Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




More "Pestered" Quotes from Famous Books



... Scotch sea-officer, who had obtained in 1511 letters of marque for himself and his two sons, to make reprisals upon the subjects of Portugal. The council-board of England, at which the earl of Surrey presided, was daily pestered by complaints from British merchants and sailors against Barton, and at last it was decided to put him down. Two ships were, therefore, placed under the commands of sir Thomas and sir Edward Howard, an engagement ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... to say that Mr. Champfort, who saw the fracas between my lord and me, about the key and the door, the night of my lady's accident, has whispered it about at Lady Singleton's and every where—Mrs. Luttridge's maid, ma'am, who is my cousin, has pestered me with so many questions and offers, from Mrs. Luttridge and Mrs. Freke, of any money, if I would only tell who was in the boudoir—and I have always answered, nobody—and I defy them to get any thing out of me. Betray my lady! I'd sooner cut my tongue out this minute! Can she have such a base ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth

... have them written, or I shall be pestered to my grave! Is that the voice of a friend of so long standing? And yet it seems but yesterday since we had good hours in Virginia together, or met among the ruins of Quebec. My memoirs—these only will content you? And to flatter or cajole me, you tell me Mr. Pitt still urges on ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... This being so, he was disinclined to talk about it. The suggestion of the regimental wise men put him in a difficult position. He was disgusted, and this disgust by a sort of paradoxical logic reawakened his animosity against Lieutenant D'Hubert. Was he to be pestered with this fellow for ever—the fellow who had an infernal knack of getting round people somehow? On the other hand, it was difficult to refuse point-blank that sort of mediation sanctioned ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad

... of last night? If a trifle of that sort gets into the papers, or gets talked about,—which is the same thing!—you have no notion how we are pestered. It becomes an almost unbearable nuisance. Jones the Unknown can commit murder with less inconvenience to himself than Jones the Notorious can have his pocket picked,—there is not so much exaggeration in that as ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh

... declared that they would take Washington and make it the Confederate Capital. Prominent men at the North declared that the South could not be and should not be coerced. And with these terrible problems puzzling him, Lincoln was also pestered with office-seekers until he remarked, "This struggle and scramble for office will yet test our institutions." For his Cabinet he chose William H. Seward, Secretary of State; Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury; Simon Cameron, Secretary of War; ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers

... occasion to change his abode, he sent on his window-plants, calceolarias and geraniums, to that which he intended to occupy several days before he went himself, and immediately found that he was pestered with flies, whereas previously he had enjoyed perfect immunity from the nuisance. A more agreeable remedy cannot be conceived. Next autumn let our windows be a blaze of brilliancy, so that all visitors ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... all driven to lie in the rain and weather, in the open air, in the burning sun, and upon the hard boards, and to dress our meat, and to carry all manner of furniture, wherewith [the boats] were so pestered and unsavoury, that what with victuals being most fish, with the wet clothes of so many men thrust together, and the heat of the sun, I will undertake there was never any prison in England that could be found more unsavoury and loathsome, especially to myself, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... no shame," she cried proudly. "You force me to defend myself before another, and I will speak out now before the man who has for long enough pestered me with his attentions, and whom, during these past few days, you have made your friend and encouraged to come home; let him hear then that I feel it no shame to say I love John Grange very dearly, and that I would not let him ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn

... thoroughly penetrated with the flame of virtuous friendship is in a state of glory; but lest it should be exalted above measure, there is given to it a thorn in the flesh. I mean that where the friendship of any person forms an essential part of a man's happiness, he will at times be pestered with the little jealousies and solicitudes of imbecile humanity. Since we last parted I have been gloomily dreaming that you did not leave me so affectionately as you were wont to do. Pardon this littleness of heart, and do not think the worse of me for it. Indeed my soul ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull

... seem, now," murmured the mother, with a tear in her eye, "that I could ever whack them pretty fingers with a thimble. I do believe if I wasn't pestered to death with everything under the sun to do, I might be kind o' ...
— Dotty Dimple at Play • Sophie May

... was no conviction more strongly impressed upon his mind than that it was his instant duty to leave Lancaster. It was obvious that he was watched, and that his presence in the old town had excited suspicion. The man who had pestered him for many days with his unwelcome society was clearly in league with the other man who had insulted the girl. The latter rascal he knew of old for a declared and bitter enemy. Probably the pair ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... indeed heard my father say that he was pestered with a great many of those who, for any religion they had, might e'en have stayed where they were, but who flocked over hither in droves, for what they call in English a livelihood; hearing with what open arms the refugees were ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe

... all right when the tribe returned to the main island, and right enough where he was, if he kept by the lagoon, yet he had a mind to make things righter if he could. So he told the high chief he had once been in an isle that was pestered the same way, and the folk had found a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... he haunted the kitchen incessantly, dancing now to the little pantry to swing back the doors and feast his eyes on the huge mince pie which waited on the bottom shelf, and then back to the kitchen where he pestered his mother with innumerable questions until she drove him out into the snappy, late November air. He scampered up to Bill's house, where the two boys retired to the chilly seclusion of the shack and ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely

... plagued, impatient things, All dream and unaccountable desire; Crawling, but pestered with the thought of wings; Spreading through every inch of earth's old mire, Mystical ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various

... Justice, Lord Coleridge visited the United States, he was continually pestered by interviewers, and one of them failing to draw him, began to disparage the old country in its physical features and its men. Lord Coleridge bore it all in good part; finally the interviewer said, "I am told, my lord, you think a great deal of your great fire of London. Well, I guess, ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton

... in her studies without being pestered by society to any extent. I sometimes think this helped old Scroggs to hate us. She was his only child, and he had taken all the affection and interest that most people distribute over their entire acquaintanceship and concentrated it on her. They had grown up together since she ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch

... flew at the black dog; nipping at the plodding forepaws. The mongrel raged; as might some painfully sick human who is pestered when he asks only to be let alone. His dull apathy gave place to sullen anger. He bit growlingly at the spaniel, throwing himself to one side in pursuit of the elusive foe. And he snapped with equal rage at an Irish terrier that had come out to ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... sticks, was a pot, and soon the mistress was preparing supper. It was dark before we had settled for the night, which was so warm that sleeping under the trees was no hardship. Jabez covered the dying fire with damp litter, the smoke of which kept off the mosquitos, which pestered us dreadfully. ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar

... about Johnny Jewel. She had been sure that he had come to Los Angeles, and she had pestered her dad into bringing her here in the firm belief that she would find him at once and "have it out with him" once and for all. (Just as though Mary V could ever settle a quarrel once and for all!) But though she had haunted all the known and some of the unknown flying fields, ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower

... exposed, in boats, to all the vicissitudes from wet to dry weather, sleeping in mangrove creeks for many months in succession, pestered by mosquitoes during the hours of repose, yet they still remained very healthy; and the only instance where the climate was at all prejudicial (if such a term can be applied) was in the Victoria River, on the north ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... Mahoning Creek. From the fact that this first American movement against the savages, during the Revolution, resulted only in the capture of non-combatants, in the almost deserted villages, it was long known as "the squaw campaign." Hand was a competent officer, but was much pestered, at Fort Pitt, with the machinations of tories, who were numerous among the borderers. Succeeded at Fort Pitt in 1778, by Brig.-Gen. Lachlan McIntosh, Hand in turn succeeded Stark in command at Albany. We find him, in 1779, actively ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... Lord to give ye the sense of a man, Mr. Sanborn," she said, "while He was a makin' on ye. If ye'd go to bed, now, instead o' snivelin' round here, you might be good for somethin' in the mornin', when there'll be plenty to do. Anyhow, I'm not goin' to be pestered by the sight on ye any longer," and Hannah banged the kitchen-door ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson

... fight," began Armitage sneeringly. He turned suddenly toward Yeasky. "I have been pestered and worried for a week now. I know I was shadowed in New York. Now that I 've a clue I am not going to let ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry

... Jawohl, which was what she always said; and we went out for a walk. When we came back and sat down to supper there were no hornets. Jawohl had just stood on a chair, she said, poured a can of water into the nest, and stuffed up the opening with grass. She had not been stung, and we were not pestered by a hornet again that summer. I have sometimes told this story to English people, and seen that though they were too polite to say so they did not believe it. But that is their fault. The story as I have told it is true. We found immense numbers of hornets in one wild uninhabited ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... for the boatswain's mate, he was rendered propitious by the present of a guinea, which she slipped into his hand. In short, Mrs. Grizzle was continually engaged in this negotiation for the space of ten days, during which, the commodore was so incessantly pestered with her remonstrances, and the admonitions of his associates, that he swore his people had a design upon his life, which becoming a burden to him, he at last complied, and was conducted to the scene like a victim to the altar, or rather like a reluctant bear, when he is led to the stake amidst ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... too independent. High-spirited girl with twenty-two shillings between her and starvation, wanders about from one registry office to another for a couple of weeks, living in a room in a Miller's Point slum; money all gone; pestered by brutes in the usual way, jumps into the water to end her miseries. Rough, ...
— In The Far North - 1901 • Louis Becke

... imaginative as the captain; I haven't pestered all the old men and women of the island to death for legends and stories, like my friend Charley here, who will surely bore you to death when his turn comes; I am sure I cannot make you laugh as Hughie and Mr. Risk have done with their very interesting narratives, and I ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... hot and humming into noon, and noon dropped languidly into afternoon. The blazing sun centered his rays upon her; insects found and pestered her; discomfort cramped her limbs, and weariness weighted down her eyelids. Twice she dozed, and wakened with a start of fear lest she had slept her chance away. But each time she was reassured by a hurried survey of the group of buildings, where no one stirred, ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham

... to another field, the early critics were no doubt often provokingly wrong when they censured the language of particular passages in Shakespeare as obscure, inflated, tasteless, or 'pestered with metaphors'; but they were surely right in the general statement that his language often shows these faults. And this is a subject which later criticism has never fairly faced ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... before the gymnastic lesson there was the gymnastic master sitting with him. Of course we bowed to them as we passed and in the gymnastic lesson Herr Baar said to us: So you two are tormented and pestered by my cousin in natural history? "Pestered" we said, o no, it's the most delightful lesson in the whole week. "Is that so?" said he, "I won't forget to let him know." Of course we begged and prayed him not ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl

... with echoes, or with answers, the poets have all but outsung the bells. The inarticulate bell has found too much interpretation, too many rhymes professing to close with her inaccessible utterance, and to agree with her remote tongue. The bell, like the bird, is a musician pestered with literature. ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... from the flag-ship came on board and piloted us into a snug berth, among the men-of-war, and close to the shore, where we were immediately surrounded by sampans, and pestered by pertinacious Chinese clambering on board. The donkey-engine, with well-rigged hose, soon, however, cleared the decks, bulwarks, and gangways, and we were not bothered ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... Crowl had never made application for their remission, though she often slapped her children in vexation instead. They were used to slapping, and when nobody else slapped them they slapped one another. They were bright, ill-mannered brats, who pestered their parents and worried their teachers, and were as happy as the Road ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... with an experience of actual warfare such as only a score or so of German officers of my generation have had; but I am bound to say I found this pounding in of patriotism on every side distinctly nauseating. Boys and girls, and men and women, ought not to need to be pestered with patriotism. We had a controversy in America some ten years before the Franco-German War, where in one battle more men were killed and wounded than in all the battles Prussia, and later Germany, has fought ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... now and then as to his progress, and received vague answers in reply, and Loman never remembered a fag that pestered him less with lessons. Stephen was, in fact, settling down into the slough of idleness, and would have become an accomplished dunce in time, had not Mr Rastle come to the rescue. That gentleman caught the new boy in an idle mood, wandering aimlessly ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... rational and select Conversation is composed of Persons, who have the Talent of Pleasing with Delicacy of Sentiments flowing from habitual Chastity of Thought; but mixed Company is frequently made up of Pretenders to Mirth, and is usually pestered with constrained, obscene, and painful Witticisms. Now and then you meet with a Man so exactly formed for Pleasing, that it is no matter what he is doing or saying, that is to say, that there need no Manner of Importance in it, to make him gain upon every Body who hears or ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... confident assurance did not seem to have the effect of relieving my mother's fears, but it served to free me from all timidity as regards my father. After that I wanted to write to him every day and pestered Mahananda accordingly. Unable to withstand my importunity he would make out drafts for me to copy. But I did not know that there was the postage to be paid for. I had an idea that letters placed in Mahananda's hands got to their destination without any need ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore

... he was there. Her office boy brought in his card, as she had rehearsed him to do. Fanny noted that it was the wrong kind of card. She would show him what happened to pushers who pestered business women ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber

... which was as yet never inhabited, there should be notwithstanding such a free and clear passage to us, without the hinderance of Bushes, Thorns, and such like fluff, wherewith most Islands of the like nature are pestered: the length of the Grass (which yet was very much intermixt with flowers) being the only impediment ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville

... said that his reputation was much on the decline in Germany. That for his own part he was not surprised to find it so, as the works of Kant were to him utterly incomprehensible—that he had often been pestered by the Kanteans; but was rarely in the practice of arguing with them. His custom was to produce the book, open it and point to a passage, and beg they would explain it. This they ordinarily attempted to do by substituting ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... John Hudson, who knew Brereton's Relacion by heart, "this must ha' been the place where they caught so many fish that they were 'pestered with Cod' and threw numbers of 'em overboard. This makes ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... me as if he expected to be pestered in some new spot, but I put him at rest by saying I had a little time to lounge and thought I could do it there. At this he dropped some of his frowns and began to be sociable. We talked until I was sure it was long after his shutting-up time, ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher

... better the Fleet; and easiest of all the Counter, where untried prisoners were commonly kept to await their trial. Alexander, the keeper of Newgate, was wont to go to Bishop Bonner, crying, "Ease my prison! I am too much pestered with these heretics." And then an easement of the prison was made, by the ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... every kind, by which the travellers had endeavored to elbow him out of their society, could not withstand the good-humored bantering, and occasionally sharp wit of She-wee-she. He evidently quailed under his jokes, and sat blinking like an owl in daylight, when pestered by the flouts and peckings of mischievous birds. At length his place was found vacant at meal-time; no one knew when he went off, or whither he had gone, but he was seen no more, and the vast surplus that remained when the repast was over, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving

... did not wish to become a greater one, or that was not jealous of Philip's power, and that there was not a villain in all Christendom but wished for Philip's death. Moreo followed the prince about to Antwerp, to Brussels, to Spa, whither he had gone to drink the waters for his failing health, pestered him, lectured him, pried upon him, counselled him, enraged him. Alexander told him at last that he cared not if the whole world came to an end so long as Flanders remained, which alone had been entrusted to him, and that if he ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... vntaught Knaues, Vnmannerly, To bring a slouenly vnhandsome Coarse Betwixt the Winde, and his Nobility. With many Holiday and Lady tearme He question'd me: Among the rest, demanded My Prisoners, in your Maiesties behalfe. I then, all-smarting, with my wounds being cold, (To be so pestered with a Popingay) Out of my Greefe, and my Impatience, Answer'd (neglectingly) I know not what, He should, or should not: For he made me mad, To see him shine so briske, and smell so sweet, And talke so like a Waiting-Gentlewoman, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... wits of that age could obtain from the public was so small, that they were under the necessity of eking out their incomes by levying contributions on the great. Every rich and goodnatured lord was pestered by authors with a mendicancy so importunate, and a flattery so abject, as may in our time seem incredible. The patron to whom a work was inscribed was expected to reward the writer with a purse of gold. The fee paid for the dedication of a book was often much larger than the sum ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... after the first meeting between Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas I heard that they were being pestered on account of some amorous letters which had been stolen from them. There was talk of blackmail and hints ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... might I call up to vindicate my past shameful silence! I might tell how I wrote a long letter on my first coming hither, and seem vastly angry at my not receiving an answer; I might allege that business (with business you know I was always pestered) had never given me time to finger a pen—but I suppress those and twenty more equally plausible, and as easily invented, since they might be attended with a slight inconvenience of being known to be lies. Let me then speak truth. An ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... with a long sign, letting the reins lie loose in his vigilant hand, to which he seemed to relegate the whole charge of the mare. "I want to talk with you about Rogers, Persis. He's been getting in deeper and deeper with me; and last night he pestered me half to death to go in with him in one of his schemes. I ain't going to blame anybody, but I hain't got very much confidence in Rogers. And I told him so ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... the most ridiculous and expensive rubbish that he had ever been called upon to purchase. When his married daughters and his wife had learned, by "prying," that he was going to New York on business, they had gathered about him with lists as long as his arm, and they had badgered him and pestered him until he had flown into a passion and snatched the lists and thrown them on the floor. But at that the ladies had looked such indignant, heart-broken daggers at him that, very ungraciously, it is true, and with language that made their sensibilities hop like peas in a pan, he ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... happiness nor contentment yet, father," answered the king peevishly. "I have never been so pestered in my life. The whole court has been on its knees to me to entreat me ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... must not imagine that Lady Arabella was prepared to give up her son, if only his love could remain constant for one year. Neither did Lady Arabella consent to any such arrangement, nor did the squire. It was settled rather in this wise: that Frank should be subjected to no torturing process, pestered to give no promises, should in no way be bullied about Mary—that is, not at present—if he would go away for a year. Then, at the end of the year, the matter should again be discussed. Agreeing to this, Frank took his departure, and was absent ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... presently, "that was a devilish queer dream, wasn't it? You'll account for it by telling me I'd been so pestered with the story of the banker's murder that I naturally had nightmare; perhaps, too, that my digestion was out of order. Call it a nightmare, call it dyspepsia, if you like. I don't, because—— But you'll see ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... pestered Mr. Lincoln with plans and schemes for the termination of the war. One Duff Green, a Virginia politician, wrote from Richmond in January, 1863, asking the President for an interview "to pave the way for an early termination of the war." He asked the same permission from Jeff. Davis. ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... club, which was formed only in 1913, the artists may go at any time to secure a model—which is a distinct boon. The old way was for the model to call on the artist, the result being that the unfortunate man was pestered with dozens of girls for whom he had no use, while the one model he really wanted never appeared. The club combines the advantages of club, employment bureau, and hotel. There is no smoking-room; every room is a smoking-room, for there ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... Chicago was coming to college—age, weight, complexion, habits and time of arrival unknown. That telegram qualified Snooty for the paresis ward. We didn't even know what Smith his millionaire father was. The world is full of Smiths who are pestered by automobile agents. All we knew was the fact that we had to find him, grab him, sequester him where no meddling Alfalfa Delt or Chi Yi could find him, and make him fall in love with us inside of forty-eight ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch

... to see how little the place had changed, for it seemed that we had passed round the curves and contours of a good many centuries in those four or five years. In the open meadow the cow was still grazing; perhaps the same cow that was once pestered by a volatile Irish terrier who used to swing merrily at the end of that cow's tail; a merry and irresponsible little creature, she was, and her phantom still scampers the road where the sharp scream of the Freeport trolley brings back her last fatal venture to our ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... persistent voice silenced, they could go on in the comfortable old fashion of lip-service and real selfishness. It is an account, in vividly parabolic language, not only of their hostility, but of that of many men who are against Him. They wish to possess life and its good, without being for ever pestered with reminders of the terms on which they hold it, and of God's desire for their love and obedience. They have a secret feeling that Christ has the right to ask for their hearts, and so they often turn from Him angrily, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... with, some in 48 deg., and others have seen it in a much lower latitude. It is true, however, that the greatest part of this southern continent (supposing there is one), must lie within the polar circle, where the sea is so pestered with ice, that the land is thereby inaccessible. The risque one runs in exploring a coast, in these unknown and icy seas, is so very great, that I can be bold enough to say that no man will ever venture farther than I have done; and that the ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook

... of English books and infinite fardles of printed pamphlets this country is pestered, all shops stuffed, and every study furnished," says a contemporary. {288a} If a doubter will look at the cheap and common books of that day (a play in quarto, and the Sonnets of Shakespeare, when new, were sold ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang

... a snug L. 1500 a year at Whitehall. After a momentary greeting they continued the conversation with Dr. Wycherley, and scarcely noticed Alfred. They were there pro forma; a plausible lunatic had pestered the Board, and extorted a visit of ceremony. Alfred's blood boiled, but he knew it must not boil over. He contrived to throw a short, pertinent remark in every now and then. This, being done politely, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... walked out in my garden of lilies There I saw endible, crindible, cronable kernt Ofttimes pestered my eatable, peatable, partable present, And I called for my man William, the second of quillan, To bring me a quill of anatilus feather That I might conquer the ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... he be returned, then shall I be pestered again with his boisterous sea-love; have my alcove smell like a cabin, my chamber perfumed with his tarpaulin Brandenburgh, and hear volleys of brandy-sighs, enough to make a fog in one's room. Foh! I hate a lover ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... of fame; such as came not to the House with a malevolent spirit of contention, but with a preparation to consult on the public good, and rather to comply than to contest with Majesty: neither dare I find {28} that the House was weakened and pestered through the admission of too many YOUNG HEADS, as it hath been of LATTER times; which remembers me of the Recorder Martin's speech about the truth of our late Sovereign Lord King James, {29} when there were accounts taken of FORTY gentlemen not above TWENTY, and some not exceeding SIXTEEN ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton

... appeared; an eagle's feather lay on the ground; two white papillons and one yellow butterfly reminded me of the Camarones Mountain; the wild bee and the ladybird-like Ba'zah stuck to us as though they loved us; and we were pestered by the attentions of the common fly. The Egyptian symbol for "Paul Pry" is supposed to denote an abundance of organic matter: it musters strong throughout Midian, even in the dreariest wastes; and it accompanies us everywhere, whole swarms ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton

... her life might have been while that season was getting under way, Henderson was involved in the most serious struggle of his life—a shameful kind of conspiracy, Margaret told Carmen, against him. I have hinted at his annoyance in the courts. Ever since September he had been pestered with injunctions, threatened with attachments. And now December had come and Congress was in session; in the very first days an investigation had been ordered into the land grants involved in the Southwestern operations. Uncle Jerry was in Washington to explain matters there, and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... about that," replied her uncle, shaking his head with a frown. "Some people have neither sense nor manners. Only yesterday I was pestered by a fellow who annoyed me, seriously annoyed me, interfering in affairs which he knew nothing of,—actually the affairs of the Bank!—prating about his family name, and all the rest of it. Family ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... hitherto objected to every purchase in the market,—not that he was insensible to the importance and consideration of landed property, but because, till he himself became the legal receiver of the income, he thought it less trouble to suffer the money to lie in the Funds, than to be pestered with all the onerous details in the management of an estate that might never be his. He, however, with no less ardour than his deceased relative, looked forward to the time when the title of Vargrave should be based upon ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book I • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... "You sho is axin' sump'n now, honey. Und' his hat, ef he had any, Brer Rabbit had a mighty quick thinkin' apple-ratus, an' mos' inginner'lly, all de time, de pranks he played on de yuther creeturs pestered um bofe ways a-comin' an' a-gwine. De dogs done mighty well, 'long ez dey had dealin's wid de small fry, like Brer Fox, an' Brer Coon, an' Brer Wolf, but when dey run ag'in' ol' Brer B'ar, dey sho struck a snag. De mos' servigrous wuz de identual one dat got de wust hurted. He got ...
— Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit • Joel Chandler Harris

... boyish unformed hand. Among other things they provided that "any one pointing a gun, accidentally or otherwise, at anybody else or Duke, is fined one cent." The entire club went into a committee of the whole, marched down town in a body and pestered a number of store-keepers. Finally it purchased a silver bangle a little larger than a ten-cent piece, had it hung from a bar pin, and inscribed "First Prize." The second prize, following Mrs. Orde's practical suggestion, ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White

... smart, sister 'n' me both. Sister's had the lumbago some this last week, and my limb has pestered me so I couldn't step on it none too lively, but other ways we're real smart. I expect you've come ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards

... the elements provoked occasional judgments in the shape of a "hoast" (cough), and the head of the house was then exhorted by his women folk to "change his feet" if he had happened to walk through a burn on his way home, and was pestered generally with sanitary precautions. It is right to add that the gudeman treated such advice with contempt, regarding it as suitable for the effeminacy of towns, but not seriously intended for Drumtochty. Sandy Stewart "napped" stones on the road in his shirt-sleeves, wet or fair, summer ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various

... woman off her feet in his rush towards his master; but one of the others had perceived the monstrous cobra, and, clubbing his gun, he beat the life out of it with one blow, before it could glide away into the jungle. It looked as if this part of the country was specially pestered ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

... the girls, and a miserable afternoon we had of it. The Story Girl again and again declared that she "didn't believe it," but when we asked her to tell a story, she evaded it with a flimsy excuse. Cecily pestered at Aunt Janet's life out, asking repeatedly, "Ma, will you be washing Monday?" "Ma, will you be going to prayer meeting Tuesday night?" "Ma, will you be preserving raspberries next week?" and various similar questions. It was a huge comfort to her that Aunt ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... almost too hot and crowded at last, so many were the invitations given; but then, as Dick said afterwards, "he was such a soft-hearted beggar that he could not refuse the fellows that pestered him for invitations." ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... stood in that pulpit for five years, spouting literary transcendentalism. Nobody listened. When I condescended to come down and talk about what people could understand then everybody listened. It wouldn't have done Rickman any good if I'd pestered people with him. But when the time comes I shall ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... the news, and as soon as she saw her husband the first thing she asked him was whether the donkey was well. To this greeting he replied that the donkey was better than he himself. And then she pestered him with questions as to what he had brought back with him for her and the children; to which he impatiently remarked that she would have to wait until he got his island or empire, when she would be called Her Ladyship. Of course, it was not to be expected that Teresa Panza should ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... had lost her chickens. It was not long before the Justice's daughters found out his passion, and having communicated their discovery to the maids, exposed him to be the laughing stock of the whole house. Never was a poor young fellow so pestered! One asked him whether he liked the wife with three trades? Another was enquiring whether he had cast up the amount of remnants of silk, shreds of lace, and the savings that might be made out of linings, facings, and robings? The Justice took notice that Philip had left ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... some further space of time the Roman Emperours subdued the land to their dominion; and after the coming of the Romans, it is hard to say with how manie sorts of people we were dailie pestered. For their armies did commonlie consist of manie sorts of people, and were (as I may call them) a confused mixture of all other countries and nations then living in the world. Howbeit I thinke it best, because they did all beare the title of Romans, to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... worm that trodden on would "turn into a torpedo." He had begun to be tormented by the dyspepsia, which "gnawed like a rat" at its life-long tenement, his stomach, and by sleeplessness, due in part to internal causes, but also to the "Bedlam" noises of men, machines, and animals, which pestered him in town and country from first to last. He kept hesitating about his career, tried law, mathematical teaching, contributions to magazines and dictionaries, everything but journalism, to which he had ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... where, however, she did not fail to say to her companions that her fate was very hard, and that she wished to be free. As for d'Aubigne he concealed from nobody that his sister was putting a joke on him by trying to persuade him that he was devout, declared that he was pestered by priests, and that he should give up the ghost in M. Doyen's house. He could not stand it long, and went back to his girls and to the Tuileries, and wherever he could; but they caught him again, and placed him under the guardianship of one of the stupidest priests ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... just described there were two women correspondents, poor souls, who were indeed sad and lonely. They were very ambitious and wanted to go to Cuba with the army, but the War Department wisely forbade any such a move and then my trouble began. At all hours of the day or night I was pestered by these same women. One of them represented a Canadian paper and was most anxious to go. She tried every expedient and tackled every man or woman of influence that came along. Even dear old Clara Barton did not escape her importunities. She wanted to go as a Red Cross nurse, but ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... the upper branches of a tall peepul tree at noon, feeling too hot to sleep, and all fanning themselves in unison with one wing—a comic spectacle. And at each flap of the elephant's ears I would observe that a cloud of flies (for the elephant is not too great to be pestered by the despicable hordes of beggars for blood) were dislodged from their feeding grounds about his head and neck, and, trying to settle about his rear parts, were driven back again by the swinging of his tail. Then I should say that ear is just a ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... would bee more commodious in this place, for the neerenesse to Seaward, and for a better outlet, then farther within the streights, being likely heere alwayes to loade in a shorter time, howsoeuer the streight should be pestered with yce within, so that if it might come to passe that thereby they might eyther finde the Fleete, Mine, or conuenient harborough, any of these three would serue their present turnes, and giue some hope and comfort vnto their companies, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt

... unbroken forest without a compass. Traveling through a northern forest in summer is desperately hard work. The moss is ankle deep, the underbrush thick; fallen logs lie across each other in hopeless confusion, through and under and over which one must make his laborious way, stung and pestered by hordes of black flies and mosquitoes. So that, unless you have a strong instinct of direction, it is almost impossible to hold your course without a compass, or a bright sun, ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long

... best part of two centuries have passed away since Antoine Galland first turned some of the tales into French, and got stigmatised as a forger for his pains. Never was there such a sensation as when he printed his translations. For weeks he had been pestered by troops of roysterers rousing him out of bed, and refusing to go until the shivering Professor recited one of the Arab stories to the crowd under his window. Nor has the interest in them in any way abated. Thousands of copies pass every year into circulation, and any one who has ever ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... had pitched in as one of the foremen some fellow or other, a friend of the firm's, a rank duffer, who pestered me incessantly with his questions. I did half his work and all my own, and it hadn't improved my temper much. On this night that I'm telling about, he'd been playing the fool with his questions as if a time-contract was a sort of summer holiday; and he'd filled me up to ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions

... desirous to obteine their purpose, continued their assaults, till by fine force they entered the towne, set it on fire, and slue all that made resistance; and after for want of a generall to command what should be doone, they being pestered with preies and prisoners, returned into England. The countesse of Kent that was daughter (as ye haue heard) to Bernabo viscont lord of Millaine, hauing no issue by hir husband, was now mooued by the king after hir ...
— Chronicles (3 of 6): Historie of England (1 of 9) - Henrie IV • Raphael Holinshed

... day, amounting to more than a million[A] of miles, and tho' sometimes much fatigued, the next Night's refreshing Sleep, always completely restored me. In early life, between 20 and 30, I used to ride on Horse back, but being often pestered by my Horses slipping their Bridles I found it more ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks

... have already said, I was blamed for, very early in my career but by learned trees, with grave and dignified complaisance. These saplings, on the contrary, pestered me with silly nicknames. For example, they took a malicious delight in calling me Skabba, which means an untimely or ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg

... the time that this speech was written, the Town was much pestered with street-robbers; who, in a barbarous manner would seize on gentlemen, and take them into remote corners, and after they had robbed them, would leave them bound and gagged. It is remarkable, that this speech had so good an effect, that there have ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... they went to windward of their camp fires they were maddened by swarms of mosquitoes, and everywhere were pestered ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... is clear. Far from me to propose to bridge it over—that the pestered people be pushed across. No! I would save them from further fatigue. I would come to their relief, and would lift from their shoulders ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler

... Lord Coleridge visited the United States, he was continually pestered by interviewers, and one of them failing to draw him, began to disparage the old country in its physical features and its men. Lord Coleridge bore it all in good part; finally the interviewer said, "I am told, my lord, you think a great deal of your great fire of London. Well, I guess, that the ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton

... of the place of Rhazes in the history of medicine is that Vesalius considered it worth his while to make a translation of his principal work. Unfortunately that translation has not come down to us. When Vesalius, pestered by the controversies that had come upon him because of his venturing to make his observations for himself, accepted the post of physician to the Emperor Charles V, he burnt a number of his manuscripts. Among these were his ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... asked me what fate there was for those single private soldiers, each real, each existent, while the Army which they made up and of whose "destruction" men spoke, was but a number, a notion, a name. He would have pestered me, if my mind had still been active, as to what their secret destinies were who lay, each man alone, twisted round the guns after the failure to hold the Bridge of the Beresina. He might have gone deeper, but I was too tired to listen to ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc

... and anecdote," cried I, interrupting him, "means, if I have any skill in reading Mr. Ferret, that that gentleman, having some ulterior purpose in view, which I cannot for the moment divine, is determined to have this writ, and does not wish to be pestered with any argument on the subject. Be it so: it is your affair, not mine. And now, as it is just upon three o'clock, let me ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren

... purpose: and I have said that I shall be happy to praise him whenever I find that he has abjured these objectionable topics." It was Sydney Smith who said of Jeffrey he would "damn the solar system—bad light—planets too distant—pestered with comets. Feeble contrivance—could make a ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks

... shore, of which a considerable distance from the main is encumbered with shoals. We all met outside of the straits in the afternoon, in nineteen fathoms water, about four miles from the Arabian shore. From the 12th to the 27th, we were much pestered with contrary winds, calms, and a strong adverse current, setting to the S.W. at the rate of four miles an hour. The 27th, we had a favouring gale to carry us off, and by six p.m. had sight of Mount Felix, [Baba Feluk,] a head-land to the west of Cape Guardafui. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... thy brother in marriage? Thou fool! Would I, the daughter of my father, seek any man for husband? Hath not this Narue pestered me so with his presents and his love-offerings that, for very weariness, and to please my father, I turned my face from the Englishman who buildeth ships for him, and said "Aye" to this Narue—who is but a little man{*}—when he besought me to be wife to him. Ah! ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke

... column with that which yielded 136, I do not know what to think. I endeavoured to prevent pollen dropping from an upper to a lower flower, and I tried to remember to wipe the pincers carefully after each fertilisation; but in making eighteen different unions, sometimes on windy days, and pestered by bees and flies buzzing about, some few errors could hardly be avoided. One day I had to keep a third man by me all the time to prevent the bees visiting the uncovered plants, for in a few seconds' time they might have done irreparable mischief. ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin

... not imagine that Lady Arabella was prepared to give up her son, if only his love could remain constant for one year. Neither did Lady Arabella consent to any such arrangement, nor did the squire. It was settled rather in this wise: that Frank should be subjected to no torturing process, pestered to give no promises, should in no way be bullied about Mary—that is, not at present—if he would go away for a year. Then, at the end of the year, the matter should again be discussed. Agreeing to this, Frank took his departure, and was absent ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... were all driven to lie in the rain and weather, in the open air, in the burning sun, and upon the hard boards, and to dress our meat, and to carry all manner of furniture, wherewith [the boats] were so pestered and unsavoury, that what with victuals being most fish, with the wet clothes of so many men thrust together, and the heat of the sun, I will undertake there was never any prison in England that could be found more unsavoury and loathsome, especially to myself, who had ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... fellow on the Casino terrace this evening caught my eye, looked at me queerly, and passed on. His face, though unfamiliar, stirred some dormant association. What was it? The profitless question pestered me for hours. At last, during the performance at the theatre, I slapped my knee ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... I promised to stay with mother; but the fact is that I'm so pestered and hunted down by that rascally press-gang, that I don't know what to do. They're sure to nab me at last, too, and then I shall have to go away whether I will or no, so I've made up my mind as a last ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne

... explained Ma Watts, "what we built on our upper desert fer a man thet wanted to run a band o' sheep. He wus rentin' the range offen us, till they druv him off—the cattlemen claimed they wouldn't 'low no sheep in the hill country. They warned him an' pestered him a spell, an' then they jest up an' druv him off—thet Vil Holland wus ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx

... to the most wonderful mountains on earth, though the public has not realized that fact, because they are not yet the fashion. They are fast reaching that recognition, however. At present one can go there without being pestered by ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... ticket was good for ten days an' dey'd go wid her back to town; an' dat if she'd stay dey'd take her 'cross de ribber to see de city. I seed she wanted ter git home to her husban', an' she tol' 'em so. Den dey tried to make her believe he was comin' for her, an' dey pestered her so an' got her so mixed up wid deir lies dat I was feared she was gwine to give in, arter all. She warn't nothin' but a po' weak thing noways. Den I riz up an' tol' 'em dat I'd call a pleeceman ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith

... forest without a compass. Traveling through a northern forest in summer is desperately hard work. The moss is ankle deep, the underbrush thick; fallen logs lie across each other in hopeless confusion, through and under and over which one must make his laborious way, stung and pestered by hordes of black flies and mosquitoes. So that, unless you have a strong instinct of direction, it is almost impossible to hold your course without a compass, or a ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long

... American movement against the savages, during the Revolution, resulted only in the capture of non-combatants, in the almost deserted villages, it was long known as "the squaw campaign." Hand was a competent officer, but was much pestered, at Fort Pitt, with the machinations of tories, who were numerous among the borderers. Succeeded at Fort Pitt in 1778, by Brig.-Gen. Lachlan McIntosh, Hand in turn succeeded Stark in command at Albany. We find him, in ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... as far north as 51 deg.. Bouvet met with, some in 48 deg., and others have seen it in a much lower latitude. It is true, however, that the greatest part of this southern continent (supposing there is one), must lie within the polar circle, where the sea is so pestered with ice, that the land is thereby inaccessible. The risque one runs in exploring a coast, in these unknown and icy seas, is so very great, that I can be bold enough to say that no man will ever venture farther than I have done; and that the lands which ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook

... however restful her life might have been while that season was getting under way, Henderson was involved in the most serious struggle of his life—a shameful kind of conspiracy, Margaret told Carmen, against him. I have hinted at his annoyance in the courts. Ever since September he had been pestered with injunctions, threatened with attachments. And now December had come and Congress was in session; in the very first days an investigation had been ordered into the land grants involved in the Southwestern operations. Uncle Jerry ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... anxious that his sister should make a wealthy marriage, for her debts and difficulties annoyed him; and he felt that if she were well married, he would be able to borrow money of her, instead of being pestered by her ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... pressed me on Mr. Platt (who "pestered" him about me, to use his own words) were Mr. Quigg, Mr. Odell—then State Chairman of the Republican organization, and afterwards Governor—and Mr. Hazel, now United States Judge. Judge Hazel did not know me personally, but ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... I set foot in England I have been pestered with applications for leave to write the Life of my wife—I have refused—and there an end. I have last week received two communications from friends, enclosing the letters of a certain . . . of . . ., asking them for details of life and letters, for a biography ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... she cried proudly. "You force me to defend myself before another, and I will speak out now before the man who has for long enough pestered me with his attentions, and whom, during these past few days, you have made your friend and encouraged to come home; let him hear then that I feel it no shame to say I love John Grange very dearly, and that I would not let him leave here, weak, ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn

... de Grammont was provoked at so ill-timed a jest, more especially as it carried along with it some appearance of truth. "Mr. Matta," said he, "do you think it can be very agreeable for a man who plays with such ill-luck as the Count to be pestered with your insipid jests? For my part, I am so weary of the game, that I would desist immediately, if he was not so great a loser." Nothing is more dreaded by a losing gamester, than such a threat; and the Count, in ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... was terribly worried about Johnny Jewel. She had been sure that he had come to Los Angeles, and she had pestered her dad into bringing her here in the firm belief that she would find him at once and "have it out with him" once and for all. (Just as though Mary V could ever settle a quarrel once and for all!) But though ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower

... of their miseries, being now under their enemies' raging stripes. I think there is no man will judge their fare good, or their bodies unloaden of stripes, and not pestered with too much heat, and also with too much cold; but I will go to my purpose, which is to show the end of those being in mere misery, which continually do call on God with a steadfast hope that He will deliver them, and with a sure faith that He can ...
— Voyager's Tales • Richard Hakluyt

... generalities or axioms, not by way of scale or ascension from particulars, but by way of derivation from principles; whence hath issued the infinite chaos of shadows and notions, wherewith both books and minds have been hitherto, and may be yet hereafter much more pestered. That in the course of those derivations, to make them yet the more unprofitable, they have used when any light of new instance opposite to any assertion appeared, rather to reconcile the instance than to amend the rule. That if any have had or shall ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon

... be pestered, ma," said Pearl, as she began on a generous helping of bacon and eggs. "Home is the best place, ma, and I never knew just how good it was to have home and folks of my own, as the day I went to school and found no children there. Isn't it queer, ma, how hard ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung

... the house an' let me be. I know what I'm a-doin'. You've pestered me about this sign jest about enough." He dabbed his brush to and fro as he spoke. His gaunt figure towered above her in shadow. His slapping brush had ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... instructive, for the morbid anatomy of this little colony has a scientific value as exhibiting, all the more vividly for the narrowness of the field, the workings of an unmitigated paternalism acting from across the Atlantic. The King's servants in Acadia pestered his minister at Versailles with their pettiest squabbles, while Marlborough and Eugene were threatening his throne with destruction.[108] The same system prevailed in Canada; but as there the field was broader and the men often larger, the effects are ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman

... companies were on shore in the island of Flores, some providing ballast for the ships, others filling water, and others refreshing themselves from the land with such things as they could procure either for money or by force. Owing to this, our ships were all in confusion, pestered, rummaging, and every thing out of order, very light for want of ballast; and what was most of all to their disadvantage, the half of the men in every ship was sick and unserviceable. For in the Revenge, there were ninety sick; in the Bonaventure, not so many in health as could hand her ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... noble Shinnr-partridge again appeared; an eagle's feather lay on the ground; two white papillons and one yellow butterfly reminded me of the Camarones Mountain; the wild bee and the ladybird-like Ba'zah stuck to us as though they loved us; and we were pestered by the attentions of the common fly. The Egyptian symbol for "Paul Pry" is supposed to denote an abundance of organic matter: it musters strong throughout Midian, even in the dreariest wastes; and it accompanies us everywhere, whole swarms riding ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton

... earlier in the season. Having occasion to change his abode, he sent on his window-plants, calceolarias and geraniums, to that which he intended to occupy several days before he went himself, and immediately found that he was pestered with flies, whereas previously he had enjoyed perfect immunity from the nuisance. A more agreeable remedy cannot be conceived. Next autumn let our windows be a blaze of brilliancy, so that all visitors to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... hundred-and-one articles necessary to the work of the Medical Corps in the field: all this had to be man-handled through the sand up to our camp about a mile away. And the sun blazed, and the flies pestered and stung and buzzed and fought with each other for the drops of sweat streaming down your face. How long should we be here? When were we going into action?... The suspense was brain-racking. The diarrhoea increased: everyone went down with it. Some got the ague shivers ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave

... and his merriment seemed to make his companion feel better, for the sullen, abashed look left his face, and he laughed a little himself as he said: "I wasn't a-pesterin' Sam, but I tell you he pestered me mighty." ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various

... wild cat, as I called it, with my gun, yet I thought it was a quite different kind from our European cats; yet the young cats were the same kind of house breed like the old one; and both my cats being females, I thought it very strange: but from these three cats I afterwards came to be so pestered with cats, that I was forced to kill them like vermin, or wild beasts, and to drive them from my house as much ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... him now and then as to his progress, and received vague answers in reply, and Loman never remembered a fag that pestered him less with lessons. Stephen was, in fact, settling down into the slough of idleness, and would have become an accomplished dunce in time, had not Mr Rastle come to the rescue. That gentleman caught the new boy in an idle mood, wandering ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... their expense. Tracy's vessel however was too small to carry all whom it was desired to send. It was in fact so crowded with plantation supplies that Tracy wrote on the eve of sailing: "I have throw out mani things of my own yet is ye midill and upper extre[m]li pestered so that ouer men will not lie like men and ye mareners hath not rome to stir God is abel in ye gretest weknes to helpe we will trust to marsi for he must help be yond hope." Fair winds appear to have carried the vessel to port, whereupon Tracy and Thorpe jointly took charge of the ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... number was the actual handiwork of the editor. Many troubles and cross-purposes, however, beset the new periodical; difficulties with which Hood was ill fitted, by his now rapidly and fatally worsening health, to cope. They pestered him when he was most in need of rest; and he was in need of rest when most he was wanted to control the enterprise. The Haunted House, and various other excellent poems by Hood, were ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... shabby mantles, though all the invitations were accepted, someone was sure to say: "You know, my dear, your mother was far the prettiest girl in Edinburgh. Oh, Christina, you were!..." It was true, too, a French artist who had come to Scotland to decorate Lord Rosebery's ballroom at Dalmeny had pestered Mrs. Melville to sit to him, and had painted a portrait of her which had been bought by the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Ellen had never had a clear idea of what the picture was like, for though she had often asked her mother, she had never got anything more out of her ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... his own future movements, Frank did not have a very happy time of it. He felt a good deal like a boy shut up in a prison. His aunt used her authority severely. She kept him away from company, and allowed none of his friends to visit the house. From morning until night she pestered him and nagged at him, "all for his own good," she said, until life at the Jordan home, roomy and comfortable as it was, became a burden to ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster

... a cool hand," says he. "And that friend of yours too. He pestered me coming here every day for a fortnight till a captain I'm acquainted with was good enough to give him a berth. And no sooner he's provided for than he turns you on. You youngsters don't seem to mind ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... the rebukes of the friends who had heretofore pestered him by overmuch petting,—the collie arose quietly from his couch of trampled earth at the foot of the stone bench and strolled back across the street. Most of the men were too busy, talking, to note Bruce's departure. But Sergeant Mahan caught sight of him ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune

... said; and we went out for a walk. When we came back and sat down to supper there were no hornets. Jawohl had just stood on a chair, she said, poured a can of water into the nest, and stuffed up the opening with grass. She had not been stung, and we were not pestered by a hornet again that summer. I have sometimes told this story to English people, and seen that though they were too polite to say so they did not believe it. But that is their fault. The story as I have told it is true. We found immense ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... latter trait when a child, in contrast to the custom of most people; for to ask questions seemed to be the usual and almost only manner of carrying on conversation among the neighbors. Moreover, I was myself pestered beyond endurance by a fire of questions whenever I went anywhere, or anybody came to us. I inherit from my mother a great reserve in speech and fondness for silence; and, as the latter can only be purchased by retirement, I have added to silence a love of solitude in which I have ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee

... with his mother and his brother Giovanni, an artist like himself, but not nearly so brilliant. Masaccio could not spend his life in painting but had to eke out the family fortunes by keeping a little shop near the old Badia, and being pestered day and night by his creditors he was forced again and again to ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon

... said, I was blamed for, very early in my career but by learned trees, with grave and dignified complaisance. These saplings, on the contrary, pestered me with silly nicknames. For example, they took a malicious delight in calling me Skabba, which means ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg

... running off stock, always appearing in unexpected places and disappearing like mists at sunrise. Thus, two and a half years went by, and the offer of five thousand dollars each for the heads of the devil-brigands had come to nothing. Finally the Havana authorities were prayed and pestered into a spell of activity. They organized a troop of one hundred and fifty men and sixty dogs, put twenty officers at the head, and sent along four chaplains to pray the evil charms away. The three savages were cornered ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... he said, "if you want a raise don't let the whole factory know about it, otherwise we would be pestered to death here. Remember, also," he continued as he sat down again, "you are only working for us a few weeks—and don't go so ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass

... "He pestered the life out of me," explained Joe ruefully, "and I finally told him I'd ask you fellows. But I suppose we can't take two more. Nine would—um—be ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour

... it patented. You see, it keeps undesirable characters at a distance—such a great thing in the suburbs. I feel I can leave Mrs. Wilson alone now; and, formerly, you have no idea how she used to be pestered.' ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen

... were in embarking upon the Berlin adventure it is very difficult to say. It is true that he was disgusted with Paris—he was ill-received at Court, and he was pestered by endless literary quarrels and jealousies; it would be very pleasant to show his countrymen that he had other strings to his bow, that, if they did not appreciate him, Frederick the Great did. It is ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... An' then ag'in I got toler'ble oneasy fur fear the Law mought hold ME 'sponsible fur knowin' 'bout Birt's crime of stealin' the grant an' yit not tellin' on him. An' I'd take ter hopin' an' prayin' the boy would confess, so ez I wouldn't hev ter tell on him. I hev been mightily pestered in my mind ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)

... time have incurred the resentment of the robbers; and between both, he would have no possible chance of escape. He therefore consults his own interest and his own case by leaving them to carry on their trade of robbery or murder unmolested; and his master, the magistrate, is well pleased not to be pestered with charges against men whom he has no chance of getting ultimately convicted. It was in this way that so many hundred families of assassins by profession were able for so many generations to reside in the most ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... measure of its natural tone. When he attempted to rise and dress himself, however, he betrayed such a degree of bodily feebleness that his wife forbade him to make further exertions. He yielded to her importunities, and remained in bed, which was manifestly the best place for him. He was pestered by no unnecessary questions to account for his presence, Mrs. Savareen rightly considering that it was for him to volunteer any explanations he might have to make whenever he felt ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent

... and it doos seem as if for the time bein' some of Joe's grit had gone with it. He went up to Montany and tended to his business, but it was all like a dumb show and no heart in it. It's cut him pretty deep, through his bein' alone so long, perhaps, and thinkin' about how you'd feel. And then he's pestered in his mind about marryin'. He feels he's got no claim to you now. Says it ain't fair to ask a young girl that's likely to have plenty good chances to tie up to what's left of him. I wanted you should know about this before you go inside. It might hurt him some to ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... do, sometimes, when I'm pestered—not as I pester much," he laughed and broke off suddenly in his laughter, with a little sobbing shake in his breath, and passed on ahead of Steering, who looked away from him up the bridle road that ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young

... acquiring that grace of repose, that perfection of ease, which cultivation, example, and a conscious knowledge of the world gives to the beau-monde of Europe; on the other hand, in the absence of this, you are seldom pestered with the second-hand ladies'-maid airs of your pretenders to exclusive gentility, ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power

... something from the servant who interrupted and pestered at his shoulder, and he said, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... coffee-house in China Lane, there was no conviction more strongly impressed upon his mind than that it was his instant duty to leave Lancaster. It was obvious that he was watched, and that his presence in the old town had excited suspicion. The man who had pestered him for many days with his unwelcome society was clearly in league with the other man who had insulted the girl. The latter rascal he knew of old for a declared and bitter enemy. Probably the pair were only waiting for authority, perhaps merely ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... perspiration, pestered by flies and mosquitoes, and in constant dread of leeches. But we forget all such annoyances in the joy of these wonders of the tropics, whether they be trees or orchids, ferns or butterflies. And to see one of these gorgeous ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband

... them; it is a thing which very few people have the art of, even those most accustomed to have soirees. In some you get tired, and you are in great ceremony; you must restrict yourself to a conversation that is neither open, nor friendly, nor amusing. In others, you are pestered to death by the amphitryon, who is perhaps endowed with the bump of music, and won't leave the piano for fear some one else should take his place. There are others fond of cards, who only ask their friends that they may make up a table. Such individuals care for nothing but the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... new rule it was carried unanimously, Dr Weakling being the only dissentient, but of course he—as Brother Grinder remarked—was always opposed to any sensible proposal. There was one consolation, however, Grinder added, they was not likely to be pestered with 'im much longer; the first of November was coming and if he—Grinder—knowed anything of working men they was sure to give Weakling the dirty kick out directly ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... passed. The Motorola guys pestered their Xerox field-support rep, to no avail. Finally they decided to take direct action, to demonstrate to Xerox management just how easily the system could be cracked and just how thoroughly the security safeguards could ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10

... chat and their gab, and to do their business and take their ease and have a comfortable life, only the King! The beasts of the field have leave to lay themselves down in the meadow and to stretch their limbs on the green grass in the heat of the day, without being pestered and plagued and tormented and called to and wakened and worried, till a man is ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory

... except Filly's colt. He keeled over one morning, poor fellow! and was dragged out and buried under the oaks in the high pasture. But for some reason, I didn't pick up as quick as the others. The cough held on, and I was pestered for breath, and I didn't get back my strength; and what I ate didn't seem to fatten me up much, for Master Fred says one day, laughing, 'Well, Old Star, we've saved your skin and bones, and that's about all!' However, I got round again, only ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning

... of flies becomes of vast moment to a Pharaoh, whose ears are dinned with the buzz of myriad winged plagues, mingled with angry cries from malcontent and fly-pestered subjects; or to the summer traveller in northern lands, where they oppose a stronger barrier to his explorations than the loftiest mountains or the broadest streams; or to the African pioneer, whose cattle, his main dependence, are stung to death by the Tsetze fly; or ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard

... And it must have been a singular sight to Loron Usark, a big childish lout that lived on Spruce Street. We would pass the end of the alley back of his house and he was out there every day to watch us go by. Now this Loron was too weak, mentally, for school. Ordered around by everybody and pestered and teased by many, the moronic-minded will seek a victim that he can abuse and bend to his own will, and this Loron party was on the lookout. One day he caught me tagging along behind the others. He grabbed me and would have beaten ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney

... day beeing Munday the 11 of January the terme should have begun in the house, but because of the extreame cold and froast which had now continued full six weekes and better without any intermission, as also by reason the hall was still pestered with the stage and scaffolds which were suffered to stand still in expectation of the Comedy, therefore it was agreed by the President and the officers that the terme should bee prorogued for 7 dayes longer in which time it was agreed the Comedy should ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... game came when my country cousin returned from Exeter and told me he believed I had the making of a football player," says John Cranston, who was Harvard's famous old center and former coach. "At once I pestered him with all kinds of questions about the requirements, and believed that some day I would do something. I shall always remember my first day on the field at Exeter. Lacking the wherewithal to buy the regulation suit, I appeared in ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards

... little the place had changed, for it seemed that we had passed round the curves and contours of a good many centuries in those four or five years. In the open meadow the cow was still grazing; perhaps the same cow that was once pestered by a volatile Irish terrier who used to swing merrily at the end of that cow's tail; a merry and irresponsible little creature, she was, and her phantom still scampers the road where the sharp ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... diet. The Bashinje refused to sell any food for the poor old ornaments my men had now to offer. We could get neither meal nor manioc, but should have been comfortable had not the Bashinje chief Sansawe pestered us for the customary present. The native traders informed us that a display of force was often necessary before ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... neatly patched with substantial cloth of a different color. "Mr Lincoln, Sir, you've been nominated, Sir, for the highest office, Sir—." "Oh, don't bother me," said Honest Old Abe; "I took a STENT this mornin' to split three million rails afore night, and I don't want to be pestered with no stuff about no Conventions till I get my stent done. I've only got two hundred thousand rails to split before sundown. I kin do it if you'll let me alone." And the great man went right on splitting rails, paying no attention to the Committee whatever. The Committee ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne

... love is every man's who sets not himself before it," returned Lot, with sad dignity. "I will not yield that even for love of you, Madelon; but myself shall be pushed yet farther out of sight, I promise you, and you shall be pestered no more, child. Go on with ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... Hudson, who knew Brereton's Relacion by heart, "this must ha' been the place where they caught so many fish that they were 'pestered with Cod' and threw numbers of 'em overboard. This ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... however, one serious drawback in all America to life in the woods, or life in cities, or every other kind of life; which is the manner, go where you will, in which you are pestered by the mosquitoes. Strangers are not the only sufferers; those who are born and die in the country are equally tormented, and it is slap, slap, slap, all day and all night long, for these animals bite through everything less thick than a buffalo's skin. ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... and Ralph liked him for keeping it. The young fellow watched everything going on in the cab in a shrewd, interested fashion, but he neither got in the way of the cross-grained Fogg, nor pestered Ralph with questions. ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman

... swarm in their own little cottage. On the contrary, the first thing that they did was to fling open the doors and windows, in hopes of getting rid of them; and, sure enough, away flew the winged Troubles all abroad, and so pestered and tormented the small people, everywhere about, that none of them so much as smiled for many days afterwards. And what was very singular, all the flowers and dewy blossoms on earth, not one of which had hitherto faded, now began to droop and shed their leaves, after a day ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... over, than a clamour arose as to the disposal of the profit. It was argued that as the money raised had so far exceeded expectation, it ought, in fairness, to be divided between the two hospitals. Correspondence in the newspapers became warm, and almost angry. Walsh was pestered with all sorts of suggestions, and a deputation waited upon him, urging the "claims" of the General Hospital. Walsh received them with politeness, but with reticence, and they left dissatisfied. It was a ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards

... the Fairies; and I askt, Did anie believe in 'em now? and he made Answer, Oh, yes, he had known a Serving-Wench in Oxon depone she had beene nipped and haled by 'em; and, of Crickets, he sayd he had manie Times seene an old Wife in Buckinghamshire, who was soe pestered by one, that she cried, "I can't heare myself talk! I'd as lief heare Nought as heare thee;" soe poured a Kettle of boiling Water into the Cranny wherein the harmlesse Creature lay, and scalded it to Death; and, ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning

... unpleasant campaign. We have no favourable events, but that Russia, who had neither men, money, nor magazines, is much softened, and halts her troops. The Duke of Grafton(782) still languishes: the Duke of Newcastle has so pestered him with political visits, that the physicians ordered him to be excluded: yet he forced himself into the house. The Duke's Gentlemen would not admit him into the bedchamber, saying his grace was asleep. Newcastle protested he would go in on tiptoe and only look at him-he ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... not have vanished from the earth like a bubble of the elements. Well and sound he cannot be; for, besides that I am sure I saw him stagger and drop, firing his pistol as he fell, I know him well enough to swear, that, had he not been severely wounded, he would have first pestered me with his accursed presence and assistance, and then walked forward with his usual composure to settle matters with Sir Bingo Binks. No—no—Saint Francis is none of those who leave such jobs half finished—it is but doing ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... wife learned the news, and as soon as she saw her husband the first thing she asked him was whether the donkey was well. To this greeting he replied that the donkey was better than he himself. And then she pestered him with questions as to what he had brought back with him for her and the children; to which he impatiently remarked that she would have to wait until he got his island or empire, when she would be called Her Ladyship. Of course, it was not to be expected that Teresa Panza should understand ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... drove onward, a young officer on horseback looked earnestly into the carriage, and recognized some faces that he had seen before; so he rode along by our side, and we pestered him with queries and observations, to which he responded more civilly than they deserved. He was on General McClellan's staff, and a gallant cavalier, high-booted, with a revolver in his belt, and mounted on a noble horse, which trotted hard ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... said the youthful Crichton sententiously, "do not disturb yourself with those problems, which are already disposed of. In twenty years the sultan will become a monk, to get rid of the chief sultana, who has pestered his life out with her notions of woman's rights, and who wore the Bloomer costume before the Crimean war. As for the question about China, it is better to let sleeping dogs lie: it has been a great mistake to arouse China, for it is a dog that drags after it three hundred millions of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... is very good-natured he gets much pestered—a discovery which I daresay you have made, or anyhow will soon make; for I do want very much to know whether you have sown seed of any moss-roses, and whether the seedlings were moss-roses. (196/2. Moss-roses can be raised from seed ("Variation ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... object of the bird in settling upon the animal is to search for vermin, but it is not contented with the mere insects, and industriously pecks holes in all parts of the animal, more especially on the back. A wound once established, adds to the attraction, and the unfortunate animal is so pestered that it has no time to eat. I was obliged to hire little boys to watch the donkeys, and to drive off these plagues; but so determined and bold were the birds, that I have constantly seen them run under the body of the donkey, clinging ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... Jerry, with old Michael McAlpin, were the freest of smugglers. In them days the McAlpins wasn't pestered with feelings; they was good sports. Jerry marrying that full-breed had it taken out of him somewhat—she was a hifty one. Them Indians never can get off their high heels—not the full-breeds. But I tell you, Mr. Farwell, and you ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock

... when I deserved it, and when I did not; I was flogged for speaking too loudly, and for not speaking loud enough, and for holding my tongue. Moreover, one morning I rode the horse without the saddle, because my face was dirty, and the next, because I pestered the maid-servant to wash it clean. I was flogged because my shoes were dirty, and again because I attempted to wipe them clean with my pocket-handkerchief. I was flogged for playing, and for staying in the school-room and not going out to play. The bigger boys used to beat me, and I was then flogged ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... wooded. In the evening, a halt was made at a town called Quarra, where Clapperton waited upon the governor, who was an aged Fellata. Here Clapperton was unluckily taken for a fighi, or teacher, and was pestered at all hours of the clay to write out prayers by the people. His servants hit upon a scheme to get rid of their importunities, by acquainting them, that, if he did such things, they must be paid the perquisites usually given to the servants ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... familiar use among them as her real name, but her touch on the bell did not suggest the imperiousness of royalty. Aunt Rachel was an old family servant, faithful, fat, and important, and Aunt Rachel hated to be hurried. She said "it pestered her, an' made her spile the vittles." She answered promptly this time, however, entering with the great waiter of hot and tasty dishes before the bell had ceased its faint tintinnabulation. Berkeley, ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland

... their Shippes, which would bee more commodious in this place, for the neerenesse to Seaward, and for a better outlet, then farther within the streights, being likely heere alwayes to loade in a shorter time, howsoeuer the streight should be pestered with yce within, so that if it might come to passe that thereby they might eyther finde the Fleete, Mine, or conuenient harborough, any of these three would serue their present turnes, and giue some hope and comfort vnto their companies, which now were altogether ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt

... day upon his hands while his gold-seeking confreres of the League made their preparations for the journey to Bush Robin Creek. To loiter about the town meant that he would be pestered with questions regarding the locality of the new "field," which, until his friends' "claims" were pegged off, it was desirous to keep secret. He decided, therefore, to re-visit the scene of the ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... and realized that she was the Effect and baby doll in question. She flushed, and her ears tingled. She thought of the Arabian Nights tale, where the searcher after the Golden Water was pestered by voices of those who had been turned to black stones on ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... week o' disagreeable lessons once-t at one school 'cause he was watchin' a bird-nest on the way to that school. He was determined them young birds was to be allowed to leave that nest without bein' pestered, an' they stayed so long they purty nigh run him into long division 'fo' they did fly. Ef he'd 'a' missed school one day he knowed two sneaky chaps thet would 'a' robbed that nest, either goin' ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart

... of the impending undertaking and at the same time beset by a nervous apprehension lest I fail to embark in proper season, due either to an unexpected change in the hour of sailing or perchance to some unforeseen delay encountered in transit from my hotel to the water front, and pestered finally by a haunting dread lest the cabman confuse the address in his own mind and deposit me at the wrong pier, there being many piers in New York and all of such similarity of outward appearance, I must confess that I slept but poorly the ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... if they had—something like "Capt. Blank, Blankth Blank Regt., Blankth Fighting Force, c/o G.P.O." What will happen is that we shall go suddenly and without time to explain, and, when our friends are told, their faces will cloud over, not with sorrow at our departure but with annoyance at being pestered with the news of it again. It is a hard life, is ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various

... heard from Erasmus himself: how Erasmus on his arrival at Venice had gone straight to the printing-office and was kept waiting there for a long time. Aldus was correcting proofs and thought his visitor was one of those inquisitive people by whom he used to be pestered. When he turned out to be Erasmus, he welcomed him cordially and procured him board and lodging in the house of his father-in-law, Andrea Asolani. Fully eight months did Erasmus live there, in the environment which, in future, was to be his true element: the printing-office. ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga

... progress. I almost thought that they were my own sins that appalled me there. These were freaks of imagination—nothing more, certainly-mere delusions, which I ought to be heartily ashamed of; but all through the Dark Valley I was tormented, and pestered, and dolefully bewildered with the same kind of waking dreams. The mephitic gases of that region intoxicate the brain. As the light of natural day, however, began to struggle with the glow of the lanterns, ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... tendency to exaggerate the various sensations of the body and their importance, their exaggeration being at times so great as to amount to actual delusion. All sorts of symptoms are dwelt upon, and the doctor is pestered to the extreme by the morbid fears ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... twenty-two miles in the afternoon, and, being all down wind, were pestered with mosquitoes ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall

... that business of last night? If a trifle of that sort gets into the papers, or gets talked about,—which is the same thing!—you have no notion how we are pestered. It becomes an almost unbearable nuisance. Jones the Unknown can commit murder with less inconvenience to himself than Jones the Notorious can have his pocket picked,—there is not so much exaggeration in that as there sounds.—Good-bye,—thanks for ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh

... lost her chickens. It was not long before the Justice's daughters found out his passion, and having communicated their discovery to the maids, exposed him to be the laughing stock of the whole house. Never was a poor young fellow so pestered! One asked him whether he liked the wife with three trades? Another was enquiring whether he had cast up the amount of remnants of silk, shreds of lace, and the savings that might be made out of linings, facings, and robings? The Justice took notice that Philip ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... transferred my worship to Artimisia Briggs, who was a year older than Mary Miller. When I revealed my passion to her she did not scoff at it. She did not make fun of it. She was very kind and gentle about it. But she was also firm, and said she did not want to be pestered by children. ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... is run off I know not where, but as he makes his bed, must he lie on't; and if he run away for his pleasure, may stay away for mine. I have been pestered with this lot too long, and only bore with him for poor sister Martha's sake; but 'tis after his father that the graceless lad takes, and ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner

... that they had pitched in as one of the foremen some fellow or other, a friend of the firm's, a rank duffer, who pestered me incessantly with his questions. I did half his work and all my own, and it hadn't improved my temper much. On this night that I'm telling about, he'd been playing the fool with his questions as if a time-contract was a sort of summer ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions

... and who dead, it would contribute infinitely to my peace of mind. Every day of my life somebody comes and stares me in the face whom I had quietly blotted out of the tablet of living men, and trusted nevermore to be pestered with the sight or sound of him. For instance, going to Drury Lane Theatre a few evenings since, up rose before me, in the ghost of Hamlet's father, the bodily presence of the elder Kean, who did die, or ought to have died, ...
— P.'s Correspondence (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... that political advantages accrued to the convert." For "in many places the missionary intrudes himself into the Chinese court, and sits beside the magistrate to hear a case between his convert and a non-Christian native. The influence of the missionary is very great, and the official is often pestered and worried by the messengers of the Gospel." Therefore the Christian converts are voted a "source of trouble and ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch

... afternoon, or brought up the arrears of the journal he had begun keeping; but the Sunday afternoon that followed, he was too excited to stay in and write. He thought he would go and take a walk, and get away from the things that pestered him. He did not watch where he was going, and after a while he turned a corner, and suddenly found himself in a long street, planted with shade-trees, and looking old-fashioned and fallen from a former dignity. He perceived that it could never have been ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells

... wide-spread belief, mere age adds very little to the value of any book, and oft-times nothing at all. All librarians are pestered to buy "hundred year old" treatises on theology or philosophy, as dry as the desert of Sahara, on the ground that they are both old and rare, whereas such books, two hundred and even three hundred years old, swarm in unsalable masses on the shelves ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... as many witches to-day as there ever was," cried the corroborative Mr. Gammon. "The trouble is they ain't hunted out and brought to book for their infernal actions. There's hundreds and hundreds of folks goin' through this life pestered all the time with trouble that's made for 'em by a witch, and they don't know what's the matter with 'em. But they can't fool me. I know witches when I see 'em. And when she turns herself ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... indifferent things. I asked him what he thought of Kant. He said that his reputation was much on the decline in Germany. That for his own part he was not surprised to find it so, as the works of Kant were to him utterly incomprehensible—that he had often been pestered by the Kanteans; but was rarely in the practice of arguing with them. His custom was to produce the book, open it and point to a passage, and beg they would explain it. This they ordinarily attempted to do by substituting ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... "to tell you these things, because you never do so well as when you are humbled and frightened, and, if you could be alarmed into the semblance of modesty, you would charm everybody; but remember my joke against you about the moon: 'D—n the solar system! bad light—planets too distant—pestered with comets—feeble contrivance; could make a better ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... Monroe, musingly, "that if they'd begun by eatin' separate they might have got along, 'cause it's only His saints that the Lord has made pleasant-tempered enough to stand bein' pestered with three meals a day, unless they're busy enough not to have time to think about anythin' but swallerin'. Hayin'-time most men is kinder pleasant 'bout their food—so long 's it's ready. Wal, however it was, after they eat separate there was other things. ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull

... think so. He pestered me in the most absurd manner. I could have forgiven the bitterness of his persecution of me, had it not been that I was myself bitterly roused at the ill-behaviour of my friend, whom up to that time ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid

... witches abounding in all places. Now hundreds (says he) are discovered in one shire; and, if fame deceive us not, in a village of fourteen houses in the north are found so many of this damned brood. Heretofore, only barbarous deserts had them; but now the civilized and religious parts are frequently pestered with them. Heretofore, some silly, ignorant old woman, &c.; but now we have known those of both sexes who professed much knowledge, holiness, and devotion, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... were more or less pestered with ticks of various sizes. These clung to the grass blades; but with no invincible preference for that habitat; trousers did them just as well. Then they ascended looking for openings. They ranged in size from little red ones as small as the period of ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... most dangerous and troublesome creatures we had to encounter on our journey down the river, excepting man, were the mosquitoes—which swarmed all along the river borders and pestered us with their bites— and an exceedingly small fish that seemed to be in myriads in parts of the stream, and to make up in absolute ferocity for their want of size. This savageness of nature was of course but their ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn

... And for five months at least—there was Mr. Pike's offered wager of a pound of tobacco or a month's wages to that effect—I was to be pent on the same ship with her. As sure as cosmic sap was cosmic sap, just that sure was I that ere the voyage was over I should be pestered by her making love to me. Please do not mistake me. My certainty in this matter was due, not to any exalted sense of my own desirableness to women, but to my anything but exalted concept of women as instinctive huntresses of men. In my experience women hunted men with ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... river 12 feet wide. The whole surface of the front building was to be excavated, and filled in with concrete 12 feet thick, thus forming a permanent and solid foundation for the superstructure. Towards the end of this year, the Queen was somewhat pestered with lunatics. On Nov. 4, as she was going through Birdcage Walk on her return from Brighton, a man of respectable appearance went near the Queen's carriage, held up his fist, and made use of most insulting language towards Her Majesty and the Duchess of Kent, declaring that the ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... give me the old maid every time. She don't begin to eat so much, and she takes care of her room. Albion Bennet about ruined my spare chamber. He et peanuts every Sunday, and they're all ground into the carpet. Yes, I'm mighty glad to get rid of him. Let alone everything else, the way he pestered my Susy was enough to make me sick of my bargain. There that poor child got so she tagged me all over the house for fear Albion Bennet would make love to her. I guess Susy ain't going to take up with a man like Albion Bennet. He's too old for ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... number of sea rovers from the West Indies had made their appearance, and the factory at Fort St. George reported that the sea trade was 'pestered with pirates.' The first comers had contented themselves with plundering native ships. Now their operations were extended to European vessels not of their own nationality. In time this restriction ceased to be observed; they ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph

... in ecstasy, so her gossips declared, and so she almost persuaded herself, even after she had certain drawbacks to her pleasure, and certain cares intruding upon her exultation; after she was again harassed and pestered with the inconvenient resuscitation of that incorrigible little plain, vain portrait painter, Sam Winnington. He was plain—he had not the county member's Roman nose; and he was vain—Clary had already mimicked the fling of his cravat, and the wave of his white hands. Clever, smart ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... wonder! Thrown out of hotels, because we're not married, and pestered by the police, we're forced to come to this place, the last I'd have wished. To this very room, number eight.... Someone must ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg

... religion in Germany, and laid down the law with unhesitating conviction. As far as I can remember, he was answering a number of questions about St. Paul, and what he thought of Christ, of the Kingdom of Christ, and the Life to come, and being pestered and driven into a corner by his various questioners, and asked at last how he knew St. Paul's secret thoughts, he not knowing how to express himself in fluent English, exclaimed in a loud voice, "I know it by the Holy Ghost." Here the ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller

... are crying out they are like to be ruined," said Percy; "the roads are cloyed and pestered, ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... nearer exhaustion. Had Ginevra Fanshawe been my companion in that drawing-room, she would not have suffered me to muse and listen undisturbed. The presence just gone from us would have been her theme; and how she would have rung the changes on one topic! how she would have pursued and pestered me with questions and surmises—worried and oppressed me with comments and confidences I did not want, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... you are firm. And you must be firm. Is it not true that he has been disgracefully involved in debt ever since he has been there; that you have been pestered by letters from unfortunate tradesmen who cannot get their money ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... shiny-eyed, double-headed little niggers, sha'p ez a steel trap, en sly ez de fox w'at keep out'n it. Dis yer Wiley had be'n pesterin' Dilsey 'fo' she come ter our plantation, en had nigh 'bout worried de life out'n her. She didn' keer nuffin fer 'im, but he pestered her so she ha' ter th'eaten ter tell her marster fer ter make Wiley let her 'lone. W'en he come ober to our place it wuz des ez bad, 'tel bimeby Wiley seed dat Dilsey had got ter thinkin' a heap 'bout Dave, en den ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... blush to repeat. I say it in confidence, but I have again and again been made the sport of a wayward and wanton ridicule. I say, gentlemen, I have always conducted myself as only a Potts knows how to conduct himself—and yet I have been pestered by cheap flings at my personal bearing. Is this courtesy, is it common fairness, is it the boasted civilization of our ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... stranger. Here they are kept in the background, and a European must remain in the place for a couple of months or so, and make friends with the merchants, before he be even permitted to see them. The position is reversed. At Stamboul the stranger is pestered and worried to buy; at Teheran one must sometimes entreat before being allowed even to inspect the contents of a silk or jewel stall. Even then, the owner will probably remain supremely indifferent as ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt

... now," murmured the mother, with a tear in her eye, "that I could ever whack them pretty fingers with a thimble. I do believe if I wasn't pestered to death with everything under the sun to do, I might ...
— Dotty Dimple at Play • Sophie May

... church. I called it the "West End Literary Institute," and truly it was designed upon a most ambitious scale. When I recall the way in which I begged money from all and sundry among my friends for the purpose of starting the institute, and the manner in which I pestered distinguished authors for presentation copies of their books, in order to furnish the shelves of the library, I am driven to the painful conclusion that I must have been a terrible person in the days of my youth, and something of a ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.

... who was very prosperous; but his wife found their life of wealth and ease monotonous, and she continually urged him to travel into other countries and to see whether other modes of life were pleasant or distressful; she pestered her husband so much that at last he gave way. He put his kingdom in charge of his father's sister and her husband and set off with his wife and his two sons ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas

... could not prevail upon her instantly to give up her objection. She desired till the next day to consider of it. The day after was fixed by Mr. Tyrrel for the marriage ceremony. In the mean time she was pestered with intimations, in a thousand forms, of the fate that so nearly awaited her. The preparations were so continued, methodical, and regular, as to produce in her the most painful and aching anxiety. If her heart attained a moment's ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... crippled limbs, or his despondency concerning the future; in fact, he pretty well forgot them for the time. And he did not mention George Kent, a person whom he had meant to mention and praise highly, for his unreasonable conscience had pestered him since the talk in the summer-house and, as usual, he had determined to do penance. But he forgot Kent for ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... likely be pestered with me at any hour. And I'd be proud to have you drop over to visit me now and then too. I live on that point yander. Neither me nor my house is worth coming to see. It's only got one room and a loft and a stovepipe sticking out of the roof for a ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... a long sign, letting the reins lie loose in his vigilant hand, to which he seemed to relegate the whole charge of the mare. "I want to talk with you about Rogers, Persis. He's been getting in deeper and deeper with me; and last night he pestered me half to death to go in with him in one of his schemes. I ain't going to blame anybody, but I hain't got very much confidence in Rogers. And I told him so ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... sat upon a bench where Lord Wellington and Bluecher perhaps met, and drank to their healths in Vin de Bordeaux. In spite of the corn, there are still bits of leather caps and bullets and bones scattered about in the fields, and you are pestered with children innumerable with relics of all sorts. We had heard magnificent accounts on our road here of all that was to be done on the field, balls, fetes, sham fights, processions, and I do not know what, but they have all dwindled to a ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley

... always dreamed of flight; but when did men first actually fly? We smile at the story of Daedalus, the Greek architect, and his son, Icarus, who made themselves wings and flew from the realm of their foes; and the tale of Simon, the magician, who pestered the early Christian Church by exhibitions of flight into the air amid smoke and flame in mockery of the ascension. But do the many tales of sorcerers in the Middle Ages, who rose from the ground with their cloaks apparently filled with wind, to awe ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson

... discomfiture. To be trampled under foot by the hostile power seemed indeed no remote possibility, now that the Lacedaemonians had procured an ally in the person of the Persian monarch, and they were in little less than a state of siege themselves, pestered as they were by privateers from Aegina. On all these grounds the Athenians became passionately desirous of peace. (16) The Lacedaemonians were equally out of humour with the war for various reasons—what with their garrison ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon

... served me right for saying one thing when I meant another. However, it don't matter now. Joel is as clever as the day is long, but he is a shiftless critter, never splits his kindlin's till jest bedtime, and Patty is pestered to death for wood, while his snorin' nights, she says, is awful, and that I never could abide; so, on the whole, ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... handed out to him that Sunday," she bluntly declared, "I don't care a——" The oath quite dazed me for a moment, although I had been warned that she would use language on occasion. "What I do care about," she went on briskly, "is that I won't have this girl pestered by Jackson or by you or by any man that wears hair! Why, Jackson talks so silly about her sometimes you'd think she was a bad woman—and he keeps hinting about something he's going to put over till I can hardly keep ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... hottest, and on another side a Gardner was brought to bear on a bit of cover where the Arabs clustered thickly. Ere the sun was quite above the horizon the loud sharp report of the former cheered the hearts of those who had been so hemmed in and pestered, and a second or so after there was a second bang as the avenging shell burst right among the bushes a thousand yards off. At the same time the ger-r-er of the machine-gun told that its handle was turning, and its deadly missiles tearing through the light cover. The effect was immediate; the ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough









Copyright © 2025 e-Free Translation.com




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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |