"Roundabout" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it?" said Johnny Stout (Mabel her laugh must smother), As he straightened himself in his roundabout, And said, "I'll sing you another." He sang and whistled with might and main, Till Mabel's ears were a-ringing, And she stopped them up, and exclaimed again "Why, Johnny, ...
— Harper's Young People, August 31, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... revenge on the spy by making his task as difficult as she could. If she detected him in time lying in wait in the bushes by the front of the Pavilion, she would slip out at the back, and reach her favourite haunts by a roundabout path screened by yew hedges, while he imagined her to be still indoors. He was really such an unsuspicious spy that there was hardly any fun in baffling him. She had done so with the usual success one hot afternoon, and was making for a tree under which she ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... impossible. A total defeat, on the other hand, would have extinguished the will itself and obliterated every human impulse seeking expression. Man's existence is proof enough that nature was not altogether unpropitious, but offered, in an unlooked-for direction, some thoroughfare to the soul. Roundabout imperfect methods were discovered by which something at least of what was craved might be secured. The individual perished, yet not without having segregated and detached a certain portion of himself ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... past few months the telephone service in the neighborhood of Dexter's Corners had been greatly improved and the lines could be connected with nearly all of the villages and towns roundabout. ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer
... and not beginning by hating everybody and thinking who they are not. Aunt Phyllis is very nice indeed, and sometimes her eyes and mouth get like Mysie's, and her voice is just exactly yours. Only she is plump and roundabout, not a dear, tall, graceful figure like my White Lily Aunt. Please don't call it nonsense, for indeed I mean it, and Aunt Phyllis does like your photograph so much. I have the whole group hung up in my room, and ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... find that just when we were on the point of overtaking them they were always able to flutter a few yards farther, until they had led us about a quarter of a mile from the nest; then, suddenly getting well, they quietly flew home by a roundabout way to their precious babies or eggs, o'er a' the ills of life victorious, bad boys among the worst. The Yankee took particular pleasure in ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... uncertain tones and ill-defined edges. Its effect was due to its volume, readiness, and long continuance. Swelling up of the puffy form, and reddening ripples of the broad face heralded it, it began with a contagious cackle, it deepened into a flabby guffaw, and after all the others roundabout had finished their cachinnatory tribute it wound up with what was between a roar and the ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... this to his friend in a rather roundabout fashion, for he had not found Peters on the shore, as he had expected, and where he could have stated his errand in a few words. He had found instead that all the village was astir with the news of a tea-meeting, that was to take place that afternoon ...
— A Sailor's Lass • Emma Leslie
... stated, shortly after 6 a. m. our column started. We made a roundabout march of a few miles and finally halted, under cover of high ground, nearly opposite the city of Fredericksburg. All this day a furious cannonade was maintained by our side, and from big guns mounted ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... them, as if they were tied and bound. But in brutes the gentleness of mood inspired by reason, the subtlety, the love of freedom, are not qualities found in excess, but they have unreasonable appetites and desires, and act in a roundabout way within certain limits, riding, as it were, at the anchor of nature, and only going straight under bit and bridle. But in man reason, which is absolute master, inventing different modes and fashions of life, has left no plain ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... he should go into figures they would, as they are said to be able to prove anything, prove at least that my advice was sound and that he had wasted time enough. This quickened on my part another hope, a hope suggested by some roundabout rumour—I forget how it reached me—that he was engaged to a girl down in Hampshire. He turned out not to be, but I felt sure that if only he went into figures deep enough he would become, among the girls ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... did not count much on what information might come from the head clerk. Blossom, in the mind of Dr. Lambert, was a person of not much strength of character. There had been certain episodes in his life, information as to which had come to the physician in a roundabout way, that did not reflect on him very well; though, in truth, he felt that the man was weak rather ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... visited the Place Vendome, in the centre of which is a tall column, sculptured from top to bottom, all over the pedestal, and all over the shaft, and with Napoleon himself on the summit. The shaft is wreathed round and roundabout with representations of what, as far as I could distinguish, seemed to be the Emperor's victories. It has a very rich effect. At the foot of the column we saw wreaths of artificial flowers, suspended there, no doubt, by some admirer ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... impression. He had been there but five minutes, he had smoked in her face, and, busy with his telegrams, with the tapping pencil and the conscious danger, the odious betrayal that would come from a mistake, she had had no wandering glances nor roundabout arts to spare. Yet she had taken him in; she knew everything; she had made ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... understand the visitors. At last a chief of great age, bearing the name of Chatidoolts (mentioned by Vancouver as a youth), was found to be able to interpret some of the signs made by the strangers, and after a little practice he entered into a continued conversation with them in rather a roundabout way, being himself blind. He informed me that it was the second or third time within his recollection that strangers like those then present had come to Kinnik from the northeast, but that in his youth ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... Morphew is going to New Zealand. I had a letter from him this morning. Here it is. "I heard yesterday that H. W. is dead. She died a fortnight ago, and a letter from her mother has only just reached me in a roundabout way. She had been ailing for some time. They suspected drains, and had workmen in, with assurance that all had been put right. Since H.'s death the drains have again been examined, and it was found that the men who came before so bungled and scamped their work that ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... the way that Patty had come. It would never have done to go through the village and meet those same ruffians, who would have understood the position in the twinkling of an eye. Instead, they took a roundabout way, which, although it took an extra half hour, brought them through the wood on the other side of Colonel ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... did desire it. The shrewd Roman said: "The gods will give us what is most appropriate; man is dearer to them than to himself." But the faithful Anglo-Saxon maintains that his prayer is none the less answered even if it be denied, and that it is made up to him in some roundabout way. It is inconceivable to the Anglo-Saxon that there may be a strain of sadness and melancholy in the very mind of God; he cannot understand that there can be any beauty in sorrow. To the Celt, sorrow itself is dear and beautiful, and the mournful wailing of winds, the tears of ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... souvenirs I had of this brave tavern-keeper in his old capacity of roadster and tramp. Now, after an hiatus of years, I found him before me in a different character at the beginning of my roundabout trips to Marly. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... the principal war-chief of the Apaches. But the truth was, the camps of the scout and the redskins were not so widely separated as Mickey and Fred believed. He had selected the best site possible, and took a roundabout course in going to or from it, as he had more means given him of concealing his trail. There were places where the soil was so rocky and stony that the foot left not the slightest ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... more than willing, for he seldom received instruction. With now and then a word of counsel or warning from the wise man of the west in the corner, he cautiously assembled two other fizzes, while Mr. Pike, in a most nonchalant and roundabout manner, sought information concerning affairs of state, local politics, the Governor-General's household and Princess Kalora. Popova told more than he had meant to tell and more than he knew that he ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... feelings, if not in her conduct. Look at it how she would, she was wrapped up in Harry Tristram; she spent her days watching his fortunes, any wakeful hour of the night found her occupied in thinking of him. Was she a traitor to her friend Janie Iver? Was that treachery bringing her back, by a roundabout way, to a new alliance with her uncle? Did it involve treason to Harry himself? For certainly it was hard to go on helping him toward a marriage ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... manufacture of clocks; since he had already made one, of a kind which nobody had ever heard of before. It was set a-going, not by wheels and weights, like other clocks, but by the dropping of water. This was an object of great wonderment to all the people roundabout; and it must be confessed that there are few boys, or men either, who could contrive to tell what o'clock it is, by means of a ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... travelled by night, as there was moonlight. Hiring a carretero at San Blas, we loaded our materials and instruments into the cart, and started it upon its way. At about four o'clock in the afternoon, we rode from Tehuantepec, taking a roundabout road in order to see the hill which gives name to the town. It was Sunday, and many women and girls had been visiting the cemetery, carrying bowls filled with flowers to put upon the graves of friends. We saw numbers of young fellows sitting by the roadside, and learned ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... of the little ones playing at her feet, and the little Skye comfortably disposed on the cushions of a low wicker-work chair. The two sisters kissed her, and disturbed the children's game to kiss them, and displaced the little Skye, who did not like it at all. Mrs. Wilberforce was a little roundabout woman, with fair hair and a permanent pucker in her forehead. She was very well off,—she and all her belongings; the living was good, the parish small, the work not overpowering: but she never was able to shake off a visionary ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... what I resented most, is that those pitfalls, barricades, and the whole array of defence are not so much erected for the repulse of the enemy as to give them the sensation of warfare. I spoke of this in a roundabout way with a clever woman only half a Pole, for her father was ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the Lee, with his son and retinue, journeying in a roundabout way in order to throw Monceux off the scent, and so give Robin a chance to reach his stronghold in Barnesdale. Both knights paused in amazement to see this ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... neglected the steps for your return to Germany. Unfortunately my late efforts and endeavours have not as yet led to a favourable result, which proves by no means that such may not be the case in the future. Your hint about the roundabout way, viz., Prague, I believe to be an illusion which you ought not to cherish, because it might lead to the ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... cap, and crossed himself rapidly and repeatedly, watching me out of the corner of his eye, meanwhile, to see how his piety impressed me. It produced no particular effect upon me, except to make me engage a smart-looking cabby to take me to my hotel, close by, by a roundabout route. Whether this Jew returned to Minsk as Vladimir or as Isaac I do not know; but I made a point of mentioning the incident to several Russian friends, including a priest, and learned, to my surprise, that, though ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... ill at ease. Lucian—so much as he had seen of him—had always liked him better than Lydia, and was sorry to see him so downcast. Nor when he learned the reason was he better pleased. Clyne told it to him in a roundabout way. ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... McCook, in his great work, after elaborately describing and carefully illustrating the skill exhibited in individual cases by Spiders in their aerial labours, considers himself justified in concluding as follows:—"The manner in which the ends of the radii which terminate upon the herb are wrapped roundabout and braced by the notched zone; the manner in which the wide non-viscid scaffold lines are woven in order to give vantage ground from which to place the close-lying and permanent viscid spirals, upon which the usefulness of the orb depends—all these, to mention no other points, seem to indicate ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... the address to the Emperor. But he could not prevent the speech from producing its effect. Although Presburg was only six hours' journey from Vienna, the route had been made so difficult that the news of anything done in the Hungarian Diet had hitherto reached Vienna in a roundabout manner, and had sometimes been a week ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... sack for a saddle and a bit of rope for a bridle. Better riders than the Cubans I never saw in an equestrian circus, and steadier and easier-going animals than Cuban horses I have never ridden on a 'roundabout' at a country fair. ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... day in the new week, Agnes left London on her way to Ireland. As the event proved, this was not destined to be the end of her journey. The way to Ireland was only the first stage on a roundabout road—the road that led ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... in Munich; he did not seek stimulus from without so much as freedom to develop the ideas that were teeming in his mind. When he left Hamburg, however, he was destined never to return thither except as a visitor, and started on the long, roundabout way to an unforeseen new home in Vienna. He had been but little over a month in Paris when he learned of the death of the little son that Elise had borne him three years before. He was deeply grieved both for himself ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... mayst pluck what thou canst reach thereof." Accordingly the Blind man took on his back the Cripple who guided him till he brought him under a tree, and he fell to plucking from it what he would and tearing at its boughs till he had despoiled it, after which they went roundabout and throughout the garden and wasted it with their hands and feet; nor did they cease from this fashion, till they had stripped all the trees of the garth. Then they returned to their place and presently up came the master of the garden, who, seeing it in this plight, was wroth with sore ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... farm-houses if anything had been seen of Ted and Kitty Curtis. And no one had seen them. All the Elderkins had to say was that Ted and Kitty had told them there was a nearer way to reach home than by following the dusty, roundabout road, and they had run off through the woods to find it. The Elderkins chose to follow the road, because they had on their new lawn dresses trimmed with torchon, and "didn't want to get all scrambled ...
— Harper's Young People, September 21, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Malcolm into his confidence by slow and roundabout steps, thus multiplying his difficulties in discharging his "duty." If Coulter's son had not been married to Malcolm's daughter, it is probable that not even his complete subserviency would have enabled him to ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... accessories of the first act have an unsatisfactory sequel in the last, as the poet here too feels obliged to take a roundabout road instead of the direct one. But we surely do not need to prove thus late that the fault is quite as ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... old fellow with a red nose and white hair, seemed utterly dejected; while the woman, a little roundabout, fat woman, with shining cheeks, looked at the agent of the authorities who had arrested them, with ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Bog rapped, and entered. He was more neatly dressed than when Marcus saw him on the occasion of his first visit. His patched and threadbare coat was replaced by a neat roundabout jacket; his greasy, visorless cap, by a flat felt hat, of which the brim was symmetrically turned up; his tattered shoes by great cowhide boots. The boy was of that age when the human frame grows with vegetable-like rapidity; and he seemed ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... singular proof of the importance which Bonaparte attached to the opinion of the English people respecting any misconduct that was attributed to him. What I am about to state will afford another example of Bonaparte's disposition to employ petty and roundabout means to gain his ends. He gave a ball at Malmaison when Hortense was in the seventh ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... a bit, Jimmie," he confided to the pony, and, taking the little animal by the bridle, began leading it cautiously up the slope, which he ascended by a roundabout course, remembering the jump they had taken on the way down. Tad was not likely to ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... enter the Rue du Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine; he remembered the Cul-de-Sac Genrot arranged there like a trap, and of the sole exit of the Rue Droit-Mur into the Rue Petit-Picpus. He made sure of his back burrows, as huntsmen say; he hastily despatched one of his agents, by a roundabout way, to guard that issue. A patrol which was returning to the Arsenal post having passed him, he made a requisition on it, and caused it to accompany him. In such games soldiers are aces. Moreover, the principle is, that in order to get the best of a wild boar, one ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... over the dry leaves and stones in the path to Mountain Spring. She took a very rough way, through the woods. There was another, much plainer, round by the wagon road; but Elizabeth chose the more solitary and prettier way, roundabout and hard to ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... than realized ultimately, of an English counterpart in the north to the Spanish empire in the south. He had already begun to equip a couple of vessels. He despatched them to America on April 27, 1584, under Captains Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlow. They took the roundabout route by the Canaries and West Indies. In July they were saluted with a most fragrant gale from the land they were seeking. Sailing into the mouth of a river they saw vines laden with grapes, climbing up tall cedars. On July 13 they proclaimed ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... before? It is fortunate indeed that we can do so, being both for a while longer in the day. But, alas! when I see "works of the late J. A. S.,"[63] I can see no help and no reconciliation possible. I wrote him a letter, I think, three years ago, heard in some roundabout way that he had received it, waited in vain for an answer (which had probably miscarried), and in a humour between frowns and smiles wrote to him no more. And now the strange, poignant, pathetic, brilliant creature is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a dozen of you, with a supply of makeup for the blue patches. And you'd separate, and take ships that went various roundabout ways, and arrive on Weald one by one, to see what could be done there to...." He stopped. "When did you find out positively that there ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... say what you want? Why these roundabout ways to your purpose? Have you, by any chance, been ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... way, apparently, to the ends of the earth, and, after breakfast, fell asleep in the hayloft, leaving them both gaping with pleasure and curiosity. For he came, Aaron had to admit, like a tramp; but spoke, Margaret thought, like the Gospels. "He's from roundabout," she said; "I hope he doesn't think to try and sell us anything. Men with something to sell always ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... Philip. Of minor pieces we may mention his Rebecca and Rowena, and his Kickleburys on the Rhine; his Essay on Thunder and Small Beer; his Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo, in 1846, and his published collection of smaller sketches called The Roundabout Papers. That Thackeray was fully conscious of the dignity of his functions may be gathered from his own words in Henry Esmond. "I would have history familiar rather than heroic, and think Mr. Hogarth and Mr. Fielding. [and, we may add, Mr. Thackeray,] ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... the gate, Uncle James approached stealthily by a roundabout way and beckoned to them. "Excuse me," he began, as they came within speaking distance, "but has ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... put off his tour of inspection till the next day. Travelling in the buggy as he did, he must keep to the road which led to Derrick's, in very roundabout fashion, by way of Guadalajara. This rain would reduce the thick dust of the road to two feet of viscid mud. It would take him quite three hours to reach the ranch house on Los Muertos. He thought of Delaney and the buckskin and ground ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... woman one loved, but to back her up in her mistakes—once they had gone a certain length—that was perhaps chief among the inevitabilities of the abjection of love. Loyalty was of course supremely prescribed in presence of any design on her part, however roundabout, to do one ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... parents, and making the conventional round of respectful ceremonies, started again for his neglected business in New York. Here he planned to adjust his affairs, then to return to the mountain country, by a roundabout route, to begin ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... He took a roundabout route home, for he did not want to see Nan until he had thought out this matter to his own satisfaction. To help people poorer or weaker than himself, or to "keep straight" himself, and help others to do likewise—this was one thing. To meekly submit to ill treatment and "take ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... learnt this differentiation; he has also learnt the futility of desire, and by continuous practice manages to postpone his aspirations, until they can be granted in some roundabout method by a change in the external world. For this reason it is rare for him to have his wishes realized during sleep in the short psychical way. It is even possible that this never happens, and that everything which ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... too shrewd to run this risk. He would return at another time, seeing that the minister turned a deaf ear, but pecaire! he sweat huge drops in seeking roundabout phrases, this man who never minced his words and habitually called things by their proper names. Was the like ever seen! A pettifogger from Grenoble to ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... as to slavery in the Territories, and that was more apparent than real. Lincoln contended for free soil through the direct action of the general government. Douglas advocated a roundabout way that led up to the same result. His proposition, which he called "popular sovereignty," was to leave the decision to the people of the Territories, saying he did not care whether they voted slavery up or voted it down. That was a practical, although indirect declaration in favor ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... reached home by a roundabout course, and found it impossible to dismiss thoughts of the boys engaged in that practice game, he eventually decided that he was a fool. Having reached this conclusion, he set off in great haste for the gymnasium, running the ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... Butler, shaking his head. "You see, Mrs. Hazleton is a nervous wreck, but it's about the baby, and caused, she says, by her fears for its safety. It came to us only in a roundabout way, through a servant in the house who keeps us in touch. The curious feature is that we can seem to get nothing definite from her about her fears. They may ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... and writers upon, the Free Papers probably underestimate their own effect even now. They are never mentioned in the great daily journals. It is a point of honour with the Official Press to turn a phrase upside down, or, if they must quote, to quote in the most roundabout fashion, rather than print in plain black and white the three words "The New ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... this," Ned explained. "The Government is accused, in certain hostile foreign circles, of conspiring with the leaders of the revolution now brewing in China. He declared that the Washington officials were even charged with sending the gold to the rebels by the roundabout way of the ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... hide himself from them behind a manner of cold and silent finality, and, so, to prevent them from forming an alliance and a junction of forces with the traitor softness within him. Besides, gentle, roundabout, gradual measures would require time—delay; and he must "put his house in ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... always a roundabout one. Our petty economies are no concern of hers. Man wants specific results at once. Nature works slowly to general results. Her army is drilled only in battle. Her tools grow sharper in the using. The strength of her species is the strength of the obstacles they overcome. ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... to express their meaning In all matters but this of slavery the framers of the Constitution used the very clearest, shortest, and most direct language. But the Constitution alludes to slavery three times without mentioning it once The language used becomes ambiguous, roundabout, and mystical. They speak of the "immigration of persons," and mean the importation of slaves, but do not say so. In establishing a basis of representation they say "all other persons," when they mean to say slaves—why did they not use the shortest phrase? In providing for the ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... "Major" Galahad Shaughnessy. I imagine I can see him, in his white duck, brass-buttoned roundabout, with his sabreless belt peeping out beneath, all his boyishness in his sea-blue eyes, leaning lightly against the door-post of the Cafe des Exiles as a child leans against his mother, running his fingers ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... know, boys, what Yetmore did when he came down for his tobacco this morning? He went to the stable, saddled his horse, untied your two ponies and led them out. Then he mounted his horse and taking the halter-ropes in his hand he led your ponies by a roundabout way through the woods down to the road. After leading them at a walk along the road for half a mile he dismounted—that was where his tracks showed—and either took off the halters and threw them away, or what is more likely, tied them up around ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... do, then. As long as I asked him direct questions he could answer falsely. I must trip him up in some roundabout way. ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... Emperor, if he has not gone to bed, or else the very first thing to-morrow morning. Remember, you must seem to have consulted no one. Make him read this letter; watch him as closely as you can; but, whatever happens, show that you hate these roundabout methods, and tell him again that you will never listen to anything but ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... developed a formula for making bronze which is said to be extraordinary, and then began exploring the Harz mountains. He sent me some of the ores he found; it appears that there is nearly everything in those ranges. I heard no more until the news came, in a roundabout way, that he was dead and his ashes cast to the four winds. His writings were supposed to have been burned at the same time, but not all of them were, for three manuscripts at least must have gone to make up the fragments we found among our bezants. I wish for your sake, Alan, my son, that I could ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... seconds the Pavilion d'Armenonville swirled round the unfortunate painter so violently that he felt as if he were on a roundabout at a fair. He feared that the siren must hear the pounding of his heart. To think that he had dreaded paying two louis! Two louis? Why, it would have been a bagatelle! Speechlessly he laid a fortune ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... manufacture emotion. No; but I will tell you what you can do. You can determine what you will think about most, and what you will look at most, and if you settle that, that will settle what you feel. And so, though it is by a roundabout way, we can regulate our emotions. A man travelling in a railway train can choose which side of the carriage he will look out at, either the one where the sunshine is falling full on the front of each grass-blade and tree, or the side where it is the shadowed side of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... earlier hours of the same day, Miss Grierson took the roundabout way between the Raymer plant and Mereside, making the circuit which took her through the college grounds and brought her out at the head of upper Shawnee Street. The Widow Holcomb was sitting on her front porch, placidly crocheting, ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... conquest of the eighteen provinces, ordered the construction of this magnificent waterway, [Page 32] which extends 800 miles from Peking to Hangchow and connects with other waterways which put the northern capital in roundabout communication with provinces of the extreme south. His object was to tap the rice-fields of Central China and obtain a food supply which could not be interfered with by those daring sea-robbers, the redoubtable ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... still had to say to you is something very general, and yet I prefer to choose this roundabout way. I do not know whether it is false or true delicacy, but I should find it very hard to talk with you, face to face, about friendship. And yet it is thoughts on that subject that I wish to convey to you. The application—and it is about that I am most concerned—you will yourself easily ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... 108 deg. in the shade. What a climate Natal has! For fickleness it beats anything we have to grumble about in England. At night the temperature went down to 65 deg., and the brilliant summer weather broke up suddenly in a fierce thunderstorm. For a time every object roundabout would be blotted out by inky blackness, and for the next two or three minutes the lowering angry clouds would pulsate with dazzling light that leaped upward like life-blood from the throbbing heart of the storm. Each thundering peal ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... more interesting surely than a small-town bank president. Have him learn a good loose trade and see the world—get into real life! But they'd had him going for a minute—when the only meaning he could get from Harvey D.'s roundabout talk was that the old girl of yesterday had misunderstood his attentions. That would have been a nice fix to find himself in! But Merle was off his mind; he would become a real Whipple and some day be the head of the family. Funny thing for a Cowan to fall into! He turned to his dusty ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... are at Montpellier. They had a long roundabout journey to get there. Part of a magnificent collection formed by successive Bouhiers (seven of whom were Presidents of the Parlement de Bourgogne, and lived at Dijon), they were bought in 1781 from the heir of the last Bouhier by the last Abbot but one of Clairvaux. Then, ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James
... the drollest things, and takes the most amusing, roundabout way of intimating whatever he does not care to say openly. For example, when he wished the King to understand that the Count de Marsan, brother of M. Legrand, had attached himself to M. Chamillard, the then Minister, he took the following means: "Sire," ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... made a winding, roundabout march to Trintange. Here we were instructed to settle down for a week or ten days' halt, and many worse places might have been chosen. The country was very broken, with hills and ravines. Little patches ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... shutters for protection were often used, but to close them at time of service would have been to plunge the church into utter darkness. Permission was sometimes given, as in Haverhill, to "sett up a shed outside of the window to keep out the heat of the sun there,"—a very roundabout way to accomplish a very simple end. As years passed on, trees sprang up and grew apace, and too often the churches became overhung and heavily shadowed by dense, sombre spruce, cedar, and fir trees. A New ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... most eagerly sought for. Those strips of white paper, bearing the deity's name, and a few words of promise, which are sold for a few rin, are tied to rods of bamboo, and planted in all the fields of the country roundabout. The most curious things sold are tiny packages of rice-seeds. It is alleged that whatever you desire will grow from these rice-seeds, if you plant them uttering a prayer. If you desire bamboos, cotton-plants, peas, lotus-plants, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... a place belonging to the Earl of Argyll, but rented at that time by Lady Elizabeth's cousin, Sir Edmund Withipole. The distance from Holborn to Oatlands, as the crow flies, is about twenty miles; but, by the roundabout roads which the fugitives took in order to prevent attempts to trace them, the distance must have been considerable, and the journey, in the clumsy coach of the period, over the rutted highways and the still worse by-roads of those times, must have been long and wearisome. ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... beadles in gowns ushering the preacher to the carpeted pulpit steps, with velvet cushions, and with the rustle and fulness of his robes. No one seemed to think of writing a sermon as he would write an earnest letter. A preacher must approach his subject in a kind of roundabout make-believe of preliminary and preparatory steps, as if he was introducing his hearers to what they had never heard of; make-believe difficulties and objections were overthrown by make-believe answers; ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... foreshore rights, and had employed those to lay a tramway from their hustling centre; and as the rival town was on the main line, the majority of visitors preferred going by the foreshore route in preference to the roundabout branch line route, which was somewhat handicapped by the fact that this, too, connected with the branch line at Tolness, a little town which had done great work in the War, but which did not attract the tourist ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... said to make Mr Gordon fully comprehend the case. The men were dissatisfied. They had come in a roundabout way to the conclusion that some pecuniary concession, not mentioned in their bond, should come from the side of capital to that of labour. Whether wages, interest of capital, share of profits, reserve fund, they knew not nor cared. This was their stand. And being Englishmen ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood
... men, for a moment decline Your feats in the rhubarb and ipecac line; While you shut up your turnpike, your neighbors can go The old roundabout ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... delightful books destined some day to claim their places beside the companion-volumes we have so many times taken down for pure enjoyment during the last twenty years. Do you remember, who read this brief notice of the man so recently passed away, a passage in one of these same "Roundabout Papers," where this sentence holds the eye half-way down the page,—"I like Hood's life even better than his books, and I wish with all my heart, Monsieur et cher confrere, the same could be said for both ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... moderately prosperous and contented, comfortable if not energetic and advanced. This is not a pushing town: it has never known a boom. That I'm sure will some day come, but I hope not in my time. I have faith in the mountains that fold us roundabout; they are rich with the possibilities of coal and iron, and year by year are being more and more widely opened up and developed; year by year the ranks of flaming, reeking coke ovens push farther on beside the railway that penetrates ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... Saint-Castin took a roundabout course, and went to Madockawando's lodge, near the fort. All the members of the family, except the old chief, were away at the sugar-making. The great Abenaqui's dignity would not allow him to drag in fuel to the fire, ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... appointed, and the honour of the country should be committed to their hands. With a small force, complete in itself, at the disposal of such men, more could be effected at the moment for the honour and interests of the country than by long and roundabout despatches, passing through so many hands that one fool in authority nullifies all, as a bad link in an otherwise good chain renders the whole useless. Omitting the other portions of the correspondence, the following ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... that of Henri and Jean. The journey across Belgium in the springless farm wagon was the worst. They had had to take roundabout lanes, avoiding the main highways. Fortunately, always at night there were friendly houses, kind hands to lift Henri into warm fire-lighted interiors. Many messages they had brought back, some of cheer, but too often of tragedy, from ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... be that Ethan Pratt would behold himself growing old in the peaceful safe harbour of South New Medford, anchored fast by his heartstrings to a small white cottage, all furbished and plenished within, all flowers and shrubs roundabout, with a kitchen garden at its back, and on beyond an orchard of whitewashed trees where buff cochins clucked beneath the ripening fruit, and on beyond this in turn a hay meadow stretching away ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... followed by such a funeral; and I determined that I would be buried in the same manner. This is the fact; but I am not now exactly of the same opinion. I had no idea at that time, that it was such a terrible roundabout way to St. Paul's. Here I have been tossed about in every quarter of the globe, for between twenty and five-and-twenty years, and the dome is almost ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... a roundabout way to Waterfall Cottage, because she did not want the slight interruption of speaking to Susan Horridge if she went out by the South lodge, the nearest way. By a detour through her own park she entered O'Hart property, which had been in Chancery ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... She went a roundabout way, walking down F Street and stopping to make some trifling purchases in two or three shops. She could not detect that she was being followed, but she went into a large department store, and spent considerable time in matching some half-dozen shades of ribbon. On the way out she stepped into ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... A roundabout route, via the Postage and Inwards Bills Departments, took him to the swing-doors. It was here that the danger became acute. The doors were well within view of the Fixed Deposits Department, and Mr Gregory had an eye compared with which that of an eagle was more ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... column followed. It would appear, however, that he still moved cautiously, and that the battalion, or the troops that followed, avoided a direct approach, and reached the Jamaica Road on the other side of the pass by a roundabout lane known as the Rockaway Path. The innkeeper Howard was waked up, and with his son compelled to guide the British around to the road, where it was discovered, as the patrol had stated, that the pass was unguarded. ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... daring hunter or trader found the Indians at the head waters of the Ohio,—among them the Delawares, Shawanese, Mohicans, and Iroquois,—whither they tracked the bear from their village of Logstown, seventeen miles down the river. They also employed the country roundabout as a highway for their march to battle against other tribes, and against each other. At that time France and England were disputing for the new continent. France, by right of her discovery of the Mississippi, claimed all lands drained by that river and its tributaries, a contention which would ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... grievances there was no doubt. American citizens were imprisoned, interned in reconcentrado camps, and otherwise maltreated. The nationality of American sufferers was in some cases disputed, and the necessity of dealing with each of these doubtful cases by the slow and roundabout method of complaint to Madrid, which referred matters back to Havana, which reported to Madrid, served but to add irritation to delay. American resentment, too, was fired by the sufferings of the Cubans themselves as much as by the losses and ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... just got to get down to it, that's all. We'll start with the London area. Just note down the addresses of any of the females who live in London or roundabout, while I ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... as the maid returns, Hortense at once leaves her modest quarters. The bills are all paid. Their belongings are packed as for departure. To the Hotel Meurice, by a roundabout route, mistress and maid repair. Hortense Duval is no more. A ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... work, 'Lovell the Widower,' is 'a very clever sketch, but as a novel is rather drawn out.' 'The Roundabout Papers' make very pleasant reading. In one 'he compares himself to a pagan conqueror driving in his chariot up the Hill of Coru, with a slave behind him to remind him that he is only mortal.' In 1863, suddenly, Thackeray died, seven years ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... the pure rhetoricians, of the national school, who are castizo—the Mariano de Cavias, the Ricardo Leons—should happen to write something simply, logically and with modern directness, they would cast about immediately for a roundabout way of saying it, which might appear ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... that the stories be told in the language of the ex-slave, without excessive editorializing and "artistic" introductions on the part of the interviewer. The contrast between the directness of the ex-slave speech and the roundabout and at times pompous comments of the interviewer is frequently glaring. Care should be taken lest expressions such as the following creep in: "inflicting wounds from which he never fully recovered" (supposed to be ...
— Slave Narratives, Administrative Files (A Folk History of - Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves) • Works Projects Administration
... the charter of the shipbuilding company, these vessels cannot be sold to any foreign government without the consent of Downing Street. That is the reason why the affair had to be conducted in such a roundabout manner." ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... by a somewhat roundabout way, to the idea we started from, that of an original impetus of life, passing from one generation of germs to the following generation of germs through the developed organisms which bridge the interval between the generations. This impetus, sustained right along the lines ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... on prodding the Cacique, as hunters stir up a bear before killing him, they began to see that there was something more coming, and they stood still, packed solidly in the square to listen. On all the housetops roundabout the women and the children were as still as images. A young priest from the steps of the Hill, who thought he must back up the Cacique, threw up his arms and shouted, 'Give her to the Sun!' and a kind of quiver went over the people like the shiver of still water ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... decided to go to the lake by a roundabout way, covering a distance of about forty miles. They left at a little after ten o'clock, calculating to get to the lake in time for lunch. They would attend the afternoon concert, take Roger's chum out for a short ride around the lake road, and then return to ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer
... He put his hand in his pocket and drew out a handful of salt, which he kept for just such times as this. He held it out toward Nanni and carefully and slowly backed away from the edge of the cliff, coaxing her to follow him. As she stepped forward, he stepped back, and in this way led her by a roundabout path down the farther side of the rocks to the place where the other ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... and there, from a score or two of authors, and has not the slightest idea about the merits of any of them. Some one came up with her nicely the other night, at a party. He had suspicions, I suppose, that she was trying to pass for too much; at all events, he asked her a great many roundabout questions, which she was obliged to answer, and in doing so she let out the secret. Every body saw what sort of a coin she was, ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... private opinion that Osric Dane's attitude toward the Lunch Club might have been very different had it welcomed her in the majestic setting of the Plinth drawing-rooms; but not liking to reflect on the inadequacy of Mrs. Ballinger's establishment she sought a roundabout satisfaction in ...
— Xingu - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... when everybody did not carry a dial in his poke as now. He is the last of the poets, who went (without affectation) by the great clock of the firmament. Dante, the miser of words, who goes by the same timepiece, is full of these roundabout ways of telling us the hour. It had nothing to do with Spenser's stanza, and I for one should be sorry to lose these stately revolutions of the superne ruote. Time itself becomes more noble when so measured; we never knew before of how precious a commodity we had the wasting. Who would ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... one else,—it would have been difficult to deny to him what was apparent to an entire summer colony,—but she explained that that did not mean she would marry him. She announced this when the signs she knew made it seem necessary. She announced it in what was for her a roundabout way, by remarking suddenly that she did not intend to marry ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... Only, as it happened to be the wrong bell, he obtained the presence of Joseph in a roundabout way, through the agency of a gentleman-in-waiting. Such, however, is the human faculty of adaptation to environment that he was merely amused in the morning by an error which, on the previous night, would have put him ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... law or no law, doubt or no doubt. He would have faith that the people would sustain him; and that the courts and the lawyers, among whose functions it is to see to it that laws and statutes do not interfere too seriously with the convenience of the community, would arrive, in what subtle and roundabout way they might choose, at the conclusion that whatever must be done might be done. These learned gentlemen did their duty, and developed the "war powers" under the Constitution in a manner equally ingenious, comical, and sensible. But the fundamental basis was, that necessity knows no law; ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse |
