"Desultory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a mere mocking-bird, though it did not quite provide him with any prevailing or wholly original pipe of his own. Britannia's Pastorals (the third book of which remained in MS. for more than two centuries) is a narrative but extremely desultory poem, in fluent and somewhat loose couplets, diversified with lyrics full of local colour, and extremely pleasant to read, though hopelessly difficult to analyse in any short space, or indeed in any space at all. Browne seems to have meandered on exactly as the fancy took ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... accomplish as much as any ordinary half-dozen people put together. He formed part of the much- despised band of fellows in his form contemptuously termed "muggers." In other words, he read hard, and took no part in the desultory amusements which consumed the odd moments of so many in the house. And yet he was an excellent cricketer and runner, as the school was bound to acknowledge whenever it called out its champions to do battle for ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... and arranged with Romano's Battery for mutual alarms if any gas should come too near. An hour later I was relieved in the Command Post and turned in. As I was undressing, I heard the wind rising again and the telephonists next door baling out their dug-out. We were keeping up a desultory fire all night to harass any further attacks that might be attempted. The Major, who had been out on a Front Line Reconnaissance that morning in the neighbourhood of Merna, had come in for some very heavy ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... it may not be uninteresting to my readers to receive some desultory anecdotes that I have heard concerning one or two of the leading monsters, by whom the horrors upon which ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... who had gathered round Enceladus, shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders, and a long and desultory conversation ensued upon the copious and very controversial subject of Re-action. In the meantime Rhoetus, a young Titan, whispered to one of his companions, that for his part he was convinced that the only way to beat the Olympians was to turn them into ridicule; and that he would accordingly commence ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... the men opened their line to cover a wide stretch of the mountain, and plunged upward through the scrub of pines and oaks. There was much running about of the dogs, and desultory barking, corrected by spicy admonitions from their masters, until the ascent's steepness forced silence upon them by the ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... afternoon he began work on another tale. It was his purpose to complete four or five stories before he sent any away. But to-day he did not get beyond half a dozen desultory start-offs. From McClintock's came an infernal tinkle-tinkle, tump-tump! There was no composing with such a sound hammering upon the ear. But eventually Spurlock laughed. Not so bad. Battle, murder, and sudden death—and an old chap like ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... begin to realize this. It is a great defect in our social system, that, when a woman has left school and settled down in life, she considers it the signal for her to quit all mental acquisition except what she may gather from her desultory reading, and, henceforth, her family and her immediate neighborhood absorb her whole soul under ordinary circumstances. The great majority of our countrywomen thus grow careworn, narrow-minded, self-absorbed. Now this ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... overwhelmed by this disaster. All his warriors were terror-stricken, and feared to remain in the fort, lest they should experience the same doom which had overwhelmed their companions. In their desultory wars, the loss of a few men was deemed a great disaster. To have six or seven hundred of their warriors, hitherto deemed invincible, in one hour shot or burned to ashes, was to them inexpressibly awful. In dismay, they set fire to the royal fortress and to all ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... I venture to entreat a gracious hearing; and if what I shall say from an affection tested for almost forty years rather than for mere rhetorical effect—by no means well composed, but rather in brief sentences, and even in desultory fashion—may seem worthy neither of him who is honored nor of them who honor, then I must remark that here you may expect only a preliminary outline, a sketch, yes, only the contents and, if you so will, the marginal notes ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Several desultory remarks were made in the audience. Presently an elderly lady—a Mrs. Maginley—arose and expressed her opinions. She had confidence in Mr. Lincoln, but denounced Gen. Banks, who, she said, was a hero in one place and a slave-driver in another. As next President, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... keeps unremitting command over every possible touch of each key and at the same time seeks sweeping mastery over vast and complex harmonies. So we, if we would have the obedience of our vocabularies, dare not lag into desultory attention to either words when disjoined or words as potentially combined into the larger units of ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Making his desultory pacings from end to end of the gallery, Cromwell considered that in that speech he had done a good morning's work, for assuredly these men put him in peril. More than one of these dangerous proclaimings of loyalty to him rather than to the King had ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... combat a people who are animated by one spirit against him." Tory and Whig alike held that "never had so happy an opportunity existed for Britain to strike a bold stroke for the rescue of the world"; and Canning at once resolved to change the system of desultory descents on colonies and sugar islands for a vigorous warfare in the Peninsula. Supplies were sent to the Spanish insurgents with reckless profusion, and two small armies placed under the command of Sir John Moore and Sir Arthur Wellesley for service in the ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... the marks of a certain wear and tear in the face which neither his bath nor his valet had been able to obliterate. The thin lips—thin for a man so fat, and which showed, more than any other feature, something of the desultory firmness of his character—drooped at the corners. The eyes were half their size, the snap all out of them, the whites lost under the swollen lids. His greeting, moreover, had ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the ambition of France, had acquired in two centuries. The Romans had frequently acquired more in a single year. They severely and in every part of it criticised the reign of Louis XIV., whose irregular and desultory ambition had more provoked than endangered Europe. Indeed, they who will be at the pains of seriously considering the history of that period will see that those French politicians had some reason. They who will not take the trouble of reviewing it through all its wars ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... In that year the defeat and massacre of the last army of law and order in the lava beds of California extinguished the final fires of enlightened patriotism and quenched in blood the monarchical revival. Thenceforth armed opposition to anarchy was confined to desultory and insignificant warfare waged by small gangs of mercenaries in the service of wealthy individuals and equally feeble bands of prescripts fighting for their lives. In that year, too, "the Three Presidents" were driven from their capitals, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... paused, and all were happier that morning, though none knew why. Days passed, desultory and sweet, and with a pile of books about him, he lay in a long cane chair under the trees; then the book would drop on his knees, and blowing smoke in curling wreaths, he lost himself in dramatic meditations. It was pleasant to ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... no time for divided councils. If I would have you remember anything I have said in these desultory remarks, it would be to remember at this critical hour in the nation's history we must not be divided. The triumphs of the war are yet to be written in ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... preoccupation with life, not with death, that filled the pale galleries within. Today the eighteen hives lay under their winter covering, and the eager creatures within slept. Only one or two strayed sometimes to the early arabis, desultory and sad, driven home again by the frosty air to await the purple times of honey. The happiest days of Abel's life were those when he sat like a bard before the seething hives and harped to the muffled roar of sound that came ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... visited with her. We have walked together or sat down together, and our intimacy grows with the seasons. What I have learned about her ways I have learned easily, almost unconsciously, while fishing or camping or idling about. My desultory habits have their disadvantages, no doubt, but they have their advantages also. A too strenuous pursuit defeats itself. In the fields and woods more than anywhere else all things come to those who wait, because all things are on the move, and are sure ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... a letter from Friend Barton, and was preparing to read it aloud to the children. They were in the kitchen, where the boys had been helping Dorothy, in a desultory manner, to shell corn for the chickens; but now all was silence, while Rachel wiped her glasses and turned the large sheet of paper, squared with ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... necessarily had been desultory. For his History it had to be concentrated. He distrusted the exactness of his information, and was willing to accept advice freely. For criticism, Greek, Mosaic, Oriental and remoter antiquities, he consulted the learned ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... and Margaret;" of which, though it contains nothing very striking or difficult, he has been envied the reputation; and plagiarism has been boldly charged, but never proved. Not long afterwards he published the "Excursion" (1728); a desultory and capricious view of such scenes of nature as his fancy led him, or his knowledge enabled him, to describe. It is not devoid of poetical spirit. Many of his images are striking, and many of the paragraphs are elegant. The cast of diction seems to be copied from Thomson, whose "Seasons" ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... expansion successively vanished like soap bubbles; they seemed to approach his very face, and anon were an immeasurable distance away. He heard, somewhere, the continual throbbing of a great drum, with desultory bursts of far music, inconceivably sweet, like the tones of an aeolian harp. He knew it for the sunrise melody of Memnon's statue, and thought he stood in the Nileside reeds, hearing, with exalted sense, that immortal anthem through the ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... wind, no motion; the little whirlwinds of dust that arose settled quickly down, the desultory breezes which had caused them departing as mysteriously as they had come. In the blighting heat the country lay, dead, spreading to the infinite horizons; in the sky no speck floated against the dome of blue. More desolate than a derelict on the calm surface of the trackless ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... breeze lisped never so faintly in the tree-tops; here and there bird-notes fell, liquid, desultory, like drops of rain after a shower; and constantly one heard the cool music of the river. The sun, filtering through worlds and worlds of leaves, shed upon everything a green-gold penumbra. The air, warm and still, was sweet with garden-scents. The lake, ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... evening she took great pains to explain an ambitious scheme, he said, "O Miss Marcia, such a thing would be quite impossible! You would want years of thorough training before you could attempt it. I should advise something less arduous and better suited to a young lady's desultory pursuits. You have no idea ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... incident occurred which must close this desultory sketch. It happened one day, while the Countess was in a notary's office, for the purpose of signing some deeds, that a tall, grave, and eccentric-looking old gentleman entered, and seeing the notary engaged, took his seat to wait his turn. After completing her signature of the deeds, the Countess, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... being his occupation. The adjutant, being newly married to a gaunt female, who, I hope, nagged him as he us, preferred to take his meals at home. Smallweed, who had somehow got made quartermaster, couldn't go old Heavysterne, he said, and so kept as long as he could to his desultory habits of living as a citizen and a bachelor. So our mess consisted of the major, who exercised a paternal care over the rest of us, superintending, indeed often joining in, our amusements and discussions, our quarrels and makings up; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Virginia, sauntered about the deck and presently approaching an elderly lady who sat somewhat apart from the rest, lifted his cap with a smiling "How do you do, Mrs. Noyes?" and taking an empty chair by her side entered into a desultory conversation. ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... the United States, ... although it is known that the trade still exists to a most lamentable extent."[23] Indeed, all that an American slaver need do was to run up a Spanish or a Portuguese flag, to be absolutely secure from all attack or inquiry on the part of United States vessels. Even this desultory method of suppression was not regular: in 1826 "no vessel has been despatched to the coast of Africa for several months,"[24] and from that time until 1839 this country probably had no slave-trade police upon the seas, except in the Gulf of ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... in a private dining-room at the "Ritz," and Olivia found the dinner delightful. The three men, after some desultory talk about common friends and the ordinary London subjects, fell to talking about their work and their fighting in France. She was most pleased by the evident respect and admiration with which the other two regarded her husband. It was a new experience for her ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... of the swamp to guard the crossings. Jackson and Magruder began pressing him early on the 30th in his rear, while Longstreet, A.P. Hill, and others were marching with might and main to intercept him on the other side. After some desultory firing, Jackson found McClellan's rear guard too strong to assail, by direct assault, so his divisions, with Magruder's, were ordered around to join forces with Hill and Longstreet. The swamp was impassable, except at the few crossings, and they were strongly guarded, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... watered by the Pasig River, and the Augustinian convents therein; and continues his account, in like manner, for Panay and the other islands in which that order has its missions—throughout furnishing much valuable, although desultory, information regarding social and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... were posted. He noticed it predicted continued fair. Then he turned and walked in the street for about a block, gazing in shop windows. There was nothing in any of them that he particularly wanted. He stopped at a street corner and looked up and down both streets. A few desultory pedestrians went walking hither and yon, leisurely, with no apparent purpose. It was the lull of supper hour and there was an orange glow that penetrated even down to the streets which were mere canyons between sombre, artificial cliffs of masonry. To the west a small patch ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... a desultory fashion, and a daily interchange of shots was wont to take place between the naval and military forces. This situation continued for the remainder of the year 1893, and, as time went on, the position of the Government became rather ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... rather melancholy, desultory thoughts, Blanche Farrow suddenly experienced a very peculiar sensation. It was that of finding herself as if impelled to look up from the embroidery-frame ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... facility as a writer, and for twenty years has maintained a quasi or direct connection with the press. He is not lacking in the culture of desultory reading, and when he chooses to do so can bear himself like a gentleman. Of such a thing as dignity of character, he appears to have but a faint conception. Pedantry is more to him than profundity, and to tickle the ear of the town ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... sent them alongside of their comrade, who quickly caught the stern of the bark. The women plied their paddles, the Esquimau gave a shout of triumph, and half immersed in the water, was dragged away from shore. A yell of anger, and, soon after, a desultory discharge of firearms, told that the Indians ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... the fallen-out contingent, which gravely unpiled its arms and marched back to its lines, amid a little desultory cheering from some few by-standers who ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... His wife accompanied him, but so hot a climate was not considered good for a young girl, and Lucie was sent to a school at Bromley. She must have been as great a novelty to the school as the school-life was to her, for with a great deal of desultory knowledge she was singularly deficient in many rudiments of ordinary knowledge. She wrote well already at fifteen, and corresponded often with Mrs. Grote and other friends of her parents. {4} At sixteen she determined to be baptized and confirmed as a member of the Church of England ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... during the latter part of January, the main attack was not developed until Feb. 2, when the enemy began to move toward the Ismailia Ferry. They met a reconnoitring party of Indian troops of all arms, and a desultory engagement ensued, to which a violent sand storm put a sudden end about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. The main attacking force pushed forward toward its destination after nightfall. From twenty-five to thirty galvanized iron ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... commercial training in a mercantile firm at Liverpool. My father died shortly after I was twenty-one; and being left well off, and having a taste for travel and adventure, I resigned, for a time, all pursuit of the almighty dollar, and became a desultory wanderer over ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the son of a Scotch merchant, was born in New York, April 3, 1783. As his health was delicate his education was desultory, and at sixteen he began to study law but without much seriousness. He spent most of the time in reading, being in this way really self-educated. His health continuing a matter of concern, he took many excursions up the state to the woods, with much physical benefit. In many of the up-state ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... I will certainly give her your message. What a blessing that new cambric is finished! Cyril will be so pleased when I tell him about your kindness. He worries dreadfully about Mollie sometimes: he says her education is so desultory; but I tell him he cannot alter his mother's nature. I never was methodical; it drives me crazy to do things by rule. Mollie sometimes says to me: "Mamma, I do so wish I had a fixed hour for lessons, that I knew exactly when you could read with me;" and my invariable ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... have thought no labour worth the price of a single hour of pleasure and enjoyment. For you, how joyfully will I renounce my code! For myself I could ask no honour: for you, I will labour for all. No toil shall be dry to me—no pleasure shall decoy. I will renounce my idle and desultory pursuits. I will enter the great public arena, where all who come armed with patience and with energy are sure to win. Constance, I am not without talents, though they have slept within me; say but the word, and you know not ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the first time he had let any one into his confidence, and perhaps the darkness aided his revelations; but at any rate he went over all the old time, until it seemed to his companion that he was talking to himself, so aimless and desultory were his pathetic reminiscences. He called her Sheila, though Eyre had never heard her name. He spoke of her father as though Eyre must have known him. And yet this rambling series of confessions and self-reproaches and tender memories did ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... choice of men, the respective appointments of Arthur lord Grey,—distinguished by the vigor which he had exerted in suppressing the last Irish rebellion,—to the post of president of the council of war; of lord Hunsdon,—a brave soldier long practised in the desultory warfare of the northern border, as well as in several regular campaigns against Scotland,—to the command of the army of reserve; and of the earl of Essex,—a gallant youth who had fleshed his maiden sword and gained his spurs in the affair of Zutphen,—to the post of general of the horse ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... was desultory throughout the repast; but when the cloth was raised and the table cleared of all but the dishes of fruit and the decanters of Oporto, Canary and Madeira, there came a ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... discover themselves at a very early period. A passion for expense and show is one of the first they exhibit. This gives them a taste for refinement, which divests their young hearts of almost every other feeling, renders their tempers desultory and capricious, regulates their dress only by the most fantastic models of finery and fashion, and makes their company rather tiresome and ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... desultory remarks, I want to tell you of a very curious survival among the Ojibways and Ottawas of the Georgian Bay. It seems that some hundreds of years ago these ordinarily peaceful folk descended on the Iroquois in what is ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... trice, the ear becomes more Irish and less nice." The first man I ever saw killed was a Spanish soldier, who was cut in two by a cannon ball. The French army, not long after we began to return their fire, was in full retreat; and after a little sharp, but desultory fighting, in which our Division met with some loss, we took possession of the camp and strong position of Soult's army. We found the soldiers' huts very comfortable; they were built of branches of trees ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... idea over and over in her restless mind, which was always at work in a desultory but often clever way. She could not help being clever. She had never studied, never applied herself, never consciously tried to master anything, but she was quick-witted, had always lived among brilliant and highly cultivated people, had seen everything, been ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... cushions of a teak-wood chair, Anthony let his eyes ramble luxuriously over the prospect. In a chaise longue by his side Valerie was engaged in the desultory composition of a letter to her uncle in Rome. Stretched blinking upon the warm flags, Patch watched the two vigilantly for any ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... encouragement were equally thrown away upon the good- humored but immovable indifference of their pupil; and though there exist among Mr. Sheridan's papers some curious proofs of an industry in study for which few have ever given him credit, they are probably but the desultory efforts of a later period of his life, to recover the loss of that first precious time, whose susceptibility of instruction, as well as ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... preparations were totally inadequate. Spain, Portugal, Naples, and Malta sent a combined fleet in 1784 to punish the Algerines, but the vessels were all small and such as the Corsairs could tackle, and so feeble and desultory was the attack that, after a fortnight's fooling, the ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... that morning; but after the late dinner at his boarding house had set out on this lonely walk. Now he had nothing to look forward to as he returned but the stuffy parlor of Mrs. Atterson's boarding house, the cold supper in the dining-room, which was attended in a desultory fashion by such of the boarders as were at home, and then a long, dull evening in his room, or bed after attending the evening service at ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... superior forces and defeated them. The Austrian retreat to the Drina which followed, necessitated the evacuation of Belgrade on Dec. 15. Since then, the situation on the Serbian frontier has been a deadlock, only desultory and insignificant fighting occurring for ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... for the last eight-and-forty hours had been sensibly declining in its temperature, was, on the above morning, within half a degree of freezing point; and, second, a new and far more arduous and important undertaking had by this time suggested itself to her mind. Like many young persons of desultory inclinations, Charlotte often amused herself with writing verses; and it now occurred to her that an abridged history of England in verse was still a desideratum in literature. She commenced this task with her usual diligence; ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... war. Rome was now like a great stone left in an alluvial plain showing where the river had once flowed, but the currents of commerce, of politics, of war, flowed now in other channels. Belisarius, leaving a garrison in Rome, had to betake himself once more to that desultory warfare, flitting round the coast from one naval fortress to another, in which the earlier years of his second command had been passed; and at length, early in 549, only two years after his re-occupation of Rome, he obtained as a great ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... dream; and long before we could find our tools and get to work we heard the desultory reports of his pistols exploding in his holsters, as his pony measured off the darkness ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... volumes have now appeared. Before anything had been seen of them, I gave some account of this scheme, and of the material on which he had worked, with a statement of the reasons which made all existing versions unsatisfactory to the student, and incomplete. Captain Burton saw fit to reprint these desultory paragraphs as a kind of circular or advertisement on his forthcoming book. He did not think it necessary to ask leave to do this, nor did I know to what use my letter had been put till it was too late to object. In ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... tribe, as a resident in their camps, and their companion on hunts and war-parties,—I lost no opportunity of gathering information concerning their religious belief and traditions, and the system of medicine, as it prevails in its purity. It would be foreign to the design of this desultory paper to enter at large upon the history of creation as preserved by the Indians in their traditions, the conflicts of the Beneficent Spirit with the Adversary, and the Indian idea of a future state. With all these, the present sketch has no further concern than a mere statement that "medicine" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... for this purpose, at the age of nineteen, he went to Cambridge. Here it soon appeared that he was no better adapted to the ministry than he was to the practice of medicine, and his university career went on in very desultory fashion. Most of his work was distinctly neglected, but two of the men he met there were to influence largely his future life. Henslow, the botanist, was unusually fond, for a professor in those days, of work in the field. Charles Darwin's tastes coincided with those ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... forearmed; and I seriously counsel you to try if you cannot find something new this summer along the coast to which you are going. There is no reason why you should not be so successful as a friend of mine who, with a very slight smattering of science, and very desultory research, obtained in one winter from the Torbay shores three entirely new species, beside several rare animals which had escaped all naturalists since the lynx-eye of Colonel Montagu discerned ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... detached from the life of the present day. It is true that Aigues-Mortes does a little business; it sees certain bags of salt piled into barges which stand in a canal beside it, and which carry their cargo into actual places. But nothing could well be more drowsy and desultory than this industry as I saw it practised, with the aid of two or three brown peasants and under the eye of a solitary douanier who strolled on the little quay beneath the western wall. "C'est bien plaisant, c'est bien paisible," said this worthy ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... soon retired to the sitting room while the three older people carried on a desultory conversation for the next hour. Suddenly there came a tapping on the sitting room window by Nelson's chair. He pulled aside the shade a ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... women have failed in obtaining the first position, even in music or painting, for the cultivation of which their circumstances would appear most propitious. It is as impossible to find a female Raphael, or a female Handel, as a female Shakespeare or Newton. Women are intellectually more desultory and volatile than men; they are more occupied with particular instances than with general principles; they judge rather by intuitive perceptions than by deliberate reasoning or past experience. They are, however, usually superior to men in nimbleness and rapidity of thought, ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... not completeness, nor comprehensiveness, nor depth of research, nor splendor of description; but the very reverse,—its simple, superficial, desultory character, as better adapted to the volatile beings ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... pleasure-loving and effeminate, but cultured and refined, character of the class of Japanese who produced it. It has no serious masculine qualities and may be described in one word as belles-lettres—poetry, fiction, diaries, and essays of a desultory kind. The lower classes of the people had no share in the literary activity of the time. Culture had not as yet penetrated beyond a very narrow circle. Both writers and readers belonged exclusively to the official caste. It is ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the introduction of the motor had transformed into a neighbour. Effie was to pay for her morning's holiday by an hour or two in the school-room, and Owen suggested that he and Darrow should betake themselves to a distant covert in the desultory quest ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... screaming high overhead was his morning salutation, and then came other shells, desultory but noisy. John paid no more attention to them than if they had been distant bees buzzing. He looked at his young prisoner, Kratzek, and found that he was still sleeping, with a healthy color in his face. John was impressed anew by his youth. "Why do they let such ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... unequal terms. Leicester's army, by living on the mountains of Wales without bread, which was not then much used among the inhabitants, had been extremely weakened by sickness and desertion, and was soon broken by the victorious royalists; while his Welsh allies, accustomed only to a desultory kind of war, immediately took to flight, and were pursued with great slaughter. Leicester himself; asking for quarter, was slain in the heat of the action, with his eldest son Henry, Hugh le Despenser, and about one hundred and sixty knights, and many other ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... my staircase here," drawls Volumnia, whose thoughts perhaps are already hopping up it to bed, after a long evening of very desultory talk, "one of the prettiest girls, I think, that I ever saw ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... and pain the Aleuts fell back, and found shelter for themselves behind trees and rocks. But they were not minded to give up the fight so easily. They gradually extended their line of battle until they had our friends completely surrounded. Their desultory fire, however, did not at first do any damage to those in the fortress, and the whites replied only occasionally, taking careful aim and winging an Indian at ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... cut nostril and upper lip; for there was a certain virtue in that benignant yet keen countenance as there is in all human faces from which a generous soul beams out. And over all streamed the delicious June sunshine through the old windows, with their desultory patches of yellow, red, and blue, that threw pleasant touches of colour ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... charges lived in the family of Professor Loffler, "so as to rub off a little knowledge from this learned man." They studied history, philosophy, law, political economy and natural history. We would say their method was desultory, were it not for the fact that they were always thorough in all that they undertook. They were simply three boys together, intent on getting ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... the British occupied the part of the town that was north of the Saranac, and began a desultory bombardment of the fortification opposite. Not a very serious one, for they considered they could take the town at any time, but preferred to await the arrival ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Norwich, being then about thirty-six years old, he had already completed the Religio Medici; a desultory collection of observations designed for himself only and a few friends, at all events with no purpose of immediate publication. It had been lying by him for seven years, circulating privately in his own ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... headquarters, as he averred the road I was now pursuing was not safe from the Mafeking gun-range. I therefore waited their good pleasure for an hour, during which time the firing from all round the town went on in a desultory sort of way, occasionally followed by a boom from a large Boer gun, and the short, sharp, hammering noise from the enemy's one-pounder Maxim. The sun was almost down when the burgher in charge gave the signal ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... discursive and desultory enough, as a reader, to have pleased even the late Lord Iddesleigh. It was "Aucassin and Nicolette" only a month ago, and to-day you have been reading Lord Lytton's "Strange Story," I am sure, for you want information about Plotinus! He was born (about ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... Hogg, his landlady, and ordered a pair of little muslin bags about the size of a pistol-cartridge each, which she promised to prepare in five minutes, and he himself tumbled over the leaves of his private manuscript quarto, a desultory and miscellaneous album, stuffed with sonnets on Celia's eye—a lock of hair, or a pansy here or there pressed between the pages—birthday verses addressed to Sacharissa, receipts for 'puptons,' 'farces,' &c.; and several for toilet luxuries, 'Angelica water,' 'The Queen ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... been famous for punctuality. He was slightly Bohemian in his habits, and rather given to desultory bachelor ways; but his domestic timekeeper, Mrs. Drabble, ruled him most despotically in the matter of meals, and it was amusing to see how she kept him and Mr. Tudor in order: neither of them ventured to keep the dinner waiting, for fear of the ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... at about ten, Mrs. Eustace Ansell joined herself to the two gentlemen who still lingered over a desultory breakfast in Mrs. Westmore's dining-room, she responded to their greeting with less than ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... drought continued. The sky was cloudless, the desultory breezes that swept the plains blighted growing things, raising little whirlwinds of fine, flinty alkali dust and spreading it over the face of the world. The storm that had caught Hollis on the Dry Bottom trail had covered only a comparatively small area; it had lasted only a brief time and after ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... that I finally prevailed upon Mlle. Jacquier to keep them out of my room and away from my table. But the majority of the students were "regular girls." At first I was as welcome in the dining-room as a Prussian sentinel, and they exchanged desultory remarks in whispers; but after a while they grew accustomed to me and chattered like magpies. I could hear them again in their dormitories until about half-past ten at night. Mlle. Jacquier asked me once with some anxiety if I minded, and I assured her that I liked it. This was quite true, for ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... (the Sage replied) in peace return 'To the gay dreams of fond romantic youth, 'Leave me to hide, in this remote sojourn, 'From every gentle ear the dreadful truth: 'For if my desultory strain with ruth 'And indignation make thine eyes o'erflow, 'Alas! what comfort could thy anguish sooth, 'Shouldst thou the extent of human folly know? 'Be ignorance thy choice, where knowledge ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... ended a rain began to fall, and it rapidly thickened from a desultory shower to a roaring downpour that effectually quenched not only the fires around which the savages were dancing, but the enthusiasm of the dancers as well. During the rest of the afternoon and all night long the fall was incessant, accompanied by a ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... became acquainted with his genius praised it with all the warmth of which they were masters. Thus he has become a kind of classic in his own day, for an undisputed reputation makes a classic while it lasts. But was ever so much fame won by writings which might be called scrappy and desultory by the advocatus diaboli? It is a most miscellaneous literary baggage that Mr. Stevenson carries. First, a few magazine articles; then two little books of sentimental journeyings, which convince the reader that Mr. Stevenson is as good company to himself as his books ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... bullets rather wildly into the night. Lead spattered against the adobe wall behind them. But the attackers were checked. Their fire was of a desultory character. There was such a thing as being too impetuous. Who were these men they were assailing? Perhaps they were acting under orders of Pasquale. Better not be too rash. So the mind of the peon ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... can only be learnt from the memoirs of the chief actor, or from his intimate friends; and in such things of this kind are often treated of in a very desultory manner, or purposely misrepresented. Criticism must, therefore, always forego much which was present in the minds of those ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... behind to such an extent as to be unable to reach the cover of the woods in time. If the Tehuas were informed of his approach they would either prepare for his coming at the Puye—and the result of an open attack would be to say the least extremely doubtful,—or they would come out in force, and desultory fighting would ensue. In this those who were nearest water and supplies always had the advantage. His idea of striking a sudden blow appeared very much endangered by the presence of Tehuas in the forest. He thought and thought ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... The talk became desultory, as they proceeded for at least a mile along a cart-track through soft-tufted grass and heath and young fir- trees. It ended in a broad open moor, stony; and full of damp boggy hollows, forlorn and desolate under the autumn sky. Here they met Norman again, and walked on along a very rough and ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... The easy, desultory lessons were often prolonged, and then the girl stayed to dinner and played dominoes afterwards with him or with his mother until ten o'clock, when old Carolina came to fetch her home. The withered little serving-woman was voluble, and always cheerfully ready to lighten ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... with morbid curiosity to the babble of the idiot Feklusha. At home he read in the most desultory way. He deemed the secrets of Eastern magic, Russian tales and folk-lore, skimmed Ossian, Tasso, Homer, or wandered with Cook in strange lands. If he found nothing to read he lay motionless all day long, as if he were exhausted with hard work; his fancy carried him beyond Ossian and Homer, beyond ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... 26.—[The debate on the 9th section still continued desultory—and consisted of similar objections, and answers thereto, as had before been used. Both sides deprecated the slave trade in the most pointed terms; on one side it was pathetically lamented, by Mr. Nason, Major Lusk, Mr. Neal, and others, that ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... had been carried on in a very desultory way. All parties were anxious for a peace. Towards the end of April, 1697, William once more crossed over to Flanders,(1858) and the French king having for the first time shown a disposition to come to terms, it was ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... and example which first changed Erasmus's desultory occupation with theological studies into a firm and lasting resolve to make their pursuit the object of his life. Colet urged him to expound the Pentateuch or the prophet Isaiah at Oxford, just as he himself treated of Paul's epistles. Erasmus ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... had been a very careless and desultory attendant, sometimes upon the Catholic chapel, sometimes upon the Protestant church, now became a very regular frequenter of the latter place of worship; the object of his worship being not the Creator, but the creature, whom, if he missed from her accustomed seat, the singing, and praying, ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... with her second waking, but seemed to grow with every passing day; for, as once all things seemed going against them, now all were in their favor. Morton, who had for some time given desultory help in the college laboratory, was offered a permanent position there at a modest salary for next year, with limited hours, so that he might still keep on with recitations in school; and meanwhile was to act as clerk in a drug-store until the ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... to come with John, to whom she was always kind, though she thought him "cracked," and after a little desultory hovering about the shells, for which she did not really care, except when they were made up with glass beads, she was apt to sit down on the after-deck, with John beside her (unless the Skipper appeared, ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... discussion was carried on in the columns of Notes and Queries concerning the origin of the saying round which my present desultory jottings are centred. One correspondent, with unconscious plagiarism, suggested that the maxim was derived ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... it is stated that this practice was due to the exhaustion of the soil. That, however, is open to question, for five or ten years' desultory cultivation on the part of the Indian would scarcely exhaust the soil so much that people would go to the great labor of making new clearings and moving their villages. Moreover, in the Southern States it is well known ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... the future, the governor issued a proclamation ordering all who lived in secluded places in the country to gather themselves into villages "after the fashion of our New Engand neighbors." After some desultory fighting on the frontier, Dutch and Indian hostilities in a great measure ceased, and for about ten years, beyond the threatenings of the English on the one hand and the Indians on the other, New Netherland enjoyed a season ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... to account, on principles of culture which we recognize, for our author's style. His education was exceedingly defective, nor was his want of discipline supplied by subsequent desultory application. He seems to have been born with a rare sense of literary proportion and form; into this, as into a mold, were run his apparently lazy and really acute observations of life. That he thoroughly mastered such literature ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... chin, curly yellow hair, and big, dreamy blue eyes that especially appeal to a certain class of men; like most women, however, I prefer something more solid, both physically and intellectually—I cannot stand "the pretty, pretty." She was, of course, far too ill to converse, and, beyond a few desultory and spasmodic ejaculations, maintained a rigid silence. As there was no occasion for me to sit close beside her, I drew up a chair before the fire, placing myself in such a position as to command a full view of the bed. My first night passed undisturbed by any incident, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... It falling nearly calm, the Bristol and Lion got out their boats and were towed by them to her support. The two other French ships of the line got up during the forenoon of the 21st, so that the action that afternoon, though desultory, might ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... Goldsmith's desultory habits are quite characteristic. Irving says: "It was his custom during the summer-time, when pressed by a multiplicity of literary jobs, or urged to the accomplishment of some particular task, to take country lodgings a few miles from town, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... more desultory talk they separated and Steve went back to join Nancy on the porch where he thought ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... literally. And Grant, if he had little taste for the task, had learned books and other things not mentioned in the curriculums of the schools she sent him to—and when the bag was reported by Phoebe to be empty, he had returned with inward relief to the desultory life of the Hart ranch and its ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... evening, Forbes came home by the last train, carrying his bundle of volumes. He was careful to fumigate them for the purpose of destroying any microbes, and finally would sprinkle them with eau de Cologne to make them tolerable to the nose. On Sunday, he enjoyed the luxury of desultory reading. ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... could do nothing but sing songs fashioned out of their own brains; now they danced, now they would do nothing but laugh and weep, or were dogged and sullen both in look and speech. All they did, all they sung, was alike unconnected; indicative of the desultory and rambling ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... a joyous task.—We "changed works" with neighbor Button, and in return Cyrus and Eva came to help us. Harriet and Eva and I worked side by side, "dropping" the corn, while Cyrus and the hired man followed with the hoes to cover it. Little Frank skittered about, planting with desultory action such pumpkin seeds as he did not eat. The presence of our young friends gave the job something of the nature of a party and we were sorry when ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... Art is protean. But will, I ask myself, posterity sit before the masterpieces of Matisse, Picasso, and Van Dongen, and experience that nostalgia of the ideal of which I wrote at the beginning of these desultory notes? Why not? There may be other ideals in those remote times, ideals that may be found incarnate in some new-fangled tremendous Gehenna. But nature will ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... Robert Louis did desultory work on newspapers in San Francisco and later at Monterey, with health up and down as hope fluctuated. In the interval a cablegram had come from his father saying, "Your allowance is two hundred and fifty pounds a year." This meant ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... went on wasting our time in this desultory conversation, when the prudent and careful servant brought us an excellent supper. I could not touch anything, my heart was too full, but my dear little wife supped with a good appetite. I could not ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... appeared to be catching a train, he might have inferred that he had come on her in the act of transition between one and another of the country-houses which disputed her presence after the close of the Newport season; but her desultory air perplexed him. She stood apart from the crowd, letting it drift by her to the platform or the street, and wearing an air of irresolution which might, as he surmised, be the mask of a very definite purpose. It struck him at once ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... put it aside with something about feeling very well now, and he looked so healthy, only perhaps a little more hearty and burly, that she did not think any more of the matter, and only talked in happy desultory scraps, now dwelling on her little Owen's charms, now joyfully recognizing familiar objects, or commenting upon the slight changes that had taken place. One thing, however, she observed; Humfrey did not stop the horse at the foot of the ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of reading will be a method from nature, and not a mechanical one of hours and pages. It holds each student to a pursuit of his native aim, instead of a desultory miscellany. Let him read what is proper to him, and not waste his memory on a crowd of mediocrities. As whole nations have derived their culture from a single book,—as the Bible has been the literature as well as the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... life and character. I seated myself in the pictorial chair, with the only light in the room descending upon me from a high opening, almost at the ceiling, the rest of the sole window being shuttered. He began to work, and we talked in an idle and desultory way,—neither of us feeling very conversable,—which he attributed to the atmosphere, it being a bright, west-windy, bracing day. We talked about the pictures of Christ, and how inadequate and untrue they are. He said he thought artists should attempt only to paint ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... out upon the plain like a flock of sheep to feed and batten. Cobbett is a pleasanter writer for those to read who do not agree with him; for he is less dogmatical, goes more into the common grounds of fact and argument to which all appeal, is more desultory and various, and appears less to be driving at a present conclusion than urged on by the force of present conviction. He is therefore tolerated by all parties, though he has made himself by turns obnoxious to all; and even those he abuses read him. The Reformers read him when he was a Tory, and the ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... want of order, a rambling, unconnected, desultory manner, is commonly objected; as Hume styles it, "extreme carelessness of method;" and this is so often observed, as to be justly an object of dread. But this is occasioned by that indolence and want of discipline to which we have just alluded. ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware
... it has wings that carry it nearly as close to heaven's gate as any of Shakespeare's lark-like interludes. The brevity of the poems and their uniform smoothness sometimes produce the effect of monotony. The crowded richness of the line advises a desultory reading. But one must go back to them again and again. They bewitch the memory, having once caught it, and insist on saying themselves over and over. Among the poets of England the author of the "Hesperides" remains, and is likely to remain, unique. As Shakespeare stands alone in his ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Europe. Collecting a large body of troops he directed them into the mountains, and marched from the wall of Antoninus even to the very extremity of the island; but this year, 208, was also barren of fruits. Fifty thousand Romans fell a prey to fatigue, the climate, and the desultory assaults of the natives. Soon after the entire country north of the Antonine wall, was given up, for it was found that while it was necessary for one legion to keep the southern parts in subjection two were required to repel the ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... as the preceding day; on rounding a projecting ledge of rock we saw that fortress in the distance, on an insulated eminence adjacent to a low range of hills. Meer Baber Beg has placed his fortress in a very respectable state of defence, quite adequate to repel the desultory inroads of his predatory neighbours; but commanded by and exposed to enfilade from the hills about it, on one of these hills he has built a tower as a kind of outwork, but it is very weak and ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... this question and reply sprang a change in the chat—chat it still remained, easy, desultory, familiar gossip. Hint, allusion, comment, went round the circle, but all so broken, so dependent on references to persons not named, or circumstances not defined, that listen as intently as I would—and I did ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... who bears False witness—he who takes the orphan's bread, And robs the widow—he who spreads abroad Polluted hands in mockery of prayer, Are left to cumber earth. Shuddering I look On what is written, yet I blot not out The desultory numbers; let them stand, The record ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... All at once this desultory, almost unresisted attack came to an end, as a fresh body of Indians cantered up; many of the latter leading horses, to which the attacking party from the canyon now made their way; and just at sundown the whole body galloped ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... oldest political units of the country, perhaps the very oldest, it had become the least important of all. Its ancient significance as the primary organization of the community for judicial purposes disappeared long before the beginning of the seventeenth century, leaving only a desultory practice of holding a sheriff's semi-annual "tourn" through the hundreds of the shire; and some traditional payments of fees to the noblemen who held the hundred court as a "liberty," or to the crown. Apart from its existence as a unit of jurisdiction, ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... call the following day, nor on many following ones, and a casual lady visitor destroyed Eleanor's last hope that he would ever call again, for, after a little desultory gossip, she said, "You will miss Mr. Smith very much at your receptions, and brother Sam says he is to ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... forces and the foe was now pretty nigh over, and the combatants had long since swept past us; pursuers and pursued having alike disappeared in the bush surrounding the native town or lost to sight amid the smoking ruins, where some little desultory ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... arguing a technical case before one of the judges of the superior court in a western state. He had rambled on in such a desultory way that it became very difficult to follow his line of thought, and the judge had ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... and desultory, owing to the fact that the circumstances are so varied, the subject so vast, and the materials so abundant, yet, taken as a whole, they seem overwhelming, and, except to the careful, persistent, and ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... to the second floor and waited. The elevator came down, stopped, and the guard repeated his desultory search, not stopping to pry into any ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... day we have had desultory picket firing, and the great guns in the naval battery have spoken whenever an opportunity presented itself. The opposing outpost lines are drawn so far apart that with the best intentions they can scarcely ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... fancy my lady thinks poor Kally too handsome for it to be good for a young clergyman to have much to say to her. They have not been so cordial to them of late, but that is partly owing to poor Mrs. White's foolish talk, and in part to young Alexis having been desultory and mopy of late—-not taking the interest in his music he did. Mr. Lee says he is sure some young woman is at the ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... time when all business was run on the chaotic and desultory lines characteristic of the purely competitive age, he had the foresight and shrewdness to perceive that the storekeeper who depended upon the jobber and the manufacturer for his goods was largely at the mercy of those elements. Even if he were not, there were two sets of profits ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... diseases, shut herself up in her house, and refused to see any one. She grew morbid and was sure that every person who approached her had some sneaking, personal, hostile motive. Though always busy, she accomplished little. Desultory work, procrastination, and self-indulgence destroyed her power of concentration. She could not think long enough on one subject to think it out straight, therefore she was constantly deceived in her ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... will believe me when I say that I have rarely in my life been more gratified than by reading your address; though I feel that you speak much too strongly of what I have done. Your notice of pangenesis (225/3. "It would be unpardonable to finish these somewhat desultory remarks without adverting to one of the most interesting subjects of the day,—the Darwinian doctrine of pangenesis...Like everything which comes from the pen of a writer whom I have no hesitation, so far as my judgment goes, in considering as by far the greatest ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... our schools, there are a good many men, who intend to be teachers, who enter for classical examinations. But where we fail grievously is in our provision for average men; they are provided with feeble examinations in desultory and diffuse subjects, in which a high standard is not required. It is difficult to imagine a condition of greater vacuity than that in which a man leaves the University after taking a pass degree. No one has endeavoured to do anything for him, or to cultivate his intelligence ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... into the hands of the English, and were given to the flames; but though a small amount of booty was obtained, their numbers were greatly reduced by this desultory style of warfare. An expedition under Sir Thomas Baskerville to capture Panama failed, and the party with difficulty ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... General Court of Massachusetts on August 17, 1664. Such names as Maccarty, Gleason, Coggan, Lawler, Kelly, Hurley, MackQuade, and McCleary also appear on the Cambridge Church records down to 1690. These are but desultory instances of the first comers among the Irish to Massachusetts, selected from a great ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... disappointed by not obtaining a commission in the Guards, he led a desultory butterfly-like life; one day at Richmond with Queen Caroline, then Princess of Wales; another, at Pope's villa, at Twickenham; sometimes in the House of Commons, in which he succeeded his elder brother as ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... supernatural penalties. The doctrines by which Butler attracted some readers and revolted others throw no shadow over his writings. He is a placid enlightened professor, whose real good feeling and frequent shrewdness should not be overlooked in consequence of the rather desultory and often superficial mode of reasoning. This, however, suggests a ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... A desultory discussion followed now, and Lord Kitchener urged that the Governments should make a proposal in accordance with what he had suggested; and both the Presidents replied that the Governments, according to the constitutions of the Republics, were not qualified to make any proposals whereby ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell
... perused, "under the determinate sentence" of the scripture authorities. With all this voracity for the useful, Milton had no conception of scientific form, or method; and indeed, few of the subjects had as yet passed the stage of desultory treatment; so that the idea of casting the knowledge into some one form, under the guidance of a chosen author, would never occur to him. Better things might have been expected of James Mill, in conducting the education of his son. Yet we find his ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... after the habitual pleasure of the apt quotation, he felt acutely shocked at the inappropriateness of the place, the press-yard, with the dim light weeping downwards between immensely high walls, and the desultory snowflakes that dropped between us. And he had tried so hard, in his emergency, to be practical. When he had reached London, before even attempting to see me, he had run from minister to minister trying to influence them ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... there needed no conjunction of planets to tell them that the day was near at hand, when the long desultory duel between Spain and England would end, once and for all, in some great death-grapple. The war, as yet, had been confined to the Netherlands, to the West Indies, and the coasts and isles of Africa; to the quarters, in fact, where Spain was held either to have no rights, or to have forfeited ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... The desultory fighting of this day was not without casualties. The 19th Brigade lost fifty-six men up to 2 p.m.; later I heard the figures were fourteen killed and seventy-three wounded. These were not in the 'taking' of the single line of Aujeh trenches, but came from long-distance ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... from the hands of charlatans, rechristened, and subjected to accurate investigation by Dr. James Braid, of Manchester, as early as 1841. But his results, after attracting momentary attention, fell from view, and, despite desultory efforts, the subject was not again accorded a general hearing from the scientific world until 1878, when Dr. Charcot took it up at the Salpetriere, in Paris, followed soon afterwards by Dr. Rudolf Heidenhain, of Breslau, and ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams |
