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More "Cumber" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it is tenanted by the soul of their first ancestor and that it rules their destiny. Sometimes there is a sacred grove near a village, where the trees are suffered to rot and die on the spot. Their fallen branches cumber the ground, and no one may remove them unless he has first asked leave of the spirit of the tree and offered him a sacrifice. Among the Maraves of Southern Africa the burial-ground is always regarded as a holy place where neither a tree may be felled nor ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... my father!" she exclaimed; "save him from worse than death! Let us fly together at once," she continued; "no, not together, I would cumber your flight; but make your escape, O my father, from this wicked court, this barbarous king, this life which, to a son of Hadassah, must be misery and bondage indeed! Oh, fly, fly; be safe, be free; be again what you were once! it is not too late! it is not too late!" There was intense delight ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... we resided has long since been swept away, with its barns, its piggery, and its shippon. Never more will its cornricks gladden the eye—never more will busy agricultural life be carried on in its precincts. Streets and courts full of houses cumber the ground. No more will the lark be heard over the cornfield—the brook seen running its silvery course—or the apple in the orchard reddening on the bending bough. The lark is represented by a canary in a gilded cage hanging out of a first-floor window—the ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... to those most frequently mispronounced, thus reducing the book to a practical working field at small cost. Many of the words in most books on orthoepy are very rarely mispronounced, and they serve only to cumber the work. Those who desire an exhaustive reference book should consult the dictionaries. Second, the plan of exhibiting the weight of authorities where authorities differ is of great practical value. In these ...
— A Manual of Pronunciation - For Practical Use in Schools and Families • Otis Ashmore
... the maiden Who calls on you now— Arise! from your dreaming In violet bowers, To duty beseeming These star-litten hours— And shake from your tresses Encumber'd with dew The breath of those kisses That cumber them too— (O! how, without you, Love! Could angels be blest?) Those kisses of true love That lull'd ye to rest! Up!—shake from your wing Each hindering thing: The dew of the night— It would weigh down your flight; And true love caresses— ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... also the monks of every district and city shall be subject to the bishop, that they shall love peace and quiet and observe the fasts and prayers in the places where they are assigned continually; that they shall not cumber themselves with ecclesiastical and secular business and shall not take part in such; they shall not leave their cloisters except when in cases of necessity they may be commissioned by the bishop of the city with such; that no slave shall ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... you've lost your way,—you, whom people so cosset and praise Sir. You won't be hurried, and you can't be flurried, and you're always as cool as a cucumber. Can a little 'un like me, your own child, don't you see, such a smart pioneer as are you cumber? You, the modern Theseus? Where's your Ariadne? Oh, I know you are cool, and clever. Yet I feel a doubt. When shall we get out?—which I can't ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... lad: thews that lie and cumber Sunlit pallets never thrive; Morns abed and daylight slumber Were ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... met below, They, too, have long roam'd to and fro; They ramble, leaving, where they pass, Their fragments on the cumber'd grass. And often to some kindly place Chance guides the migratory race, Where, though long wanderings intervene, They recognise a former scene. The dingy tents are pitch'd; the fires Give to the wind their wavering spires; In dark knots crouch ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Emerson says: "I pray you, O excellent wife, cumber not yourself and me to get a curiously rich dinner for this man and woman who have just alighted at our gate. These things, if they desire them, they can get for a few shillings at any village inn; but rather let that stranger see, if ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... cats in Kilkenny till both were "eaten up:" the Gudabirsi fix the event at the period when their forefathers still inhabited Bulhar on the coast,—about 300 years ago. If the date be correct, the substantial ruins have fought a stern fight with time. Remnants of houses cumber the soil, and the carefully built wells are filled with rubbish: the palace was pointed out to me with its walls of stone and clay intersected by layers of woodwork. The mosque is a large roofless building containing twelve square pillars of rude masonry, ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... town, With more respect he and his dog are known: A brisker face he wears at wake or fair, Nor views with longing eyes the pedlar's ware, But buys at will or ribands, gloves, or beads, And willing maidens to the ale-house leads: And, Oh! secure from toils which cumber life, He makes the maid he loves an easy wife. Ah, Nelly! can'st thou with contented mind, Become the help-mate of a lab'ring hind, And share his lot, whate'er the chances be, Who hath no dow'r, but love, to fix on thee? Yes, gayest maid may meekest matron prove, And things of little note may 'token ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... beholds Some sunken feature of the mummied Past, But oftener only the embroidered folds And soiled magnificence of her rent robe Whose tattered skirts are ruined dynasties That sweep the dust of aeons in our eyes And with their trailing pride cumber the globe.— For lo! the high, imperial Past is dead: The air is full of its dissolved bones; Invincible armies long since vanquished, Kings that remember not their awful thrones, Powerless potentates and foolish sages, Impede the slow steps ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... Turkish, capitals it met much the same reception. Nowhere did it reach the eye of a Departmental Head. It went to Siam, to the Prince of Monaco, to Ecuador, and was tossed to cumber a basket, or moulder on ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... there is an assurance that they have enough to eat and drink and to spare, and idleness is joined therewith; just as we still see, the richer cities are the more shamefully do men live in them; but where there is hunger and cumber there the sins are so much the fewer. Therefore God permits, in regard to those that are His, that their education should be severe, ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... storm-winds of Autumn . . . . . Ye are bound for the mountains— Ah, with you let me go . . . . . Hark! fast by the window The rushing winds go, To the ice-cumber'd gorges, The vast seas of snow. There the torrents drive upward Their rock-strangled hum, There the avalanche thunders The hoarse torrent dumb. —I come, O ye mountains! Ye torrents, ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... livest, my beloved, the Giver of Life sends down upon thee sometimes things of sadness; but I, the singer, shall make thee glad in the place of difficulty, in the place of cumber. ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton
... hill, and pasture. Great numbers of them have become standards; we see them following the lines of old stone walls that skirt the bounds and avenues of the farm, in company with the Ash and the Maple. In these situations, where they would not "cumber the ground," they have been allowed to grow, without exciting the jealousy of the proprietor of the land. Accident, under these circumstances, has reared many a beautiful tree, which would in any other place have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... earliest and foggiest period, whose only memorials are the stones which still cumber the ground, or those subtler traces of occupation of which philology keeps the key, and pushing aside a long and uncounted crowd of kings, with names as uncertain as their deeds, pushing aside, too, the legends and coming to hard fact, we must picture Ireland ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... prophet: "There where dragons roamed, In later days the grass shall grow—the reed"? I choose those rocky hills that, on our left, Drag down the skiey waters to the woods: Such loved I from my youth: to me they said, "Bandits this hour usurp our heights, and beasts Cumber our caves: expel the seed accurst, And yield us back to God!"' The King gave ear; And Cedd within those mountains passed his Lent, Driving with prayer and fast the spirits accurst With ignominy forth. Foundations next He ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... It would also follow that the names of substances would not only have, as in truth they have, but would also be supposed to have different significations, as used by different men, which would very much cumber the use of language. For if every distinct quality that were discovered in any matter by any one were supposed to make a necessary part of the complex idea signified by the common name given to it, it must follow, that ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... for the security of those who depended on their vigilance, with their own lives. These assurances had, beyond a doubt, a soothing influence on the apprehensions of Ruth and her handmaidens; but they somewhat failed of their effect, with those unwelcome visiters who still continued to cumber Wish-Ton-Wish with their presence. Though they had evidently abandoned all ideas connected with the original object of their visit, they spoke not of departure. On the contrary as night approached, their chief entered into council with old Mark Heathcote, and made certain propositions ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... and as many women slaves or concubines as a man can properly and with decency provide for, the children of the latter, if recognised by the father, sharing equally with the offspring of the former. Though why a man who has found his love should wish to cumber his house with other women, seething with jealousy and peevish from want of occupation, is beyond my ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... only astonish the world, that is enough. Its citizens fondly hope that everything they do is on the largest scale. Size, speed, and prominence are the three gods of their idolatry. They are not content until they—the citizens—are all prominent, and their buildings are all the largest that cumber the earth. It is a great comfort to those who gamble away their substance in the Board of Trade to reflect that the weathercock that surmounts its tower is the biggest ever seen by human eye. There is not one of them ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... life, just as if the business of this mighty world could be carried on by innocent people fond of ease and quiet, or that Providence would permit innocent, quiet drones to occupy any portion of the earth and to cumber it. God had at any rate decreed that this man should not cumber it as a drone. He brings a certain affliction upon him, the agony of which produces that terrible whirling of the brain which, unless it is stopped in time, produces madness; ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... some places an iron rod laid on the surface would sink by its own weight. Like many other difficulties in this world, the solidification of the Chat Moss was said to be impossible, but the great engineer scarce admitted the propriety of allowing the word "impossible" to cumber our dictionaries. He began the work at once by forming an embankment twenty feet high, which he carried some distance across the treacherous soil, when the whole affair sank down one day and disappeared! Undismayed, Stephenson began ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... German Fiddles, which may be bought new for a few shillings, has swamped English makers of cheap instruments, of which there are by this time five times as many in the market as there is any occasion for. Hence it is that Fiddles meet us everywhere; they cumber the toy-shop; they house with the furniture dealer; they swarm by thousands in the pawnbrokers' stores, and block out the light from his windows; they hang on the tobacconists' walls; they are raffled at public-houses; and they form an item in ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... then his whip he flourished, Cracked his whip, all bead-embroidered, Quick he sped upon his journey, Lurched the sledge, the way was shortened, 10 Loudly rang the birchwood runners, And the rowan cumber rattled. ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... same longings, for among the many proclamations against the residence in London of country gentlemen in unofficial positions is one of James I., noticing "those swarms of gentry, who, through the instigation of their wives, do neglect their country hospitality and cumber the city, a general nuisance to the kingdom;" and the royal Solomon elsewhere observes that "gentlemen resident on their estates are like ships in port—their value and magnitude are felt and acknowledged; but when at a distance, as their size seemeth insignificant, so ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came seeking fruit thereon, and found none. 7 And he said unto the vinedresser, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why doth it also cumber the ground? 8 And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it: 9 and if it bear fruit thenceforth, well; but if not, thou ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... the French differ from us and from the Spaniards, is that they do not embarrass or cumber themselves with too much Plot. They only represent so much of a Story as will constitute One whole and great Action sufficient for a Play. We, who undertake more, do but multiply Adventures [pp. 541, 552]; which (not ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... For the upper classes of all countries, the people who travel, and have to stand the nuisance and loss of changing their money at every frontier, the bankers and international merchants who have to cumber their accounts with the fluctuating item of exchange between commercial centres will insist upon it. All the European nations, with the exception of Russia and Turkey, are ready for the change, and when these ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... correi, Sage counsel in cumber, Red hand in the foray, How sound is thy slumber! Like dew on the mountain, 390 Like the foam on the river, Like the bubble on the fountain ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... with some of the finest and most characteristic work of the author, would be rather a puzzle in a more "serious" writer than Hamilton; but in his case there is no need to distress, or in any way to cumber, oneself about the matter. The whole thing was a "compliment," as the age would have said, to Fantasy; and the rules of the Court of Quintessence, though not non-existent as dull fools suppose, are ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... surely, sir,—too strange to be believable," quoth Shelby. "You are a traitor, Captain Ireton—of the kind we need not cumber ourselves with on ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... scarcely grown? Or hast thou told of the Volsungs, and the gathered heart of these, And their still unquenched desire for garnering fame's increase? E'en so do I hearken thy words: for I wot how they deem it long Till a man from their seed be arisen to deal with the cumber and wrong. Bid me therefore to sit by thy side, for behold I wend on my way, And the gates swing-to behind me, and each day of mine is a day With deeds in the eve and the morning, nor deeds shall the noontide ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... dear child, but sometimes a little glimpse. But you should see the pictures of our holy Father Angelico, to whom the angels appeared constantly; for so blessed was the life he lived, that it was more in heaven than on earth. He would never cumber his mind with the things of this world, and would not paint for money, nor for prince's favor; nor would he take places of power and trust in the Church, or else, so great was his piety, they had made a bishop of him; but he kept ever aloof and walked in the shade. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... No Persian cumber, boy, for me; I hate your garlands linden-plaited; Leave winter's rose where on the tree It hangs belated. Wreath me plain myrtle; never think Plain myrtle either's wear unfitting, Yours as you wait, mine as ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... and with a feeling of consternation and pity, as she thought of the orphan boy, she accepted his greeting with duteous welcome as he said, "Kinswoman, I am come to cumber you, whilst I inquire into this matter. I give your son thanks for the honesty and faithfulness he hath shown in the matter, as befitted his father's son. I should wish ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... from him. In the first place, he was by no means sure that escape was what he wanted—not yet, at any rate; in the second place, if Gabriel Druse passed the word along the subterranean wires of the Romany world that Jethro Fawe should vanish, he would not long cumber ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... cigars—and those disgusting cigarettes," said Mr. Flint, with conviction. "There are a lot of worthless young men in these days, anyhow. They come to my house and loaf and drink and smoke, and talk a lot of nonsense about games and automobiles and clubs, and cumber the earth generally. There's a young man named Crewe over at Leith, for instance—you may have seen him. Not that he's dissipated —but he don't do anything but talk about railroads and the stock market to make you sick, and don't know any more ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a cumber-ground long already, and wilt thou continue so still? Thy sin has brought this army to thy walls, and shall it bring it in judgment to do execution into thy town? Thou hast heard what the captains have said, but as yet thou shuttest thy gates. Speak out, Mansoul; wilt thou do so still, or wilt ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... the Filipinas ships, and the sailors have been permitted to take two or three very large boxes, under pretext that these contain wearing apparel, and thus cumber the ships. We order that no irregularity be permitted in this, and that the utmost circumspection be exercised; and that the sailors be not allowed to carry more boxes or clothing on the said ships than that indispensably needed for ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... head the plunging pilot rears, Clogg'd with his clothes, and cumber'd with his years: Now dropping wet, he climbs the cliff with pain. The crowd, that saw him fall and float again, Shout from the distant shore; and loudly laugh'd, To see his heaving breast disgorge the briny draught. The following Centaur, and the Dolphin's crew, ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... say, not exceed three or four hairs at the most; though you may fish a little stronger above, in the upper part of your line: but if you can attain to angle with one hair, you shall have more rises, and catch more fish. Now you must be sure not to cumber yourself with too long a line, as most do. And before you begin to angle, cast to have the wind on your back; and the sun, if it shines, to be before you; and to fish down the stream; and carry the point ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... couple. But this rare result, which is not intended by the directing power, is the sole good purpose these agencies were ever known to serve. Lord Mansfield, it must be admitted, once seemed to justify the use of private detectives in divorce suits, but he was careful to cumber the faint praise with which he damned them by making honesty in the discharge of these delicate duties a first essential. Had he lived to see the iniquitous perfection the business has now attained, he would undoubtedly have withheld even that quasi-endorsement of ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... themselves; what the world has lost by that compulsory expression of genius, in a form which may not have been its most natural form of expression, or only one of its forms, no one can ever know. Even in the little third-rate novelist whose works cumber the ground, we see often a pathetic figure, when we recognise that beneath that failure in a complex and difficult art, may lie buried a sound legislator, an able architect, an original scientific investigator, or a good judge. Scientifically speaking, ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... rare, that they have desired the seeds of them out of England, and preserve them with extraordinary care in their best gardens; this I learn out of our Johnson's Herbal; by which we may consider, that what is reputed a curse, and a cumber in some places, is esteem'd the ornament and blessing of another: But we shall not need go so far for this, since both beech and birch are almost as great strangers in many parts of this nation, particularly Northampton and Oxfordshire. Mr. Cook is much ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... into a consistent body, illustrated by one series of plates, purchasable in separate parts, and numbered consecutively. Of other prefatory matter, once intended,—apologetic mostly,—the reader shall be spared the cumber: and a clear prospectus issued by the publisher of the new series of plates, as soon as they are in ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... up the artificial valley, between high, grassy hills, completely covered with what at a distance resembled loose boards, but which were actually the long marble seats of the stadium. Urging our horses over piles of loose blocks, we reached the base of the theatre, climbed the fragments that cumber the main entrance, and looked on the spacious arena and galleries within. Although greatly ruined, the materials of the whole structure remain, and might be put together again. It is a grand wreck; the colossal fragments which have tumbled from the arched proscenium fill ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... on the corrie, Sage counsel in cumber, Red hand in the foray, How sound is thy slumber! Like the dew on the mountain, Like the foam on the river, Like the bubble on the fountain, Thou ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... dwindles to about six fathoms for the next fourteen miles, the channel at the same time narrowing down to a width varying from about two miles to less than half-a-mile in some parts, notably at the spot where it begins to thread its devious way among the islands that cumber the stream for a length of fully thirty miles, at a distance of about twenty-eight ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... enlarged. We have a memorable instance of this policy in the Athenian envoys, who, upon receiving a most ominous doom, but obscurely expressed, from the Delphic Oracle, which politely concluded by saying, "And so get out, you vagabonds, from my temple—don't cumber my decks any longer;" were advised to answer sturdily—"No!—we shall not get out—we mean to sit here forever, until you think proper to give us a more reasonable reply." Upon which spirited rejoinder, the Pythia saw the policy of revising her truly ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... 'Oh, why cumber yourself with such a useless thing,' cried the Lala in disgust; 'have you not enough to occupy your hands and mind, without taking an extra burden?' But the prince, who liked having his own way, paid no heed to him, and paying the high price asked by the man, he carried the bird back to the inn, ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... thou bringest no dream of frost to the flowers that slumber, Though no tree for its leaves, doomed of thy voice, maketh moan, Yet with th' unconscious earth's boded evil my soul thou dost cumber, And in the year's lost youth makest me still ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... south-west, bending at last in a picturesque bow, with a shallow sag. The material is the taua or blood-red marl of the Brazil, banded with white and brown, green, chocolate, and yellow; huge heaps of "rotten earth," washed down by the rains, cumber the base of the ruined sea-wall north of the town; in front is a pellucid sea with the usual trimmings, while behind roll the upland stubbles of autumn, here mottled black with fire, there scattered ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... does not seek opportunity to revel in mere rhetoric. He goes for the heart of his subject and his literary charms are displayed quite incidentally to his progress thereto. His stylism does not clog his story or cumber his argument. The result is that he produced a tract of the Church of Man which is a powerful argument for a realization in Man of the Church of God. His book is superbly human and "Ginx's Baby" deserves immortality with other dream- children of good men's hearts and ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... would be a strange shame for this age if it were not so: for as every age of the world has its own troubles to confuse it, and its own follies to cumber it, so has each its own work to do, pointed out to it by unfailing signs of the times; and it is unmanly and stupid for the children of any age to say: We will not set our hands to the work; we did not make the troubles, we will not weary ourselves seeking a remedy for them: ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... Augustus—the beach is a-spray; Blithesome the bee and the hive full alway; Better work than the bow hath the sickle to-day; Fuller the stack than the House of the Play; The Churl who cares neither to work nor to pray Now why should he cumber the earth with his clay? Justly St. Breda, the sapient, would say "As many to evil as ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... would rather that the wound should be ever fresh than that the image of the dear past should fade. It would be a loss to our best life if it would fade. There is no sting in such a faith. Such remembrance as this, which keeps the heart green, will not cumber the life. True sentiment does not weaken, but becomes an inspiration to make our life worthy of our love. It can save even a squalid lot from sordidness; for however poor we may be in the world's goods, we are rich in happy associations in the past, and in sweet communion in the present, ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... aim, it were all, in sooth, That any soul needs, to climb to heaven, And we would not cumber the way of truth With dreary dogmas, or rites ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... to me lately more possible than I knew, to carry a friendship greatly, on one side, without due correspondence on the other. Why should I cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet. Let your greatness educate the crude and cold companion.... Yet ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... why not? What use are these manikins in creation? Only to cumber the earth. Well, mozo, you ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... would be a dead weight on the community, and "cumber the ground," be a Drunkard; for that will render you useless, ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... there, are due to its impact against these obstacles. I doubt this explanation. At all events, there is another sufficient reason to be taken into account. Boulders derived from the adjacent cliffs visibly cumber the sides of the river. Against these the water rises and sinks rhythmically but violently, large waves being thus produced. On the generation of each wave, there is an immediate compounding of the wave-motion with he river-motion. The ridges, which in still water would proceed in circular curves ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... follower of yours he must be looked to; I'll send Callum to you; but diaoul! ceade millia mottigheart,' continued the impatient Chieftain, 'what made an old soldier like Bradwardine send dying men here to cumber us?' ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... that upsets their stereotyped calculations—any new combination, any strange factor, any fresh variant. And you will be all that to them, Mr. Harnish. And I repeat, they are gamblers, and they will deserve all that befalls them. They clog and cumber all legitimate enterprise. You have no idea of the trouble they cause men like us—sometimes, by their gambling tactics, upsetting the soundest plans, even overturning the ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... denied, and then it strikes in and makes poets—perhaps the most daring adventurers of all. It must be difficult for the beaters of iron and the barterers in swine to understand why such useless timber is allowed to cumber the great workhouse; but then we don't know exactly what the trilobites were good for, and the utilitarians may find comfort in the reflection that at the present rate the obnoxious family is likely to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... onward for his life. But very soon the power of his charge was gone, his limbs could not rise, and his breath was taken from him; the hole that he had made was filled up behind him; fresh volumes from the shaken height came pouring down upon him; his flanks and his back were wedged fast in the cumber, and he stood still and trembled, being ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... result of the duel was to deprive Burr of all power and influence. He killed Hamilton, but he fell himself by the same shot that carried death to his opponent; and so complete was his fall that he never could rise again, though he continued to cumber the earth for more than thirty-two years. Hamilton's quarrel with Burr, as his son and biographer truly observes, "was the quarrel of his country. It was the last act in the great drama of his life. It was the deliberate sacrifice of that life ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... exclaimed, "there is enough clothing in those two cases to last us for the rest of our lives; to say nothing of that third case which you say is full of unmade silks and linen. Surely it was scarcely necessary to cumber yourself with ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... of her mother) or they were sad (as of Keggo) or they were appealing (as the happy schoolgirl memories) but they must not touch or sadden or appeal too closely. They must be estimated in their degree and in their place; they must not be assumed, be shouldered, be permitted to cumber. No good could be done to them by encumbrance with them. That was the point. What good could it do them? No ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... ablutions of the faithful. But now no man comes to this old place, no murmur to God disturbs the heavy silence. And the silence, and the emptiness, and the greyness under the long arcades, all seem to make a tremulous proclamation; all seem to whisper, "I am very old, I am useless, I cumber the earth." Even the mosque of Amru, which stands also on ground that looks gone to waste, near dingy and squat houses built with grey bricks, seems less old than this mosque of Ibn-Tulun. For its long facade is striped with white and apricot, and there are lebbek-trees growing in its court ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... what it does in private: that man to whom God intendeth to reveal great things, he taketh him aside from the lumber and cumber of this world, and carrieth him away in the solace and contemplation of the ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... snow was gone; there was left only its cold bitterness and a vague sense that it ought no longer to cumber the ground, but would better go away as soon as possible and spare the wood folk any more suffering. The litter of a score of storms covered its soiled rough surface; every shred of bark had left its dark stain where the decaying sap had melted and spread in the midday sun. The hard crust, ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... wars—for the dispensing of that sacred duty of hospitality which Allah enjoins upon the faithful. It is reported that he was host here to fifty of the enemy during their remaining lifetime—although they had the delicacy not to cumber him with overlong living. It is not, as I said, a pleasant place, but the walls are strong and so I selected ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... occurred in the Filipinas ships, and the sailors have been permitted to take two or three very large boxes, under pretext that these contain wearing apparel, and thus cumber the ships. We order that no irregularity be permitted in this, and that the utmost circumspection be exercised; and that the sailors be not allowed to carry more boxes or clothing on the said ships than that indispensably needed for the voyage. [Felipe III—San ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... that lie and cumber Sunlit pallets never thrive; Morns abed and daylight slumber Were not meant for ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... in this and in other, hath three wings, to bear itself up into the air of due commendation: that is, art, imitation, and exercise. But these, neither artificial rules, nor imitative patterns, we much cumber ourselves withal. Exercise indeed we do, but that, very fore-backwardly: for where we should exercise to know, we exercise as having known: and so is our brain delivered of much matter, which never was begotten ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... you, O excellent wife, not to cumber yourself and me to get a rich dinner for this man or this woman who has alighted at our gate, nor a bed-chamber made ready at too great a cost. These things, if they are curious in, they can get for a dollar at any village. But let this stranger, if he will, ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... "and if they prove to be what I want, you shall have the price Mac Cumber is going to charge me for these—it ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... as a man can properly and with decency provide for, the children of the latter, if recognised by the father, sharing equally with the offspring of the former. Though why a man who has found his love should wish to cumber his house with other women, seething with jealousy and peevish from want of occupation, is beyond ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... of ripening, and are beginning to go into a worthless condition,—green. The cucumbers cumber the ground,—great yellow, over-ripe objects, no more to be compared to the crisp beauty of their youth than is the fat swine of the sty to the clean little pig. The nutmeg-melons, having covered themselves ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... what oysters is." Especially on Saturday afternoons does the basket brigade come out in force, and many a homely little idyl may be conjured out of the family groups or the purveying parents who throng and cumber the boat at such times. The capacities of the market-basket, as then and there revealed, are prodigious, rivalling those of the trunk of travel; and yet out of the cover will still protrude the legs of unadjustable "broilers" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... parable; A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came seeking fruit thereon, and found none. And he said unto the vinedresser, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why doth it also cumber the ground? And he answering saith unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it: and if it bear fruit thenceforth, well; but if not, thou ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... which he rehearses, are as significantly palaces or meadows to him, while he speaks his lines and lives himself into his character, as all the real grass and real woodwork with which the manager will cumber the stage on the first night. As little will he need to distinguish between the gilt and the gold cup as between the imaginary characters who surround him, and his mere friends and acquaintances who are ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... 'freedom for bears;' And how, inter alia, the beast got away And took himself off in the midst of the fray; And how Tommy Johnson at last came to grief: All which I omit, as I wish to be brief. The story's too lengthy—it must not be sent all To cumber your pages, my dear CONTINENTAL. At present my purpose, my object, my mission is To show how the woodman became 'Abolitionist.' Introductions, you know, like 'original sin,' Hang on, while you long for some sign of repentance In shape of the last and the welcomest sentence, So, in short, I'll cut ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the smith, sinking his hammer, and assuming a more gentle and submissive tone of voice, "that when so poor a man does his day's job, he might be permitted to work it out after his own fashion. Your horse is shod, and your farrier paid—what need you cumber yourself further than to ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... excuse his excitement, even in a less interested person. The Castle of Hers, though built for strength, presented a very different appearance from that of Stramen: its outline was light and graceful, and it seemed rather to lift up than cumber the tall hill that it so elegantly crowned. It was situated upon the border of the lake, which, by trouvere and troubadour, in song and in verse, in every age and in every clime, has been so justly celebrated. A few miles to the southwest the mighty Rhine came tumbling in; who, as the German ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... awful people, these Finns and ... Greeks," he thought. "Useless, good-for-nothing, disgusting people. They only cumber the earth. What is the good ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... vigilance, with their own lives. These assurances had, beyond a doubt, a soothing influence on the apprehensions of Ruth and her handmaidens; but they somewhat failed of their effect, with those unwelcome visiters who still continued to cumber Wish-Ton-Wish with their presence. Though they had evidently abandoned all ideas connected with the original object of their visit, they spoke not of departure. On the contrary as night approached, their chief entered into council ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... n'ai pas la pretention de m'affubler d'un titre que la mauvaise fortune de mon roi ne me permet pas de porter comme il sied. Je m'appelle, pour vous servir, Blair de Balmile tout court." [My lord, I have not the effrontery to cumber myself with a title which the ill fortunes of my king will not suffer me to bear the way it should be. I call myself, at your service, plain Blair ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not the dark thee cumber; What though the moon does slumber? The stars of the night Will lend thee their light, Like tapers clear, ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... surface would sink by its own weight. Like many other difficulties in this world, the solidification of the Chat Moss was said to be impossible, but the great engineer scarce admitted the propriety of allowing the word "impossible" to cumber our dictionaries. He began the work at once by forming an embankment twenty feet high, which he carried some distance across the treacherous soil, when the whole affair sank down one day and disappeared! Undismayed, Stephenson began again, and went on steadily depositing thousands on ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... objects in the open plain, hill, and pasture. Great numbers of them have become standards; we see them following the lines of old stone walls that skirt the bounds and avenues of the farm, in company with the Ash and the Maple. In these situations, where they would not "cumber the ground," they have been allowed to grow, without exciting the jealousy of the proprietor of the land. Accident, under these circumstances, has reared many a beautiful tree, which would in any other place have been cut down as a trespasser. Thus ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... no murmur to God disturbs the heavy silence. And the silence, and the emptiness, and the greyness under the long arcades, all seem to make a tremulous proclamation; all seem to whisper, "I am very old, I am useless, I cumber the earth." Even the mosque of Amru, which stands also on ground that looks gone to waste, near dingy and squat houses built with grey bricks, seems less old than this mosque of Ibn-Tulun. For its long facade is striped with white and apricot, and there are ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... for the souls that come unwelcomed into birth, I'm sorry for the unloved old who cumber up the earth. I'm sorry for the suffering poor in life's great maelstrom hurled, In truth I'm sorry for them all who make this ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... are now withered and torn, and their red blood oozes slowly from their bodies in thin and trickling streams. You think of Ossian's heroes, of Thor and his hammer, of the Anakim or of the steeple-high Brobdignagian cavalry, and almost expect to hear groans issuing from the colossal trunks that cumber the ground ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... the reiver who was the terror of the Borders, yet "never molested no Scottis man," it is not necessary to decide. He was a scourge to the English, of whom it was said that there was none from the Scottish Border to Newcastle who did not "pay ane tribute to be free of his cumber." Johnnie Armstrong had the folly to come into the King's presence with such a train, his men so completely armed and so many in number, as to compete with royal magnificence, not very great in Scotland in those days. "What wants yon ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... at last with a belt of booths. While they last they give great animation and spirit to the street life of the town. You can scarcely make your way among the heaps of gaudy shawls and handkerchiefs, cheap laces and illegitimate jewels, that cumber the pavement. When the Jews were driven out of Spain, they left behind ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... be a strange shame for this age if it were not so: for as every age of the world has its own troubles to confuse it, and its own follies to cumber it, so has each its own work to do, pointed out to it by unfailing signs of the times; and it is unmanly and stupid for the children of any age to say: We will not set our hands to the work; we did not make the troubles, we will not weary ourselves seeking a remedy for them: so heaping up ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... courser mounting light, He seemed to vanish from my sight; The moonbeam drooped, and deepest night Sunk down upon the heath. 'Twere long to tell what cause I have To know his face, that met me there, Called by his hatred from the grave, To cumber upper air; Dead or alive, good cause had he To be ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... amounted to this, that James flung down a petition presented by some supplicant who paid no compliments to his horse, and expressed no admiration at the splendour of his furniture, saying, "Shall a king cumber himself about the petition of a beggar, while the beggar disregards the king's splendour?" It is, I think, Sir John Harrington who recommends, as a sure mode to the king's favour, to praise the paces ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... know it; and why not? What use are these manikins in creation? Only to cumber the earth. Well, mozo, you have ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... old pranks of the boys—White, who died in California, or Porter, who was now in the Senate—and then a shake of the hand and good-bye, Neckart usually wondering to himself, as they parted, how soon that fellow Laidley would cease to cumber the earth and the captain would have his own and wear a decent coat again and the bits of gaudy jewelry in which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... badly needed. For the upper classes of all countries, the people who travel, and have to stand the nuisance and loss of changing their money at every frontier, the bankers and international merchants who have to cumber their accounts with the fluctuating item of exchange between commercial centres will insist upon it. All the European nations, with the exception of Russia and Turkey, are ready for the change, and when these reach the stage of real constitutionalism in their progress upward, ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... on the correi, Sage counsel in cumber, Red hand in the foray, How sound is thy slumber! Like dew on the mountain, 390 Like the foam on the river, Like the bubble on the fountain Thou art gone, ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... cumbered with large boulders, and that the jostling, tossing, and wild leaping of the water there, are due to its impact against these obstacles. I doubt this explanation. At all events, there is another sufficient reason to be taken into account. Boulders derived from the adjacent cliffs visibly cumber the sides of the river. Against these the water rises and sinks rhythmically but violently, large waves being thus produced. On the generation of each wave, there is an immediate compounding of the wave-motion with he river-motion. The ridges, which ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... many parts, and figures in a variety of scenes. Like the more delicate and sympathetic kinds of human beings, it is naught unless it is valued; but, being valued, it is a treasure beyond price. Cold, glittering, and dumb, it stands among the tasteless splendors with which the wealthy ignorant cumber their dreary abodes,—a thing of ostentation merely,—as uninteresting as the women who surround it, gorgeously apparelled, but without conversation, conscious of defective parts of speech. "There is much music, excellent voice, in that little organ," but there ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... stopped to cumber the statement of this simple plan by adding the details necessary to meet severance of a farm by a railway company, etc. The provisions to meet complicated tenures, etc., would run much the same as in the Lands ...
— Speculations from Political Economy • C. B. Clarke
... and princesses. As they talked with Elizabeth and her friend the countess, discoursing upon heavenly themes, they were interrupted by the rattling of a coach, and callers were announced. The countess "fetched a deep sigh, crying out, 'O the cumber and entanglements of this vain world! They hinder all good.' Upon which," says William, "I replied, looking her steadfastly in the face, 'O come thou out of them, then.'" This journey was of great importance as affecting afterwards the population of Pennsylvania. Here it was that Penn met ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... note to some degree those changes in tree and plant which coincide with the variations of his daily employment. Early in March, as he walks along the southern side of the hedge, where the dead oak leaves still cumber the trailing ivy, he can scarcely avoid seeing that pointed tongues of green are pushing up. Some have widened into black-spotted leaves; some are notched like the many-barbed bone harpoons of savage races. The ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... of them some remarks, intended apparently as a reflection on Mr. Huggins's speculations respecting the star in the Northern Crown. 'I,' says M. Cornu, 'will not try to form any hypothesis about the cause of the outburst. To do so would be unscientific, and such speculations, though interesting, cumber science wofully.' This is sheer nonsense, and comes very ill from an observer whose successes in science have been due entirely to the employment of methods of observation which would have had no existence had others been as unready to think out the meaning of observed ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... of Autumn . . . . . Ye are bound for the mountains— Ah, with you let me go . . . . . Hark! fast by the window The rushing winds go, To the ice-cumber'd gorges, The vast seas of snow. There the torrents drive upward Their rock-strangled hum, There the avalanche thunders The hoarse torrent dumb. —I come, O ye mountains! Ye ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... dead speak too. From their crowded graves come voices of thrilling and persistent pathos, whispering, "Finish the work that has fallen from our nerveless hands. Let no weight of tyranny, nor taint of oppression, nor stain of wrong, cumber the soil nor darken the land ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... like a base common sod; I wonder at thee, and thy power to hold The world in bond to thee, thou yellow gold! Yet do I sadly own thy fascination, And would I gladly show my estimation By giving house-room to thee, if thou'lt come And cumber up my home;— I'd even promise not to call attention To these things that ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... save my father!" she exclaimed; "save him from worse than death! Let us fly together at once," she continued; "no, not together, I would cumber your flight; but make your escape, O my father, from this wicked court, this barbarous king, this life which, to a son of Hadassah, must be misery and bondage indeed! Oh, fly, fly; be safe, be free; be again what you were once! it is not too late! it is not too late!" There was intense delight ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... of Augustus—the beach is a-spray; Blithesome the bee and the hive full alway; Better work than the bow hath the sickle to-day; Fuller the stack than the House of the Play; The Churl who cares neither to work nor to pray Now why should he cumber the earth with his clay? Justly St. Breda, the sapient, would say "As many to evil as good take ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... "are a race which will not be said nay. But, father prior, I am myself, it may be, an intruder of this kind; for my sojourning hath been long among you, and my retinue, though far fewer than the Douglas's, are nevertheless enough to cumber you for their daily maintenance; and though our order is to send out purveyors to lessen your charge as much as may be, yet if there be inconvenience, it were fitting ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... Indians will never bear the strain of development. Lazy and ambitionless, they are incapable of uniting their tribal forces. Alas for them! They merely cumber ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... rises without a hope, night by night she lies down vacant or apathetic; and the utmost use she can make of the day is to totter three or four times across the floor by the assistance of her staff. Yet, though we wonder that she is still permitted to cumber the ground, joyless and weary, "the tomb of her dead self," we look at this dry leaf, and think how green it once was, and how the birds sung to it in its ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... has little to do, and has even that little done for him by his chief clerk, Zolotucha. The Inspector of the Medical Department is also a man of leisure, and likely to be at home—if he has not gone out to a card party. Others also there are—all men who cumber the ground for nothing." ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... gone, his limbs could not rise, and his breath was taken from him; the hole that he had made was filled up behind him; fresh volumes from the shaken height came pouring down upon him; his flanks and his back were wedged fast in the cumber, and he stood still and trembled, being ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... even our common Broom is so rare, that they have desired the seeds of them out of England, and preserve them with extraordinary care in their best gardens; this I learn out of our Johnson's Herbal; by which we may consider, that what is reputed a curse, and a cumber in some places, is esteem'd the ornament and blessing of another: But we shall not need go so far for this, since both beech and birch are almost as great strangers in many parts of this nation, particularly Northampton and Oxfordshire. Mr. Cook is much in praise of juniper for ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... Against Abaddon, who hath overcast The truth and right, Adami, made full fast Unto God's glory by our steadfast band. Go, smite each sophist, tyrant, hypocrite! Girt with the arms of the first Wisdom, free Your country from the frauds that cumber it! Swerve not: 'twere sin. How good, how great the praise Of him who turns youth, strength, soul, energy, Unto the ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... feature of the mummied Past, But oftener only the embroidered folds And soiled magnificence of her rent robe Whose tattered skirts are ruined dynasties That sweep the dust of aeons in our eyes And with their trailing pride cumber the globe.— For lo! the high, imperial Past is dead: The air is full of its dissolved bones; Invincible armies long since vanquished, Kings that remember not their awful thrones, Powerless potentates and foolish sages, Impede the slow steps of the ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... are those Who ne'er heard of Greek Prose— Or Greek Poetry either, as far as that goes; For Liddell and Scott Shall cumber them not, Nor Sargent nor Sidgwick shall break ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... of this earliest and foggiest period, whose only memorials are the stones which still cumber the ground, or those subtler traces of occupation of which philology keeps the key, and pushing aside a long and uncounted crowd of kings, with names as uncertain as their deeds, pushing aside, too, the legends and coming to hard fact, we must picture Ireland still covered for the ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... simplicity. He pled for a return to nature, to country-side, thatched cottages, ploughed fields, flocks, harvests, vintages and rustic holidays. He made this plea, not with an armoury of Greek learning, such as cumber Virgil and Horace, but with an original passion. He cannot speak of the jewelled Roman coquettes without a sigh for those happy times when Phoebus himself tended cattle and lived on curds and whey, all for the love ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... little sister!" he said. "Yes, it will be quite all right. I'll continue to cumber the ground a little longer, if you call that being sensible. And if you think my chances of heaven are likely to be improved by your kind intervention, p'r'aps you'll put up a prayer now and ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... grandeur, and the fame Are bounded by the world alone; The calm, the smouldering, and the flame Of awful patience were his own; With him they are forever flown Past all our fond self-shadowings, Wherewith we cumber the Unknown As with inept, ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... and valley, Lift the dirge for the sons of the brave; We have fired our last bullet, have made our last rally, And Caucasus gives us a grave. Here the soft pipe no more shall invite us to slumber —The thunder our lullaby sings; Our eyes not the maiden's dark tresses shall cumber, Them the raven shall shade with his wings! Forget, O my children, your father's stern duty— No more shall he bring ye ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... equally deep-set between the bushes, opens on a pasture, where the docks of last year still cumber the ground, and bunches of rough grass and rushes are scattered here and there. A partridge separated from his mate is calling across the field, and comes running over the short sward as his companion answers. With his neck held high and upright, ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... Present-good, namely, for they are two men full of civility and cunning. Let these engage in this business for us, and let Mansoul be taken up with much business, and if possible with much pleasure, and this is the way to get ground of them. Let us but cumber and occupy and amuse Mansoul sufficiently, and they will make their castle a warehouse for goods instead of a garrison for men of war.' This diabolical advice was highly applauded all through hell till all the lesser devils, while setting themselves to carry ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... because he knew Robert could not tell a lie. Therefore, when he murmured over the volume some of its own words which he had read the preceding Sunday, it was in a quite inaudible whisper: 'Now is it good for nothing but to cumber the ground, ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... some popular misconceptions which cumber our minds and often interfere with the work ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... gone before me. I may do some good among these poor creatures, and here I shall stay. You are young and full of life, and have many happy days in store for you. My race is nearly run—even did I wish for life, I would not cumber you and your friends; there will be perils to encounter and fatigues to be undergone. Had not Mary left us I would have sent her with you, but God did not will it so. Go, therefore, to the window, dear, ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... no more; an' thy mother may's well go arter him—the sooner the better—for I'm no good to nobody now. One old coat 'ull do to patch another, but it's good for nought else. Thee'dst like to ha' a wife to mend thy clothes an' get thy victual, better nor thy old mother. An' I shall be nought but cumber, a-sittin' i' th' chimney-corner. (Adam winced and moved uneasily; he dreaded, of all things, to hear his mother speak of Hetty.) But if thy feyther had lived, he'd ne'er ha' wanted me to go to make room for another, for he could no more ha' done wi'out me nor one side o' the scissars ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... That further rules you will not break, And marriage liberties partake? Some really do, as I suppose, Upon design keep on some clothes, And yet in truth I'm not afraid For to describe a bundling maid; She'll sometimes say when she lies down, She can't be cumber'd with a gown, And that the weather is so warm, To take it off can be no harm: The girl it seems had been at strift; For widest bosom to her shift, She gownless, when the bed they're in, The spark, nought feels but naked skin. But she is modest, also chaste, While only bare from neck to waist, ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... twenty years were occupied with the strife of Kirk and King, whence arose "all the cumber of Scotland" till 1689. The preachers, led by the learned and turbulent Andrew Melville, had an ever-present terror of a restoration of Catholicism, the creed of a number of the nobles and of an unknown proportion of the people. The Reformation of 1559-1560 had been ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... of his fine ships strewing the southern coast of Cuba, where they remain as memorials, like and unlike the distorted iron that was the Maine, in the harbor of Havana, and as the shattered and charred remnants of the fleet of Montejo, at Manila, still cumber the waters of the bay off Cavite, telling the story of the glory of ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... Fiddles, which may be bought new for a few shillings, has swamped English makers of cheap instruments, of which there are by this time five times as many in the market as there is any occasion for. Hence it is that Fiddles meet us everywhere; they cumber the toy-shop; they house with the furniture dealer; they swarm by thousands in the pawnbrokers' stores, and block out the light from his windows; they hang on the tobacconists' walls; they are raffled at public-houses; and they form an ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... he answered, "but she is a married woman, and I will have no Umpondwana brats among my people. Let her go, and take a girl if you will." For Van Vooren did not wish that the few men who remained with him should cumber themselves just then with women and children, since they were needed to look after ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... nice that these men should die, it is ordained that they must die, and we should not quarrel with them if they cumber our highways and kitchen stoops with their perambulating carcasses. This is a form of elimination we not only countenance but compel. Therefore let us be cheerful and honest about it. Let us be as stringent as we ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... strange tale, surely, sir,—too strange to be believable," quoth Shelby. "You are a traitor, Captain Ireton—of the kind we need not cumber ourselves with ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... should wait to enter. I would not cumber his Highness' courtyards. We know not yet that this Lady ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... personal subserviency. So far as concerns the economic efficiency of the community, the sentiment of personal fealty, and the general habit of mind of which that sentiment is an expression, are survivals which cumber the ground and hinder an adequate adjustment of human institutions to the existing situation. The habit of mind which best lends itself to the purposes of a peaceable, industrial community, is that matter-of-fact temper which recognizes ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... this policy in the Athenian envoys, who, upon receiving a most ominous doom, but obscurely expressed, from the Delphic Oracle, which politely concluded by saying, "And so get out, you vagabonds, from my temple—don't cumber my decks any longer;" were advised to answer sturdily—"No!—we shall not get out—we mean to sit here forever, until you think proper to give us a more reasonable reply." Upon which spirited rejoinder, the Pythia saw the policy of revising her truly brutal rescript as ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... ransack every hole and corner of your dim brain, and pick over all the spiders' webs and old iron that cumber your head, without ever lighting on a picklock to open this word and extract the meaning. But for me, my poor friend, you would get yourself hanged and your body burned for a word of one syllable which ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... our aim, it were all, in sooth, That any soul needs, to climb to heaven, And we would not cumber the way of truth With dreary dogmas, or ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... to about six fathoms for the next fourteen miles, the channel at the same time narrowing down to a width varying from about two miles to less than half-a-mile in some parts, notably at the spot where it begins to thread its devious way among the islands that cumber the stream for a length of fully thirty miles, at a distance of about twenty-eight miles from ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... minds run in ruts. It is the unexpected that upsets their stereotyped calculations—any new combination, any strange factor, any fresh variant. And you will be all that to them, Mr. Harnish. And I repeat, they are gamblers, and they will deserve all that befalls them. They clog and cumber all legitimate enterprise. You have no idea of the trouble they cause men like us—sometimes, by their gambling tactics, upsetting the soundest plans, even overturning the ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... a sidewind sped, Through narrow lanes his cumber'd fire does haste, By powerful charms of gold and silver led The Lombard bankers ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... tedious matter short, And sell the ass with all convenient speed, Thus saving the expense of his support, And hoarding something for a time of need. So he despatched him to the neighboring Fair, And freed himself from cumber and from care. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... child, I trust, should such a state of things ever come to pass; but I am old, and shall not cumber the earth long," and a ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... the number and extent of bibliographical and other lists given in this Appendix: they may cumber the book but they are necessary to complete my design. This has been to supply throughout the ten volumes the young Arabist and student of Orientalism and Anthropology with such assistance as I can render him; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... situated, the things he would have done, the difficulties he might have avoided had he exercised forethought. Though Defoe had little insight into the complexities of man's inner life, he has not been surpassed in his accumulations of naturalistic outer details. These do not cumber his narrative; they contribute to its purpose and add to its effectiveness. In this selection (Appendix 5) observe how plausible are such homely details as Crusoe's seeing no sign of his comrades "except ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... long white-apron, and bare arms, came down the little walk, and—eyeing the peer with an awful curiosity—presented the shears to the charming Atropos, who clipped off the withered blossoms that had bloomed their hour, and were to cumber the stalk no more. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... roads, she could neither stay where she was, nor pursue her journey. Her infant, too,—she was sure, if she tried to force her way through the hills, it would perish in the snow. The master, though unwilling to cumber us with a passenger in such weather, was induced, out of pity for the poor destitute creature, to take her aboard. And she was now with her child, all alone, below in the cabin I was stationed a-head on the out-look beside the foresail horse: ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... hand that shed this costly blood! Over thy wounds now do I prophesy, 260 Which, like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips, To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue, A curse shall light upon the limbs of men; Domestic fury and fierce civil strife Shall cumber all the parts of Italy; 265 Blood and destruction shall be so in use, And dreadful objects so familiar, That mothers shall but smile when they behold Their infants quartered with the hands of war; All pity chok'd with custom ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... I lo'ed my lassie weel, When thae gleesome days were gane; 'Mang a' the bonnie an' the gude, To match her saw I nane. Though the cauld warl' o'er me cam, Wi' its cumber an' its toil, My day-tide dool was a' forgot, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... need, I do beseech thee, as the last trouble you shall take for an unfortunate lady, to deliver this letter to the noble Earl of Leicester. Be it received as it may," she said, with features agitated betwixt hope and fear, "thou, good fellow, shalt have no more cumber with me. But I hope the best; and if ever lady made a poor man rich, thou hast surely deserved it at my hand, should my happy days ever come round again. Give it, I pray you, into Lord Leicester's own hand, and mark how he ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... he goes, to church or market town, With more respect he and his dog are known: A brisker face he wears at wake or fair, Nor views with longing eyes the pedlar's ware, But buys at will or ribands, gloves, or beads, And willing maidens to the ale-house leads: And, Oh! secure from toils which cumber life, He makes the maid he loves an easy wife. Ah, Nelly! can'st thou with contented mind, Become the help-mate of a lab'ring hind, And share his lot, whate'er the chances be, Who hath no dow'r, but ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... the dark thee cumber: What though the moon does slumber? The stars of the night Will lend thee their light Like tapers ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... dullest with some of the finest and most characteristic work of the author, would be rather a puzzle in a more "serious" writer than Hamilton; but in his case there is no need to distress, or in any way to cumber, oneself about the matter. The whole thing was a "compliment," as the age would have said, to Fantasy; and the rules of the Court of Quintessence, though not non-existent as dull fools suppose, are ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... sacred bones, or we will shake out our frills and tumble them in the dust. Domestic cats may mioul in the garden at night to a certain extent, but a line must be drawn; after that they must be chased up trees and barked at, if necessary, all night. Opossums and native cats are unfit to cumber the earth, and must be hunted into holes, wherever possible. Cows and other horned animals must not come into the yard, or even look over the garden fence, under penalties. Black fellows must be barked at, and their dogs chased to the uttermost limits of the habitable ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... whom we met below, They, too, have long roam'd to and fro; They ramble, leaving, where they pass, Their fragments on the cumber'd grass. And often to some kindly place Chance guides the migratory race, Where, though long wanderings intervene, They recognise a former scene. The dingy tents are pitch'd; the fires Give to the wind their wavering spires; In dark knots crouch round the wild flame Their ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... them. Then let Rivers take four men, and go in, and take all the loot you can find. The jewels we will divide among the men when at Meerut. Tell off another party to loot the rest of the rooms, but only take what is really valuable and portable. We cannot cumber ourselves with baggage. It would serve the rajah right if I were to burn his castle down; he may think himself lucky to get off ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... they took him out again, And cutten all his joints in sunder, And burnt him eke upon a hill; I-wis they did him curstly cumber. ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... Platte River Valleys were already confronted with hostile Indians who protested against the unlawful seizure of their lands. And now that wheat and corn were becoming great staple crops, the Northwestern pioneers were loudly demanding that the natives should not be permitted to cumber the ground. They must move on to the arid desert beyond or be carried into the Southern country, which Davis, as we have seen, was trying to open to Southern pioneers. It was a real conflict of interest between the lower South and the Northwest, and in order to win, the Northwestern politicians ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... around, without rising, and looked awhile toward the house. She had as much trouble to get matters adjusted to her mind as if she had a houseful of furniture to place, with carpets to lay, curtains to hang, and the thousand and one "things" with which we bigger housekeepers cumber ourselves and make life a burden. This spasmodic visitation went on for days, and finally it was plain that sitting had begun. Still the birds of the vicinity were interested callers, and I began to think ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... interruption, "and I take a spear with me for every year of the Prophet's life, trusting that Allah will add to our number, at the prophet's intervention, should such an augmentation prove necessary. Get together then the forty oldest men under my command. Let them cumber themselves with nothing in the way of offence except one tall spear each, and see that every man is provided with water and dates for twenty days' sustenance of horse ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... Chart, What have you done to my elderly heart? Of all the ladies of paper and ink I count you the paragon, call you the pink. The word of your brother depicts you in part: "You raving maniac!" Adela Chart; But in all the asylums that cumber the ground, So delightful a maniac was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... would be unprais'd, Not half his riches known, and yet despis'd, And we should serve him as a grudging master, As a penurious niggard of his wealth, And live like Natures bastards, not her sons, Who would be quite surcharged with her own weight, And strangl'd with her waste fertility; Th'earth cumber'd, and the wing'd air dark't with plumes. 730 The herds would over-multitude their Lords, The Sea o'refraught would swell, and th'unsought diamonds Would so emblaze the forhead of the Deep, And so bested with Stars, that they below ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... that midnight dread, Or venturous less that daring, when La Seine Dismay'd, dismasted, cumber'd with her dead, Struck to the ship ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... worthless ones are too often left to cumber the earth; it is the precious ones who are taken," he said, thinking of her as he looked into her tired face, and remembered all she ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... envied her rejection of a serious suitor such as John. It was rumored the latter was taking to liquor, and she was blamed for it. Women often like to have others say yes to the first man who comes, and not leave old love affairs to cumber the ground. And girls, however loving to their friends, have but a cold sympathy for their sex ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... he's not allowed to cumber the crease this season," said Horace, bowling his cigarette-end into the darkness with a distinct swerve in the air. "To have him called our 'pocket edition,' on the cricket-field of all places, ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... abashed by the captain's error; abashed, also, by the surprise and fear with which the Indian regarded me at first, and the obsequious civilities with which he soon began to cumber me. I know now that he must have overheard and comprehended the peculiar nature of my prayers. It is certain, of course, that he at once disclosed the matter to his patron; and looking back with greater ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been a cumber-ground long already, and wilt thou continue so still? Thy sin has brought this army to thy walls, and shall it bring it in judgment to do execution into thy town? Thou hast heard what the captains ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... reads more like a second Robinson Crusoe than sober history. For that reason I have put the corroborative evidence in footnotes, rather than cumber the movement of the main theme. I am sorry to have loaded the opening parts with so many notes; but Radisson's voyages change the relative positions of the other explorers so radically that proofs must ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... furnish forth a whole legion of the poetasters who crawl through our effete literature!" But I cannot pursue these memories. They are too painful. For who speaks of CHEPSTOWE now? Who cares to cumber his bookshelves with the volumes in which this inflated arm-chair prophet of the tin pots delivered his shrieking message? His very name has flickered out; and when I spoke of him the other day, I was asked, by a person of some ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... kind, quieted his soul by the worship of animals, birds, and insects, holding the cat sacred to Re, the bull to Isis, the beetle to Pthah. A long struggle against their rude faith ended in its adoption as the religion of the new empire. Then rose the mighty monuments that cumber the river-bank and the desert—obelisk, labyrinth, pyramid, and tomb of king, blent with tomb of crocodile. Into such deep debasement, O brethren, the ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... with close-shutting doors and windows, and you expose his constitution to a very serious strain, especially in a country where there is a good deal of rain. Being, after all, but half civilized, he will probably sleep in a wet shirt, or cumber his feet with wet shoes; he will most likely neglect to open his windows at night, and poison himself and his family with bad air, to the influence of which, besides, his unaccustomed lungs will be peculiarly liable; he will live a less active life under his ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... Night, And blest the endless Slumber! We are heated with the day too bright, And withered up with cumber! We're weary of that life abroad: Come, we will now go ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... reasonably clothed, and had a good bed in which to sleep. Where she was sinned against was in this: that her family looked upon her white hair and her wrinkles and arrived at the erroneous conclusion that her interest in life was gone—in short, that she was content to cumber the earth and to wait for the long sleep. To them she was simply one who tarries and is content. Scattergood looked into her sharp, old eyes, eyes that were capable of sudden gleams of humor or flashes of anger, and he knew. He knew that death seemed as distant to Grandmother Penny as ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... stuttering. "That's 'appen for them as doesn't like them. I niver knowed a cumber do me no harm, an' I eat 'em like a happle." Whereupon the hawker took a "cumber" from his barrow, bit off the end, and chewed it till the sap squirted. "What's wrong with that?" he said, holding up ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... Conscience! indeed I do you wrong, But I'll quickly right it; my cloak shall not cumber you long. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... give the slightest hint of their purport; but I may say at once, without trespassing the bounds of my pledged word, that if these few concise instructions were known and practised by everyone, doctors would be entirely thrown out of employment, and chemists' shops would no longer cumber the streets. Illness would be very difficult of attainment—though in the event of its occurring each individual would know how to treat him or herself—and life could be prolonged easily and comfortably to more than a hundred years, barring, ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... need little doctrine to live at our ease; and Socrates teaches us that this is in us, and the way how to find it, and the manner how to use it: All our sufficiency which exceeds the natural is well-nigh superfluous and vain: 'tis much if it does not rather burden and cumber us ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... these sheaves," he continued, "and look again. Let us reject not a single one of the little facts that build up the reality of which I have spoken. Let us permit them to depart of their own accord into space. They cumber the foreground, and yet we cannot but be aware of the existence behind them of a great and very curious force that sustains the whole. Does it only sustain and not raise? These men whom we see before us are at least no longer the ferocious animals of whom ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... of a rebellion. The result of the duel was to deprive Burr of all power and influence. He killed Hamilton, but he fell himself by the same shot that carried death to his opponent; and so complete was his fall that he never could rise again, though he continued to cumber the earth for more than thirty-two years. Hamilton's quarrel with Burr, as his son and biographer truly observes, "was the quarrel of his country. It was the last act in the great drama of his life. It was the deliberate sacrifice of that life for his country's welfare,—a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... boat of the travellers had reached the ship, that of Wilder had skimmed the water over half the distance between her and the land. As he plied his skulls with vigorous and skilful arms, he soon stood upon her decks. Forcing his way among the crowd of attendants from the shore, that are apt to cumber a departing ship, he reached the part of the vessel where a circle of busy and anxious faces told him he should find those most concerned in her fate. Until now, he had hardly breathed clearly, much less reflected on the character of his sudden enterprise. It was too ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... wood and drawers of water—to find cattle for your banquets, and subjects for your laws to oppress and trample on. But now we are free—free by the very act which left us neither house nor hearth, food nor covering—which bereaved me of all—of all—and makes me groan when I think I must still cumber the earth for other purposes than those of vengeance. And I will carry on the work, this day has so well commenced, by a deed that shall break all bands between MacGregor and the Lowland churls. Here Allan—Dougal—bind these Sassenachs neck and heel together, ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... reporters are beginning their innuendoes. The next thing will be her picture in the sensational press, and a scandal. Don't you know this? It must not happen! We must make way for them—you and I. We cumber the path." ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... said, "this people founded the city, of which the ruins yet cumber the plain yonder, four thousand years before this cave was finished. Yet, when first mine eyes beheld it two thousand years ago, was it even as it is now. Judge, therefore, how old must that city have been! And now, follow thou me, and ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... and animated discussion among the old ladies as to what was the most delightful product of the garden. One old lady said, that so "fur" as she was "consarned," she preferred the "per-turnip"—another preferred the "pertater"—another the "cow-cumber," and still another voted "ingern" king. But suddenly a wise looking old dame raised her spectacles and settled the whole question by observing: "Ah, ladies, you may talk about yer per-turnips, and your pertaters, and your passnips and other gyardin sass, but the sweetest ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... too glad if she could, and would want no asking. But you could if you would—it's true, my dear, and you don't need to stare, as if you'd never seen me before this evening. As for looking for you to go, I didn't indeed; I never look for aught but cumber, and so I'm not disappointed.—Mr Marshall, I ask your pardon; I'm staying you ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... for awhile. All over the grey soft shallow Hover the colours and clouds of the twilight, void of a star. As a bird unfledged is the broad-winged night, whose winglets are callow Yet, but soon with their plumes will she cover her brood from afar, Cover the brood of her worlds that cumber the skies with their blossom Thick as the darkness of leaf-shadowed spring is encumbered with flowers. World upon world is enwound in the bountiful girth of her bosom, Warm and lustrous with life lovely to ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... absurd animal than you was certainly never allowed to cumber the earth. You had no right to be born, for you make no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some other person's strength: if no one can be found willing to burden her or himself with ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... funeral customs, not long gone by; but such respect is a national virtue and emotion. No nation loving war harbours that virtue. And in nothing do the kinsmen with whom we have much language in common differ from us more than in the policy that brought this Prussian host to cumber the stagnant waters of the ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... choice, a good sword, a musket, a brace of pistols, with a good supply of ammunition for each, a stout dagger, a bow, arrows, and a good strong machete for general purposes. That, I think, will be quite as much as it will be advisable for us to cumber ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... the lonely flower I bent, I thought of lives thus lowly clogged and pent, Which yet find room, Through care and cumber, coldness and decay, To lend a sweetness to the ungenial day And make the sad earth happier for ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... Fox, inspired by the Prince, had formally denied that any ceremony had taken place, 'the knocker of her door,' to quote her own complacent phrase, 'was never still.' The Duchesses of Portland, Devonshire and Cumber-land were among her visitors. ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... me lately more possible than I knew, to carry a friendship greatly, on one side, without due correspondence on the other. Why should I cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet. Let your greatness ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... T-light, in the midst of which he rehearses, are as significantly palaces or meadows to him, while he speaks his lines and lives himself into his character, as all the real grass and real woodwork with which the manager will cumber the stage on the first night. As little will he need to distinguish between the gilt and the gold cup as between the imaginary characters who surround him, and his mere friends and acquaintances who are speaking ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... hurried out from Los Angeles and begged their men to give up so disorderly and unsoldier-like an idea. "Yes, sirs, it is true, all that you say; but they are rebels, they talk too much; why suffer them to cumber Union ground?" This seemed the only reply they could obtain; but finally the captives were liberated, though advised in the future to guard well ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... herself around, without rising, and looked awhile toward the house. She had as much trouble to get matters adjusted to her mind as if she had a houseful of furniture to place, with carpets to lay, curtains to hang, and the thousand and one "things" with which we bigger housekeepers cumber ourselves and make life a burden. This spasmodic visitation went on for days, and finally it was plain that sitting had begun. Still the birds of the vicinity were interested callers, and I began to think that one kingbird would not even protect his nest, far less justify his ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... sister!" he said. "Yes, it will be quite all right. I'll continue to cumber the ground a little longer, if you call that being sensible. And if you think my chances of heaven are likely to be improved by your kind intervention, p'r'aps you'll put up a prayer now and then on my behalf to the Power that ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... (especially for three or four links towards the hook) I say, not exceed three or four haires; but if you can attain to Angle with one haire; you will have more rises, and catch more fish. Now you must bee sure not to cumber yourselfe with too long a Line, as most do: and before you begin to angle, cast to have the wind on your back, and the Sun (if it shines) to be before you, and to fish down the streame, and carry the point ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... hast not need of me, Home of the rotting and the rotten dead— For thou art cumber'd to satiety, And wilt be cumber'd—ay, when I am fled! Why stand I here, the living among tombs? Answer, all ye who own a grassy bed, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... ever-changing line of the constant hills; every dwelling by the low banks; every aspect of the smoky towns; every caprice of the river; every-tree, every stump; probably every bud and bird in the sky. They talked only of the river; they cared for nothing else. The Cuban cumber and the Philippine folly were equally far from them; the German prince was not only as if he had never been here, but as if he never had been; no public question concerned them but that of abandoning ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the boat of the travellers had reached the ship, that of Wilder had skimmed the water over half the distance between her and the land. As he plied his skulls with vigorous and skilful arms, he soon stood upon her decks. Forcing his way among the crowd of attendants from the shore, that are apt to cumber a departing ship, he reached the part of the vessel where a circle of busy and anxious faces told him he should find those most concerned in her fate. Until now, he had hardly breathed clearly, much less reflected on the character of his sudden enterprise. It was too late, however, to retreat, ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... have a memorable instance of this policy in the Athenian envoys, who, upon receiving a most ominous doom, but obscurely expressed, from the Delphic Oracle, which politely concluded by saying, "And so get out, you vagabonds, from my temple—don't cumber my decks any longer;" were advised to answer sturdily—"No!—we shall not get out—we mean to sit here forever, until you think proper to give us a more reasonable reply." Upon which spirited rejoinder, the Pythia saw the policy of revising her truly brutal ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... that this is in us, and the way how to find it, and the manner how to use it: All our sufficiency which exceeds the natural is well-nigh superfluous and vain: 'tis much if it does not rather burden and cumber us than do ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... more like a second Robinson Crusoe than sober history. For that reason I have put the corroborative evidence in footnotes, rather than cumber the movement of the main theme. I am sorry to have loaded the opening parts with so many notes; but Radisson's voyages change the relative positions of the other explorers so radically that proofs must be given. The footnotes are for the student and may be omitted by the general reader. ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... the channel at the same time narrowing down to a width varying from about two miles to less than half-a-mile in some parts, notably at the spot where it begins to thread its devious way among the islands that cumber the stream for a length of fully thirty miles, at a distance of about twenty-eight miles from ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... happy are those Who ne'er heard of Greek Prose— Or Greek Poetry either, as far as that goes; For Liddell and Scott Shall cumber them not, Nor Sargent nor ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... now note some popular misconceptions which cumber our minds and often interfere with the work of ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... the worthless ones are too often left to cumber the earth; it is the precious ones who are taken," he said, thinking of her as he looked into her tired face, and remembered all she ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... we met below, They, too, have long roam'd to and fro; They ramble, leaving, where they pass, Their fragments on the cumber'd grass. And often to some kindly place Chance guides the migratory race, Where, though long wanderings intervene, They recognise a former scene. The dingy tents are pitch'd; the fires Give to the wind their wavering spires; In dark knots crouch round the wild flame ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... she said, "this people founded the city, of which the ruins yet cumber the plain yonder, four thousand years before this cave was finished. Yet, when first mine eyes beheld it two thousand years ago, was it even as it is now. Judge, therefore, how old must that city have ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... under this seven years' weight of misery," replied Hester, fervently resolved to buoy him up with her own energy. "But thou shalt leave it all behind thee! It shall not cumber thy steps, as thou treadest along the forest-path; neither shalt thou freight the ship with it, if thou prefer to cross the sea. Leave this wreck and ruin here where it hath happened. Meddle no more with it! Begin all anew! Hast ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... shepherds use few ceremonies, for that they acquaint themselves with few subtleties: to frame myself, therefore, to your country fashion with much faith and little flattery, know, beautiful shepherdess, that whilst I lived in the court I knew not love's cumber, but I held affection as a toy, not as a malady; using fancy as the Hyperborei do their flowers, which they wear in their bosom all day, and cast them in the fire for fuel at night. I liked all, because ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... vineyard; and he came seeking fruit thereon, and found none. And he said unto the vinedresser, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why doth it also cumber the ground? And he answering saith unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it: and if it bear fruit thenceforth, well; but if not, thou shalt cut it ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... has occurred in the Filipinas ships, and the sailors have been permitted to take two or three very large boxes, under pretext that these contain wearing apparel, and thus cumber the ships. We order that no irregularity be permitted in this, and that the utmost circumspection be exercised; and that the sailors be not allowed to carry more boxes or clothing on the said ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... her. They envied her rejection of a serious suitor such as John. It was rumored the latter was taking to liquor, and she was blamed for it. Women often like to have others say yes to the first man who comes, and not leave old love affairs to cumber the ground. And girls, however loving to their friends, have but a cold sympathy for their sex ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... of the river is cumbered with large boulders, and that the jostling, tossing, and wild leaping of the waters there are due to its impact against these obstacles. A very different explanation occurred to me upon the spot. Boulders derived from the adjacent cliffs visibly cumber the sides of the river. Against these the water rises and sinks rhythmically but violently, large waves being thus produced. On the generation of each wave there is an immediate compounding of the wave-motion ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... pranks of the boys—White, who died in California, or Porter, who was now in the Senate—and then a shake of the hand and good-bye, Neckart usually wondering to himself, as they parted, how soon that fellow Laidley would cease to cumber the earth and the captain would have his own and wear a decent coat again and the bits of gaudy jewelry in which he used so ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... pas la pretention de m'affubler d'un titre que la mauvaise fortune de mon roi ne me permet pas de porter comma il sied. Je m'appelle, pour vous servir, Blair de Balmile tout court.' [My lord, I have not the effrontery to cumber myself with a title which the ill fortunes of my king will not suffer me to bear the way it should be. I call myself, at your service, plain ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Aldersgate-street. Meynell of Aldersgate-street must have been a responsible man, and it will be hard if there is no record of him extant in all the old topographical histories of wards, without and within, which cumber the shelves of your dry-as-dust libraries. We must hunt up all available books; and when we've got all the information that books can give us, we can go in upon hearsay evidence, which is always the ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... Sir Gawains than to go about cutting off their great blundering heads with enchanted swords. But things have wonderfully changed. It is the giants, now-a-days, that have the science and the intelligence, while the chivalrous Don Quixotes of Conservatism still cumber themselves with the clumsy armour of a by-gone age. On whirls the restless globe through unsounded time, with its cities and its silences, its births and funerals, half light, half shade, but never wholly dark, and sure to swing round into the happy ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... with a feeling of consternation and pity, as she thought of the orphan boy, she accepted his greeting with duteous welcome as he said, "Kinswoman, I am come to cumber you, whilst I inquire into this matter. I give your son thanks for the honesty and faithfulness he hath shown in the matter, as befitted his father's son. I should wish myself to examine ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thee, comrade! Prefer the bread-crust which has become dry in thy wallet to all the partridges that roast in the kitchen of lords. Obey thy master, whether he by a wise man or a fool, and do not cumber thy brain with too many useless things. Fear blows; 'tis verily tempting ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... and strong arguments, and the frequent interruption of the stream of his logic by doubtful, trifling, and impolitic interruptions; arguments resting in premisses denied by the antagonists, and yet taken for granted; in short, appendages that cumber, accessions that subtract, ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... in which the French differ from us and from the Spaniards, is that they do not embarrass or cumber themselves with too much Plot. They only represent so much of a Story as will constitute One whole and great Action sufficient for a Play. We, who undertake more, do but multiply Adventures [pp. 541, 552]; which (not being produced from one another, ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... trickling streams. You think of Ossian's heroes, of Thor and his hammer, of the Anakim or of the steeple-high Brobdignagian cavalry, and almost expect to hear groans issuing from the colossal trunks that cumber the ground ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... shall cumber Egypt no longer," the murket muttered after a little; "and the quarrel between them shall be at an end. The hour approacheth when every Hebrew shall leave Egypt—shall be driven forth if he leave it ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... the canon, "this is your sort, is it? I'll have nought to do with it! Preaching, preaching! Every idle child's head is agog on preaching nowadays! A plague on it! Why can't Master Dean leave it to the black friars, whose vocation 'tis, and not cumber us with his sermons for ever, and set every lazy lad thinking he must needs run after them? No, no, my good boy, take my advice. Thou shalt have two good bellyfuls a day, all my cast gowns, and a pair of shoes by the year, with a groat a month if thou wilt keep mine house, bring ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... quench'd but from the well, Whereof the woman of Samaria crav'd, Excited: haste along the cumber'd path, After my guide, impell'd; and pity mov'd My bosom for the 'vengeful deed, though just. When lo! even as Luke relates, that Christ Appear'd unto the two upon their way, New-risen from his vaulted grave; to us A shade appear'd, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... Edinburgh, John Binning's greatest enemy, being very active to obtain the gift of his forefaulture, with a designe of his ruine, and the prejudice of his numerous and just creditors, the deceased Mr. James Gordon, minister at Cumber in Ireland, John Binning's father in law and former Curator, to whom he was oweing a considerable soume of money, came over to Scotland, at John Binning's desire, who was then in Ireland, to obtaine the said gift, to disappoint Matthew Colvill thereof, who prevailed ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... days the grass shall grow—the reed"? I choose those rocky hills that, on our left, Drag down the skiey waters to the woods: Such loved I from my youth: to me they said, "Bandits this hour usurp our heights, and beasts Cumber our caves: expel the seed accurst, And yield us back to God!"' The King gave ear; And Cedd within those mountains passed his Lent, Driving with prayer and fast the spirits accurst With ignominy forth. Foundations next He laid with sacred pomp. Fair rose the walls: ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... will save my father!" she exclaimed; "save him from worse than death! Let us fly together at once," she continued; "no, not together, I would cumber your flight; but make your escape, O my father, from this wicked court, this barbarous king, this life which, to a son of Hadassah, must be misery and bondage indeed! Oh, fly, fly; be safe, be free; ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... the event at the period when their forefathers still inhabited Bulhar on the coast,—about 300 years ago. If the date be correct, the substantial ruins have fought a stern fight with time. Remnants of houses cumber the soil, and the carefully built wells are filled with rubbish: the palace was pointed out to me with its walls of stone and clay intersected by layers of woodwork. The mosque is a large roofless building containing twelve square pillars of rude ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... the tide of times. Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood! Over thy wounds now do I prophesy— Which like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue; A curse shall light upon the limbs of men; Domestic fury and fierce civil strife Shall cumber all the parts of Italy; Blood and destruction shall be so in use, And dreadful objects so familiar, That mothers shall but smile when they behold Their infants quartered with the hands of war; All pity choked with custom of fell deeds; And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge, ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... outlived the regime of status, and has no use and no place for a relation of personal subserviency. So far as concerns the economic efficiency of the community, the sentiment of personal fealty, and the general habit of mind of which that sentiment is an expression, are survivals which cumber the ground and hinder an adequate adjustment of human institutions to the existing situation. The habit of mind which best lends itself to the purposes of a peaceable, industrial community, is that matter-of-fact temper which recognizes the value of material ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... people, who never attended to them: his majesty notices "those swarms of gentry, who through the instigation of their wives, or to new-model and fashion their daughters (who if they were unmarried, marred their reputations, and if married, lost them), did neglect their country hospitality, and cumber the city, a general nuisance to the kingdom."—He addressed the Star Chamber to regulate "the exorbitancy of the new buildings about the city, which were but a shelter for those who, when they had spent their estates in coaches, lacqueys, and fine clothes like Frenchmen, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... allowed to cumber the crease this season," said Horace, bowling his cigarette-end into the darkness with a distinct swerve in the air. "To have him called our 'pocket edition,' on the cricket-field of all places, is a bit ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... and does himself oppose Betwixt his cumber'd mother and her foes; With desp'rate courage he receives her wounds, And men and boats his active tail confounds. Their forces join'd, the seas with billows fill, And make a tempest, though the winds be still. 160 Now would the men with half their hoped prey ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... sinews swept the nerveless children of the gardens of the earth from the face of their idle paradises: and, but for this stream of keener life and nobler energy, it would be difficult to imagine a more complete race of lotus-eaters than would now cumber the fairest regions of ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... man, stuttering. "That's 'appen for them as doesn't like them. I niver knowed a cumber do me no harm, an' I eat 'em like a happle." Whereupon the hawker took a "cumber" from his barrow, bit off the end, and chewed it till the sap squirted. "What's wrong with that?" he said, holding up the ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... assurance that they have enough to eat and drink and to spare, and idleness is joined therewith; just as we still see, the richer cities are the more shamefully do men live in them; but where there is hunger and cumber there the sins are so much the fewer. Therefore God permits, in regard to those that are His, that their education should be severe, that they ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... chairs and kitchen chairs, chairs that pass into benches, chairs that cross the boundary and become settees, dentists' chairs, thrones, opera stalls, seats of all sorts, those miraculous fungoid growths that cumber the floor of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition, and you will perceive what a lax bundle in fact is this simple straightforward term. In co-operation with an intelligent joiner I would undertake to defeat any definition of chair or chairishness that you gave me." Think then ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... fancy there are a good many people unconsciously repeating the mistake of the Canadian farmer—chopping down all the native growths of life, clearing the ground of all the useless pretty things that seem to cumber it, sacrificing everything to utility and success. We fell the last green tree for the sake of raising an extra hill of potatoes; and never stop to think what an ugly, barren place we may have to sit in while we eat them. The ideals, the attachments—yes, ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... no apology for the number and extent of bibliographical and other lists given in this Appendix: they may cumber the book but they are necessary to complete my design. This has been to supply throughout the ten volumes the young Arabist and student of Orientalism and Anthropology with such assistance as I can render him; and it is my conviction ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... men smoke cigars—and those disgusting cigarettes," said Mr. Flint, with conviction. "There are a lot of worthless young men in these days, anyhow. They come to my house and loaf and drink and smoke, and talk a lot of nonsense about games and automobiles and clubs, and cumber the earth generally. There's a young man named Crewe over at Leith, for instance—you may have seen him. Not that he's dissipated —but he don't do anything but talk about railroads and the stock market to make you sick, and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... calmly—"My moan is made—my sorrow—all the sorrow at least that man shall ever have noting of, is gone past; but I will have justice, and the base villain who murdered this poor defenceless old man, when he had not, by the course of nature, a twelvemonth's life in him, shall not cumber the earth long after him. Stranger, whom heaven has sent to forward the revenge reserved for this action, go to Hildebrod's—there they are awake all night in their revels—bid him come hither—he is bound by his ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... able to produce my authority. I think it amounted to this, that James flung down a petition presented by some supplicant who paid no compliments to his horse, and expressed no admiration at the splendour of his furniture, saying, "Shall a king cumber himself about the petition of a beggar, while the beggar disregards the king's splendour?" It is, I think, Sir John Harrington who recommends, as a sure mode to the king's favour, to praise the paces of ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... will fortify thee, and secure itself in thee, so that vehement blasts shall but contribute to its more fixed abode, and more fruitful actings in thee. Live up then to the gospel, and so be sure of it, and be safe in it. I mean, let Christ live in thee as thy all, and cast all thy care and cumber on him; lay all thy difficulties before him; lean all thy weight upon him; draw all thy necessities out of him: and undertake all thy duties in him; be strong in him, and in the power of his might; let him be thy counsellor, conductor, leader, teacher, ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... was well fed and reasonably clothed, and had a good bed in which to sleep. Where she was sinned against was in this: that her family looked upon her white hair and her wrinkles and arrived at the erroneous conclusion that her interest in life was gone—in short, that she was content to cumber the earth and to wait for the long sleep. To them she was simply one who tarries and is content. Scattergood looked into her sharp, old eyes, eyes that were capable of sudden gleams of humor or flashes of anger, and he knew. ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... break, And marriage liberties partake? Some really do, as I suppose, Upon design keep on some clothes, And yet in truth I'm not afraid For to describe a bundling maid; She'll sometimes say when she lies down, She can't be cumber'd with a gown, And that the weather is so warm, To take it off can be no harm: The girl it seems had been at strift; For widest bosom to her shift, She gownless, when the bed they're in, The spark, nought feels but naked skin. But she is modest, also chaste, While only ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... which may be bought new for a few shillings, has swamped English makers of cheap instruments, of which there are by this time five times as many in the market as there is any occasion for. Hence it is that Fiddles meet us everywhere; they cumber the toy-shop; they house with the furniture dealer; they swarm by thousands in the pawnbrokers' stores, and block out the light from his windows; they hang on the tobacconists' walls; they are raffled at public-houses; and they form an ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... and why not? What use are these manikins in creation? Only to cumber the earth. Well, mozo, ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... animals, birds, and insects, holding the cat sacred to Re, the bull to Isis, the beetle to Pthah. A long struggle against their rude faith ended in its adoption as the religion of the new empire. Then rose the mighty monuments that cumber the river-bank and the desert—obelisk, labyrinth, pyramid, and tomb of king, blent with tomb of crocodile. Into such deep debasement, O brethren, the ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... the bustle and cumber of the world, that will call a man off from looking after the salvation of his soul. This is intimated by the parable of the thorny ground. (Luke 8:14) Worldly cumber is a devilish thing; it will hurry a man from his bed without prayer; to a sermon, and from it again, without prayer; ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... notices of John a Cumber, see our Fourth Volume passim.—Knight of L. is Leopold of Austria; K. C., Knight of the Crescent of Turkey.—Pricket is a young male deer of two years old.—Impresse is from Ital. imprendere, says Blount: see also his Dict. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 236, May 6, 1854 • Various
... a stripling scarcely grown? Or hast thou told of the Volsungs, and the gathered heart of these, And their still unquenched desire for garnering fame's increase? E'en so do I hearken thy words: for I wot how they deem it long Till a man from their seed be arisen to deal with the cumber and wrong. Bid me therefore to sit by thy side, for behold I wend on my way, And the gates swing-to behind me, and each day of mine is a day With deeds in the eve and the morning, nor deeds shall the noontide ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... Mrs. Moss, rubbing her eyes and making an effort to restrain her tears. "The last was after my bad illness four years ago, as everything went wrong, and there was a new note made then. What with illness and bad luck, I've been nothing but cumber all my life." ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... natural heart to attain or retain such a state shows me the necessity of all being done for me through faith in Divine power, "His name, through faith in His name." Oh for watchfulness unto prayer continually, and that the cumber of earth may be cast away! "Take heed that your flight be not in the winter," has been my watchword, though how imperfectly obeyed! and if, through infinite mercy, the season be changing, if He who has faithfully kept me from utter death there-through is beginning to give me more of ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... he had them upon back, refused, saying, he was not able to make any proofe of himself therein, and therefore would goe meet the enemy with his own sling and sword. In summe, others armes either fall from thy shoulders, or cumber or streighten thee. Charls the seventh, Father of Lewis the eleventh, having by his good fortune and valour set France at liberty from the English, knew well this necessity of being arm'd with his owne armes, and settled in his Kingdome the ordinances of men at ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... two of ours, Mr. Sweet- world and Mr. Present-good, namely, for they are two men full of civility and cunning. Let these engage in this business for us, and let Mansoul be taken up with much business, and if possible with much pleasure, and this is the way to get ground of them. Let us but cumber and occupy and amuse Mansoul sufficiently, and they will make their castle a warehouse for goods instead of a garrison for men of war.' This diabolical advice was highly applauded all through hell till all the lesser devils, while setting themselves to carry ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... where they remain as memorials, like and unlike the distorted iron that was the Maine, in the harbor of Havana, and as the shattered and charred remnants of the fleet of Montejo, at Manila, still cumber the waters of the bay off Cavite, telling the story of the glory ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... time, just as will arrive the international postage stamp, which, by the way, is very badly needed. For the upper classes of all countries, the people who travel, and have to stand the nuisance and loss of changing their money at every frontier, the bankers and international merchants who have to cumber their accounts with the fluctuating item of exchange between commercial centres will insist upon it. All the European nations, with the exception of Russia and Turkey, are ready for the change, and when these reach the stage of real constitutionalism in ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... Hell, Paradise, Sin, Satan, and Serpent should occur "very frequently" in "Paradise Lost"? Would it not rather have been surprising that they should not? Such trifles at best come under the head of what old Warner would have called cumber-minds. It is time to protest against this minute style of editing and commenting great poets. Gulliver's microscopic eye saw on the fair skins of the Brobdignagian maids of honor "a mole here and there as broad as ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... honesty," Rodney commented. "Well, I'm glad, because I don't see what you want to cumber yourself with all those cushions and rugs for. You're quite comfortable enough ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... I have the bequeathing. She has something from Willebald, and her dull husband makes a livelihood. 'Twill suffice for the female brats, of whom she has brought three into the world to cumber it.... By the Gospels, she will lie on the bed she has made. I did not scheme and toil to make ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... sort of down on your friends to-day, aren't you? I'm an idiot to think of cutting down the pine grove. I'm a milksop compared with a red-headed Indian you never saw before. Now I'm a blunderbuss for answering a simple question asked me by my sister. What do you think I am, anyhow? Fit to cumber the earth?" ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... O excellent wife, not to cumber yourself and me to get a rich dinner for this man or this woman who has alighted at our gate, nor a bed-chamber made ready at too great a cost. These things, if they are curious in, they can get for a dollar at any village. But let this stranger, if he will, in your looks, ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... views and pretensions Field had so often lampooned mercilessly, had their innings, and as Field had not then conquered the popular heart with his "Little Boy Blue," his matchless lullabies, and his fascinating fairy tales and other stories, "Culture's Garland" was left to cumber the shelves of the book-stores. Several of the articles and poems in this book have been included in the collected edition of Field's works. In it will be found Field's famous "Markessy di Pullman" papers, ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... hopeless of obtaining a Government grant, have set on foot a subscription which reached 500l.—some say 700l. There are, therefore, certain fitful signs of activity, and bricks and fire-bricks now cumber the ground; but it is all a 'flash in the pan.' The present purpose is to make it a library, in place of the fine old collection which went to the dogs. It is also to serve as a lecture-room. But who is there in the 'African Liverpool' that can lecture? What ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... dead and every one wounded became a serviceable clod; rapidly as the dump and cumber of humanity filled the moat the ladders extended their upward reach; while drum-beat, battle-cry, trumpet's blare, and the roar of cannon answering cannon blent into one steady ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... from one of the barns there emerged, one by one, the female vultures of the battle. The tymbesteres, who had tramped all night to the spot, had slept off their fatigue during the day, and appeared on the scene as the neighbouring strife waxed low, and the dead and dying began to cumber the gory ground. Graul Skellet, tossing up her timbrel, darted to the fugitives and grinned a ghastly grin when she heard the news,—for the tymbesteres were all loyal to a king who loved women, and ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... or concubines as a man can properly and with decency provide for, the children of the latter, if recognised by the father, sharing equally with the offspring of the former. Though why a man who has found his love should wish to cumber his house with other women, seething with jealousy and peevish from want of occupation, is beyond ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... with vegetation, of which I should preserve a portion for shade and coolth. A fine arched cistern now affords a shelter to bats; and a building which appears to be the chapel remains on the northern side. Old iron guns still cumber the ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... had Wives enough, And Concubines a Number; Yet Ise possess more happiness, And he had more of Cumber; My Joys surmount a wedded Life, With fear she lets me mow her; A Wench is better ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... me. You are like the others. When the fire has touched their eyes and indeed they see the things that are, they fall on their knees and they tear away at the weeds and rubbish that cumber the earth, and they never lift their eyes, and soon their frame grows weary and their heart cold. Be wise, man. The mark is upon you. Those live best and work best in this world who have a soul for its beauties. Women, for instance," he went on, smoking furiously. "What help do you make ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... beach is a-spray; Blithesome the bee and the hive full alway; Better work than the bow hath the sickle to-day; Fuller the stack than the House of the Play; The Churl who cares neither to work nor to pray Now why should he cumber the earth with his clay? Justly St. Breda, the sapient, would say "As many to evil as good ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... his whip he flourished, Cracked his whip, all bead-embroidered, Quick he sped upon his journey, Lurched the sledge, the way was shortened, 10 Loudly rang the birchwood runners, And the rowan cumber rattled. ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... in short, all the wrecks of the departed year,—its mouldering relics, its dry bones. It is a pity that the world cannot be made over anew every spring. Then, in the yard, there are the piles of firewood, which I ought to have sawed and thrown into the shed long since, but which will cumber the earth, I fear, till June, at least. Quantities of chips are strewn about, and on removing them we find the yellow stalks of grass sprouting underneath. Nature does her best to beautify this disarray. The grass springs up most industriously, especially in sheltered and sunny angles ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... pasture. Great numbers of them have become standards; we see them following the lines of old stone walls that skirt the bounds and avenues of the farm, in company with the Ash and the Maple. In these situations, where they would not "cumber the ground," they have been allowed to grow, without exciting the jealousy of the proprietor of the land. Accident, under these circumstances, has reared many a beautiful tree, which would in any other ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... absurd! The young man was just married, and, to Maxwell's absent, incurious eyes, the bride had seemed a lively, pretty little person enough. No doubt it was the nervous strain of his political life that made such fancies possible to him. Let him not cumber her ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... glassed, Who gazes long and well at times beholds Some sunken feature of the mummied Past, But oftener only the embroidered folds And soiled magnificence of her rent robe Whose tattered skirts are ruined dynasties That sweep the dust of aeons in our eyes And with their trailing pride cumber the globe.— For lo! the high, imperial Past is dead: The air is full of its dissolved bones; Invincible armies long since vanquished, Kings that remember not their awful thrones, Powerless potentates and foolish sages, Impede the slow steps of the ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... of sunset burning thro' the boughs Died in a smear of red; exhausted hours Cumber'd, and ugly ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... gateway, equally deep-set between the bushes, opens on a pasture, where the docks of last year still cumber the ground, and bunches of rough grass and rushes are scattered here and there. A partridge separated from his mate is calling across the field, and comes running over the short sward as his companion answers. With his neck held high and upright, stretched to see around, he ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... bears;' And how, inter alia, the beast got away And took himself off in the midst of the fray; And how Tommy Johnson at last came to grief: All which I omit, as I wish to be brief. The story's too lengthy—it must not be sent all To cumber your pages, my dear CONTINENTAL. At present my purpose, my object, my mission is To show how the woodman became 'Abolitionist.' Introductions, you know, like 'original sin,' Hang on, while you long for some sign of repentance In shape of the last and the welcomest sentence, So, in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... tables and chairs and dragged myself along that fashion, I have now so strained the upper part of the body that I cannot turn in bed, and am full of muscular pains which are worse than the rheumatism and more disabling, so that I seem to cumber the earth. They say that summer, when it comes, will do me good. How much more sure that the sight of you will do me good, and I trust that, when your business will let you, you will give me that happiness. In the mean while will ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... high, grassy hills, completely covered with what at a distance resembled loose boards, but which were actually the long marble seats of the stadium. Urging our horses over piles of loose blocks, we reached the base of the theatre, climbed the fragments that cumber the main entrance, and looked on the spacious arena and galleries within. Although greatly ruined, the materials of the whole structure remain, and might be put together again. It is a grand wreck; the colossal fragments ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... but for that of Richard and the first year of John he is really admirable. No circumstance is too trivial for his pen, and in this garrulous diffuseness many touches are preserved of priceless worth to us, with which better authors would have disdained to cumber their work.] ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... though you may fish a little stronger above, in the upper part of your line: but if you can attain to angle with one hair, you shall have more rises, and catch more fish. Now you must be sure not to cumber yourself with too long a line, as most do. And before you begin to angle, cast to have the wind on your back; and the sun, if it shines, to be before you; and to fish down the stream; and carry the point or top of your rod downward, by which means the shadow of yourself and rod too, will ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... on the breast, and the hands drooped upon the poor crippled limbs, whose crawl in the sunshine hard youth had grudged. He felt humbled, stunned, crushed; the pride was clean gone from him; the cruel words struck home. Worse than a cipher, did he then but cumber the earth? At that moment old Ponto, the setter, shook himself, looked up, and laid his head in his master's lap; and Dash, jealous, rose also, and sprang, not actively, for Dash was old, too, upon his knees, and licked the numbed, drooping hands. Now, people praise the fidelity of dogs till the ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of the water there, are due to its impact against these obstacles. I doubt this explanation. At all events, there is another sufficient reason to be taken into account. Boulders derived from the adjacent cliffs visibly cumber the sides of the river. Against these the water rises and sinks rhythmically but violently, large waves being thus produced. On the generation of each wave, there is an immediate compounding of the wave-motion with he river-motion. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... . . . . . Ye are bound for the mountains— Ah, with you let me go . . . . . Hark! fast by the window The rushing winds go, To the ice-cumber'd gorges, The vast seas of snow. There the torrents drive upward Their rock-strangled hum, There the avalanche thunders The hoarse torrent dumb. —I come, O ye ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... or less, voice, expressive features, words ready or (more expressive still) unready, and occasions enough, Heaven knows! of making small sacrifices for our neighbours. And it is entirely superfluous to waste our substance and cumber our friends' houses by adding to these convenient items, material tokens like, say, gold from Ophir and apes and peacocks. There are inconveniences attached to the private possession of bullion; many persons dislike ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... Hardly, but here for awhile. All over the grey soft shallow Hover the colours and clouds of the twilight, void of a star. As a bird unfledged is the broad-winged night, whose winglets are callow Yet, but soon with their plumes will she cover her brood from afar, Cover the brood of her worlds that cumber the skies with their blossom Thick as the darkness of leaf-shadowed spring is encumbered with flowers. World upon world is enwound in the bountiful girth of her bosom, Warm and lustrous with life lovely to look on as ours. Still is the sunset adrift as a spirit in ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize. ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... in his voice. "Though old folks oughtn't ter expec' too much o' young ones, ez be all tuk up naterally with tharse'fs," he added, bravely. He would not let his past lonely griefs mar the bright present. "Old folks air mos'ly cumber-ers—mos'ly cumberers o' the ...
— His "Day In Court" - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... at Thornleigh a little more than a week, when Mr. Darrell one morning proposed a drive to a place called Cumber Priory, which was one of the show-houses of the neighbourhood. It was a very old place, he said, and had been one of the earliest monastic settlements in that part of the country. Milly and her father and her cousin had been there a great many times, and the visit was proposed for ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... nor reason is hid, vailed in innocence, Nor envy's snaky eye, finds any harbour here. Nor flatterer's venomous insinuations. Nor coming humourist's puddled opinions, Nor courteous ruin of proffer'd usury, Nor time prattled away, cradle of ignorance, Nor causeless duty, nor cumber of arrogance, Nor trifling titles of vanity dazzleth us, Nor golden manacles stand for a paradise. Here wrong's name is unheard; slander a monster is, Keep thy sprite from abuse, here no abuse doth haunt, What man ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... the brave; We have fired our last bullet, have made our last rally, And Caucasus gives us a grave. Here the soft pipe no more shall invite us to slumber —The thunder our lullaby sings; Our eyes not the maiden's dark tresses shall cumber, Them the raven shall shade with his wings! Forget, O my children, your father's stern duty— No more shall he bring ye the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... thus his rage. Oh both in courage and injurious deeds Unmatch'd, Achilles! whom themselves the Gods 255 Cease not to aid, if Saturn's son have doom'd All Ilium's race to perish by thine arm, Expel them, first, from me, ere thou achieve That dread exploit; for, cumber'd as I am With bodies, I can pour my pleasant stream 260 No longer down into the sacred deep; All vanish where thou comest. But oh desist Dread Chief! Amazement fills me at thy deeds. To whom Achilles, matchless in the race. River divine! hereafter be it so. 265 But not from ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... haughty, bold, and young, Rage gnaw'd the lip, and wonder chain'd the tongue. Silence at length the gay Antinous broke, Constrain'd a smile, and thus ambiguous spoke: "What god to your untutor'd youth affords This headlong torrent of amazing words? May Jove delay thy reign, and cumber late So bright a genius ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... modified by the Author's increasing desire to gather his past and present writings into a consistent body, illustrated by one series of plates, purchasable in separate parts, and numbered consecutively. Of other prefatory matter, once intended,—apologetic mostly,—the reader shall be spared the cumber: and a clear prospectus issued by the publisher of the new series of plates, as soon as they are ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... troubled with the same longings, for among the many proclamations against the residence in London of country gentlemen in unofficial positions is one of James I., noticing "those swarms of gentry, who, through the instigation of their wives, do neglect their country hospitality and cumber the city, a general nuisance to the kingdom;" and the royal Solomon elsewhere observes that "gentlemen resident on their estates are like ships in port—their value and magnitude are felt and acknowledged; but when at a distance, as their size seemeth ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... offered them. Then let Rivers take four men, and go in, and take all the loot you can find. The jewels we will divide among the men when at Meerut. Tell off another party to loot the rest of the rooms, but only take what is really valuable and portable. We cannot cumber ourselves with baggage. It would serve the rajah right if I were to burn his castle down; he may think himself lucky to get off ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... you should die. You cumber the earth! Shall I do it?" Helwyse muttered to his heart,—"merely as a ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... years were occupied with the strife of Kirk and King, whence arose "all the cumber of Scotland" till 1689. The preachers, led by the learned and turbulent Andrew Melville, had an ever-present terror of a restoration of Catholicism, the creed of a number of the nobles and of an unknown proportion ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
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