on this point to public opinion, in his moments of frankness and ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... at Priscilla and Priscilla looked at Mary. Not for veritable worlds would they have confided to Virginia the joy which would fill their hearts if that refractory kitchen cot could be moved into the living-room; not for untold riches would they have confessed the sinking feeling which attacked them upon the thought of sleeping in the kitchen nearest that unlocked door. A bear might push open that ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... kill both of the refractory chiefs, as he would have no rest during their lives; he disclaimed all relationship with Rionga, who had been represented to Speke as his brother, and he concluded by requesting me to assist him in an attack upon the river ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... No one cares for Miss Manners's whims now,' was the careless reply, as Madame ushered me into the deserted schoolroom, and then quickly vanished. She evidently dreaded a meeting with her refractory teacher. Well she might, for there sat Christal—but I will tell you all minutely. You see how I try to note down every trifle, ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... I was soon able to organise a Police Force mainly composed of Sikhs, and was provided with a couple of steam-launches. Owing doubtless to that and other causes, the refractory chiefs, soon after the Company's formation, appeared to recognize that the game of opposition to the new order of things was a ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... Ruth with a smile, as the manager mentioned their names to the newest and, seemingly, the most refractory member of the company. ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... electric lamp in which the light is produced by heating to whiteness a refractory conductor by the passage of a current of electricity. It is distinguished from an arc lamp (which etymologically is also an incandescent lamp) by the absence of any break in the continuity of its refractory conductor. ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... The expressional impulse is not satisfied by the resonance which an occasional public, however sympathetic, is able to afford. Its natural aim is to bring more and more sentient beings under the influence of the same emotional state. It seeks to vanquish the refractory and arouse the indifferent. An echo, a true and powerful echo—that is what it desires with all the energy of an unsatisfied longing. As a result of this craving the expressional activities lead to artistic production. The work of art presents itself as the most effective means by which ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... to signal the switchboard operator and tell him to come and open up the booth, when an, "Are you there, Mr. Edestone?" came to him from across the wire, and caused him for the moment to forget the refractory door. ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... organisation was marvellous.—No statesman has ever compelled alliances, no general has ever collected an army out of unyielding and refractory elements with such decision, and kept them together with such firmness, as Caesar displayed in constraining and upholding his coalitions and his legions; never did regent judge his instruments and assign ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... looking little gentleman he had ever seen in his life. He had a very large nose, slightly brass-colored; his cheeks were very round, and very red, and might have warranted a supposition that he had been blowing a refractory fire for the last eight-and-forty hours; his eyes twinkled merrily through long silky eyelashes, his mustaches curled twice round like a corkscrew on each side of his mouth, and his hair, of a curious mixed pepper-and-salt color, descended far over his shoulders. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... lenity: your examination will be alike unbiassed by partiality and prejudice;-no refractory murmuring will follow your censure, no private interest will ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... she, at last, 'I have had a great experience in refractory servants, and take a pride in breaking them. You really tempt me; and if I had not other affairs, and these of more importance, on my hand, I should certainly buy you ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... PRISON, Abbaye, refractory Members sent to, Temple, Louis sent to, Abbaye, Priests killed near, massacres at La Force, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the chapel he maintains, at a large expense, a pious and portly family chaplain. He is a most learned and decorous personage and a truly well-bred Christian, who always backs the old gentleman in his opinions, winks discreetly at his little peccadilloes, rebukes the children when refractory, and is of great use in exhorting the tenants to read their Bibles, say their prayers, and, above all, to pay their ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... everybody tried eagerly to gratify them. The ease with which they found their wishes obeyed stimulated them to desire more, and to be stubborn about impossibilities. Everywhere they found only contradictions, impediments, suffering, and sorrow. Always complaining, always refractory, always angry, they spent the time in crying and fretting; were these creatures happy? Authority and weakness conjoined produce only madness and wretchedness. One of two spoiled children beats the table, and the other has the sea ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... consider the petition. When the day came, hardly a clergyman read the paper, and in Westminster Abbey the entire congregation rose in a body and left rather than listen to it. Furious at such an unexpected result, James ordered the refractory bishops to be sent to the Tower and kept ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... his solicitations to her husband. On hearing this, the duke instantly removed from court with Igerne, and without taking leave of Uther. The king complained to his council of this want of duty, and they decided that the duke should be summoned to court, and, if refractory, should be treated as a rebel. As he refused to obey the citation, the king carried war into the estates of his vassal and besieged him in the strong castle of Tintadel. Merlin transformed the king ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... delinquent envoy, and he hearing its mournful croaking shot it with an arrow, which flew up through the ether and landed in the plains of heaven. The arrow was shot down again and killed the envoy. Finally two other envoys were sent down, who landed in Izumo, and after some parley with the refractory deities of the land received their adhesion and settled and pacified the land. Then they returned to the heavenly plains and ...
— Japan • David Murray
... consummate ability, of great earnestness, of intense personality, differing widely each from the others, and yet with a signal trait in common—the power to command. In the give-and-take of daily discussion, in the art of controlling and consolidating reluctant and refractory followers, in the skill to overcome all forms of opposition, and to meet with competency and courage the varying phases of unlooked-for assault or unsuspected defection, it would be difficult to rank ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... of Athabasca that he should sit in judgment, and should at least banish Konto from his tribe, hinting the while that he might have to put a bullet into Konto's refractory head if the thing were not done. He said large things in the name of the H.B.C., and was surprised that Athabasca let them pass unmoved. But that chief, after long consideration, during which he drank Company's coffee and ate Company's pemmican, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... says Moore, "a tyrant some few years older, whose name was N——, claimed a right to fag little Peel, which claim Peel resisted. His resistance was vain, and N—— not only subdued him, but determined also to punish the refractory slave by inflicting a bastinado on the inner fleshy side of the boy's right arm. While the stripes were succeeding each other, and poor Peel was writhing under them, Byron saw and felt for the misery of his friend; and, although he knew he was not ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... Tete-Noire. Our party consisted of five, and we had two guides. Our baggage, which was for the most part light, was strapped on the backs of the mules behind the riders. One article, however, a square box of considerable proportions, proved refractory, and, veering from side to side, refused to maintain the even balance which, owing to the rough nature of the bridle-path, was essential to the safety of both mule and rider. We were obliged to halt again and again, that the box might be restrapped, always ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... have established schools in country places, where the people made very little money; yet they were but too happy to give us money for the building and support of schools. There are hundreds of priests who can say the same of themselves. And should there be refractory characters who do not care about a good Catholic education, let us refuse them absolution, as penitents who are not disposed for the worthy reception of the sacraments. We cannot scruple ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... emotions that filled it, with the help of the inadequate language of men. But such language was not made to express unutterable things; its imperfect signs and empty terms, its hollow speeches and its icy words, were melted, like refractory ore, by the concentrated fire of our souls, and cast into an indescribable language, vague, ethereal, flaming and caressing, like the licking tongues of fire that had no meaning for others, but which we alone understood, as it ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... aside altogether. The violence which the French government usually employed in order to oblige all their parliaments, or sovereign courts of justice, to enregister any unpopular edict, very seldom succeeded. The means commonly employed, however, the imprisonment of all the refractory members, one would think, were forcible enough. The princes of the house of Stuart sometimes employed the like means in order to influence some of the members of the parliament of England, and they ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... of electricity in the direction of heat is its use in furnaces. As before stated, an intense heat is capable of being generated by the electric current, so that it becomes the great agent to use for the treatment of refractory material. ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... belligerent parties, that his honor, Judge Lynch, for many years, appears to have been not the least among the potentates of this notable republic. Nor was order restored to the ill-starred town till after the close of the war; when every refractory spirit, whether tory or Yorker, was punished or awed into submission by the fiery energy of the iron-heeled Ethan Allen, who, then being relieved from the pursuit of more important game, came thundering down upon the town with his ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... will for ages to come be a terror to belligerent redskins, and Indian mothers will use that name to reduce to obedience their refractory offspring, long after he who rendered it illustrious shall ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields
... exquisite has his head shaved with the sharpest razor, giving a bluish cast or frame for his yellow face. Occasionally the size or thickness of the tail appears to be unsatisfactory, and a larger surface is spared from the knife. The refractory hairs growing out in this supplementary patch surround the genuine cue with a halo an inch or two in height. Lots of these apostolical-looking Chinese are to be met with in every street, and, as they rarely wear hats, they have a very comical appearance. This question of hats is another of curious ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... burning forest. We might, we believed, escape with our lives, were we to leave the waggon and the cattle, but that was very far from Uncle Mark's thoughts. By voice and whip we urged on the oxen, and shouting, shrieking, and using our thick sticks, we endeavoured to drive forward our refractory charges. ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... your wise and tender treatment of John you have my heartiest thanks and admiration. It is not strictly an architectural suggestion, but could you not found a sort of training-school for wives who have not learned to manage their refractory husbands? I'm sure you would ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... nothing more to ask?" Grumkow finding there was no way made into anything, not even into the secret of the Writingcase and the Royal Women's operations there, began at last, as Wilhelmina says, to hint, That in his Majesty's service there were means of bringing out the truth in spite of refractory humors; that there was a thing called the rack, not yet abolished in his Prussian Majesty's dominions! Friedrich owned afterwards, his blood ran cold. However, he put on a high look: "A Hangman, such as you, naturally takes pleasure in talking of his tools and his trade: ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... 'em fight, till both are brought to hopeless desolation, Till wolves troop round the cottage door in one and t'other nation, Till, worn and broken down, the South shall prove no more refractory, And rust eats up the silent looms ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various |
