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More "Useless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... apostasy (Itaque plures tu unus paululum cedendo querimonias et gemitus excitasti quam centum mediocres aperta defectione). I would die with you a hundred times rather than see you survive the doctrine surrendered by you. You will pardon me for unloading into your bosom these pitiable, though useless groans." (Schluesselburg 13, 635; C. R. 41 [Calvini Opera ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... she might still have passed muster as a fairly good-looking woman. Unfortunately she was animated by an unceasing activity in trivial matters, and was rarely silent. Some women make one think of a printed page in which there are too many italics, and too many useless marks of exclamation. At first, their constant cries of admiration and outbursts of enthusiasm produce a vague sense of uneasiness in the listener, which soon develops to a feeling of positive distress ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... ever had had the advantage of hearing a sermon. "I have been reading that story of Troy again" (thus he writes to a noble youth of Rome whom he cared for), "quietly at Praeneste, while you have been busy at Rome; and truly I think that what is base and what is noble, and what useful and useless, may be better learned from that, than from all Chrysippus' and Crantor's talk put together."* Which is profoundly true, not of the Iliad only, but of all other great art whatsoever; for all pieces of such art are didactic ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... decided that the horse was useless, and had given orders to have him sent back to Thessaly, whence he came. Alexander was very much concerned at the prospect of losing so fine an animal. He begged his father to allow him to make the experiment of mounting ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... and delay caused to the enemy by this spirited resistance enabled the convoy to disperse, and all get off but three, out of thirty-two. The English ships did not strike till they were so much cut up that one sunk immediately afterwards, and the other was burned by the captors as useless. ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... is but a useless beast, here! God has given him a thicker mantle, and a warmer dress than to us Christians, but even this advantage will soon prove a curse to my poor friend. The long hair he carries will quickly be covered with icicles, and, as the snow deepens, it will retard ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... is what people so often do when they travel, they leave behind them the things they want most and take a lot of other things that are useless. Now, that resolution of the dominant seventh was hardly worth saving—at least it ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... should see the pure light of morning as it entered her little blue room in which she thought she was. For her mind, heavy with sleep, did not recall to her the adventure of the lake. But indeed, it was useless to rub her eyes, the dwarfs did not vanish, and so she was obliged to believe that they ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... something for him," thought she. "But to sit here useless! And I must not even speak to him until ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... don't you see, Andy, the little monoplane would be utterly useless to them unless they had some one who knew how ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... was near when the Lutheran Church in America would shake off the yoke of symbolism and step forward, recognized by the great Protestant world. "The attempt"—the correspondent continues—"to live in one and the same house with the symbolists is useless. We thank God that we have a paper which says in its first year: No compromise any longer with symbolism! Hallelujah! May the whole Church hear it." (L. u. W. 1865, 277.) Revealing both its ignorance and animus, the American Lutheran, Rev. Anstaedt then being the editor, said in its ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... had charge of burials found fault with the waste of money on funeral pomps. For instance, the officer for the display of armorial distinctions was really useless. It would be far better to have a goodly display of wax-tapers. A low mass accompanied ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... Roman peasant women. America follows closely in their footsteps, Great Britain's turn comes next, then Germany puts in a modest claim, while the worst customers of all are the Scandinavians, to whose deep, earnest, thoughtful nature the glittering baubles appear mere useless trifles. Among the Russian, Turkish, and Hungarian women, only the richest classes indulge in these ornaments; they are scarcely ever seen among the people, which may perhaps be explained by the fact that they would not at all suit the ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... desire to maintain some show of decency in legislating the matter. So a more moderate Statute was enacted in 1902. I was the only person who voted against it in either House. It was, of course, clear that resistance was useless. It was not worth while, it seemed to me, to undertake to express my objections at length. I contented myself with the ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... Del Pinzo made as he brushed himself off. Bather a useless proceeding it would appear, for he was always dirty and unkempt ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... straightened himself to the full height of his short body and threw back his head in simple pride. A strange indistinct sense of cleanness, strength and pride filled his soul, and everything—the sun and the sky and the people and the field and death—seemed to him insignificant, remote and useless. ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... a sleep, and sleeping, with a smile on her thin, wan face,— She passed away one morning, while I prayed to the throne of grace. I knelt in the little cabin, and prayer after prayer I said, Till the surgeon came and told me it was useless—my wife ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... There was no prospect of a storm or a calm. The stranger was coming up after us with fearful speed. We were within range of her guns, but she did not fire— so we concluded that she had none on board. It was useless for us to attempt to do anything by fighting. Jerry and I talked about it, but we gave it up as a hopeless case. The stranger could quickly have settled the matter ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... faithfully applied. Having thus endeavoured, to the best of their abilities, to provide for the welfare and safety of the Province, your representatives take the liberty of reminding you that the best laws are useless without the zealous co-operation of the people. Unless you are prepared to endure the greatest privations and to make the severest sacrifices, all that your representatives have done will be of no avail. Be ready, then, at all times to rally round the Royal Standard, and let those who ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... money would not be useless. Lady Lufton, with all her high-flown ideas, was not an imprudent woman. She knew that her son had been extravagant, though she did not believe that he had been reckless; and she was well content to think that some balsam from the old bishop's coffers should be ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... the subject, and still more so anything about myself. I steadily ENDEAVOUR never to forget my firm belief that no one can at all judge about his own work. As for Lamarck, as you have such a man as Grove with you, you are triumphant; not that I can alter my opinion that to me it was an absolutely useless book. Perhaps this was owing to my always searching books for facts, perhaps from knowing my grandfather's earlier and identically the same speculation. I will only further say that if I can analyse my own feelings (a very doubtful process), it is nearly as much for your sake as for ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... I wish we were," Harold agreed. "It is too hard being useless out here when such a splendid fight is going on. Ah! they have their eyes on us!" he exclaimed as a puff of smoke burst out from some bushes near the shore and a ball came skipping along on the surface of the water, sinking, ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... batteries. The hill swarmed with infantry as well, sheltered by fences and ravines, while shells from the gunboats in James River could reach every part of the Confederate line. Yet not till nine in the evening did Lee let the useless carnage cease. Badly demoralized as the opposing army was, McClellan at midnight withdrew to Harrison's ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... Rochelle. But imposing as was his force, Buckingham showed himself as incapable a soldier as he had proved a statesman. The troops were landed on the Isle of Rhe, in front of the harbour; but after a useless siege of the Castle of St. Martin, the English soldiers were forced in October to fall back along a narrow causeway to their ships, and two thousand fell in the retreat without the loss of a single ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... things, my friend, when you know that they are useless?" she replied, with a look which grew in the end so soft that Wilfrid ceased to behold her eyes, but saw in their place a fluid light, the shimmer of which was like the last vibrations ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... reveal himself, and by thus revealing, realize.... For she is not his love; she is only his wife; and what is left of a romance when the romance is left out?" Although there is an element of truth in this, yet it is useless as a support for the theory of Japanese "impersonality." For it is not a fact that the Japanese do not fall in love; it is a well-known experience to them. It is inconceivable how anyone at all acquainted with either Japanese life or literature could make such an assertion. ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... resumed the captain of the JUMPING JENNY; 'my handful of Latin, and small pinch of Greek, were as useless as old junk, to be sure; but my reading, writing and accompting, stood me in good stead, and brought me forward; I might have been schoolmaster—aye, and master, in time; but that valiant liquor, rum, made a conquest of me rather ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... time, I shall see the happier country face to face. If you hear that I am sick, say no prayers in church for my recovery,—it would be useless; pray rather for my new life. And now let us go ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... illegible scrawl, and that 101, two thirds of the entire number, were marksmen, signing with a cross. Few of the prisoners could read with facility; more than half of them could not read at all; the most of them thought books were useless, and were totally ignorant of the nature, ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... shelter of her tent. A day or two later Crestwick and the packer overtook them, having discovered nothing; and then the party was animated by a strong desire to escape from the river and reach the trail to the settlements as soon as possible. Further search for Gladwyne was useless; the flood had swept him away and no one would ever know where his bones lay. He had set out on his longest and most mysterious journey, leaving only two women to mourn him, and of these one, who had tried to love him out of duty, would by ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... end foremost, and to take a tender interest in one another's goods, moveable, handy, and divisible; instead of hungering after hungry land, which feeds nobody, until itself well fed and tended, and is as useless without a master as a donkey or a man is. The knowledge of these rudiments of civilization was not yet lost at Springhaven; and while everybody felt and even proved his desire to share a neighbour's trouble, nobody meddled with any right ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... if the ministers of religion were to interest themselves in this matter, and accustom their people to consult them as to the nature of the monumental inscriptions which they wish to introduce into churches and church-yards, a gradual improvement would take place in this respect. What is offensive, useless, or erroneous, would no longer find admittance, and a succession of valuable warning and consolation to the living would perpetuate the ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... toiled, of toil to reap no end, but endless toil and never-ending woe." Page 347: Cruelty is such as Hogarth might have painted her. Page 361: all the passage about Love (where he seems to confound conjugal love with creating and preserving love) is very confused, and sickens me with a load of useless personifications; else that ninth book is the finest in the volume,—an exquisite combination of the ludicrous and the terrible. I have never read either, even in translation, but such I conceive to be the manner of Dante or Ariosto. The tenth book ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... nobly, it easily creates vivid, agreeable, and natural fancies, places them in their best light, clothes them with all appropriate adornments, studies others' tastes, and clears away from its own thoughts all that is useless and disagreeable. ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... to the eye there is none; not to say that the d in poids' puts it for us in relation with 'pondus,' the x in 'poix' with 'pux,' the s in 'pois' with the Low Latin 'pisum.' In each case the letter which these reformers would dismiss as useless, and worse than useless, keeps the secret of the word. On some other attempts in the same direction see in D'Israeli, Amenities of Literature, an article On Orthography and Orthoepy; and compare Diez, Romanische Sprache, vol. i. p. 52. [In the form poids ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... they assisted the crew in hoisting the horses and guns on board. The gun-carriages, however, being too heavy, were left on board the raft, and she was let drop astern. As, however, their loss made the guns useless, Tom and Archie were sent to the nearest ship to obtain assistance. As they got alongside, they found that she was the Briton, and, Archie having explained matters to his uncle, who was on deck, Commander Murray sent a boat with a fresh crew, ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... comes to me asking for help in solving my problems." Finally the light broke upon him. He stopped answering letters, buying lunches for casual friends and visitors from out of town, he stopped lending money to old college pals and frittering his time away on all the useless minor matters that pester the good-natured. He sat down in a secluded cafe with his cheek against a seidel of dark beer and began to caress the universe with ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... is either altogether left out, or made a quite unimportant part of the dwelling. It is but a lumber room, at best; and should be approached only by a flight of steps from a rear chamber or passage, and used as a receptacle for useless traps, or cast-off furniture, seldom wanted. It is hot in summer, and cold in winter, unfit for decent lodging to any human being in the house, and of little account any way. We much prefer running the chambers partially into the roof, which we think gives ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... contrary, my intention was to save. I hoped to save Wilfred from committing a dark deed, I longed to save Ruth from becoming a villain's prey. I had no desire to hurt either Wilfred or his accomplice. No good could come of that. To meet evil with evil is useless for any ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... the horrible trump, as a soldier, nor dreads he the angry sea; he shuns both the bar and the proud portals of citizens in power. Wherefore he either weds the lofty poplars to the mature branches of the vine; and, lopping off the useless boughs with his pruning-knife, he ingrafts more fruitful ones: or he takes a prospect of the herds of his lowing cattle, wandering about in a lonely vale; or stores his honey, pressed [from the combs], in clean vessels; or shears his tender sheep. ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... are to be punished, that the government has sentenced them, that it is the law; and though they may find cause to disagree with the decree that consigns them to hopeless and useless servitude, they accept it as at least legal and incident to the game as played. But they do not believe that the government has condemned them to starvation, or to poisoning (and the condition in which food often comes to the convicts' table ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... woodcraft, had heard plainly a man creeping through the underbrush beside us. Fear of the Congo chief and pity for the wretch tore at my heart. Suddenly there loomed in front of us, on the path, a great, naked man. We stood with useless ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Narrative.—We see that this beautiful story has a purpose. Its purpose is to teach us kindness to our parents. It is well planned. Every sentence and every paragraph is adapted to the end in view. No useless item or circumstance is admitted. The story stops when the end is reached. Anything added to the fifth paragraph would spoil the story. We certainly can learn ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... useless iterations of a Greek chorus, the tale was flung at him, piecemeal and in chunks, and in a triple key. When presently he understood, Hazen looked down for a moment at the puppy—which was making sundry advances of ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... mane there's no room aboard fer us, thin why in hell don't ye git out th' way an' rid th' ship av a useless ruffian," ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... we may sometimes wish that we could have suggested answers to his antagonists, or pointed out to them the rocks which lay concealed under the ambiguous terms good, pleasure, and the like. But it would be as useless to examine his arguments by the requirements of modern logic, as to criticise this ideal from a merely utilitarian point of view. If we say that the ideal is generally regarded as unattainable, and that mankind will by no ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... said in his deep, quiet voice. "Let us talk together of this matter as friends, for a useless king were I but for such as you who keep my throne from ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... made the gunfire almost useless. The shell-bursts were spaced too far apart; they ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... do dear little nice ones, left undone by city governments and by the millionaires. I can sing, and read, and study; I can travel; and there are always people needing something wherever you are, if you have eyes to see them; one needn't live a useless life even if one hasn't any responsibilities. But"—she paused—"I've been talking all this time about my own plans and ambitions, and I began by asking yours! Isn't it strange that the moment one feels conscious of friendship, one begins to ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... remains to be seen. To be frank, I doubt it. We'll have a talk to-morrow, Mark; and maybe Doria will remember a thing or two that happened at 'Crow's Nest' and so help me. But until I have slept I am useless." ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... day a brave soldier, but he evidently knew nothing of the art of war. He allowed Belisarius to disencumber himself of many useless consumers of food by sending the women, the children, and the slaves out of the City. His attention was disturbed by feigned attacks, when the reinforcements, which were tardily sent by Justinian, and the convoys of provisions, ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... flowing hair, or wigs, or caps; the last on the right hand is a head thrusting out its tongue, perhaps a sportive essay of the carver." When the restoration was begun about the middle of the nineteenth century, this screen was removed, treated as useless lumber, and stowed away in the triforium, which at that time, as already described, was separated from the church by a wall. Here in 1880 the vicar, the Rev. E. L. Berthon, found, to use his own words, "the ancient oak-carvings of heads in ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: A Short Account of Romsey Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... give. In vain for him to open wide the supply valve. Vain to adjust the carburetor. Even as he made a despairing, instinctive motion to perform these useless acts—while Beatrice, deathly pale and shaking with terror, clutched at him—the engine spat forth a last, convulsive ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... he let the earl feel the ploughman's grasp: it was useless to struggle. His lordship threw ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... mean, yes, he did. Whitney was no boob." (This time Mrs. McGregor failed to protest; perhaps she decided it was useless.) "He had, as I told you, made wheels and canes and knives and nails in his father's workshop at home. He had even made a violin. So he wasn't at all fussed about trying to make a cotton gin. I guess he had a hunch he could ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... "the confusion." He makes man the inventor of speech, and resorts to raillery: speaking against his opponent Eunomius, he says that, "passing in silence his base and abject garrulity," he will "note a few things which are thrown into the midst of his useless or wordy discourse, where he represents God teaching words and names to our first parents, sitting before them like some pedagogue or grammar master." But, naturally, the great authority of Origen, Jerome, and Augustine prevailed; ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... also that over the left ilium. The fluid has increased during the last twenty-four hours so that there is now nearly as much as was drawn off through the canula yesterday. I concluded that further delay to a free opening was useless; consequently with the patient lying on his right side, and near the edge of the bed, I made an opening one inch long in the lower portion of the abscess,—for I now considered it one,—near the spot where the needle of the aspirator ...
— Report on Surgery to the Santa Clara County Medical Society • Joseph Bradford Cox
... the Impressionist technique. It is the work of Claude Monet which presents the most complete example of it, and which also came first as regards date. But it is very difficult to determine such cases of priority, and it is, after all, rather useless. A technique cannot be invented in a day. In this case it was the result of long investigations, in which Manet and Renoir participated, and it is necessary to unite under the collective name of Impressionists a group of men, tied by friendship, who made a simultaneous effort ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... of his limbs again. But the doctor's fears that he would never be able to resume the life of a mountaineer were unfortunately confirmed. He never properly recovered the use of his foot; and Toni often cast a sorrowful glance at the gun now hanging useless on the wall. To this cause of regret there was added anxiety for the future. The chase, which had hitherto so materially assisted in supplying his wants, could no longer be followed; and although Walter had grown tall and strong, he ...
— Harper's Young People, December 9, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... whose hollows are covered with leaves and which thou canst choose freely and to thy heart's content. O patient one exercising due discrimination in thy wisdom, do thou forsake this old tree that is dead and useless and shorn of all its leaves and no ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... promise to support the mission, but nothing was realized from their promises, and it soon became apparent that they cared more about the fur trade than about religion. Champlain saw many people who he believed could assist the settlement, but the winter was passed in useless negotiations. He therefore prepared a greater shipment than usual from his own resources, and he was fortunate in finding that his old friend, Louis Hebert, an apothecary of Port Royal, was willing to accompany him. Hebert took his family with him, composed ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... that the Congress will be beset by many groups who will urge that the legislation that I have proposed should either be eliminated or modified to the point where it is nearly useless. The Congress has a clear responsibility to meet this challenge with courage and determination. I have every confidence that ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... overseas. When Thomas Jefferson, as Secretary of State, fought down Southern opposition to a retaliatory shipping policy, he uttered a warning which his countrymen were to find still true and apt in the twentieth century: "If we have no seamen, our ships will be useless, consequently our ship timber, iron, and hemp; our shipbuilding will be at an end; ship carpenters will go over to other nations; our young men have no call to the sea; our products, carried in foreign bottoms, will be ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... half an hour too late to be of any use to me, if I wanted to go and meet my people—which was the case—for by the wording of the message you can see that they were to arrive at the station at 11.45. Why did, your h. c. send me this useless message? Can't he ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... thereby put out the little flame of the match. If he entertain the thought the little flame will communicate itself until almost before he is aware of it a consuming fire is raging, and then effort is almost useless. The thought must be banished from the mind the instant it enters; dalliance with it means failure and defeat, or a fight that will be indescribably fiercer than it would be if the thought ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... Constantinople, under the name of Donanma, not only when the Sultanas are enceintes, but also when they are brought to bed. In 1803 the rumour of the pregnancy of a Sultana, being falsely spread, involved all the Ministers in useless expenses to prepare for a Donanma which never took place." Lane justly remarks upon this passage that the title Sultan precedes while the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... roused to activity. Even before the ledge was entirely clear he was leaning over his father, knife in hand. It was useless to attempt to extricate the rope-end from the crack in which it was caught; the only thing to do was to cut it. Percy stooped quickly. Already the next sea was curling over his head. He made a ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... see either of them, will you say that Miss Bonnicastle, Colonel Bonnicastle's sister, will be here again in the morning, unless it storms, upon important business? Ask them to wait here for me, please. I should not like to make a second useless trip. Good-afternoon." ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... years before, but it was still regarded even by practical men as a doubtful venture. It was one of those "inventions born before their time," which, according to the Emperor Napoleon III., "must necessarily remain useless until the level of the common intellect rises to comprehend them." Thanks, however, to the co-operation of Mr. David Napier, a cousin of Robert's, who assisted him in the construction of the Comet, and took a lively personal interest in the advancement ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... appeared. But along their path the waste was unbroken. The swamp on either side of the road was filled with birds, who flew in and out and perched on the dry planks in the walks. An abandoned electric-car track, raised aloft on a high embankment, crossed the avenue. Here and there a useless hydrant thrust its head far above the muddy soil, sometimes out of the swamp itself. They had left the lake behind them, but the freshening evening breeze brought its damp breath across ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... for illustration," said she, "that cotton should be superseded. Vast numbers of our slaves might then be useless here. What would become of them? We should implore the North to relieve us of them, in part. Then would rise up the Northern antipathy to the negro, stronger, probably, in the abolitionist than in the pro-slavery man; and as we sought ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... her handkerchief, while Elma turned aside, realising sadly that it was useless to prolong the discussion. Presently Geoffrey and his mother would arrive and then they would all consult together. Elma had not rehearsed her own share in the conversation; the all-important decision was in the last issue to be left to herself, and she had spoken ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... who had enlisted his services. Now he was walking from corner to corner, and, like Stepan Trofimovitch, was muttering to himself, though he looked on the ground instead of in the looking-glass. He was not trying on smiles, though he often smiled rapaciously. It was obvious that it was useless to speak to him either. He looked about forty, was short and bald, had a greyish beard, and was decently dressed. But what was most interesting about him was that at every turn he took he threw up his right fist, brandished it above his head and suddenly brought ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... debate, therefore, one's first effort should be to state his own side so clearly and concisely as to make the principles involved easily understood. His second object should be so to divest his opponent's argument of useless verbiage as to make it stand forth clearly; for as truth is self-evident, so error bears upon its face its own condemnation. Error needs only to ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... did agree with General Sherman to go and advise him to that course, and on the 19th I had an interview alone with Mr. Stanton, which led me to the conclusion that any advice to him of the kind would be useless, and I ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... such sponges! I'm thankful I was never one to go trailin' about the country after my relations. I never was away from home more than a day in my life till I was married, and it's been nothing but work ever since, and now to be laid here like a useless log, with everything going hotfoot to destruction! It's a good thing you've come at last, for the children are makin' sawdust and splinters of every bit of crockery in the house, and that Martha Spriggs ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... see that it required a good deal of money to live in New York as I wished to live and that I should have to find, very soon, some more or less profitable employment. I was sure that unknown, without friends or prestige, it would be useless to try to establish myself as a teacher of music; so I gave that means of earning a livelihood scarcely any consideration. And even had I considered it possible to secure pupils, as I then felt, I should have hesitated about taking up a work in which the chances ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... rotten, no window is useless and yet if air will not come in there is a speech ready, there always is and there is no dimness, not a bit ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein
... so picturesque, and so detailed as positively to require no addition, I should have deemed it my duty to attempt to supply the want; but with their narrative before us in all its original freshness, it would be useless to attempt anything further. Both of these writers were on the spot at the time of the city's greatest grandeur and prosperity, though in the time of Nuniz the period of its political decay had set in. With their descriptions I shall not ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... he cried. "Hereward has escaped! Quick! Shut the gates!" He saw Adams near and hurried up to him. "My blight has escaped," he said breathlessly, holding up the now useless leash. "He gnawed through the chain and got away. I'm afraid he may be running amok among the guests. Supposing he were to leap upon Sir Thomas from behind and savage him—it's too terrible." He moved anxiously ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... despair. The birds were fast eating and destroying his partially ripened corn. He could not husk it yet. It was not ripe enough. He thought how easy it would be to protect his field if he had a gun. But he had learned that it is useless to give time to idle dreaming. He must do something ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... criminal, disloyal or immoral, but in the breach or non-observance of positive regulations made by the legislature, or persons having statutory authority, for a great variety of purposes. It would be useless to give details on the subject here. Again, there are cases where an agreement may be made and performed without offending the law, but on grounds of "public policy" it is not thought right that the performance should be a matter of legal obligation, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... cleanse their souls. "There is no place in the moral history of mankind of a deeper or more painful interest than this ascetic epidemic. A hideous, sordid, and emaciated maniac, without knowledge, without patriotism, without natural affections, passing his life in a long routine of useless and atrocious self-torture, and quailing before the ghastly phantoms of his delirious brain, had become the ideal of the nations which had known the writings of Plato and Cicero, and the lives of Socrates and Cato." ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... for experience had taught him that Charley never made useless demands. In a few minutes he was back dragging the sapling ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... home if he were slain, but to watch and come to him if he killed the dragon, or were only hurt by it. He then rode down the hillside, and towards the haunt of the dragon. It roused itself at his advance, and at first he charged it with his lance, which was perfectly useless against the scales. His horse was quick to perceive the difference between the true and the false monster, and started back, so that he was forced to leap to the ground; but the two dogs were more staunch, and sprang at the animal, whilst their master struck at it with his sword, but ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that Mrs. Driscoll had been called up immediately after his departure. Mrs. Driscoll was one of those terrible people who say nothing yet see everything; for the last year and a half she had been watching Rafferty; knowing it to be quite useless to report what she knew to her easy-going master, she had, none the less, kept on watching. As a result, she was now able to bring up a hard fact, a small hard fact more valuable than worlds of ductile evidence. ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... world! Ah me! I searched the sky, I searched the sea, With much of useless grief and rueing, Those winged thoughts of mine pursuing— So dear were they, So lovely ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... 21 Same; and so without material change, the daily record of wind, weather, and the ship's general course—the repetition of which would be both useless and wearisome —continued through the month and until the vessel was near half the seas over. Fine warm weather and the "harvest-moon." The ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... serious, our progress was slow, until some genius conceived the idea that the track, rails and ties, might be lifted from its bed bodily, turned over, and subjected to a high heat; a convenient supply of dry fence-rails would furnish ample fuel to render the rails useless. In this way a good deal of the track was effectively broken up, and communication by rail from Corinth to the south entirely cut off. While we were still busy in wrecking the road, a dash was made at my right and rear by a squadron of Confederate ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... before the time this story begins, did something to Johnny's back which made his poor legs nearly useless, and changed the lively, rosy boy into a pale cripple. His mother took in fine washing, and worked hard to pay doctors' bills and feed and clothe her boy, who could no longer run errands, help with the heavy tubs, or go to school. ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... sudden weight and pulled—and while he pulled felt in a moment no grip, no weight at all. Between two hateful screams a face slid by him, out of reach, silent, with parted lips; and as it slipped away he fell back staggering, grasping the useless, headless crutch. ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... is effectual that does not render it useless. Nothing but the ballot renders corruption useless. .'. Nothing but the ballot is an ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... strange to see him enslaved and compelled by his labor to maintain both his master and himself, after having declared him incapable of doing either. Why not let him go then? Why hold with an unyielding grasp, so miserable and useless a piece of property? Is it benevolence that binds him with his master's chain? Judge ye. Stranger still is the fact of attaching such vast influence to his presence and so much concern regarding his movements, when in a state of freedom, if indeed, he is of so little ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... made his whole vision crumble—his theory that she had secretly kept herself true. Even to her old lover she wouldn't be so! He was sick; he couldn't eat; he knew that he looked very strange. He murmured something about it being useless to cry over spilled milk—he tried to turn the conversation to other things. But it was a horrid effort and he wondered whether they felt it as much as he. He wondered all sorts of things: whether they guessed he disbelieved ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... breaking both wings. I did not blame him when he keeled over. The leader disposed of, Hubbard and George again fired in quick succession, and two of the other geese dropped just as they were turning back upstream and vainly trying to rise on their wings, which were useless so soon after the moulting season. The second shot emptied George's rifle. He threw it down, grabbed a paddle and went after one of the birds, which, only slightly wounded, was flopping ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... behind?" cried Gwenny, in a voice that settled it. And so we began to arrange about it; and I was much excited. It was useless now to leave it longer; if it could be done at all, it could not be too quickly done. It was the Counsellor who had ordered, after all other schemes had failed, that his niece should have no food until she would obey him. He had strictly ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... repent always read it—and sometimes she would come upon threats and curses, and cry out and turn white and begin to shiver. Then she would beg me to pray and pray with her. And we would kneel down on the bare floor and pray together. My prayers were worse than useless. What could I say? I was a black sinner, too—a man who was perjuring his soul with lies—and they were told and acted for her sake, and she knew it. She used to cling about my neck and beg me to betray ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... say not yes to thy words. The iron-workers enter into the smithy; they rummage in the workshops of the carpenters; the handicraftsmen and saddlers are at hand; they do whatever thou requirest. They put together thy chariot; they put aside the parts of it that are made useless; thy spokes are faconne quite new; thy wheels are put on; they put the courroies on the axles and on the hinder part; they splice thy yoke, they put on the box of thy chariot; the [workmen] in iron forge the ...; they put the ring that is wanting ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... was useless to insist on such a matter with his father, and he did not persist; but this is what he did. He knew that exactly at midnight his father stopped writing, and quitted his workroom to go to his bedroom; he had heard him ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... daughters, if she would sing with them on Sundays; but she could not get through the drudgery of the exercises, and advanced only so far as to be able to take her proper part in a hymn. Here, however, she was almost useless, from incapability of proper subordination, the sopranos, tenors, and basses being well ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... were lowered, and the anchor let go. A boat was then launched. As we were standing looking towards the shore, the chief touched me on the shoulder, and made signs that I was to get into the boat. I knew that resistance would be useless. Two men then stepped in. I also did as I was ordered. He then signed to Oliver and Macco to follow; Macco going forward, and Oliver and I sitting in the stern. We endeavoured to ascertain from the ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... it was all useless. The next morning the first one of us was smitten with the plague—a little nurse-girl in the family of Professor Stout. It was no time for weak-kneed, sentimental policies. On the chance that she might be the only one, ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London
... survey of all self-governing colonies has been, and still is, regarded by the Imperial Government as a matter for the Colonial Governments. The survey of Cape Colony alone on a scale large enough for tactical purposes would have cost L150,000, and it would have been perfectly useless to ask the Treasury to sanction the provision of any such sum. A map, on a scale of twelve and a half miles to an inch, had been produced by the Survey department of the Cape Government, covering Cape Colony, Natal, Orange Free State, and part of the Transvaal, and arrangements were made with ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... fifteen he announced that he wanted to leave England and go to the Colonies. He had kept touch with the Home. The Rockleys knew that, when Hadrian made a declaration, in his quiet, half-jeering manner, it was worse than useless to oppose him. So at last the boy departed, going to Canada under the protection of the Institution to which he had belonged. He said good-bye to the Rockleys without a word of thanks, and parted, it seemed, without a pang. Matilda and Emmie wept ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... ears. The annoying clatter of shoes on bare floors gave us no peace. The constant clash of harsh noises, with an undercurrent of many voices murmuring an unknown tongue, made a bedlam within which I was securely tied. And though my spirit tore itself in struggling for its lost freedom, all was useless. ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... it seems a useless thing our goin' up to the oak. I know the Cap' sayed we were to wait for them under it. Why cant we just as well stay heer? 'Taint like they'll be long now. They wont dally a minute, I know, after they've ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... will not take them off our hands nor facilitate their adjustment. Distrust of the capacity, integrity, and high purposes of the American people will not be an inspiring theme for future political contests. Dark pictures and gloomy forebodings are worse than useless. These only becloud, they do not help to point the way of safety and honor. "Hope maketh not ashamed." The prophets of evil were not the builders of the Republic, nor in its crises since have they saved or served it. The faith of the fathers was ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... of Uncle Benjamin's pamphlets. It seemed useless for one to look for books in this great ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... are thick with rusting cans, old tires and miscelaneous rubbish. Some of them are so gutted by gully wash that any attempt at beautification would be worse than useless. Some are swept—farm fashion—free from surface dust and twigs. Some attempt—others achieve grass and flowers. Vegetable gardens are far less frequent then they should ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... receive the perfect conviction which the Admiral meant to convey, but it would have been useless to press the enquiry farther. She therefore satisfied herself with common-place remarks or quiet attention, and the Admiral had ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... am full of wrong and miserable feelings, which it is useless to detail, so grudging and sullen, when I should be thankful. Of course, when one sees so blessed an end, and that, the termination of so blameless a life, of one who really fed on our ordinances and got strength from them, and sees the same continued in a whole ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... recently almost ignored them altogether, penetrated France between the forts, and left a superior force "in observation," to watch the garrison and accept its surrender when the greater events of the war ahead made further resistance useless; but earth-forts, and especially field-works, will hereafter play an important part in war, because they enable a minor force to hold a superior one in check for a time, and time is a most valuable element in all wars. It was one of Prof. Mahan's ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... It is useless to deny that we were in constant fear even when there were soldiers by. The unsettled conditions gave us a creepy feeling that expressed itself in the anxious faces and broken words of our American women. One would ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... been almost useless to despatch a new Governor to the Red River settlement unless there had also been obtained a number of settlers to fill the place of those so skillfully led away by Duncan Cameron. Lord Selkirk now secured the best band of Emigrants attainable. ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... and his home, his parents, and his beautiful life there came up to his inward vision. The dreary pounding sea made him homesick, and for the first time he burst into tears. But George was a brave boy. He knew that crying was useless, and felt a ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... never came to our house; we met in an unfrequented spot, and my father's illness had interrupted these interviews. Altogether I can not tell if Jules discovered any thing. A fearful circumstance rendered all our precautions useless, and cut the knot of our secret connection, to loose which voluntarily I felt I had no power. A wedding-feast, at a neighboring castle, assembled all the nobility and gentry, and officers quartered near, together; ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... possibility of such transformations is becoming less and less; and, so far as we yet know, the final state of the present universe must be an aggregation (into one mass) of all the matter it contains, i. e. the potential energy gone, and a practically useless state of kinetic energy, i. e. uniform temperature throughout that mass." Thus our authors conclude that the visible universe began in time and will in time come to an end; and they add that under the physical conditions of ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... prayers and expostulations were in vain; and the dog then, brandishing over my head an enormous bludgeon, said—what abominable language!—'I think, doctor, I shall put an end to an existence derogatory to your self and useless to others.' At that moment the young gentleman beside me sprang over the very gate by which the tall ruffian had disappeared, and cried, 'Hold, villain!' On seeing my deliverer, the coward started back, and plunged into a neighbouring wood. The good young gentleman pursued him for a few ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... her breath even, while Roger slept there in the shadowed bed. Had this thing happened to her before their arrival at Heston, she must have fallen upon Roger in mad grief and passion, ready to kill him or herself; must at least have poured out torrents of useless words and tears. She could not have sat dumb like this; in misery, but quite able to think things out, to envisage all the dark possibilities of the future. And not only the future. By a perfectly logical diversion her thoughts ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... as he spoke, were on the figure of Lee, who still stood on the bridge awed and worshipful, barred of approach by Lize. "She shall not know," he silently vowed. "Why put her through useless suffering and shame? Edward Wetherford's disordered life is near its end. To betray him to his wife and daughter would be but the reopening ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... said her father, as if he were in the kindest manner heading her off from a useless project, "that I'd better make a call on her ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... these inquiries would be as useless as it would be sad, if the rate of infant mortality were fixed by determinate laws, such as those which limit the stature of man or the age to ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... they do show some of the lines, and persons who disbelieved have expressed surprise at their excellence. Success was only obtained by means of specially sensitised plates, for the ordinary photographic rays and ordinary plates were found useless, whilst the process of photographing so small and distant a planet is surrounded ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... yet I was windy, too. And now it has all come true like a dream. I can call to mind not one little thing I ettled for in my lusty days that hasna been put into my hands in my auld age; I sit here useless, surrounded by the gratification of all my wishes and all my ambitions, and at times I'm near terrified, for it's as if God had mista'en me for some ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... foolish one! alike unfit For healthy joy and salutary pain: Thou knowest the chase useless, and ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... your note of this day. Though not entirely of the opinion you express of the hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia; I reciprocate your desire to avoid the useless effusion of blood, and therefore, before considering your proposition, ask the terms you will offer on conditions of ...
— Lee's Last Campaign • John C. Gorman
... well. Fort Sumter is certainly battered down and utterly useless to the enemy, and it is believed here, but not entirely certain, that both Sumter and Fort Wagner are occupied by our forces. It is also certain that General Gilmore has thrown some shot into the ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... trade all the same, and I think a much more useless one than that of butchers or bakers. Oh! how tired I used to be of the drives every day in Aunt Shaw's carriage, and how I longed ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the child every morning, and I as regularly took it off. It has been fully proved since to be as useless an appendage as the vermiform. She had several cups with various concoctions of herbs standing on the chimney-corner, ready for insomnia, colic, indigestion, etc., etc., all of which were spirited away when she was at her dinner. In vain I told her we were homeopathists, and afraid ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... peculiar to Englishmen, and when displayed is very frequently not appreciated. But that critics should be honest we have a right to demand, and critical dishonesty we are bound to expose. If the writer will tell us what he thinks, though his thoughts be absolutely vague and useless, we can forgive him; but when he tells us what he does not think, actuated either by friendship or by animosity, then there should be no pardon for him. This is the sin in modern English criticism of which there is ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... who can tell that the very ease of such a destiny might not have wearied my heart, enervated my mind, and rendered me at once burdensome to myself and useless to the world? Is it not hunger that gives the true zest to the banquet, however exquisite, and labour that gives the true charm to the couch, however embroidered? Is not the noblest enjoyment of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... silent. He knew that an argument was useless. Besides, he knew that in Hal's position his own ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... your own business, my little man. You like scrub turkey. I don't. Give me a black or a wood duck, freshly killed, before all scrub or 'plain' turkeys in Australia. And move yourself, you useless animal, and get one of your turkeys and pluck it while Toby is getting a duck or two. Wonderfully intelligent nigger is Toby. I've never yet known him to fail in getting me a duck if there was one within a mile. I say, Tommy, d'ye like crawfish? ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... But as for me, if the Gods had willed that I should live, they had saved this dwelling for me. Enough it is, yea, and more than enough, that once I have seen this city taken, and lived. Bid me, then, farewell as though I were dead. Death will I find for myself. And truly I have long lingered here a useless stock and hated of the Gods, since Jupiter smote me with the blast of ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... rather than of praise. In vain did the Marechal de Lesdiguieres, the Duc de Bouillon, and even Sully, who had once controlled the destinies of France, make repeated offers of submission; the Prince de Conde had sufficient influence over the infatuated King to render every appeal useless, and to induce him to persist in the wholesale ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... quagmire of fine yellow sand. For a hundred yards he struggled on, with the car careening back and forth across the road and with much churning and slipping of tires. His shoulders began to ache and he wearied of the effort. It was a useless waste of energy. Spying a huge tree standing on the fence line on up ahead, he drew up to it and stopped in its shade. There was barely room for any one to pass on the other ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... beetle waist, usually so solid, thick, and clumsy, grows as slender and graceful as if the insects had been supplied with corsets by a fashionable West End house. But the greatest refinement of all is perhaps that noticed in certain allied species which mimic bees, and which have acquired useless little tufts of hair on their hind shanks to represent the dilated and tufted pollen-gathering apparatus of the ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... lacerate their little souls with a useless leave-taking? Go to them and comfort them; divert their minds with an expedition ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... almost covered his palette with useless squares of colour he picked up a palette-knife, scraped it clean, smeared the residue on a handful of rags, laid aside brushes and palette, and walked ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... easily overpower him and carry him into the place helpless. There seemed no possible means of escape. He determined to brazen the matter out, and meet Hartmann on his own ground. Resistance would at this juncture be useless. He congratulated himself that Grace had, by her cleverness, not shown her hand. The doctor evidently did not suspect, at least not very strongly, that she was anything other than she seemed—a patient. He knew he would be searched, and hoped that the place of concealment of the ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... ready. Our rifles would be worse than useless, we knew; our pistols we decided to carry as Drake put it, "for comfort." Canteens filled with water; a couple of emergency rations, a few instruments, including a small spectroscope, a selection from the medical kit—all these packed in a little ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... so far as this part of the section would prevent the advertising of useless or harmful products, it is unnecessary in view of the Medical Advertisements Act 1942. In so far as it represents a general attitude it seems out of date now that the matters referred to are discussed with far less reticence than when the Act was passed. ...
— Report of the Juvenile Delinquency Committee • Ronald Macmillan Algie
... happen to know that Dr. Ainstree, the greatest living authority upon tropical disease, is now in London. All remonstrance is useless, Holmes, I am going this instant to fetch him." I ...
— The Adventure of the Dying Detective • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Should I have tried to touch him by appeals to filial duty, to brotherly love? How had his appeals been answered? What memories had father and brother stored up in his heart to plead for either now? No,—all these influences, these associations, would have proved worse than useless, had I been calm enough to try them. I was not; but instinct, subtler than reason, showed me the one safe clue by which to lead this troubled soul from the labyrinth in which it groped and nearly fell. When I paused, breathless, Robert turned to me, asking, as if human assurances could ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... If the jays were particularly noisy he would go into the yard and expostulate with them in a tone of friendly reproach, whereupon, the family affirms, they would apparently apologize and fly away. Once he maintained at considerable expense a thoroughly hopeless and useless donkey, and it was his custom, when returning from the office at any hour of the night, to go into the back yard and say "Poor old Don" in a bass voice that carried a block away, whereupon old Don would lift up his own voice ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... owe their origin to causes similar to those which gave birth to ours, and it may not be useless to inquire how they conducted themselves ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... Sozialanthropologie", Jena, 1896.), defended analogous doctrines in Germany; setting the curve representing frequency of talent over against that of income, he attempted to show that all democratic measures which aim at promoting the rise in the social scale of the talented are useless, if not dangerous; that they only increase the panmixia, to the great detriment of the species and ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... fallen back and left us two together. John Mac and Reed had hastened to the cantonment for help, but Pete knew best. It was useless. Even now, after the lapse of nearly forty years, the sorrow of that day lies heavy on me. "Accidental death" the official record was made, and there was no need to change ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... pyramids found in India, they are neither so well designed, nor so well executed: they are, in fact, so very ill constructed that half of them, without any marks of antiquity, appear in ruins; of these useless and whimsical edifices His Majesty's garden at Kew exhibits a specimen, which is not inferior in any respect to the very best I have met with in China. The height of such structures, and the badness of the materials with which they are usually built, contradict the notion that they ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... man, I admit," said the Captain, "would have destroyed the useless envelope sooner than have ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... will greet him, he knows, with approval and pity; if he falls, plead for him; if he suffers, cheer him;—be with him and accompany him always until death is past; and sorrow and sin are no more. Is this mere dreaming, or, on the part of an idle story-teller, useless moralising? May not the man of the world take his moment, too, to be grave and thoughtful? Ask of your own hearts and memories, brother and sister, if we do not live in the dead; and (to speak ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of his fingers was a delight. Later on he shaved me and I always looked forward to going to the barber's. If he were not able to attend to me I felt an incredible sinking of heart. The whole day seemed dull and useless. I used to make a mark in my pocket-diary every time he ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... telling that would give us an inkling of the business. He would aye be harping on the waste of land, and indeed if there was nothing else to be doing, he would be having good red earth carted from useless places and scattered on his own fields, which I think the old monks would be doing round their monasteries long ago, a practice maybe learned from Rome in the early days, but I have no sure ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... of the Leg.—The tibia may be absent completely or in part, more often on one side than on both sides. In either case the leg is short and stunted, the knee is flexed, the foot occupies the position of extreme equino-varus, and the limb is useless. The extent of the defects is demonstrated by the Roentgen rays. Among other defects with which it may be associated, absence or deficient development of the patella is the most frequent. When the upper end of the tibia is absent, the fibula articulates ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... a neutral ship are to be safe from capture unless the ship is running a blockade, which must be effective. Whether Great Britain was well or ill advised in accepting this rule is a question which it is now useless to discuss, for the decision cannot be recalled, and the rule must be regarded as established beyond controversy. Its effect is greatly to diminish the pressure which a victorious navy can bring to bear upon a hostile State. ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... certainly deserved its name. It was about as flat as land could get, and it contained millions upon millions of useless yuccas. Perhaps they were good for something, Malone thought, but they weren't ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... much difference if you did," said Olga. It was really quite useless to attempt to be polite to him if he would come so persistently within snubbing distance. Besides, she really did not owe him any courtesy, after the way he ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... informed himself of his brother's fate, he lost no time in useless regret, which could not restore him to life; but resolving immediately to revenge his death, departed for China; where, after crossing plains, rivers, mountains, deserts, and a long tract of country without delay, he arrived ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... themselves by a rapid movement of one of their hind-feet; and when their backs are rubbed with a stick, so strong is the habit, that they cannot help rapidly scratching the air or the ground in a useless and ludicrous manner. The terrier just alluded to, when thus scratched with a stick, will sometimes show her delight by another habitual movement, namely, by licking the air as if ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... longer less met we tway * And fell out, but ended the useless fray; One night in the palace I found her fou'; * Yet of modesty still there was some display: The veil from her shoulders had slipt; and showed * Her loosened trousers Love's seat and stay: And rattled the breezes her huge hind cheeks * And the branch where two little pomegranates ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... out of place nor useless to this history, to here narrate what happened when they arrived within sight of the coasts of Paria. They encountered by chance a squadron of eighteen canoes full of cannibals engaged in a man-hunt: this was near the Boca ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... eyes of their husbands. Starkad was roused by the tale of this villainy, and went to Russia to destroy the criminal; thinking nothing too hard to overcome, he challenged Wisin, attacked him, made even his tricks useless to him, and slew him. For Starkad covered his blade with a very fine skin, that it might not met the eye of the sorcerer; and neither the power of his sleights nor his great strength were any help to Wisin, for he had to yield to Starkad. Then Starkad, trusting in his bodily strength, fought ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... divided. We must premise that our observations are intended to apply only to those who adhered, from a sincere preference, to one or to the other side. In days of public commotion, every faction, like an Oriental army, is attended by a crowd of camp-followers, a useless and heartless rabble, who prowl round its line of march in the hope of picking up something under its protection, but desert it in the day of battle, and often join to exterminate it after a defeat. England, at the time of which we are treating, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... "blowing their trumpets from the steeps." At Viik, I found a complaint in the post-book, written by an Englishman who had come with us from Hull, stating that the landlord had made him pay five dollars for beating his dog off his own. The complaint was written in English, of course, and therefore useless so far as the authorities were concerned. The landlord whom I expected, from this account, to find a surly, swindling fellow, accosted us civilly, and invited us into his house to see some old weapons, principally battle-axes. ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... smoothly. Jeanne's certainly didn't. She was abandoned to raise three little kids on welfare. Her college diploma turned out to be useless. Jeanne used to help me at Great Oaks in exchange for treatment. During those early years she had done a 30 day juice fast with colonics. Twenty years later at age 60, having survived three children's growing up, surviving the profound, enduring ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... forbid her, or the purpose may pass away," added Richard, "or it may be clearly useless and impossible to make the attempt; but I cannot as a Christian man strive to dissuade her from doing what she can. And as thou saidst, Humfrey, she is changed. She hath borne her modestly and discreetly, ay and truly, through all. The childishness is gone out ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... authorities, and most strongly in the discussion which preceded the War of 1756, that Nova Scotia extended to the St. Lawrence. The boundary of Sir William Alexander's grant was therefore to be changed from a geographical line to a water course as soon as it met with one, and the apparently useless verbiage was introduced to meet every possible contingency. Supposing, however, that it did not extend so far, the northwest angle of his Nova Scotia will be where the meridian line of the St. Croix crosses the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... in a lighter tone. "Perhaps it's a kind of useless foreboding I seem to have pretty often. It may be that—or it may be ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... were streaming now with blood. His left arm was sorely wounded. His thumb hung useless. But with the strange energy of madness he continued the desperate conflict against his unseen foe. Never should Michael turn and yield to the deadly assaults of the Evil One! He rushed on blindly once more, and ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... laughing at the strangers. One insolent fellow said to him, "Telemachus, you are not happy in your guests; first you have this importunate tramp, who comes begging bread and wine and has no skill for work or for hard fighting, but is perfectly useless, and now here is another fellow who is setting himself up as a prophet. Let me persuade you, for it will be much better to put them on board ship and send them off to the Sicels to sell for what ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... the precious metals. It is an amusing commentary on the commonly assumed material outlook of the average man that the article which has won its way to supremacy as currency by its universal desirability, should be the precious metals which are practically useless except for purposes of ornamentation. For inlaying armour and so adorning the person of a semi-barbarous chief, for making into ornaments for his wives, and for the embellishment of the temples of his gods, the precious metals had eminent advantages, ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... cannot be put into the least convenient state to receive your establishment, stores, and provisions, in less than six months. It must also be considered that she grounded on the Brake with a full cargo; from which cause, some defects may appear to render her useless in a shorter period than you can finish your voyage. Added to which, I do not consider myself justified in assuming the responsibility of giving L11,550. for little more than the hull, masts, and rigging of that ship; nor will the master, as ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... never consent. Never! You understand! It's useless to talk about it!" and the Colonel got upon his feet and stepped out upon the balcony, breathing fire and slaughter to all revolutionary schemes. And then Polly knew that she had won the day. When Uncle Dan grew emphatic and peremptory it was a ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... a useless piece of baggage," said I. "I bought it in Benton but I haven't needed it. I can kill a ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... eagles, and two thousand prisoners; onwards still they galloped, and sabred the artillerymen of Ney's seventy-four advanced guns; then severing the traces, and cutting the throats of the artillery horses, they rendered these guns totally useless to the French throughout the remainder of the day. While thus far advanced beyond the British position and disordered by success, they were charged by a large body of French lancers, and driven back with severe loss, till Vandeleur's Light horse came to their aid, ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... going abroad; and when do you return? But that's a useless question. You hardly know when you are coming back, You will find so much to learn." My smile falls ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... private matter," thought Jimmie, when he had calmed down a little, "and I'm bound to regard it as such. The statement can't affect the case against Jack—it is useless to Mr. Tenby—and it would be unwise to make it public for the purposes of denouncing Nevill—at least at present. I will put it away carefully, and give it to Jack when his innocence is proved, which I trust will be very soon. As for Nevill, ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... For, never was a man's heart caught By graces he himself had taught. And fancy not 'tis in the might Of man to do without delight; For, should you in her nothing find To exhilarate the higher mind, Your soul would deaden useless wings With wickedness of lawful things, And vampire pleasure swift destroy Even the memory of joy. So let no man, in desperate mood, Wed a dull girl because she's good. All virtues in his wife soon dim, Except the power of pleasing him, Which may small virtue be, ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... crowded rooms so swiftly, that it seemed useless to try to follow her; besides, Martial, utterly confounded, was in no mood to carry the adventure further. The Countess' laugh found an echo in the boudoir, where the young coxcomb now perceived, between two shrubs, the Colonel and Madame ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac
... long gun of the enemy was not again discharged, and the officers of the loyal ship were assured that it had been rendered useless by ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... admitted, were not all arable but many of them had considerable timber. Such property today would be considered valuable, but in those days of plentitude it passed as undesirable. Some of his enemies accused him of making for himself a reputation for generosity by giving away useless land. There is no evidence, however, that such accusations were made by the Negroes.[505] But be that as it may, the experiment was a failure. It was not successful because of the intractability of the land, the harshness of the climate, and in a great measure, the inefficiency ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... done but submit. When two such powerful Unions amalgamate, resistance is useless, and the law of the land a dead letter. Mr. Bolt, I'm not a rich man; I've got a large family; let me beg of you to release ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... proportion to the grievous sin of rebelling against this covenant of the Lord; (and it seems by the instance before, that whatsoever penalty they shall ordain less than death, will not be justice only but moderation) I say, whatever it shall be, it may be rendered useless and invalid by the forwardness and rejoicings of an obedient people; that all England, as well as Scotland, would rejoice at the oath, and swear with all their hearts. For certainly it will not be so much our duty as our prerogative, as I have shewed you before, to ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... headlong into the Euphrates. Such events may be disbelieved or disregarded; but the charity of a bishop, Acacius of Amida, whose name might have dignified the saintly calendar, shall not be lost in oblivion. Boldly declaring, that vases of gold and silver are useless to a God who neither eats nor drinks, the generous prelate sold the plate of the church of Amida; employed the price in the redemption of seven thousand Persian captives; supplied their wants with affectionate liberality; and dismissed them to their native country, to inform their king of the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... does good to one and to the other; he who assists one does good to one only: hence, we see the imposers of the laws, especially if they are for the common good, hold the eyes fixed whilst compiling these laws. Again, to give useless things to the receiver is also a good, inasmuch as he who gives, shows himself at least to be a friend; but it is not a perfect good, and therefore it is not ready: as if a knight should give to a doctor a shield, and as if the doctor should ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... the number of accidents in the mines. These burdens made the difference of one or two or three per cent, on the dividend in the best mines, threatened the prospect of any dividend on the second best, and made it useless to persevere with the working of a third class, where the ore was of a still lower grade. Such were the considerations which at last determined several of the leading mine-owners to throw in their lot with the Reform party; and the fusion ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... Strathmuir towards sunset, too late to think of attempting the pursuit that day. Indeed, during our trek, I had thought the matter out carefully and come to the conclusion that to try to do so would be useless. We must rest and make preparations; also there was no hope of our overtaking these brutes who already had a clear twelve hours' start, by a sudden spurt. They must be run down patiently by following their spoor, if indeed they could be run down at all before they vanished into ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... the prisoners of rooms will pass in their kind of eternity. In the twilight when everything fades, they will sit down near the light, in the room full of haloes; they will drag themselves to the window's void. Their mouths will join and they will grow tender. They will exchange a first or a last useless glance. They will open their arms, they will caress each other. They will love life ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... THIS EMINENT MAN, ETC.: For these two sentences the original in Blackwood had this, with its addition of good De Quinceyan doctrine: "I used to call him Cyclops Mastigophorus, Cyclops the Whip-bearer, until I observed that his skill made whips useless, except to fetch off an impertinent fly from a leader's head, upon which I changed his Grecian name to Cyclops Diphrelates (Cyclops the Charioteer). I, and others known to me, studied under him the diphrelatic art. Excuse, reader, a word too elegant to be pedantic. And also take this ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... independent of the mother-country for supplies, and sooner than she may be aware of it, will manufacture for themselves. The colonists, like healthy young sons, have been chearfully building up the parent state, and how far Great Britain will be affected, if they should be rendered even barely useless to her, is an object which we conceive is at this very juncture worth the attention ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... pointed out in the Council, when [the news of] my vindication—through this or that accident—comes from there we become reconciled, and eat, as they say, from one plate; and the same on the other side. It is useless, therefore, to take notice of anything in this little ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... Immediately upon the Capture brought the Papers of the said Vessell to him, who having first perused them Sealed them up; that some short time after the said Mackay exprest to him his Desire, in case a certain Paper was found on board, that it would be useless to this Depon't, and that he would have it Concealed, whereupon this Depon't asked him what the Paper was and where in the Vessell it could be found, but the said Mackay would not inform him, and this desire of the said Mackays he repeated several times, and in about two Days ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... of the beauty, and charm, and goodness which raised their sister so high above them in the estimation of all men. So they asked their mother to teach them a spell that should rob Melilot of her charms, and make them useless in the eyes of men. And their mother, who was wise in such arts, taught to each of them a spell, so that together they might ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... three hours' time (the town and castle, without any provocation, playing on our ships,) they did cut all our cables, so as the wind being off the land, did force us to go out, and rendered our fire-ships useless; without doing any thing, but what hurt of course our guns must have done them: we having lost five commanders, besides Mr. Edward Montagu and Mr. Windham. Our fleet is come home to our great grief with not above five weeks' dry, and six days' wet provisions however, ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... and the Marechal de Biron, who was the King's lieutenant in Guienne, had a difference, which was aggravated by the Huguenots. This breach became in a short time so wide that all my efforts to close it were useless. They made their separate complaints to the King. The King my husband insisted on the removal of the Marechal de Biron, and the Marshal charged the King my husband, and the rest of those who were of the pretended reformed religion, with designs contrary to peace. I saw, with ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... as soon as it is necessary to display all the resources of this secret strategy, it is often useless to attempt setting any traps for these satanic creatures. Once women arrive at a point when they willfully deceive, their countenances become as inscrutable as vacancy. Here is an example which came within my ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... appeal for a meeting, but Viola wrote across it in firm letters, "No. It is useless," and returned it to the girl. "Take that to him," she said, careless of the fact that her refusal was open to the eyes of ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... said as an exhortation, that men may learn, first of all, to esteem prayer as something great and precious, and to make a proper distinction between babbling and praying for something. For we by no means reject prayer, but the bare, useless howling and murmuring we reject, as Christ Himself also rejects and prohibits long palavers. Now we shall most briefly and clearly treat of the Lord's Prayer. Here there is comprehended in seven successive articles, or petitions, every need which never ceases to relate to ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... flew open, but she lowered the lids immediately. Her voice shook slightly as she replied: "He is a very great doctor. He will keep poor Mary's secret as long as she lives and nobody in Vienna would doubt his word. Investigations would be useless." ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Father Michel's through your grounds, hoping to catch a sight of her by the light in the writing-room. When I was far toward home I discovered that I had lost the cap she gave me, and turned back for it, but the snow was so deep I thought it useless," Danvers explained. ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... became entangled in some trailing vines. As I regained my feet, I saw Green rising from an encounter with a chain which had tripped him, and we simultaneously abandoned the chase. It was clearly useless to follow them further, but we fired at them with our revolvers in the hope of frightening them into a surrender. One of them instantly stopped, returned our fire, and then continued his flight. This satisfied me that they were old hands at the ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... badly distributed so as to fire at rigging and superstructures only, not at the hulls as the English did. Yet this was not the worst. The worst was that the fighting fleet was cumbered with troopships which might have been useful in boarding, but which were perfectly useless in fighting of any other kind—and the English men-of-war were much too handy to be laid aboard by the lubberly Spanish troopships. Santa Cruz worked himself to death. In one of his last dispatches he begged for more and better guns. All Philip could do was to authorize the purchase of whatever ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... cannot touch the mass of our children. For the average parent or child nothing is really available except the established practice; and this is what makes it so important that the established practice should be a sound one, and so useless for clever individuals to disparage it unless they can organize an alternative practice and make ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... Mary considered her moves to-night, studied the room idly, the thousand crowded, useless little possessions so dear to the sick; the china statuettes, the picture post-cards, the photographs and match-boxes and old calendars, the dried "whispering-grass" and the penwipers. Her eyes reached an old photograph; Susan ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... and soldiers no small amount of the contents of the bales committed to his charge, as payment for the services he had demanded of them, and in purchasing expensive luxuries. As he could not walk and was worse than useless, Stanley was obliged to send the sick man, under the charge of Mabruki, thirty miles away to the village of Mpwapwa, to the chief of which place he promised an ample reward if he ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... These runs to the mountain were very frequent; sometimes to draw, sometimes to recite, always to see Alice and be happy. Ellen grew rosy and hardy, and in spite of her separation from her mother, she was very happy too. Her extreme and varied occupation made this possible. She had no time to indulge useless sorrow; on the contrary, her thoughts were taken up with agreeable matters, either doing or to be done; and at night she was far too tired and sleepy to lie awake musing. And besides, she hoped that her mother would ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... 38). Through illness he was not present at the battle of Pharsalus, but afterwards was offered the command by Cato the Younger at Corcyra, and was threatened with death by the young Cn. Pompeius when he refused to accept it. Thinking it useless to continue the struggle, he sailed to Brundisium, where he remained until the 12th of August 47, when, after receiving a kind letter from Caesar, he went to Rome. Under Caesar's dictatorship Cicero abstained from politics. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... Society turned their attention to it, they considered whether some middle path might not be arrived at which would satisfy reasonable people on both sides of the water. They laid down four principles to guide them. They thought it useless, considering the present population of Canada, to propose a manufacture clause, and therefore set that aside. In the second place, they thought the system of licensing was far too complicated to be worked ...
— The Copyright Question - A Letter to the Toronto Board of Trade • George N. Morang
... that were defying the methods of the ranchmen, and increasing steadily in numbers. Now the wolver told me of the various ventures that Penroof had made with different kinds of Hounds; of Foxhounds too thin-skinned to fight; of Greyhounds that were useless when the animal was out of sight; of Danes too heavy for the rough country, and, last, of the composite pack with some of all kinds, including at times a Bull-terrier to lead ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... with, a tendency to the right at the entrance. At the exit it went to the right the first time and continued so to do for several trials, but later it learned by failure that there was a blocked passage as well as an open one. In the tables the records refer to choices. It was useless to record time or to lay much stress upon the course taken, as it was sometimes very complicated; all that is given, therefore, is the action in reference to the passages. Right in every case refers to the choice of the open way, and wrong to the choice of the blocked ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... would be true to him for ever and ever. Of course they could not marry. What!—would she go to him and be a clog round his neck, and a weight upon him for ever, bringing him down to the gutter by the burden of her own useless and unworthy self? No. She would never so injure him. She would not even hamper him by an engagement. But yet she would be true to him. She had an idea that in spite of all her protestations,—which, ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... canes, and fired: my aim was true, the brute fell mortally wounded, though not dead; half of the dogs were upon it in a moment, but, shaking them off, the animal attempted to re-ascend the tree. The effort, however, was above its strength, and, after two useless springs, it attempted to slip away. At that moment the larger dogs sprang upon the animal, which could struggle no longer, as life was ebbing fast with the stream of blood. Ere I had time to reload my rifle, ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... which Lord Dundonald was there engaging; and the result of that inspection was that he promptly arranged for the introduction, at the public expense, of the rotary engine in the Firefly, a small steam-vessel which, like many others, the Government had bought and found useless, by reason of its clumsy machinery. In her, with no more than the usual delay occasioned by the co-operation of official routine with private enterprise, in which Lord Dundonald had the assistance of Mr. Renton and Messrs. ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... boys," he said, "I pity you. You are bent on a desperate and foolish course, the end of which no man can foresee. I know it is useless to reason with you on the score of danger; but I warn you that you are violating the laws of God and the Church, and that no blessing comes from such action. And yet," he continued, placing his hand in the breast-pocket of his coat, and drawing out a blue official ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... rooms being slightly open, when he muttered something about "what cursed folly!" When I had finished my account Oaklands turned towards Cumberland, and asked in a stern voice "what he had to say to this statement?" Receiving no answer, he continued: But it is useless, sir, to ask you: the truth of what Fairlegh has said is self-evident—the next question is, What is to be done about it?" He paused for a moment as if in thought, and then resumed: "In the position in which I ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... not now knowing why, as perhaps he ought. The portrait, I suppose, may be in Belvoir Castle; the artistic Why of the baldness is this BATTLE OF WARBURG, as above. An Affair otherwise of no moment. Ferdinand had soon to quit the Diemel, or to find it useless for him, and to try other methods,—fencing gallantly, but too weak for Broglio; and, on the whole, had a difficult Campaign of it, against that considerable ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... add, that when you write verses you would not fail, from time to time, to let me have a sight of them; provided you will allow me to defer criticism on your diction and versification till we meet. My eyes are so often useless both for reading and writing, that I cannot tax the eyes and pens of others with writing down observations which to indifferent persons ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... prohibition, suppression, restraint, and extirpation. Its revenge, as the psychoanalysts are showing us every day, has been great. Insanity, hysteria, neuroses, morbid fears and compulsions, weaken and render useless and unhappy thousands of humans who are unconscious victims of the attempt to pit individual powers against this great natural force. In the solution of the problem of sex, we should bear in mind what the successful method of humanity has been in its conquest, or rather ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... further in compliance than conscience would allow to any real catholic; and they appear to have stopped short in this career only because they perceived in the council such a determination to strip them, under one pretext or another, of all their preferments, as manifestly rendered further compliance useless. Both of them had policy enough to restrain them, under such circumstances, from degrading their characters gratuitously, and depriving themselves of the merit of having suffered for a faith which might soon become again predominant. They received ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... tactical point of view all this was useless, and therefore dangerous. But for a brief twenty minutes we were gods, Utopians, Olympians, joyously planning out a scheme of things as they should be, to the entire oblivion of things as they are. That is always ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... said magnanimously, handing him the rifle, which he received in a very gingerly fashion. After all, I reflected, there is nothing much more useless ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... Zeus at length, from his royal throne, "it is useless for you to try longer to deceive us. Return the cows, make up the quarrel, and Apollo will ...
— Harper's Young People, May 25, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... head. 'I would with pleasure, to oblige you, were it in my power; but Lord Monmouth has particularly desired that I should take up my residence here permanently. The servants are now my servants. It is useless to ring the bell. For your Ladyship's sake, I wish everything to be accomplished with tranquillity, and, if possible, friendliness and good feeling. You can have even a week for the preparations for your departure, if necessary. I will take that upon myself. ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... off Catholics and Protestants against each other, disregarding his pledges to both alike, broke his solemn treaty with the Dutch and with his own ministers, and betrayed his country for French money to spend on his own pleasures. It is useless to paint the dishonor of a court which followed gayly after such a leader. The first Parliament, while it contained some noble and patriotic members, was dominated by young men who remembered the excess of Puritan zeal, but forgot the despotism and injustice which had compelled Puritanism to ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... reasonably concludes, from the testimony of Polybius, that galleys of a still larger size had been constructed in the Punic wars. Since the establishment of the Roman empire over the Mediterranean, the useless art of building large ships of war had probably been ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... supplied with instruments and observers. The progress of science is constantly detecting errors of method in older observations, and many laboriously constructed tables of meteorological phenomena are now thrown aside as fallacious, and therefore worse than useless, because some condition necessary to secure accuracy of result was neglected, in obtaining and recording the data ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... insect indignantly retort that, though his own ancestors have borne coat-armour for seventeen generations, and though he himself was brought up so utterly and aristocratically useless as to have been unable, at twenty years of age, to polish his own boots, yet he is now, mentally and physically, a man fit for anything— I can only reply, in the words of Portia, that I fear me my lady his mother played false with a smith. But this, again, would be claiming ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... carbines were much superior in every way to their Enfields. They would shoot much farther, and a great deal more rapidly, so that the Virginians were not long in discovering that they were losing more than they gained in this useless warfare. ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... speak so warmly in their favour. Learn that the peasant who does not pay his rent does just as well in cutting his throat, as certain people would do in holding their tongues instead of spoiling my appetite with useless speeches. Clerk-of-the-kitchen, ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... washin' fer the Camp, an' helps with the dishes, an' sews when she kin git a job at it. But there ain't none of 'em reg'lar, an' sometimes there ain't more'n enough fer us two t' live on. Then she gits pretty tired an' discouraged like, an' says Baldy's a useless expense, an' keeps me from doin' my chores, 'cause I like ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... principles regulated the financial system of M. Turgot, economy in expenditure and freedom in trade; everywhere he ferreted out abuses, abolishing useless offices and payments, exacting from the entire administration that strict probity of which he set the example. Louis XVI. supported him conscientiously at that time in all his reforms; the public made fun of it. "The king," it was said, "when he considers himself ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... of the world had to be got through, and man often had to set love aside—for honour. "But, good Lord!" Northrup argued, apparently to his useless right hand, what would become of the spiritual, if woman got to setting up little gods and bowing down before them? Why, she would forego her God-given heritage. To her, love must be all. Above all else. Why, the very foundations of life were founded upon that. What could be higher ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... the special class in public city schools" to provide for those children "who are to remain without (that is, cannot learn) Latin." Instead of forcing them to attempt to learn Donatus, which he said was useless for them, he urged that a special class (school) be organized to train them to become useful merchants, artists, and mechanics. In 1751 Rector Henzky, of Prenzlau, issued a treatise to show "That ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... see tall ice-cliffs on the left, and icebergs rising up here and there out of the frozen sea," he answered. Several times on hearing this Saunders declared it was useless to go on, and even Foubister once proposed building a snow-hut as well as their blindness would allow them, and then lying ...
— Archibald Hughson - An Arctic Story • W.H.G. Kingston
... insulto m. insult. intencin f. intention, purpose, mind. intenso, -a intense, intent, keen. intentar attempt, endeavor, try. interponerse interpose, intervene. interrumpir interrupt. intrpido, -a courageous, dauntless. inundar flood, deluge. intil adj. useless. invencible adj. invincible. invencin f. invention. invisible adj. invisible, unseen. ir go, be, be at stake; —— gerund go on, keep; —— a be about to, be going to; —se ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... Tribune say? It did say, a few months ago, that if the effort to crush the rebellion failed this spring, it would be useless to prolong the war—and that peace should be made on the best practicable terms. Since the beginning of the war, I doubt not 500,000 men have been precipitated upon Virginia. Where are they now? In the third year of ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... remarks on each of these theories may be neither unseasonable nor useless, if they serve to illustrate the different kinds of Atheism which have sprung from them, and to place in a clear and strong light the radical difference which subsists between both, and the doctrine of Providence, as it is taught ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... turned out to be one of those magnificent and exceptional days which appear to have been cut out of summer and interpolated into autumn. It was bright, warm, and calm, so calm that the boat's sail was useless, and the crew had to row; but this was, in Minnie's estimation, no disadvantage, for it gave her time to see the caves and picturesque inlets which abound all along that rocky coast. It also gave her time ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... least you must possess sufficient knowledge of the world to prevent you, in your youth, from leaving the high road, and wasting your time in useless dreaming." ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... is useless; your youth is already renewed; your age is only what it appears to be, and you do ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... unbroken. The swamp on either side of the road was filled with birds, who flew in and out and perched on the dry planks in the walks. An abandoned electric-car track, raised aloft on a high embankment, crossed the avenue. Here and there a useless hydrant thrust its head far above the muddy soil, sometimes out of the swamp itself. They had left the lake behind them, but the freshening evening breeze brought its ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... That page of my experiences is the one I care least to recall, and would most gladly forget. I am not going to specify, or give names of either localities or persons; but, knowing what I know, it is useless to approach me on this topic with the usual good-natured and optimistic, if somewhat unctuous and conventional, commonplaces on general uprightness and the tendency to improved conditions and a higher standard. I know better! I have ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams
... as I can understand, the line of respectability lies between that which is useful and that which is useless. If women do that which is of no value, their work is honorable. If they do practical work, it is dishonorable. That our young women may escape the censure of doing dishonorable work, I shall particularize. You may knit a tidy for the back of an ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... Taking itself within, it sheds a vital warmth through your Limbs, and inspires joyous strength in your heart. Then if There is anything undigested, with fire's help, it heats the Hidden channels, and loosens the thin pores, through which the Useless moisture exudes, and seeds of diseases ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... those to which Glyndon's thoughts could have referred, "Sir Humphry Davy told me that he did not consider this undiscovered art as impossible; but should it ever be discovered, it would certainly be useless.") Man cannot contradict the Laws of Nature. But are all the laws of ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... is very perplexing, for the fish bores its nose into some deep spot below a stone, and refuses to budge. Pulling him this way and that way had no effect. Jerking him was useless. Even throwing stones at him was of no avail. I know not how long he kept me there, but at last I lost patience, and resolved to force him out, or break the line. But the line was so good and strong that it caused the rod to ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... stores, and camp equipage were destroyed. A wagon train of twenty wagons and fifty mules were captured and a number of cavalry horses. Abundant supplies of coffee, sugar, etc., etc., were found in the camp. The guns captured were useless breech-loading carbines, which ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... arms to him. "Listen to me, Jacques." He motioned to her that it was useless for her to speak. Yet he wished to listen to her, and already he was listening with avidity. He detested and rejected in advance what she would say, but nothing else ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... That had occurred fully an hour before, but she continued in the same posture, a grave, pathetic figure, her face sobered and careworn beyond her years, her eyes dry and staring, one brown hand grasping unconsciously the old man's useless rifle. She would scarcely have been esteemed attractive even under much happier circumstances and assisted by dress, yet there was something in the independent poise of her head, the steady fixedness of her posture, which ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... called and coaxed him much, he nevertheless refused to go. Then the king said, "Remember who is absent." All replied, "There is no one else except U Manik Raitong." The Siem replied, "Call, then, U Raitong." Some of the people said, "It is useless to call that unfortunate, who is like a dog or a cat; leave him alone, oh king." The king replied, "No, go and call him, for every man must come." So they called him, and when he arrived and the child saw him, the child laughed and followed ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... steering here, a wrong tack there, and then ship ran against ship, the great galleasses became entangled and helpless, carried by the wind into the midst of the enemy, or borne away where they were useless, and the Turkish galleys had it all their own way. Loredano's flagship burnt down to the water, and other vessels were destroyed by fire. Y[a]ni's big ships played an important part in the action. Two galleasses, each containing a thousand men, and two other ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... pleasures as require movements equally rhythmic with those entailed by labor are almost equally agreeable, with the added advantage of being useless. Dancing, which is not only rhythmic movement, pure and simple, undebased with any element of utility, but is capable of performance under conditions positively baneful, is for these reasons the most engaging of them all; and if it were but ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... Binnie. "That's the man who wrote about 'gilded subalterns loafing luxuriously in cushioned cars in a giddy round of useless and pampered ease'?" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... that it would be useless to protest further. Besides, there was a growing feeling of sickness and pain. The man took the express and mail packages and tied them on one of the ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster
... It was useless trying to shirk the persistency of that look. "Eight hours, perhaps, sir," the Little Chemist answered, with ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... for D'Artagnan, therefore, at Fontainebleau, for to do so would be useless; but, with the permission of our readers, follow him to the Rue des Lombards, where he was located at the sign of the Pilon d'Or, in the house of our old friend Planchet. It was about eight o'clock in the evening, ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... all the most virtuous and honourable considerations of wisdom and duty, devotes his whole attention to the practice of speaking, that man is training himself to become useless to himself, and a citizen mischievous to his country; but a man who arms himself with eloquence in such a manner as not to oppose the advantage of his country, but to be able to contend in behalf of them, he appears to me to be one who both ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... because it was an instrument to promote the political emancipation of the Jews. The work of assimilation set on foot in the Occident, he realized, was not applicable in the East of Europe, and would even be useless there. No vain illusions on the subject possessed him. He was very much wrought up against such religious reforms in Judaism as, he believed, would inevitably split the people into sects, and sow the seed of disunion and indifference to national ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... fleets the vision o'er the formful brain, This moment hurrying wild th' impassioned soul, The nest in nothing lost. 'Tis so to him, The dreamer of this earth, an idle blank; A sight of horror to the cruel wretch, Who all day long in sordid pleasure rolled, Himself an useless load, has squandered vile, Upon his scoundrel train, what might have cheered A drooping ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... understand, or was impatient to get it over . . . at any rate he started to cross just as the Herr had both hands busy. He slipped at the third step . . . I heard, and turned again in time to see the jerk come. The Herr bent backward, but it was useless: he ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... mask of honesty, Retain his primeval meanness When possessed of ten thousand a year: And having daily deserved the gibbet for what he did, Was at last condemned for what he could not do. Oh! indignant reader! Think not his life useless to mankind! Providence connived at his execrable designs, To give to after ages A conspicuous proof and example Of how small estimation is exorbitant wealth In the sight of God, By his bestowing it on the ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... brought Him indeed within the proper sphere of the fine arts; but the religious idea which He represents removed Him beyond the reach of sculpture. This is an all-important consideration. It is to this that our whole argument is tending. Therefore to enlarge upon this point will not be useless. ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... Sam came as fast as he could, but he had to look out for his footing, and his antagonist did not. Still, he reached the ground first, and his sweetheart breathed more easily. It looked as if the porcupine reasoned thus: "My quills are useless against a foe so far away; I must come to close quarters with him." But, of course, the stupid creature had no such mental process, and formed no such purpose. He had found the tree unsafe, and his ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... hair on the face—such as moustache or beard—are very usually resorted to for altering a man's appearance but these are perfectly useless in the eye of a trained detective unless the eyebrows also are changed in ...
— My Adventures as a Spy • Robert Baden-Powell
... and energy; then a chill had thrown him back, and for months he sagged downwards; never very ill, but always losing vitality. The old depression seemed to come back to him tenfold. He could see nothing good in life: a cripple, a useless cripple. His parents were dead; save for a brother in Salonica, he was alone in the world. He was always courteous, always gentle; but a wall of misery seemed to cut him off ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... chap, we all worship Joan—at a distance. She is not to be painted. Tears and prayers are useless. She has a flinty father—a fisherman, who looks upon painting as a snare of the devil and sees every artist already wriggling on the trident in his mind's eye. Joan has also a lover, who would rather behold ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... field is flowing through the ditch. The tiles should be laid with all care, on a perfectly regulated fall,—using strips of board under them if the bottom is shaky or soft,—as on this line depends the success of all the drains above it, which might be rendered useless by a single badly laid tile at this point, or by any other cause of ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... forever, and until the forests grow again it can not be replaced. The sand and stones from the mountain sides are washed loose and come rolling down to cover the arable lands, and in consequence, throughout this part of China, many formerly rich districts are now sandy wastes, useless for human cultivation and even for pasture. The cities have been of course seriously affected, for the streams have gradually ceased to be navigable. There is testimony that even within the memory of men now living there has been a serious diminution ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... sky, the fluidity of calm water, the melancholy of the distance, the shiver of short waves rippled by the breeze. Boudin is a learned colourist of grey tones. His Impressionism consists in the exclusion of useless details, his comprehension of reflections, his feeling for values, the boldness of his composition and his faculty of directly perceiving nature and the transparency of atmosphere: he reminds sometimes of Constable and of Corot. Boudin's production ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... valley to Lookout Mountain. Lookout Mountain was also fortified and held by the enemy, who also kept troops in Lookout valley west, and on Raccoon Mountain, with pickets extending down the river so as to command the road on the north bank and render it useless to us. In addition to this there was an intrenched line in Chattanooga valley extending from the river east of the town to Lookout Mountain, to make the investment complete. Besides the fortifications on Mission Ridge, there was a line at the base of the hill, with ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... their differences to lend themselves willingly to a reconciliation between the two enemies ties, upon whose contests their existence and their revenues depend. If men would cease to be tempted and to sin, the ministry of priests would become useless to them. Manicheism is evidently the support of all religions; but unfortunately the devil, being invented to remove all suspicion of malice from Divinity, proves to us at every moment the powerlessness or the awkwardness of ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... and all her thoughts were intent upon making her friends happy. She seemed to live in them more than in herself, and from sympathy arose the greatest pleasure and pain of her existence. Her sympathy was not of that useless kind which is called forth only by the elegant fictitious sorrows of a heroine of romance; hers was ready for all the occasions of real life; nor was it to be easily checked by the imperfections of those to whom she could be of service. At this moment, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... Sunshine and Brightness for the return of the dead Summer. The light fell on the face of the girl in the Picture, but it did not lift the Shadow. Nor did the dead Summer return to gladden the heart of the Autumn, full of too late and useless regret. "No, I am not certain," said the Youth, touched with a Doubt. It was only a touch, but his step was heavy and a trifle less quick, as he went down the street to his Duty of the day. Again he passed by the ...
— The Story of a Picture • Douglass Sherley
... of his last three men go down in a welter of blood. His pistols were empty and useless. There was a moment of wild physical struggle. Then, the next, he was borne down under the rush, and life was literally ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... suggestion, the author is well aware that Ephemerides of the four chief asteroids have been given annually in the Greenwich Nautical Almanac; but for the object proposed they are utterly useless. Will any astronomer contend that these Ephemerides are true to ten seconds of arc? If not, they are useless for the purpose suggested above, and the theory wants revision. And it is evident that any objection ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... weak and useless, how did they get out here?" countered Krafft. "To compass such a journey takes a certain energy, a certain sum of money, a certain fund of hope. The money goes, the energy drains, the ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... think so," said Ralph. "But it was not poverty that drove me from the busy world to this solitude. Rich or poor, I had money enough for my wants. Here I have little use for money. To me it is a useless and valueless thing. You need have no hesitation in taking this. But on second thoughts, I had better give you more." And he was ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... twenty-three degrees, low rooms and short windows would be entirely satisfactory. In the torrid zone, where it is not safe to build more than one story for fear of earthquakes and tornadoes, where chambers would be useless, and where the grand question is not how to keep warm but how to keep cool, the higher the better. For houses in the temperate zones the medium height is the safest, the best—and the most artistic. If any one ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... judge men by the standards of our own age. The ancients rarely felt an international humanity, and in his own time "Caesar's clemency" was proverbial. As he was always careful not to waste in useless fighting the lives of his soldiers, so he was always true to his own precept, "Spare the citizens." The way in which he repeatedly forgave his enemies when they were in his power was an example to many a Christian conqueror. The best of his antagonists showed themselves bloodthirsty ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... before the Festival, father came home a little earlier from his work, to untie the palm-branch. He had put it away very carefully in a corner, warning Leibel not to attempt to go near it. But it was useless warning him. Leibel had his own troubles. The top of the citron haunted him. Why had he wanted to bite it off? What good had it done him to taste it when it was bitter as gall? It was for nothing he had spoiled the citron, and rendered it unfit ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... express a wish, because for several months she had been so quiet and listless that she, Stephanion, had become anxious about her. Meanwhile, Daphne had tried honestly to conceal her feelings from the old man, but such games of hide and seek were useless against the master's keen penetration. He spared no pains in the preparations for the journey, and the girl now seemed already transformed. This was caused solely by meeting her cousins again; but if any one should ask her whether Daphne preferred ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the place, for it was one of those useless rivers, so commercial men called it, where the most you could do was pleasure-boating; barges only being able to ascend to Coleby Bridge, a sort of busy colony from the town, two ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... represents the plow patented by Charles Newbold on June 26, 1797, the first American patent for a cast-iron plow. Moldboard, share, and landside were cast in one piece. If the plow broke, it became totally useless. Not until the parts were made in separate pieces did the iron plow come into wide use. The cast iron broke more readily than did the later wrought-iron plows. Gift of United States Department of ...
— Agricultural Implements and Machines in the Collection of the National Museum of History and Technology • John T. Schlebecker
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