"Ineffectual" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the woman by surprise I was charged only a legitimate amount. When I inquired where I might swing my hammock, the enemy of bathing pointed silently upward at the rafters of the veranda. These were at least ten feet above the tiled floor and I made several ineffectual efforts before I could reach them at all, and then only succeeded in hanging my sleeping-net so that it doubled me up like a jack-knife. Rearranging it near the corner of the veranda, I managed with great effort to climb ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... the encouragement is, the better the work will be performed; and it will become the wisdom of the parliament in what they do, to make it effectual; for should such an undertaking as this prove ineffectual, instead of remedying, it ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty
... give. We soon saw what her object was; for standing up abreast of the bow of the 'Cumberland,' and putting her helm aport, she ran her ram right into that vessel. The gallant frigate kept up her splendid and deliberate, but ineffectual, fire, until she filled and sank, which she did in a very few minutes. A small freight-steamer of the quarter-master's department, and some tugs and boats from the camp-wharf, put off to rescue the survivors, who were ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... apparent anxiety and concern for the little notice they took of her intreaties to return: for we imagined, in all she said when calling on them, she was informing them, that the strangers were not enemies, but friends; however, all her endeavours to bring them back were ineffectual, while we remained with her; but we were no sooner gone from the beach, than we saw some of them come out of the wood; and as there were two canoes on the shore belonging to this party, they launched one into the ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... front seat of a horse 'bus elbow to elbow with the driver, staring down over the brink of the abyss upon ears and necks—that low, distant space where the horses look so tiny and so ineffectual and so ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... changes of the guards, with the sounds of fife and drum, and the tunes of "Nancy Dawson" and "Yankee Doodle"; church-goers were annoyed by parties of soldiers in the streets, and the whole community outraged by horse-racing on the Common. Applications for redress had been ineffectual; and General Pomeroy was excused for not checking some of these things, on the ground that he was controlled by a superior officer. His successor, General Mackay, gave great satisfaction by prohibiting, in general orders, (June 15, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... and trifle absently with its most sensitive surfaces. The only way to dislodge them is to shake the head forcibly and to writhe one's features violently. This is not only a lengthy and frequently ineffectual method, but one exceedingly terrifying to foot passengers. And again, sometimes the beginner rides for a space with one eye closed by perspiration, giving him a waggish air foreign to his mood and ill calculated to overawe ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... in proclaiming that existing Christianity was a lie; but substituted no theory of it which could be more rationally or credibly sustained; and ever since, the religion of educated persons throughout Europe has been dishonest or ineffectual; it is only among the labouring peasantry that the grace of a pure Catholicism, and the patient simplicities of the Puritan, maintain their imaginative dignity, or ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... missionaries were added to the Protestant force at that time, and the Papal Church became thoroughly alarmed. Letters were addressed from Rome to the Patriarchal Vicar of Mount Lebanon, the Maronite Patriarch, and the Vicar of Syria and Palestine, urging them to render ineffectual, in every possible manner, the impious undertaking of those missionaries. These letters were dated in the first month of 1824, and the firman against the circulation of the Scriptures was issued by the Grand Seignior very soon after. Though feebly enforced ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... cannon of a beleaguered city) usefully booming outside on the dogmatic ramparts; and meanwhile, within and out of shot, dwelt in her private garden which she watered with grateful tears. It seems strange to say of this colourless and ineffectual woman, but she was a true enthusiast, and might have made the sunshine and the glory of a cloister. Perhaps none but Archie knew she could be eloquent; perhaps none but he had seen her - her colour raised, her hands ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... third of any land of which the husband was seised in fee at any time during the marriage. The result of this is that during the marriage the husband cannot alienate his own land so as to bar his wife's right of dower, unless this is done with her concurrence, and her concurrence is ineffectual unless the conveyance is made by fine." [This inconvenience for an unscrupulous husband was evaded in modern conveyancy by a device of extreme ingenuity finally perfected only in the eighteenth century. Professor James Bryce remarks ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... began to ascend the tree by means of his neck. When he had reached the lower branch of the tree he made a few gestures with his feet by a lateral movement of the legs. He made several ineffectual efforts to kick some pieces out of the horizon, and then, after he had gently oscilliated a few times, he assumed a pendent and perpendicular position at right angles with the ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... is the distance between the long roll of these mighty lines and the thin tinkle of their feeble imitator's, yet we cannot choose but catch the ineffectual note of a would-be echo in the speech of ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... hasn't Les. bucked up!" whispered Ernest, who sat on one side of me, where he had landed after an ineffectual attempt to sit ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... they were disappointed, for Madam Conway was a proud, unsociable woman, desiring no acquaintance whatever with her neighbors, who, after many ineffectual attempts at something like friendly intercourse, concluded to leave her entirely alone, and contented themselves with watching the progress of matters at "Mill Farm," as she designated the place, which soon began to show visible marks of improvement. The Englishman ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... had been practised through the spring and summer still consisted, broadly speaking, in the advance of lines of Infantry behind a creeping barrage. These lines were too often held up by pill-boxes, against which the creeping barrage was ineffectual, and once delay which had not been calculated on occurred, the creeping barrage was proved doubly useless, for it had outdistanced the speed of the advance. The change in tactics necessary to reduce these concrete strongholds was soon appreciated, but troops who had been trained in ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... the stipendiary magistrate, Sir Thomas Blake, and had to go through his bedroom to my own. We met frequently but he was quite unsuspicious. He has, I find since, been dismissed from his office, after an ineffectual search for me through the county, a month from the time we had ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... observed on Friday and Saturday nights, that, whenever her attendants recommended to her to sleep, she discovered her willingness to yield, by breathing, perhaps for the space of a minute, in the manner of a person that sleeps, though the effort, from the state of her disorder, usually proved ineffectual. ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... the use of the bath should not be too long deferred. I have had frequent occasion to become cognizant of the fact, that cases have been sent by physicians to take the baths only after prolonged ineffectual treatment of another nature had been gone through with, and where negative or at best tardy results took the place of the brilliant results that might have been obtained, had the cases been sent earlier. I do not mention this in a fault-finding spirit; to do so would ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... experiments upon freezing animals were doubtless made. A dormouse, confined in a cold mixture, he tells us, "showed signs of great uneasiness; sometimes it would curl itself into round form to preserve its extremities and confine the heat, and finding that ineffectual, would then endeavor to escape." Its feet were at last frozen, but Hunter could not freeze the entire animal because of the protection afforded by the hair. How should the scientist overcome this difficulty? He pondered over the problem; ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... a kind of tepid, ineffectual anarchists, unconvinced and wholly unconvincing. Broadly speaking, theirs was a policy of blind reversal. They were not constructive, but they were opposed vaguely to the existing order of things, and, particularly, ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... she made of her power for the interests of France, tells us, "The advocates for liberty, being excluded from posts and the management of affairs, contrived several ways to free their country from that infamous commerce; but finding them ineffectual, they at last concluded that there was no other course to take than to work the Duchess of Portsmouth out of the king's favour, by setting up against her a rival who should be in their interest. The Duchess of Mazarine was thought very fit for their purpose, for she outshined ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... White Fang made several ineffectual efforts to get up. Once he gained his feet, but his legs were too weak to sustain him, and he slowly wilted and sank back into the snow. His eyes were half closed, and the surface of them was glassy. His jaws were apart, and through them the tongue protruded, draggled and limp. To all appearances ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... established Church is a costly and indefensible luxury. Taking Utility, founded on observation of actual facts, as his guide and his measure of existing institutions, he treated them as colossal iniquities, as frauds upon the people, as dead and ineffectual for the purposes of moral and political life. Nevertheless, although he condemned the whole fabric as it stood, Bentham was an absolute believer in the unlimited power of laws and institutions; nor was he far from wishing to deal with them ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... being now firmly seated in power, and the island, settled under a regular form of government, growing in strength, the Genoese found themselves unequal to cope with a brave and united people. After some further ineffectual attempts, they once more applied to France for succour, and engaged her to occupy the strong places in the island, as she had already done from 1737 to 1741. French troops accordingly, landing in Corsica, established a footing which has never been relinquished, except ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... wolves, on the smooth sandy beach showed that there was life in the quiet lonely wilderness around us. The sun had not yet risen, but the eastern heavens were aglare with yellow light, even up to the morning-star, which, although "paling its ineffectual fires," still maintained its position as a glittering outpost between the contending powers of night and day. Far away to the north-eastward, over the yellow forest, in soft purple relief against the red sunrise, stood ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... at him, through the ineffectual screen of the leafage, that the dreadful insect was staring. At first it stared with the back of its head. Then, very deliberately, it turned its head completely around, without moving its body a hair-breadth, till its mouth was in the same plane with its back. This ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... nations, have learned to meet the kindred difficulties of pauperism. It is in no small degree the lack of such a spirit in the conduct of Indian affairs, which has rendered the efforts and expenditures of our government for the advancement of the race so ineffectual in the past; and for this the blame attaches mainly to the want of correct information and of settled convictions respecting this subject, among our people at large. So long as the country fluctuates in an alternation ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... her side, his gaze following her direction. There, after a moment, he distinguished the sheepshead, barred in black and white, wavering about the piling. His companion was fishing with a short, heavy rod from which time had dissolved the varnish, an ineffectual brass reel that complained shrilly whenever the lead was raised or lowered, ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... that man's head. What a type! I raked up all the details of his scandalous history; and there were enough to fill an encyclopaedia. The papers were full of him just then; he was mud from head to foot; it was about the time of the big viaduct steal, and irreproachable citizens were forming ineffectual leagues to put him down. And all the time one kept meeting him at dinners—that was the beauty of it! Once I remember seeing him next to the Bishop's wife; I've got a little sketch of that duet somewhere... Well, he was simply ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... keen ear, Courtlandt recognized the quality; and the weight of a thousand worlds lightened its pressure upon his heart. And the Barone laughed, too. So there they were, the three of them. But Nora's ineffectual battle for repression had driven her near to hysteria. To escape this dire calamity, she flung open a casement window and stood within it, breathing in the heavy fragrance of the ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... her—fortunately, as it turned out,—for the crawling object, on reaching the open ground, rose with apparent difficulty and staggered forward a few paces in what seemed to be the form of a drunken man. After one or two ineffectual efforts to ascend the track, the unfortunate being fell and remained a motionless heap ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... violent and ineffectual effort at breaking his bonds, he sank down upon the earth and remained silent—bitterly contemplating the degraded condition ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... present time, users of such powders are compelled to buy expensive atomizing cans, to which the powder must be transferred from the packing cans, before it can be properly used, or in the absence of such cans the powder is scattered in an ineffectual and wasteful way in or about the ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... and held it, himself untouched, for several minutes, while bullets were actually riddling the flag. At the end of that time a stalwart Irishman, finding his rifle-barrel heated and the ramrod jammed in attempting to load, made two or three ineffectual jerks at the rod, found that it was impossible to remove it; then grasped the weapon by the muzzle, whirled it half a dozen times around his head, bringing the butt down in each instance with crushing force, on the head of a foe; and finally, ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... recent ineffectual effort of a minority of the Justices to challenge the interpretation thus placed upon the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court has yet to register any departure from its ruling in Twining v. New Jersey.[877] In two subsequent ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... but there was no room for them in the Bursa. So on they went into Bohemia, where at the town of Kaaden the rector of the school was able to allot them a room—just a bare, unfurnished chamber, in which they were permitted to settle. Such teaching as Butzbach received was spasmodic and ineffectual, and after two years of this bondage he ran away. For the next five years he was in Bohemia in private service, longing for home, hating his durance among the heathen, as he called the Bohemians for following John Hus, but lacking courage to make ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... garrison to surrender, using alternately threats and caresses; but after many proposals and replies had been interchanged, their obstinacy only increased, and the conferences were abandoned, having proved wholly ineffectual. ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... Building of the Long Serpent" is not to be named with Mr. Longfellow's "Building of the Ship," which he learned from no Heimskringla, but from the dockyards of Portland, where he played as a boy. We are willing, however, to pardon the parts which we find somewhat ineffectual, in favor of the "Nun of Nidaros," which concludes, and in its gracious piety more ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... really from apprehensions that they intended to buy their peace by delivering him into the hands of his enemies. The army called aloud for their sovereign to march at their head against the Danes; and, on his refusal to take the field, they were so discouraged that those vast preparations became ineffectual for the defence of the kingdom. Edmund, deprived of all regular supplies to maintain his soldiers, was obliged to commit equal ravages with those which were practised by the Danes; and, after making some fruitless expeditions into the north, which had submitted ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... every parish had its Davies and its Morgan, the unhappy Charles, faultless as a man, and at worst only ill-advised as a Monarch, found himself, after much ineffectual submission, and many unconstitutional abridgements of his lawful rights, required to surrender the scanty remains of his prerogative, and consent to be a state-engine, in the hands of his enemies. When, driven from his capital by riots, his fleet, army, militia, garrisons, magazines, ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... is physically so delicate and sensitive that he naturally cries about nothing, I will soon exhaust the fountain of his tears, by making them ineffectual. So long as he cries, I will not go to him; as soon as he stops, I will run to him. Very soon his method of calling me will be to keep quiet, or at the utmost, to utter a single cry. Children judge of the meaning of signs by their palpable effect; they have no ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... attempts have been made to bring in the use of the sea coal in these works instead of charcoal; the former being to be had at an easy rate, the latter not without a great expence; but hitherto they have proved ineffectual, the workmen finding by experience that a sea-coal fire, how vehement soever, will not penetrate the most fixed parts of the ore, by which means they leave much of the mettal behind ...
— Iron Making in the Olden Times - as instanced in the Ancient Mines, Forges, and Furnaces of The Forest of Dean • H. G. Nicholls
... when Satan perceived that his thus tempting and assaulting of me, would not answer his design; to wit, to overthrow the ministry, and make it ineffectual, as to the ends thereof: then he tried another way, which was, to stir up the minds of the ignorant and malicious to load me with slanders and reproaches: now therefore I may say, that what the devil could devise, and his instruments invent, was whirled up ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... better and more generous hopes of our kind are to be lost and ineffectual, that genius is finally wasted, and goodness an exotic to be trampled under foot in the blind movements of Nature—that requires more power of faith than I can muster. Once believe that thought is the main factor, the motive force ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... stood surveying the consequences of the mishap; his countenance expressed almost every emotion of the human mind, as he held up the shoes and tried to wipe away the black mud which dyed them, until at length, finding all his efforts ineffectual, he burst into a ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... and all our efforts at retaliation either with artillery or trench mortars proved entirely ineffectual. There was nothing we could do except clear as many men as possible away from the danger area, and come back at dusk to rebuild our parapet. Towards the end of the tour the Boche started firing rifle grenades before each mortar, so that we should stoop to avoid the former and so miss seeing ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... thoughts are thine, majestic peak? And moods that were not born to chime With poets' ineffectual rhyme ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... a great comfort in talking to you—this writing is stiff, ineffectual work. Pen is very well, cheerful now,—has his little horse here. The place is singularly unspoiled, fresh and picturesque, and lovely to heart's content. I wish you were here!—and if you knew exactly what such a wish means, you would ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... forceful, but he is incorrigible. He will not understand that my young pines are beautiful, and that they are expected to grow into fine trees. He has no sense of beauty, of symmetry, of fitness. He is only a beast. He has no soul—I pause, remembering the ineffectual attempts of my Radiant Being to inspire human souls with a greater vision. Are we not all goats before the gaze of ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... made close to it on the summit, the present being intended to cover the working party at the next. The enemy, about 4 P.M., having discovered the stockade, opened a fire for half an hour; but finding it ineffectual, they sank into their usual apathy. It is difficult to attribute this quietude to any other cause than weakness; and they are doubtless harassed by the want of Dyak light troops, as they are unable ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... has for many years been scarcely a single administration of the French Government by whom the justice and legality of the claims of our citizens to indemnity were not to a very considerable extent admitted, and yet near a quarter of a century has been wasted in ineffectual ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... successful in getting rid of the leaders of the opposite party as they were in getting rid of him. The processes of count and reckoning instituted by him and by those who shared his views before the burgesses uniformly remained, at least in the cases that were of political importance, quite as ineffectual as the counter-accusations directed against him. Nor was much more effect produced by the police-laws, which were issued at this period in unusual numbers, especially for the restriction of luxury and for the introduction of a frugal and orderly housekeeping, and some of which have still ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... lightest pistols the cataloguer has ever seen. These ineffectual weapons are sold in large numbers on the waterfront of Genoa, where the owner acquired ...
— A Catalogue of Early Pennsylvania and Other Firearms and Edged Weapons at "Restless Oaks" • Henry W. Shoemaker
... namely, that the terms of compromise proposed by Crittenden should have been submitted to a vote of the whole people. It was not passed. Seward, whom many people now thought likely to catch at any and every proposal for a settlement, said afterwards with justice that it was "unconstitutional and ineffectual." Ineffectual it would have been in this sense: the compromise would in all probability have been carried by a majority consisting of men in the border States and of all those elsewhere who, though they feared ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... as East Hartford could, and no more; that is, the Rome which the average tourist feels an interest in. There are other things here which stir me enough to make life worth living. Livy and Clara are having a royal time worshiping the old masters, and I as good a time gritting my ineffectual ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... king and the earl of Leicester, in order to accommodate the differences between them, but found that the fears and animosities on both sides, as well as the ambition of Leicester, were so violent, as to render all his endeavors ineffectual. But when this solemn appeal, ratified by the oaths and subscriptions of the leaders in both factions, was made to his judgment, he was not discouraged from pursuing his honorable purpose: he summoned the states of France at Amiens; and there, in the presence of that assembly, as well as in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... air by some extraordinary power; for the Desert Fairy had fallen in love with him. To secure him for herself, therefore, she carried him to a frightful cavern, hoping he would there forget All-Fair. But finding this scheme ineffectual, she resolved to carry him to a place altogether as pleasant as the other was terrible; and accordingly placed him in a chariot drawn by swans. In passing through the air, he was unspeakably surprised to see his beloved princess in a castle of polished ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... launched a publication entitled L'Association Lithographique Mensuelle, which brought to light much of Daumier's early work. The artist passed rapidly from seeking his way to finding it, and from an ineffectual ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... had become extinct when he ceased to fulfil his purpose, and she sat at his side with the provisional air of a traveller who waits for a belated train to start. Lily's feelings were softer: she pitied him in a frightened ineffectual way. But the fact that he was for the most part unconscious, and that his attention, when she stole into the room, drifted away from her after a moment, made him even more of a stranger than in ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... you must not shoot with that. It will be ineffectual! Let the gunners do their work, I beg of you. Take your places at ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton
... giving us of her bounty what we could not hope for by our search. This success attends your lordship's thoughts, which would look like chance if it were not perpetual and always of the same tenor. If I grant that there is care in it, it is such a care as would be ineffectual and fruitless in other men; it is the curiosa felicitas which Petronius ascribes to Horace in his odes. We have not wherewithal to imagine so strongly, so justly, and so pleasantly: in short, if we have the same knowledge, we cannot draw out of it the same quintessence; ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... time, and tells us we shall not exercise the power of disposition as we wish. We would gain a particular advantage of another; and the thought of the old Roman lawyer who died before Justinian, or that of Rome's great orator Cicero, annihilates the act, or makes the intention ineffectual. This act, Moses forbids; that, Alfred. We would sell our land; but certain marks on a perishable paper tell us that our father or remote ancestor ordered otherwise; and the arm of the dead, emerging ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... York, if it should ever come to pass that the Constitution shall be perverted to the destruction of our rights so that we shall have the mere right as a feeble minority unprotected by the barrier of the Constitution to give an ineffectual negative vote in the Halls of Congress, we shall then bear to the federal government the relation our colonial fathers did to the British crown, and if we are worthy of our lineage we will in that ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... 1818, and put Clare to the severest distress. The expenses connected with his poetical speculation had swallowed up all his hoardings, and left him absolutely without a penny in the world. After several ineffectual efforts to find work as a lime-burner either at Pickworth or Casterton, he bethought himself to seek again employment as a farm-labourer, and for this purpose went back to Helpston. His parents, now quite reduced to the mercies of the workhouse, ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... Mr. Polly had a feeling—A young rabbit must have very much the feeling, when after a youth of gambolling in sunny woods and furtive jolly raids upon the growing wheat and exciting triumphant bolts before ineffectual casual dogs, it finds itself at last for a long night of floundering effort and perplexity, in a net—for the ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... glow of novelty had entirely ceased to bewilder the understanding of the renegade, preparations were made for the assault; and after a fierce but ineffectual resistance, under their gallant leaders Thomas and Herbis, the Damascenes were obliged to submit to their imperious conqueror, on condition of being allowed, within three days, to leave the ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... animals, though hungry, would touch them. The keeper then brought out a large bear, that had that very day destroyed three men; but this voracious creature and a fierce lioness both refused to touch the prisoners. Finding the design of destroying them by the means of wild beasts ineffectual, Maximus ordered them to be slain by the sword, on the 11th of October, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... to discontinue it,—the old farmer who told me said he had "failed up." Then I heard no more of him until that night of the convention, when I had the adventure with the Empress and Sir John, all unknown to them; and Jim made the ineffectual attempt to find me. His family had left the old neighborhood, and so had mine; and the chances of our ever meeting seemed very slight. In fact it was some years later and after many of the brave dreams of the youthful publicist had passed away, that I casually stumbled upon ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... transgressions; nor even could the united tears of angels erase the record of those offences for which man is brought in guilty before God! Can, then, subsequent obedience achieve the work of the sinner's justification? This, alas! will prove as ineffectual as repentance; for though we should render to God a perfect obedience for the remainder of our lives, still the sin we have committed is sufficient to procure our conviction and condemnation; for the wages of sin is death! Shall we, then, have recourse to the abstract mercy of God, as the foundation ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various
... though it may perhaps be doubted whether equal blame may not fairly be imputed to the arrogance and restlessness of the warden. At length he receded altogether from public life, and retired to his ancient domicile at Mortlake. He made one attempt to propitiate the favour of king James; but it was ineffectual. Elizabeth had known him in the flower and vigour of his days; he had boasted the uniform patronage of her chief favourite; he had been recognised by the philosophical and the learned as inferior to none of their body, and he had finally excited the regard of his ancient mistress ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... but ineffectual hands That with every futile pass Made the great tree seem as a little bird Before ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... shuffled back, to be met by a distressing spectacle. The lamp, burning as peacefully as it might have burned on an old lady's tea-table, revealed the window of the garden-room driven bodily inward, shutters and all, and now forming an inclined bridge over Dougal's ineffectual tubs. In front of it stood McGuffog, swinging his gun by the barrel and yelling curses, which, being mainly couched in the vernacular, were happily meaningless to Saskia. She herself stood at the hall door, plucking at something hidden in ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... but should they so do, that would not stench or quench the thirsts of these men. They must have blood, the blood of Mansoul, else they die; and it is from hence that they have their name. Wherefore these blood-men he reserved while now that they might, when all his engines proved ineffectual, as his last and sure card be played ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... vies with her neighbor in her devotion to the scrubbing-brush, as zealous Catholics do in their devotion to the cross; and it is said a notable housewife of the place in days of yore is held in pious remembrance, and almost canonized as a saint, for having died of pure exhaustion and chagrin in an ineffectual attempt to scour a black ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... with a reason which lays life open before her, an understanding which surveys science as its appropriate task, and a conscience which would make every species of responsibility safe,—for such a woman there is in all England no chance of subsistence but by teaching—that almost ineffectual teaching, which can never countervail the education of circumstances, and for which not one in a thousand is fit—or by being a superior Miss Nares—the feminine gender of the tailor and ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... future. He himself felt it, and welcomed it now as an authority not to be gainsaid, and again as an example to be competed against and surpassed. This fashion, this trend of opinion and hope, was the significance behind the effect produced on him by Jacopo de' Barbari, whose charming but ineffectual originality succeeded merely in creating an eddy in that stream. It was the tide behind him which so powerfully stirred and stimulated Duerer. The resemblances traceable between certain still life ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... to stay its ravages. It was a task beyond human strength, but he most gallantly attempted it. On some occasions he rescued with his own hands the victims of the popular fury, and arrested the cockaded assassins who would have destroyed them. But even his great popularity was ineffectual to prevent the massacre of innocent citizens, and more than once, overwhelmed with grief and disgust, he threatened to ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... quaint!" his mother exclaimed, putting out to caress him a practised but ineffectual hand. He slipped out of it, but looked with intelligent innocent eyes at Pemberton, who had already had time to notice that from one moment to the other his small satiric face seemed to change its time ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... Queen. One day, looking into Venus's looking-glass, given by Merlin to her father, she saw therein sir Artegal, and fell in love with him. Her nurse Glauce (2 syl.) tried by charms "to undo her love," but love that is in gentle heart begun no idle charm can remove. Finding her "charms" ineffectual, she took her to Merlin's cave in Caermarthen, and the magician told her she would be the mother of a line of kings (the Tudors), and after twice 400 years one of her offspring, "a royal virgin," would shake the power of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... crowd. I passed along till I found myself inside the grove, where I met Charles Ewing and John Hunter, and we stood looking at the troops on the road, heading toward the city. A band of music was playing at the head, and the column made one or two ineffectual starts, but for some reason was halted. The battalion of regulars was abreast of me, of which Major Rufus Saxton was in command, and I gave him an evening paper, which I had bought of the newsboy on my way out. He was reading from it some piece of ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... more than an hour, watching the motions and playing with the young elephant, which made several attempts to induce its prostrate mother to take notice of it. Finding, however, that all its efforts were ineffectual, when our travelers quitted the spot to go back, it voluntarily followed them to the caravans, where it remained, probably quite as much astonished to find all the Hottentots lying about as insensible as ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... which she kept her eyes turned from him, he saw that she was going to cry. For a moment he hesitated, afraid of the threatening scene, then, with a decisive movement, he took her violin-case out of her hand. Ephie made an ineffectual effort to get possession of it again, but he held it above her reach, and saying: "Wait a minute," ran up the steps. He came back without it, and throwing a swift glance round him, took the young girl's arm, and walked her off at a brisk pace to the woods. She made a few, faint protests. ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... appointed him guardian in the erroneous belief that he was free. The appointment of another man's slave as guardian, without any addition or qualification, is void, though valid if the words 'when he shall be free' are added: but this latter form is ineffectual if the slave is the testator's own, the appointment being void from ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... fresco, where coloured shapes Of old, ineffectual lives linger blurred and warm; An endless tapestry the past has woven drapes The halls of my life, ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... non-official member who supported the executive, was absent, and thus the votes of the official and country party were equal, and the balance was in the governor's hands.[243] At the next sitting of the council Wilmot proposed to pass the estimates. Ineffectual efforts to postpone their consideration exhausted all means of evasion, and Mr. Dry moved that the Appropriation Act should be read that day six months. He expatiated on the injustice of the system which condemned the colony to the cost of an imperial scheme, and insisted on the solemn ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... pieces—taken, as well as 1,800 prisoners, whilst we lost only five men. The whole affair lasted scarcely forty minutes. While our lines were forming, the Abyssinian artillery opened upon us a perfectly ineffectual fire at three miles and three-quarters. Our artillery kept silent until the enemy was within a mile and a-half, when a few volleys from us silenced the latter, dismounted two of their guns, and compelled the rest to withdraw. Our artillery ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... forfeited estates, but still excluding him from the House of Lords. He thereupon retired to his house, Dawley, near Uxbridge, where he enjoyed the society of Swift and Pope, on the latter of whom he exerted a strong influence. After some ineffectual efforts to regain a position in political life, he returned to France in 1735, where he remained for 7 years, and wrote most ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... the impediment to the exchange of prisoners, which had hitherto appeared to be insuperable, and made repeated but ineffectual efforts to remove it. Howe had uniformly refused to proceed with any cartel unless his right to claim for all the diseased and infirm, whom he had liberated, should be ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... with the ebb tide to Middle Island, and then steered across the basin for the Middle Arm, which was yet totally unexplored; but after many ineffectual attempts to find a passage over the shoals, we came to, in 5 fathoms, near the Shag Rocks, and I went to examine the arm with the boat. From Inspection Head I discovered a narrow channel leading into it, ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... the solemn vows required in the marriage covenant. From the time Margaret took her place on the floor, she felt her power over herself failing. Most earnestly did she struggle for calmness and self-control, but the very fear that inspired this struggle made it ineffectual. When the minister in a deeply impressive voice, said, "I pronounce you husband and wife," her eyes grew dim, and her limbs trembled and failed; she sunk forward, and was only kept from falling by the arm of the minister, which was extended in time ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... giver of wisdom, without whose help resolutions are vain, without whose blessing study is ineffectual; enable me, if it be thy will, to attain such knowledge as may qualify me to direct the doubtful, and instruct the ignorant; to prevent wrongs and terminate contentions; and grant that I may use that knowledge which I shall ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... fair, was carried on by the jockey and myself, the foreigner, who appeared to understand the greater part of what we said, occasionally putting in a few observations in broken English. At length the jockey, after the other had made some ineffectual attempts to express something intelligibly which he wished to say, observed: 'Isn't it a pity that so fine a fellow as meinheer, and so clever a fellow too, as I believe him to be, is not a little better master of ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... The crew of the Guerriere, counting men only, numbered 244, that of the Constitution with a similar limitation 460. Finally the Guerriere's tonnage amounted to 1,092, as against the Constitution's 1,533. The Guerriere's guns proved very ineffectual from the start, while the marksmanship, not only of the American gunners but of the riflemen in the Constitution's tops, was the wonder of the British. It is stated that none of her shot fell short. After a fight lasting nearly ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... back of the house and dashed out again at the front. Browne attempted to arrest his flight, crying out, as he made an effort to seize him, "Stop, you old villain, or I'll kill you!" But the momentum of the flying figure rendered Browne's grasp ineffectual, and in a moment he was out of doors, just as Bob and Jocko and the other servants entered the ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... chosen too late. It has been reserved to signalize the lives of a Cato or a Brutus, on the eve of fatal revolutions; to foster in secret the indignation of Thrasea and Helvidius; and to occupy the reflections of speculative men in times of corruption. But even in such late and ineffectual examples, it was happy to know, and to value, an object which is so important to mankind. The pursuit, and the love of it, however unsuccessful, has thrown its principal ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... such a body declares its aims, its declaration automatically separates the sheep from the goats, and its enemies are outside and not inside. The organizing body should be the heart and centre of the farmers' movement, and if the heart has its allegiance divided, its work will be poor and ineffectual, and very soon the farmers will fall away from it to follow more single-hearted leaders. No trades union would admit representatives of capitalist employers on its committee, and no organization of farmers should allow alien or opposing interest on their councils to clog the ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... Perhaps she partly guessed the cause of his commotion; yet it was not so much her beauty that silenced him, as the spirit that seemed to inhabit it. Nature, in general so chary of her gifts, so prone to use one good feature as the palliation of a dozen deficiencies, to wed the eloquent lip with the ineffectual eye, had indeed compounded her of all fine meanings, making each grace the complement of another and every outward charm expressive of some inward quality. Here was as little of the convent-bred miss as of the flippant and vapourish fine lady; and any ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... at resistance so ill calculated as these demonstrations of the wage-earners and farmers, not to speak of the host of petty sects of so-called reformers during the first phase of the Revolution, were ineffectual. The great labor organizations which had sprung up shortly after the war as soon as the wage-earners felt the necessity of banding themselves to resist the yoke of concentrated capital, after twenty-five years of fighting, ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... down while he massaged the bruised arms and ankles, which were badly swollen from the tight ropes. The girl had apparently been in the grip of such terrible fright that she had temporarily lost her power of speech. Mentally he chalked up another score against the Professor as the girl made several ineffectual attempts to speak. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... with horror, and whose nerves were no longer obedient to his will, after several ineffectual attempts to speak, looked up at OMAR; and striking his hand upon his breast, cried out, in an earnest, but faultering voice, 'What shall I do?' 'Thou must do,' said OMAR, 'that which is RIGHT. Let not thy foot be ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... that hour still remained inclined for drinking, they were to do it on the open deck. (Which Roberts believed would give a check to their debauches, for he was a sober man himself, but found at length that all his endeavors to put an end to this debauch proved ineffectual.) ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... in such places, and now first I understand why men try to make them grow about their houses. But though there may be very perfect specimens in front-yard plots, their beauty is for the most part ineffectual there, for there is no such assurance of kindred wealth beneath and around them, to make them show to advantage. As we have said, Nature is a greater and more perfect art, the art of God; though, referred to ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... Law of the Conditioned," as a ground of faith in the Infinite Being, is utterly void, meaningless, and ineffectual. Let us re-state it in Hamilton's own words: "The conditioned is the mean between two extremes, two inconditionates exclusive of each other, neither of which can be conceived as possible, but of which, on the principle of Contradiction and Excluded Middle, one must be admitted as necessary." ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... entering into the combat, and probably only had about seventeen thousand worn out men in front of him, he failed to do anything to relieve Sedgwick's force, which was now becoming seriously compromised. A feeble and ineffectual reconnoissance was indeed attempted, and as that was promptly resisted, Hooker gave up the idea of any advance, and left Sedgwick to get out of the difficulty the best way he could. At 11 A.M., Sedgwick wrote, stating the obstacles which beset ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... New-York, the Constitution provides for an election on the first Wednesday of February. On that day the Whig candidate, ex-Governor Hamilton Fish, received a majority of 37 in the House: the Senate, after two ineffectual ballots, adjourned. A special law will therefore be required to elect a senator. In Massachusetts, the Democratic candidate, Robert Rantoul, Jr., was elected to fill the vacancy occasioned by Mr. Webster's acceptance of a place in the Cabinet. All attempts to elect a senator for the ensuing ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... make out, it was so immediately above him; then he crossed the yard with a swift but anxious step to its north corner, and peered about in the gloom for the promised rope; the spout was there, smooth and ineffectual enough as a means of exit, but ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... character, and individual exertions. The main direction that the stream will take is manifest enough perhaps; but it may come down upon long tracts of level ground which it will overspread quietly, or it may enter into some rocky channel which will control it; or it may meet with some ineffectual mud embankment which it ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... the meanest of them has some beloved being whom he can clasp to his heart, and upon whom he can lavish the fondness of a father. But all that a king can give to a people is a smile, such as the sun bestows on the snowy peaks of the Grampian mountains, as distant and as ineffectual. Alas, Robin! our father used to caress us, and if he chid us it was with a tone of kindness; yet he was a monarch as well as I, and wherefore should not I be permitted, like him, to reclaim my poor prodigal by affection as ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... altar dedicated to its worship,—before which ancient holocausts, the smoke of burnt-offerings in the old Jewish rites, the censers of the Church, and the joss-sticks of the East, must "pale their ineffectual fires." All classes, all ages, in all climates, and in some countries both sexes, use tobacco to dispel heat, to resist cold, to soothe to reverie, or to arouse the brain, according to their national ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... of the War Cabinet it had been a case of that solemn, time-honoured, ineffectual council composed of all the principal Ministers of the Crown, gathered together in Downing Street to discuss matters which the majority of those present never know any more about than the man in the ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... assist me to revolutionize chemistry. Mr. Smith, I fear you know more of my plans than I had deemed it possible for you to have learned, and I am anxious to know if you have a confidant. Where your memory fails you, and my files and wire jackets prove ineffectual, Inspector Weymouth's recollections may prove ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... dinner. When she came matters were apt to become confusedly strenuous. There was always a slight and ineffectual struggle at the end on the part of Margaret to anticipate Altiora's overpowering tendency to a rally and the establishment of some entirely unjustifiable conclusion by a COUP-DE-MAIN. When, however, Altiora was absent, the quieter influence of the Cramptons prevailed; temperance ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... one of her most promising sons. Infinite charity! Infinite courage! Infinite truth! Infinite humility! Who could do justice in prose to those rare and godlike qualities? No: miserable, weak, and ineffectual though my gift of poesy may be, yet I will not let those qualities pass away from the minds of all, save the few that knew him well, without following in the footsteps (though at an immeasurable distance) of the divine author of "Lycidas," by ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... her husband, that he was convinced of his purity of life, and though one should carry tales to him about Joseph and herself, Potiphar would lend them no credence. And when she saw that all this was ineffectual , she approached him with the request that he teach her the word of God, saying, "If it be thy wish that I forsake idol worship, then fulfil my desire, and I will persuade that Egyptian husband of mine to abjure the ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... that helps them still. Apart from these, Near the sky-borders of that banish'd world, Wander pale spirits among willow'd leas, Lost beyond measure, sadden'd without end, But since, while erring most, retaining yet Some ineffectual fervour of regret, Retaining still such weal As spurned Lovers feel, Preferring far to all the world's delight Their loss so infinite, Or Poets, when they mark In the clouds dun A loitering flush of the long sunken ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... the air, and the quickness of it and his weight half threw me off my balance. I made a hurried step on the log, and my right foot slipped into a huge, gaping crack. It was only after I had made two or three ineffectual struggles to release it that I found I ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... and were attended with consequences so important to themselves and the country. By the difference just mentioned, between Mr. Pitt and Lord Thurlow, the ministerial arrangements of 1793 were facilitated, and the learned Lord, after all his sturdy pliancy, consigned to a life of ineffectual ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... being kept on such duty overtime. The Massachusetts men had the worst pay and the best ringleaders, so they were the first to break out openly. One morning they fell in without their officers, marched on to the general parade, and threw their muskets down. This was a dramatic but ineffectual form of protest, because nearly all the muskets were the private property of the men themselves, who soon came back to take their favourite weapons up again. One of their most zealous chaplains, however, was able to enter in his diary, perhaps not without a qualm, but certainly not without ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... of an hour the strife lasted, and still victory was on the side of the Scots—glorious victory, purchased with scarce the loss of ten men. The English fled back to their camp, leaving many wounded and dead on the field, and some prisoners in the hands of the Scots. Ineffectual efforts were made to harass the Scots, as with a daring coolness seldom equalled, they repaired the outworks, and planted fresh palisades to supply those which had fallen in the strife, in the very face of the English, ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... this gentleman might be; and Mrs. Flaxman gave him a lightly touched account. A young man of wealth and family, it seemed, but spoilt from his earliest days, and left fatherless at nineteen, with only an adoring but quite ineffectual mother to take account of. Some notorious love affairs at home and abroad; a wild practical joke or two, played on prominent people, and largely advertised in the newspapers; an audacious novel, and a censored play—he had achieved ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... October, 1869. (A reduced facsimile of the communication is shown below.) An attempt was made through the police and the secret service system to trace the authorship of the superscription. The attempt was ineffectual. ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... results from allowing damp clothes to lie in the basket for a length of time, is obstinate and difficult to remove. Boil in salted buttermilk; or wet with lemon juice and stand in the sun. If these treatments are ineffectual, resort to diluted oxalic acid or Javelle water, a careful rinsing to follow the application. Grass stains may be treated in a like manner, or washed in alcohol. Ammonia and water, applied while the stain is fresh, will ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... nineteen-centuries-dead Galilean carpenter's son that they have about no one else. All the great names of antiquity are but ghosts and shadows, and all the names in the Church and in the world, of men whom we have not seen, are dim and ineffectual to us. They may evoke our admiration, our reverence, and our wonder, but none of them can touch our hearts. But here is this unique, anomalous fact that men and women by the thousand love Jesus Christ, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... The morning broke badly. I lashed my hand to my hammock and was forced to call on the P.O. to extricate me. He remarked, with ill-disguised bitterness, that I could think of more ineffectual things to do than any rookie it had been his misfortune to meet. I told him that I didn't have to think of them, ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... is of very great use in preserving things that you wish to keep a long time, which without its help would soon spoil, from the clumsy and ineffectual manner in which ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... Ten minutes more, and I shall be asleep in the sun, with my head down-dropped on the window-sill. I get up, and, putting on my out-door garments, stray out into the sun, leaving Barbara—her pretty forehead puckered with ineffectual wrath, and Tou Tou blurred with grimy tears, to their death-struggle with the restive verb "to love." It is the end of March, and when one can hide round a corner from the wind, one has a foretaste of summer, in the sun's warm strength. I gaze lovingly at the ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... think we ought to recur for a moment, perhaps, to the Pilgrim Fathers [laughter], and I desire to say that both Harvard and Yale recognize the fact that there are some things before which universities "pale their ineffectual fires." ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... his own village or county, not a little good to find themselves lost in the crowd, and quite overshadowed by the stars of the brigadiers. Even these latter did not look quite so portentous and dazzling when we saw them in whole constellations, paling their ineffectual rays before the luminary of headquarters. Many an ambitious youth, who had come from home with very grand though vague ideas of the personal influence he was to have upon the country's destinies, found it a wholesome exercise ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... flung against this opening. Drill and discipline were necessary, however, before the attempt could be made. In the present chaotic, untrained condition of their forces, an assault would prove not only ineffectual, but disastrous. Day after day the recruits were put through hard drill under the direction of the regular officers. Every day saw the force increased. This made hard work for the drill-masters. The willingness of the recruits, however, lessened ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... scarf trailing from his hat. There were some fair American costumes and faces in the crowd, but it was essentially Quebecian. The young girls, walking in pairs, or with their lovers, had the true touch of provincial unstylishness, the young men had the ineffectual excess of the second-rate Latin dandy, the elder the rude inelegance of a bourgeoisie in them; but a few better-figured avocats or notaires (their profession was as unmistakable as if they carried their well-polished door-plates upon their breasts), ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... without a soul." Oliver Ellsworth, advocating the adoption of the Constitution in the Convention of Connecticut, says: "A more energetic system is necessary. The present is merely advisory. It has no coercive power. Without this, government is ineffectual, or rather is no government at all." Earlier than this Madison had claimed "an implied right of coercion" even for the Confederate Congress, and Jefferson had gone so far as to say that they possessed it "by the law of nature." ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... horsemen, and yelled vengeance, violently wrenching the weapons from the hands of their dying companions to supply the place of those they had discharged at their antagonists. Sufficient intervals were afforded, and every encouragement held out for them to make proposals, but all was ineffectual. They sallied forth with increased vigor, so as to oblige the Griquas to retreat, though only to a short distance, for they never attempted to pursue above 200 yards from their camp. The firing, though without any order, was very destructive, as each took a steady aim. Many of their chief ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... concession 1165-1829.' On arriving at the spot designated, we found some new graves, but nothing to indicate that of M. Dassas, our only mark by which we could trace the site after the changes wrought since 1829. After several ineffectual attempts, I finally perceived a flat grave, surrounded by an iron railing, and covered with weeds. Its surface seemed to me very regular, and I probed this lot. There was a gravestone there. The grave-digger who accompanied ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... a triumph decreed him at Rome, much more splendid than his first; they looked upon him now as a champion who had learned to cope with his antagonist, and could now easily foil his arts and prove his best skill ineffectual. And, indeed, the army of Hannibal was at this time partly worn away with continual action, and partly weakened and become dissolute with overabundance and luxury. Marcus Livius, who was governor of Tarentum when it was betrayed to Hannibal, and then ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... impatience. But if she tried to get away he brought her back to the subject. Cornered, she grew resentful: "I can't tell who told me," she pleaded, after ineffectual sparring. "I've forgotten. Are you a gambler?" ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... sea men requires revision and amendment. The provisions for their support in foreign countries and for their return are found to be inadequate and ineffectual. Another provision seems necessary to be added to the consular act. Some foreign vessels have been discovered sailing under the flag of the United States and with forged papers. It seldom happens that the consuls can detect this deception, because they have no authority ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... poor man, in hauling a boat up one of these channels, was, by the breaking of the line, precipitated into the stream and hurried down the cascade with such rapidity, that all efforts to save him were ineffectual. His body was afterwards found, and interred near ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... constantly lessening. As the brook gradually subsided to its customary level, the forest became more and more silent. The greater his endeavor to sleep, the less dormant Roland felt, and all his senses seemed unduly quickened by this ineffectual beckoning to somnolence. He judged by the position of the stars, as he lay on his back, that it was past midnight, when suddenly he became aware of a noise to the west of him, on the other side of the brook. Sitting up, and listening intently, he suspected, ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... largest of what I thought to be Women, I accosted her, but received no answer. A second and third appeal on my part were equally ineffectual. Losing patience at what appeared to me intolerable rudeness, I brought my mouth to a position full in front of her mouth so as to intercept her motion, and loudly repeated my question, "Woman, what signifies this concourse, ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... are loaded with ball-cartridge, and carefully capped. The fight is to be with Colt's six-shooters, navy size. Each combatant chances to have one of this particular pattern. They are to commence firing at twelve paces, and if that be ineffectual, then close up, as either chooses. If neither fall to the shots, then ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... their own danger; a solid security with knaves, though none with fools. His Royal Highness the Duke is hourly expected here: his arrival will make some bustle; for I believe it is certain that he is resolved to make a push at the Duke of N., Pitt and Co.; but it will be ineffectual, if they continue to agree, as, to my CERTAIN KNOWLEDGE, they do at present. This parliament is theirs, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... waving his gown and yelling, collided with an old gentleman hobbling round the corner, and sat down suddenly in the gutter with a squeal, as a bagpipe collapses. The old gentleman rotated on one leg like a dervish, made an ineffectual stoop to clutch his gouty toe and wound up by bringing his rattan cane smartly ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... stood, each brandishing on high His massy spear, and each was fiery wroth. First, Alexander his long-shadow'd spear Sent forth, and on his smooth shield's surface struck 410 The son of Atreus, but the brazen guard Pierced not, for at the disk, with blunted point Reflex, his ineffectual weapon stay'd. Then Menelaues to the fight advanced Impetuous, after prayer offer'd to Jove.[18] 415 King over all! now grant me to avenge My wrongs on Alexander; now subdue The aggressor under me; that men unborn May shudder at the thought of faith abused, And hospitality ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... the Administration had some excuse for laughing at the "inglorious and ineffectual war" thus waged. It had failed to result in the capture of Villa and it gave rise to serious danger of an open break with Mexico. On the 21st of June an attack at Carrizal by Carranza's troops resulted in the capture of some United States cavalrymen and the mobilization of the national ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... In spite of his ineffectual attempt at the prison, Nekhludoff, still in the same vigorous, energetic frame of mind, went to the Governor's office to see if the original of the document had arrived for Maslova. It had not arrived, so Nekhludoff went back to the hotel and wrote without delay to Selenin and ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... this ineffectual and abortive sniping kept up, and then from the walls of the stockade appeared that for which MacNair had been waiting—a white flag fluttering from the end of a sapling. Raising his head, MacNair imitated ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... intellect and warm heart, abounding in illustrious virtues. When on her deathbed, in 1821, she repeatedly sent for Buxton, and urged him "to make the cause of the slaves the great object of his life." Her last act was to attempt to reiterate the solemn charge, and she expired in the ineffectual effort. Buxton never forgot her counsel; he named one of his daughters after her; and on the day on which she was married from his house, on the 1st of August, 1834,— the day of Negro emancipation—after his Priscilla had been manumitted ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... the House made an ineffectual effort to sustain the veto, but the party whip and the power of the saloons were too strong for them, and the bill was passed over the veto by a vote of 9 to 4. It met a different and better fate, however, in the Council, where it was sustained ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... constitution, naturally weak, was being gradually undermined. He suffered from constant headache, heart-burn, pains in the back and limbs, weakness, and lassitude. Yet he attributed none of these ailments to the true cause. After the lapse of three or four years thus spent, and after repeated ineffectual attempts, by a powerful effort of the will, by the aid of prayer, and by adopting a more wholesome diet, he succeeded in getting the mastery of his vice. But the local difficulties still continued in a great degree, and under particularly aggravating ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... constantly once, and sometimes twice a day, for several days together, to see what success at the lake; till at length she grew very impatient, for fear, as she afterwards told me, I should either think she had not done what she said, or had done it in an ineffectual manner. But one day, walking by the lake, I thought I saw something floating in the water at a very great distance. "Youwarkee," says I, "I spy a sail!" Then running to my boat* and taking her in, away we went, plying my oars ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... through the scrubs, but it was just the same, and altogether abominable. Night again overtook me in the direful scrubs, not very far from the place at which I had slept the previous night; the most of the day was wasted in an ineffectual search for water. ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... dwelling and its contents from the devastation that threatened it. They knew that they had no power to stop its onward course, as they possessed no implement better than a rough wood shovel, which would be found very ineffectual in opening a trench or turning the ground up, so as to cut off the communication with the dry grass, leaves, and branches, which are the fuel for supplying the fires on the Plains. The little clearing on one side the house they thought would be its safeguard, but the fire was advancing ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill |
