Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Roundabout way   /rˈaʊndəbˌaʊt weɪ/   Listen
Roundabout way

noun
1.
A roundabout road (especially one that is used temporarily while a main route is blocked).  Synonym: detour.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Roundabout way" Quotes from Famous Books



... in this conversational bow-knot, Mr. Ramsay waited to be extricated. His idea had been to convey in the most delicate and roundabout way to Bijou that he was not the man to marry any woman for her money, and that if he had seemed to like a certain person a good deal it was not because she was the daughter of a rich man. To her, however, he seemed to be posing as a conqueror of heiresses, indifferent to the pain he might inflict ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various

... We must therefore attribute them to an extra-corporeal principle; and this we call soul. As an incorporeal thing the soul cannot be strictly defined, not being composed of genus and species; but we can describe it in a roundabout way in its relation to the body. He then gives the Aristotelian definition of the soul as "the [first] entelechy of a natural body having life potentially" (cf. above, ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik

... with the Regicides will give a stability to the Regicide system. This will not clear the discourse from the absurdity, but it will account for the conduct, which such reasoning so ill defends. What a roundabout way is this to peace,—to make war for the destruction of regicides, and then to give them peace in order to insure a stability that will enable them to observe it! I say nothing of the honor displayed in such a system. It is plain it militates with itself almost in all the parts of it. In one part, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... abandonment of his wife had led to the mischief, and his desertion of his country's flag seemed to merit censure. It was, however, finally decided that when he ran away he "acted rather from levity than malice;" and as he had entered the Spanish army in a roundabout way, and after considerable persuasion, that the loss of his leg in that service was sufficient punishment. The guilt of his wife, Bertrande de Rols, was thought even more apparent, and that a woman could be deceived in her husband was a proposition few could digest. Yet, as the woman's life-long ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous

... driver of the carriage sent to meet them, that the crowd in the streets being already very great, he feared it would be a tedious undertaking to get through. Some of the thoroughfares were closed for traffic; he would have to go by a roundabout way; and in any case could not reach the main entrance of the hotel. At best, he would have to deposit his passengers and their luggage at a side ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson

... to fulfil so simple a duty, you chose a roundabout way, which is not only troublesome, but actually dangerous, ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau

... I led there in that wretched house. I tried to do my duty by Stein, but I had also other matters to think of. When I escaped to Doramin old Tunku Allang got frightened and returned all my things. It was done in a roundabout way, and with no end of mystery, through a Chinaman who keeps a small shop here; but as soon as I left the Bugis quarter and went to live with Cornelius it began to be said openly that the Rajah had made up his mind to ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... sustain him; and that the courts and the lawyers, among whose functions it is to see to it that laws and statutes do not interfere too seriously with the convenience of the community, would arrive, in what subtle and roundabout way they might choose, at the conclusion that whatever must be done might be done. These learned gentlemen did their duty, and developed the "war powers" under the Constitution in a manner equally ingenious, comical, and sensible. But the fundamental basis was, that necessity knows no law; every man ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse

... enough that something else will have happened meanwhile and that he'll see, and thank God for it, that what is is best. There'll be another thing too. He'll find his wife has married again. Yes, fact! I heard in a roundabout way that she's going to marry an old neighbour of theirs, chap called Major Millett, Hopscotch Millett, old Sabre used to call him. However, that's not the thing—though it would be a complication—that I mean will have happened and will make him see, ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... this new railroad route through the Cascades. This Pass of Snoqualmie had always been his choice of a transcontinental line. And he was approaching new territory; he never had pushed down the eastern side from the divide. He had chosen this roundabout way purposely, with thirty miles of horseback at the end, when the Great Northern would have put him directly into the Wenatchee Valley and within a few miles of that tract of Weatherbee's he ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... head. "You see, Mrs. Hazleton is a nervous wreck, but it's about the baby, and caused, she says, by her fears for its safety. It came to us only in a roundabout way, through a servant in the house who keeps us in touch. The curious feature is that we can seem to get nothing definite from her about her fears. They may ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... day at Eugenia's oftener than to any other part of the grand outing. There was to be a whole week of sight-seeing in New York sandwiched in between the cozy hours at home with Joyce in her studio, and then on the roundabout way back to school a stop-over at Annapolis, for a few hours ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston

... an authoritative body, and to the satisfaction of their conscience by the dogmas revealed through its agency. Then the question occurs: Is this a logical argument, or an appeal from argument to feeling? Is it not, as Fitzjames thinks, a roundabout way of saying, 'I believe in this system because it suits my tastes and feelings, and because I consider truth unattainable'? If so, persuasion is substituted for reasoning: and the force of persuasion depends upon the constitution of the person to be persuaded. Now the arguments, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... this secluded, elevated domain, and which twenty centuries of civilization keeps inaccessible, he still encroaches, and to the utmost, in a roundabout way, by laying his hand on the Church, and next on the Pope; here, as elsewhere, he takes all he can get. Nothing in his eyes, is more natural; he has a right to it, because he ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... just come to her recollection that the cloth manufacturer had also passed the night at Bazeilles, and if he had returned would be able to give her the intelligence she wanted. She ran swiftly down the stairs again. In place of taking the more roundabout way by the Rue des Voyards, she crossed the little courtyard of her house and entered the passage that conducted to the huge structure that fronted on the Rue Maqua. As she came out into the great central ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... England, absorbed in political struggles at home—the Corn Law Repeal and the vexed question of Ireland—had still no anxiety over Franklin. No message could have come except {118} by the chance of a whaling ship or in some roundabout way through the territories of the Hudson's Bay Company, after all but a slender chance. The summer of 1846 came and went and then another winter, and now with the opening of the new year, 1847, the first expression ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock

... that it made his blood boil, for it was perfectly evident now to Buck that he had thwarted a deliberate plot to introduce the blackleg scourge among the Shoe-Bar cattle. Instead of riding fence, the two punchers must have made their roundabout way immediately to the stricken T-T ranch, secured in some manner an infected yearling and brought it back through the twisting mountain trail Bud had spoken of a ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

... I did not care about, but which would be necessary as links, because, when you have made a man or a woman, you must do, something with him. You can't leave him standing, without any visible means of support. One person writes a novel of four hundred pages to convince you in a roundabout way, through thirty different characters, that a certain law, or the mode of administering it, is unjust. He does not mention himself, but makes his men and women speak his arguments. Another man writes a treatise of forty pages and gives you his views out of his own mouth. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... did he notice any one he knew. There was a new assemblage of station loafers, and none of these recognized him. Suitcase in hand, his soft hat pulled well down, he walked quickly round the crowd and took a roundabout way through quiet streets ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... gate to the old family mansion of Midbranch, but it was never opened to admit the family or visitors; although occasionally a load of wood, drawn by two horses and two mules, came between its tall chestnut posts, and was taken by a roundabout way among the trees to a spot at the back of the house, where the chips of several generations of sturdy wood-choppers had formed a ligneous soil deeper than the arable surface of any portion of the nine hundred and fifty acres which formed the farm of Midbranch. This seldom opened ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton

... left for a secret corner of the palace by a roundabout way, three priests were dispatched to Tarzan and with whining words that did not entirely deceive him, they acknowledged his kinship to Jad-ben-Otho and begged him in the name of the high priest to honor the temple with a visit, when the priests from A-lur would be brought to ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... still had to say to you is something very general, and yet I prefer to choose this roundabout way. I do not know whether it is false or true delicacy, but I should find it very hard to talk with you, face to face, about friendship. And yet it is thoughts on that subject that I wish to convey to you. The application—and it ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... in local usage. But indirectly Roman law did exert a by no means insignificant influence through the medium of the Church, which, for all its insular character, was still permeated with Roman ideas and forms of culture. The Old English "books" are derived in a roundabout way from Roman models, and the tribal law of real property was deeply modified by the introduction of individualistic notions as to ownership, donations, wills, rights of women, &c. Yet in this respect also the Norman Conquest increased the store of Roman conceptions by breaking ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various

... is in herself unknowable. Aristotle teaches: there is nothing in the intellect which hath not first been in the senses, and the senses cannot penetrate beyond experience. But what the mind cannot grasp directly it may come to comprehend by a roundabout way. When we consider her works, as far as in our human weakness we can know, we say the Maid is of God. Albeit she hath adopted the profession of arms, she never counsels cruelty; she is merciful to her enemies when they throw themselves upon her mercy and she offers peace. Finally the ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... Simeon Khlopov, deceased? On one occasion she asked me to call Peter's attention to the matter of his title to the property. I entered the sick-room and began to discuss the matter cautiously, in a roundabout way, so as not to excite the patient by implying that his end might be near. But my precautions were unnecessary. He spoke very cooly of the possibility of his end coming at any moment, but at the same time he insisted that there ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg

... like to explain to you some of my doings; and I must go a roundabout way to do it. Miss Hazel, do you read the ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... consultation, the guide announced that he was ready for the attempt, and advanced, followed by the others. They took a roundabout way, so as to get at the pagoda on the rear. They reached the walls about half-past twelve, without having met anyone; here there was no guard, nor were there ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne

... make any use of the evidence against her and are prepared to take all the blame for the unhappy state of affairs between you! I write sarcastically. Why, it would be monstrous if you had any other intention! Oh, how I hate this pedantic roundabout way of writing! I feel inclined to tear up these sheets—I've torn up two already. Really, you've made it so difficult for me to treat you naturally. If I could talk to you, I'd make you understand in five minutes—but I ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... a great circle and came by a roundabout way back to the little fuzz-balls she had left hidden in ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton

... mentioned to me yesterday, which illustrates the very roundabout way in which justice is arrived at among us all here. The coolies in a French coolie ship rose. The master and mate jumped overboard, and the coolies ran the ship on shore, where the crew had their clothes, &c., taken from them, but were ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... went a roundabout way to put it before you, but you have hit the right nail clean on the head at once. We want to make their lives as sunshiny as we can, and not try to point out clouds where as likely ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn

... had learned from his father that Nina had spoken to her aunt about the title-deeds of the houses in the Kleinseite, and that thus, in a roundabout way, a demand had been made for them. "Of course, they will not give them up," he had said to his father. "Why should they, unless the law makes them? They have no idea of honour or honesty to one of us." The elder Jew had then expressed his opinion ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope

... Petit Val, who is living in her other chateau in Brittany, sent a letter to me which I should send to Helen in Berlin, to be sent to Paul, who is in Versailles, to be sent to Mr. Washburn, in Paris, who is to give it to Henry at Petit Val. Rather roundabout way! I can't tell you how much of that sort of thing I am constantly doing for people who are afraid of doing anything for themselves; they think every one is a spy or ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone

... perfectly free to do exactly as you like, but I heard in a roundabout way something that ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson

... sent it. And, after a good while and in a roundabout way, I heard that the whole dinner party vowed 'twas the best wild goose they ever ate. So I ain't sure just who the joke was on. However, I'm satisfied with my end. Well, there! I guess you must think I'm pretty talky on short acquaintance, Mr. Sylvester. You'll have to excuse ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln

... disagreement was as to slavery in the Territories, and that was more apparent than real. Lincoln contended for free soil through the direct action of the general government. Douglas advocated a roundabout way that led up to the same result. His proposition, which he called "popular sovereignty," was to leave the decision to the people of the Territories, saying he did not care whether they voted slavery up or voted it down. That was a practical, although ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume

... me, of Mr. Alberts, the queen's page. He said nobody dared represent to the king the danger of his present continual exertion in this hot weather,—"unless it is Mr. Fairly," he added, "who can say anything, in his genteel roundabout way." ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay

... That's just it, for Court's a settin' all this week. Well I hope Mr. Lawson will get a good share of the pickins, for he's as honest as the sun, and when a fellar goes to him for advice he gets it in good English law, and no runnin' roundabout way that would puzzle a chap till his hair would ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... news of the gold discovery filtered to us in a roundabout way through vessels to the Sandwich Islands, and then appeared again in the columns of some Baltimore paper. Everybody laughed at the rumour; but everybody remembered it. The land was infinitely remote; and then, as now, romance increases as the square of the distance. There might well ...
— Gold • Stewart White

... tree in the orchard where Mitch was. Then we walked clear to the back of the orchard, clumb the rail fence, walked through the meadow a roundabout way and came to the road on the other side of the Tate farm. So here we struck out for Atterberry, so as to walk the railroad to Havaner. We thought we could make ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters

... yet come out. Had she taken the straightforward measure of examining Robert, she would soon have arrived at the truth. But she had such a dread of causing a lie to be told, that she would adopt any roundabout way rather than ask a plain question of a suspected culprit. So she laid the shoes down beside her, saying to ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... Violante's hand. But Riccabocca had already learned that the fancied spy was but his neighbour Leonard; and, without so saying, he cleverly contrived to make the supposition of such espionage an additional reason for the cessation of Leslie's visits. Randal then, in his own artful, quiet, roundabout way, had sought to find out if any communication had passed between L'Estrange and Riccabocca. Brooding over Harley's words to him, he suspected there had been such communication, with his usual penetrating astuteness. Riceabocca, here, was less on his guard, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... he got over the stile, the dog gave a louder whine of alarm, placed its fore feet upon his breast, and held him fast against the stile. He tried to push the dog aside, but it would not let him proceed. The strap was therefore put around its neck, and the wise creature at once led its master by a roundabout way quite out of the ordinary path. It appeared that part of the footpath which led past a stream had been entirely washed away by a flood, so that, had the gentleman continued upon the old path, he must have met with a most serious accident. What made the sagacity ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... of doing so in your roundabout way, I will. You intended to run away with Miss Collingsby. You deceived her, lied to her, and thus induced her to come on board of your yacht. You asked me only because she would not ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic

... steps for your return to Germany. Unfortunately my late efforts and endeavours have not as yet led to a favourable result, which proves by no means that such may not be the case in the future. Your hint about the roundabout way, viz., Prague, I believe to be an illusion which you ought not to cherish, because it might lead to the most ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... heard nothing except what flattered his own passion, believed that Charlotte, in these words, was alluding to her previous widowed state, and, in a roundabout way, was making a suggestion for a separation; so that he answered, with a laugh, "Why not? all we want is to come to an understanding." But he found himself sorely enough undeceived, as Charlotte continued, "And we have now a choice of opportunities for placing Ottilie in another situation. Two ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... mortal; Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal.' In this case, what we really know beyond reasonable doubt is that certain men, A, B, C, were mortal, since, in fact, they have died. If Socrates is one of these men, it is foolish to go the roundabout way through 'all men are mortal' to arrive at the conclusion that probably Socrates is mortal. If Socrates is not one of the men on whom our induction is based, we shall still do better to argue straight from ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell

... had all the external signs of enjoyment. I doubt if he was ever very selfish where she was concerned, and love can forgive almost any conduct where there is personal indulgence. I had a glimpse of the real state of things in a roundabout way. Henderson loved his wife and was proud of her, and he was not unkind, but he might have been a brute and tied her up to the bedpost, and she never would have shown by the least sign to the world that she was not the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... old rags over me until he was gone. Then she would slip me off to school through the back way. I can see her now with her hands upon my shoulder, shoving me along through the woods and underbrush, in a roundabout way, keeping me all the time out of sight of the great plantation until we reached the point, a mile away from home, where we came to the public road. There my mother would bid me good-bye, whereupon she would return to the plantation ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various

... that could be spared from Quebec; he detached a body of troops under Colonel Haviland from Crown Point, to cross Lake Champlain, take possession of the Isle Aux Noix, and push on to the St. Lawrence, while he took the roundabout way with his main army by the Mohawk and Oneida rivers to Lake Ontario; thence to descend the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving

... know comes in a roundabout way," he replied slowly. "Penfield, who is known all over the Southwestern as Mr. North's private detective and spy, is with Mr. Colbrith acting as the president's secretary. Yesterday, while the Nadia was side-tracked here, Penfield had a lot of telegraphing to do for Mr. Colbrith. He did it himself—he's ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde

... former owners are all dead, and the property fell into my father's hands in a roundabout way. You see, when he got it the land was worth but very little, and no great care was taken ...
— The Young Bridge-Tender - or, Ralph Nelson's Upward Struggle • Arthur M. Winfield

... Plate-fleet in sight, is hanging out lights, firing guns, and shrieking vainly for the General, who is gone on a new course, in which he might have caught the fleet after all, in spite of his two mistakes, but that he chooses to go a roundabout way instead of a short one; and away goes the whole fleet, save one Carack, which runs itself on shore and burns, and the game is ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley

... the lawyer that he knew nothing of this, although he had heard in a roundabout way that such an intention had been talked of; and he also at length succeeded in making Sir Abraham understand that even this did not satisfy him. The attorney-general stood up, put his hands into his breeches' ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope

... the good?" returned Andrews. "The enemy's engine will reach Dalton in a minute or two—perhaps they are there now—and they can telegraph on to Chattanooga by way of the wires on the Cleveland line. It's a roundabout way, but it will answer ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins

... into his plate, and from there in a somewhat roundabout way past his mother's plate, slyly across to his aunt, to see whether it looked like an order to go to bed at once. And it was so beautiful today, how beautiful the running about this evening after school ...
— Erick and Sally • Johanna Spyri

... took her head in her hands. If she only had some one to talk things over with. It was impossible to confide in Gora, in any one. If she broached the subject to Tom Abbott, to Judge Lawton, even in a roundabout way, they would suspect at once. Aileen and Janet and the other girls did not know enough. They would suspect also. But her head would burst if she didn't consult some one. She was too horribly alone. And after all she was still very young. She had talked ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... am going to follow it. It is good. When Carnival is over I will go away, and perhaps get to Saracinesca by a roundabout way, so that no one will know where I am. ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford

... to be trouble that evening at the big-riffle crossing was this way"—it is the dying Bledsoe, of course, who is being quoted. "The man they sent to the mill with the message did a lot of loose talking on his way back after he gave in the message, and in this roundabout way the word got to me at my house on the Eden's Swamp road soon after dinnertime. Now I had always got along fine with both of the Stackpoles, and had only friendly feelings toward them; but maybe there's some people still alive back there in that county ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... factor depended on the vexed question of means of communication. There was no cross-country railway linking the eastern German wing to the western German wing. As has been previously remarked, all supplies and munitions had to come in a roundabout way. Verdun was a desired goal, but Field Marshal von Heeringen was wise enough to know that if the crown prince's effort against General Sarrail had failed, if the Third French Army had secured heavy reenforcement, and if it had been left unmolested for a week, the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... in his roundabout way to tell her that he had no idea of the ownership of the scenario. Her name was not on it, and he had not observed her face that day at the Red Mill. And in his mind all the time had been his own ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson

... things were little better. Sol Hanson had, in a roundabout way, gathered that Smiler had been abused, and, in some inexplicable manner, had arrived at the truth, that Brenchfield was responsible for it. Sol was vowing vengeance in no ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson

... intuition Frank divined the big bashful man's meaning. It was his roundabout way of asking the boy to commit him to the care of God before leaving him ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley

... not count much on what information might come from the head clerk. Blossom, in the mind of Dr. Lambert, was a person of not much strength of character. There had been certain episodes in his life, information as to which had come to the physician in a roundabout way, that did not reflect on him very well; though, in truth, he felt that the man was ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele

... you know," put in Mrs. Harmon, viewing her benignly. "We heard in a roundabout way that Mr. Brown was paying attention to ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart

... resumed Miss Castlevaine, "that I guess you won't like—I don't know what we're coming to! Miss Major got it in a roundabout way through one of the managers, and it may not be true; but they say they're going to cut out our Wednesday pudding and our Sunday pie!" Her little blue eyes glared at ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd

... were bestowed on me without any merit on my part: and I always greatly desire this. My confessor told me not to do it. But almost to this day, if I saw that any one thought well of me, I used in a roundabout way, or any how, as I could, to contrive he should know of my sins: [4] that seemed to relieve me. But they have made me very scrupulous on this point. This, it appears to me, was not an effect of humility, ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... I was not anxious to see him. I went to the barn, and by a roundabout way reached the swamp. I need hardly say that I was in great excitement and alarm. The constable was to be put upon my track; but I was not at all afraid that he would find me in the swamp, which for nearly half a mile had three feet of water ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic

... and uneasy, so that I shrank from meeting her with the necessary challenge. None the less, however, was I impatient to learn how the new day found him; and as Mrs. Ambient hadn't seen me I passed into the grounds by a roundabout way and, stopping at a further gate, hailed the Doctor just as he was driving off. Mrs. Ambient had returned to the house before he ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James

... shows no signs of leaving the sofa. She has evidently come to Holchester House to say something—and she has not said it yet. Is she going to say it? Yes. She is going to get, by a roundabout way, to the object in view. She has another inquiry of the affectionate sort to make. May she be permitted to resume the subject of Lord and Lady Holchester's travels? They have been at Rome. Can they confirm the shocking intelligence which has reached her of the "apostasy" ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins

... Versailles his ideal of the charming and picturesque. Sir George, no exception to the rule, shivered as he looked round. He began to experience a revulsion of spirits; and to consider that, for a gentleman who owned Lord Chatham for a patron, and was even now on his roundabout way to join that minister—for a gentleman whose fortune, though crippled and impaired, was still tolerable, and who, where it had suffered, might look with confidence to see it made good at the public ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman

... assertions. When I say that A is above B, however, I surely assert that B is below A; and I cannot make both assertions about A and B at the same time without a contradiction. To explain this by an association of simultaneous and successive sensations seems to be a curiously roundabout way of 'explaining.' Every assertion is also a denial; and, if I am entitled to say anything, I am enabled without any help from association to deny its contradictory. On Mill's showing, the assertion and the denial of its contradiction, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... all our momentum. It ended up by our lowering sail and ignominiously trundling the yacht back to school. After that we carefully selected our course, and never sailed away from home before the wind unless we knew of a roundabout way that would lead us back to port on a couple of reaches ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond

... occasion to send Jim upon an errand shortly after his return from school that afternoon; and he found it convenient, according to his usual custom, to return by a roundabout way, and stop at the peanut-stand. The excitement in Johnny's small establishment had hardly subsided when he made his appearance, and it was little wonder that he tarried long on his errand; so long, indeed, ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews

... the door and blindfold the doctor tight and fast, and make him swear to be silent as the grave, and put a purse full of gold in his hand, and then take and lead him all around the back alleys and everywheres in the dark, and then fetch him here in the canoe, in a roundabout way amongst the islands, and search him and take his chalk away from him, and don't give it back to him till you get him back to the village, or else he will chalk this raft so he can find it again. It's the way they ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... who it was, he swerved hurriedly in another direction, and got to his destination by a roundabout way, feeling as he reached it about as miserable and hopeless as it was possible for a boy ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed

... has got tired of St. Victor, and will probably leave the neighborhood to-morrow. I do not dare to keep the bonds in my possession, as I may be followed, but consider it safer to express them to you at once. I shall go back to New York by a roundabout way, but shall probably arrive very nearly as soon as ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger

... which she overheard; of her marvellous vision in the night; of her waking next morning to find her vision true, and her father dead on the floor. All these facts, with which the reader is already familiar, the poor child made known to the jury in a fragmentary, roundabout way, as they were elicited by questions from the coroner, the jury, and occasionally the prisoner's counsel. The narrative of the vivid dream, or vision, produced a startling effect on the coroner, who was a firm believer in every species of supernaturalism ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... a roundabout way over six weeks ago that an attempt would be made by the Germans to establish a radio station somewhere along this portion of the coast. The hills back of Timminsport and Henryville would make an ideal ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)

... left it there? Why such anxiety to escape observation as to make the man alert to notice Sally's head peering over the parapet of the landing at the head of the cliff? And if he had been employed in no way to be ashamed of, and had no consequences to fear, why that roundabout way up the cliff again and that ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... night after signing the pledge he went straight to the Post Office and put a good portion of his money into the Savings Bank, and then went home by a roundabout way to avoid the public-houses. "It's no use to pray 'Lead us not into temptation' and then go right by the Bear's Den when you aren't obloiged to," he ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis

... intelligent mother, "Every thing to relate me, the smallest as well as the greatest. Men will always be hasty, their thoughts to extremes ever running: Easily out of their course the hasty are turned by a hindrance. Whereas a woman is clever in thinking of means, and will venture E'en on a roundabout way, adroitly to compass her object. Let me know every thing, then; say wherefore so greatly excited As I ne'er saw thee before, why thy blood is coursing so hotly, Wherefore, against thy will, tears are ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... scared still more, by a sound as of a cavalry or a battery of artillery coming behind us. It was three loads of people on the hayracks, who had overtaken us on account of our having gone by the roundabout way; coming at a keen gallop down the hill to have the credit of passing a fancy carriage. They passed us like a tornado; shouting as they went by, asking what I had shot at, and telling us to hurry up so as to ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick

... whether the name rebels, in its ordinary sense, could properly be applied to those colonists who had what he termed grievances. We both showed heat, I the more, until he, rather than quarrel, fell into silence. We had turned back into the town; choosing a roundabout way for home, that we might observe the effect of the messenger's news upon the citizens. In a few streets the narrow footways were thronged with people in their churchgoing clothes, and many of these had already gathered into startled ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens

... the pressure of Jack Fyfe's lips on hers left no room for anything but an amazing thrill of pure gladness. She was happy in his arms, content to rest there, to feel his heart beating against hers, to be quit of all the uncertainties, all the useless regrets. By a roundabout way she had come to her own, and it thrilled her to her finger tips. She could not quite comprehend it, or herself. But she was glad, weeping with gladness, straining her man to her, kissing his face, murmuring incoherent words ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... add, nor Amy reflect, that it was a very long and roundabout way to reach "the other village," by passing over rough and steep Bareacre hill; but John was willing enough to take it, when he was told who was to be his companion on the route. He had liked Amy from the first, and had grown to know her fairly well during his time of helping ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond

... bell. Only, as it happened to be the wrong bell, he obtained the presence of Joseph in a roundabout way, through the agency of a gentleman-in-waiting. Such, however, is the human faculty of adaptation to environment that he was merely amused in the morning by an error which, on the previous night, would have ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett

... a glade of the forest, are a large sawmill and Mont Bozat. About 1 m. E. from the junction the high road crosses the Clergue, where a path descends northwards by the stream passing the Cascade Plat-a-Barbe, about 4m. from Bourboule by this roundabout way, but only 2 m. by the direct path. The falls, 60 ft. high, tumble into a cavity bearing some resemblance to a barber's shaving basin. A little way farther down through the woods the Clergue makes ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black

... Mason-bees, whom I thought that I had bewildered by a long and circuitous drive, and six of the blue Mason-bees, who came to Font-Claire by the direct route. The two proportions, forty-six and forty per cent., are almost equal; and the slight excess in favour of the insects that went the roundabout way is evidently an accidental result which we need not take into consideration. The bend described cannot have helped them to find their way home; but it has also certainly not ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... Sir Richard of the Lee, with his son and retinue, journeying in a roundabout way in order to throw Monceux off the scent, and so give Robin a chance to reach his stronghold in Barnesdale. Both knights paused in amazement to ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick

... know, except that it's somewhere out of town and some of the girls and fellows are going to the place in sleighs. I wasn't asked to go, and I got the information in a roundabout way." ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer

... Emma, goes—although in Mr. Marsden's letter—such a roundabout way, that I cannot say all that my heart wishes. Imagine every thing which is kind and affectionate, and you will come near ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson

... path which nature has prescribed for them, as if they were tied and bound. But in brutes the gentleness of mood inspired by reason, the subtlety, the love of freedom, are not qualities found in excess, but they have unreasonable appetites and desires, and act in a roundabout way within certain limits, riding, as it were, at the anchor of nature, and only going straight under bit and bridle. But in man reason, which is absolute master, inventing different modes and fashions of life, has left no plain or evident ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... drove back to my flat, taking a roundabout way through the Bois, I mused and analysed things. And what is the psychological reason for some presents being quite correct to give and some not? It all goes back to the re-creative instinct and through what this manifests itself. Gifts which ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn

... what Yetmore did when he came down for his tobacco this morning? He went to the stable, saddled his horse, untied your two ponies and led them out. Then he mounted his horse and taking the halter-ropes in his hand he led your ponies by a roundabout way through the woods down to the road. After leading them at a walk along the road for half a mile he dismounted—that was where his tracks showed—and either took off the halters and threw them away, or what is more likely, tied them up around the ponies' necks so ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp

... a few bright days here. The city was crowded with an army and those who supply it and live by it, and it was a center of vivid activity. Dick had letters from his mother and he also heard in a roundabout way that Colonel Kenton had gone through the battle of Perryville uninjured and was now with Bragg ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler

... patiently. She knew Betty's roundabout way of telling a story, and waited. "What did you tell Aunt Pike? Do tell me, Betty dear. I ought to know before I ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... of old the roundabout way pursued by her aunt's friend in her narrations. Besides, she cared very little anyway for this bit of old women's gossip. So she said carelessly, "No, I'm sure I haven't; and I don't believe it's ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney

... to prove from this quotation out of the Book of Deuteronomy that all men who are under the Law are under the sentence of sin, of the wrath of God, and of everlasting death. Paul produces his proof in a roundabout way. He turns the negative statement, "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them," into a positive statement, "As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse." These two statements, one ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther

... retreating to the nest, or to the place where they have been stealing. After a quarter of an hour's confusion and hissing, one may make a circuit of a foot round the earth, and soon all follow in that roundabout way. When on their way to attack the abode of the white ants, the latter may be observed rushing about in a state of great perturbation. The black leaders, distinguished from the rest by their greater ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... laughed he, as he lighted the cigar, "what a droll masquerade it has been! 'Pon my soul! I can scarce get the paint off; and my voice, after such yelling, won't recover for a week! Ha! ha! Never was maiden wooed and won in such a romantic, roundabout way. Shepherds attacked—sheep driven off and scattered to the winds—cattle carried away and killed in regular battue—old woman knocked over, and rancho given to the flames—besides three days of marching and countermarching, travestying Indian, and whooping till one is ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid

... noticed at what an opportune time Locke's work came to the French. Locke had established the philosophy of bon sens, of healthy common sense, that is, to express it in a roundabout way, that there are no philosophers other than those of the understanding which is based ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx

... certain roundabout way it is slightly connected with him. That is really my excuse for inflicting the subject upon you. You are the only man I can speak to about it—if I shall not ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome

... pains the old people took to hide places where gold could be found, and if there had been rich mines among these mountains you speak of, no doubt they would have hidden them just as carefully. The question is, shall we go up this pass as we intended, and take our chance, or shall we go by this roundabout way?" ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty

... French is the language the thieves talk, and I solemnly believe it. That's one thing. Now, here's another. You'll excuse me, my dear fellow. In course you know more than I do, but I must say that you have got sometimes a very roundabout way of coming to the pint. I mean no offence, and I don't blame you. It's all along of the company you have kept. You are—it's the only fault you have got—you are oudaciously fond of hard words. Don't let the young uns larn 'em. That's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... shadowy wall of the building, they turned a corner and by a roundabout way reached ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... through Moscow could not be thought of, and the roundabout way Princess Mary was obliged to take through Lipetsk, Ryazan, Vladimir, and Shuya was very long and, as post horses were not everywhere obtainable, very difficult, and near Ryazan where the French were said to have shown themselves was ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... earlier hours of the same day, Miss Grierson took the roundabout way between the Raymer plant and Mereside, making the circuit which took her through the college grounds and brought her out at the head of upper Shawnee Street. The Widow Holcomb was sitting on her front porch, placidly crocheting, when the phaeton ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... however, had occurred to the commander-in-chief, the man of brilliant ideas. He communicated it to the council, where it instantly found adherents, and objectors, too. It was the third alternative. A circuitous road called the Quaker road, recently surveyed and just made, led in a roundabout way from the rear of the camp toward the Princeton road, which it entered two miles from that town. Washington's plan was to steal silently away in the night by this road, leaving bright fires burning to deceive the confident enemy, and press with all speed toward Princeton, strike ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... wobbled a good deal, and the Kid came near falling sidewise off the last step before he could balance his burden. But he managed it, being the child of his parents and having a good deal of persistence in his makeup; and he went, by a roundabout way, to the stable with the grub-sack bending him double. Still it was not so very heavy; it was made bulky by about two dozen fresh-made doughnuts and a loaf of bread and a jar of honey and a glass of wild-currant jelly and a pound or so of raw, dried prunes ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower

... indeed was made to the testimony of a neighbor who professed to have overheard what he deemed an incriminating statement. As a matter of fact the remark, if made, was harmless enough.[17] Expert evidence was introduced in a roundabout way by the statement offered in court that a physician had suspected that a certain case was witchcraft. Nothing was excluded. The garrulous women had been give free rein to pile up their silly accusations against one another. Not until the trial was nearing its ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein

... asked him in a roundabout way if he thought any of his guests could have had anything to say to it. Phew! How furious Sir Roland became with them! You should have seen him—I was with him at the time. Then suddenly he grew quite calm, realizing that they were, after all, only trying ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux

... approaching the ideal of its kind is therefore only a roundabout way of specifying its intrinsic merit and expressing its direct effect on our sensibility. If in referring to the ideal we were not thus analyzing the real, the ideal would be an irrelevant and unmeaning thing. We know what the ideal is because we observe what pleases us in the reality. If we allow ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana

... other hand, the Roman Hill (/Romerberg/) was a most delightful place for walking. The way to the New-Town, along by the new shops, was always cheering and pleasant; yet we regretted that a street did not lead into the Zeil by the Church of Our Lady, and that we always had to go a roundabout way by the /Hasengasse/ or the Catherine Gate. But what chiefly attracted the child's attention, were the many little towns within the town, the fortresses within the fortress; viz., the walled monastic enclosures, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... pretty badly treated, I think. I suppose he knows it isn't my fault or Harry's. I try to make up for it in lots of ways—by getting him an introduction to the man who wants to fly across the Atlantic. I really hoped he would say to Van Buren, 'Fly with me!' but he didn't, and in the most roundabout way and by the most fearful lot of trouble—chiefly through me—he was asked to dinner to meet that other man—I forget his name, the one who keeps on discovering the North Pole. And it seems he is a dear, and awfully good-looking. ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson

... anger swept over the First Brigade. The 65th grew intractable, moved at a snail's pace. The company officers went to and fro. "Close up, men, close up! No, I don't know any more than you do—maybe it's some roundabout way. Close up—close up!" The colonel rode along the line. "What's the matter here? You aren't going to a funeral! Think it's a fox hunt, boys, and step out lively!" A courier arrived from the head of the column. "General Jackson's ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... somewhat roundabout way to the gate, opened it and closed it behind them before she attempted to mount. Jake was very tall—much taller than he had ever before seemed to be. She had to hunt a high spot and coax him to stand on the lower ground beside it before she could feel confidence enough to lift her toe to the ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower

... the good?" returned Andrews. "The enemy's engine will reach Dalton in a minute or two—perhaps they are there now—and they can telegraph on to Chattanooga by way of the wires on the Cleveland line. It's a roundabout way, but it will answer their ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins

... "You better be careful how you talk to me, Mr. Farnum. I might want to know what Big Tim was doing in your office yesterday. I might want to know what business took you up to The Brakes by a mighty roundabout way." ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine

... returned Carton excitedly, "The story is to be, as I understand it, that the fake pictures were among those stolen from me and that in a roundabout way they came into the possession of someone in the organization, without their knowing who the thief was. Of course they don't know who took them and the original plates or films are destroyed, but they've concocted some means of putting a date on them ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve

... fearful in reporting the dangerous part of this interview, on account of the many spies not only in my own Embassy but also in the State Department, that I sent but a very few words in a roundabout way by courier direct ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard

... I wish you had been with us, Mamma. I came a roundabout way back alone with my "partner-in-sauce" as we called him, in his automobile, an open one, and we just tore along for miles as fast as we could, and though he was driving himself, he managed to say all sorts of charming things; ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn

... time, Tom was thoroughly tired of going such a roundabout way, and without telling his plans to any one, he resolved to pass through the giant's domain, or lose his life in the attempt. This was a bold undertaking, but good living had so increased Tom's strength and courage, ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... Moriarity, and took him to old Nance, the widow. Still later, you, Cook and Moriarity took refuge at Swanson's ranche in the Indian Territory, and after attempting to rob your host, which attempt was frustrated by my men, you came, in some roundabout way, to Chicago, where you put up at the Commercial Hotel, disguised by a false mustache. Every evening you went to West Lake street, and last night you were arrested. Now, Mr. Wittrock, ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton

... Jack for his impudence to him in the field. Nevertheless, the fair Amelia continued her attentions, and talked of hunting, occasionally diverging into observations on Lord Scamperdale's fine riding and manly character and appearance, in the roundabout way ladies send their messages ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... and seen nothing of Polly; but her motherly instinct won the day and she urged him to eat before disturbing him with her own anxieties. It was no use. He only toyed with his food; he was clearly ill at ease and eager to be alone. She gave up trying to tempt his appetite, and began to lead up in a roundabout way to the things which she ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo

... last we returned. Never did a jollier little procession march up Broadway. People were going to the opera and evening companies, and carriages rolled by, filled with elegantly dressed ladies and gentlemen; but my wife remarked, "None of those people are so happy as we are, trudging in this roundabout way to ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe



Words linked to "Roundabout way" :   road, route



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com